Constance Julia Cimmers Swenson was born on August 8, 1949 in Magna, Salt

Lake County, Utah. She passed away on October 20, 2025 at the Trios Hospital in

Kennewick, Benton County, Washington. Her funeral service was held on

November 1 at the Meadow Springs Ward chapel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Church) on Pittsburgh St. in Kennewick, Washington.

Pioneer Woman

Connie Swenson was a beloved daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother, and spent her seventy-six years on earth creating beauty and caring for the ones she loved.

Connie was born August 8, 1949 to Julia Halvorsen and Robert Cimmers, the second of their five children. She grew up in a one-bedroom home in Magna, Utah, on the same street as her grandparents and her aunt and uncle. Her earliest memories were of her close-knit family serving and caring for each other. Connie’s cousin Joan became Connie’s lifelong best friend.

As a child, Connie loved to read and sew and play with dolls, and she dreamt someday of working as a fashion designer. She also persevered through health challenges that would stay with her for the rest of her life.

Connie graduated from Cyprus High School in 1967 and attended LDS Business College (now Ensign College) for a year. She loved recalling her early twenties, when she met lots of new friends while working at the Church genealogical records archive, doing the earliest part of transcribing Elizabethan parish records into the computer database that became FamilySearch. Connie loved having that opportunity for education and independence. Connie was a devoted daughter, and part of her small secretary salary went to supporting her mother.

Connie met her lifelong sweetheart, Raymond Takashi Swenson, at a Church dance soon after returning from his two-year mission in Japan. At the time, Ray was a college student enrolled in AFROTC at the University of Utah, but Connie said she always knew that he would be so much more. She became close to Ray’s parents, Fumie Suzuki Swenson and Robert Swenson, who had married in Japan during the Occupation.

Connie married Ray on September 1, 1972 in the Salt Lake City Temple. Soon after, Connie went back to work to support Ray as he finished his math degree.

The Air Force soon took Connie and Ray to Colorado Springs, CO. This was the first time Connie had lived outside of Utah, and the beginning of two military careers: Ray’s career, beginning at the NORAD Space Defense Center inside Cheyenne Mountain, and Connie’s career as a faithful military spouse.

Connie gave birth to their first son, Robert Takashi, at the Air Force Academy hospital. Robert was premature, and spent weeks in the Fitzsimons Army Hospital NICU 80 miles north in Denver. Even decades later, Connie’s face would light up whenever she remembered the joy and relief she felt when she and Ray were able to bring their tiny firstborn son home on Christmas Day, 1973.

Twin daughters, Karen Marie and Julia Lynn, soon followed in November 1974. The twins were premature, and did not live very long. They were buried at a Swenson family plot in Pleasant Grove, Utah. This heartbreaking loss stayed with Connie for the rest of her life, and she often spoke of how much she loved her tiny daughters. Connie had a spiritual gift for remembering and loving family through the veil, and her loving remembrance for her babies kept Karen and Julie close for the whole family.

Connie and Ray soon moved to Utah in 1975 for two reasons: first, to pursue Ray’s USAF law school scholarship, but also so Connie could help care for her mother Julia, who was dying of cancer.

It was a bittersweet time for Connie, who needed to care for a preschooler and another high-risk pregnancy while losing her mom. Connie remembered a time when she was on bed rest in the same hospital where her mother lay dying a few floors above in May, 1976. This difficult time gave Connie the ability to see and understand the struggles of others in similar impossible circumstances.

Ray and Connie welcomed their son Eric John in 1976. Connie was delighted to have two healthy kids. Soon she and Ray moved to Washington, D.C, and after another high-risk pregnancy, Connie delivered their daughter Rebecca Sachiko in 1980 at the Andrews AFB hospital. Connie had longed for a daughter, and now their joy (and family) was complete.

Soon Connie’s family of five moved to Yokota Air Base in Tokyo, Japan. She went with Ray and the children to visit Ray’s grandmother and family in Nagoya. Connie loved these years in Japan, and the memories she made there as she and the kids connected with their Japanese family and visited traditional inns and shrines, including visits by Ray’s parents, brothers and sister.

Connie continued as a busy wife and mother while the Air Force took them back to Washington, DC for Ray’s second law degree, and then to Omaha, Nebraska, where Ray began work for HQ Strategic Air Command, supporting 25 bomber and missile bases from Maine to California and the Pacific island of Guam.

Connie loved collecting antiques, and spent many weekends driving with Ray through rural Nebraskan towns, finding beautiful furniture and quilts from the pioneer era that she treasured. Ray traveled a lot for work, leaving Connie to manage their family daily life alone. She made it work, and despite dealing with frequent illness, she created a beautiful home, full of clothes she sewed for the children and delicious meals every night.

After five years the Air Force moved the family to the San Francisco Bay Area, just in time for the 1989 earthquake that broke the Oakland Bay Bridge and the Oakland freeway. Ray was in a San Francisco subway station when the quake hit, but fortunately got home safely that night. Connie got the chance to pursue her lifelong passion for education, fashion, and heritage. She enrolled at Diablo Valley College and at Marin County Community College, excelling in all her classes. Connie had a love of painstaking process and incredible attention to detail, and she won clients who paid her well to restore antique quilts from the 19th and 20th centuries. When Connie spoke of this work, she glowed. Most of Connie’s life was spent in quiet devotion to home, and the recognition she received for her abilities while working with antique textiles was something she cherished for the rest of her life.

After Ray retired from the Air Force in 1993, he and Connie moved back home to the Wasatch Front, where Connie eagerly reconnected with their extended families in Salt Lake. Connie was proud of her heritage as a daughter of Norwegian and Danish pioneers who had come to Utah in the last handcart company, in 1860, and settled in Sanpete Valley. Connie joined Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, and was a

faithful member for the rest of her life, as she and Ray moved to Richland, Washington in 1998, and then to Idaho Falls, Idaho, in 2000.

Connie remained devoted to her children as they grew up and began their own families. The struggles of her own childhood never left her, and she tried to make sure her grandbabies had plenty to eat, nice clothes to wear, and warm blankets on their beds. She loved babies so much.

In 2008 Ray and Connie moved back to Richland, WA, where they lived a few minutes away from their daughter Rebecca and her large family. Connie enjoyed more adventures as she visited the Washington and Oregon coast, went to quilt and doll shows, and attended meetings for Daughters of the Utah Pioneers.

Connie created beauty always, whether by crafting clothes from vintage fabric and lace; collecting and restoring antique quilts and dolls; or playing the piano, which she did with heartfelt precision. She played for church meetings for years, and also filled her home with Debussy and Chopin.

She did all this while suffering from increasing health issues that brought with them daily pain and multiple complex surgeries. Connie experienced so much heartbreak in life, and her trials gave her the ability to see the pain others felt. She had a special concern for single mothers, like the one who raised her; for mothers who had lost their own children, as she had; for babies in fragile health, like the babies she had lost, and the child she had been. When one of her granddaughters was born with health challenges, Connie immediately became a tireless and tender caregiver to the tiny baby, and was key to that baby’s thriving.

She faced life with quiet courage: a steadfast pioneer woman.

Connie leaves behind her beloved Ray, husband of 53 years; her living children,

Robert, Eric, and Rebecca; and her grandchildren: Amethyst, Cambree, Ember, and

Gideon (Robert), Leif, Alanna, Christian, Ronan and Genevieve (Eric); and

William, Bronwen, Haven, Sakura, Musashi, Cora Dove, Duncan and Reilly (Rebecca). Her sister Patty and her children, and the children of her sister Colleen and brother Mark, will remember her fondly, as will the cousins she grew up with in Magna, and Ray’s brothers Dave and Mike, and sister Pam. Family was everything to Connie, and she was everything to us.