Louise Degn papers, 1946-2015

Louise Degn was born in Logan, Utah on May 25th, 1946. She attended Ogden High School, graduated from Utah State University, and later received a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University. She worked for several years at KSL, a local news station, as the only woman broadcast news reporter in Utah. During her career as a television reporter, she produced the program "Mormon Women and Depression" for Dimension Five despite intense pressure against it from the LDS church. For this and other programs she produced, she won several awards praising her perspective on the lives of Utah women. In 1990, she began teaching at the University of Utah Communication Department where she produced a program on women's suffrage in the western United States, "Let the Women Vote!" Louise served a LDS mission at the Australia-Brisbane Mission in 1973; however, after the 1993 LDS Purges she helped run a small nondenominational religious group called "Sunday Gatherings." Throughout her life, she played and composed music, and performances of her compositions are maintained on her website. Despite her worsening physical condition later in her life, she continued to conduct for her local ward's choir until her death on May 8th, 2015.