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IN MEMORIAM
179 Evah and David Bigler, February 2014. (Photograph by Richard Paine. Courtesy of Sun Senior News, Roseville, California.)
In Memoriam David Louis Bigler, 1927–2018
The Utah State Historical Society and the West altogether lost an outstanding and original historian with the death of David L. Bigler. Dave received a Service Award from the historical society in 1992 for his research and work to preserve historic trails. He became a member of the Utah State Board of History in 1996, was made an Honorary Life Member of the historical society in 2004, and then a Fellow in 2010. Dave died January 31, 2018, in Roseville, California, at the age of ninety. A Utah native of pioneer Mormon stock, Dave was born May 9, 1927, in Provo to Louis Burtran Bigler and Hazel Anderson and grew up in Salt
Lake City. At Granite High School, he played on the tennis team. At age seventeen in November 1944, he enlisted in the Navy and served in the Pacific Theater for two years at the end of World War II. For at least part of that time, Dave was ranked as a Seaman First Class Radioman on the USS Higbee. Upon his discharge, he attended the University of Utah where he was editor of the Daily Utah Chronicle, the university’s student newspaper, from 1949 to 1950. In 1950 Dave graduated with bachelor’s degree in journalism and was one of eleven individuals elected to the Owl and Key honor society for senior men. After a brief stint as a United Press correspondent in Salt Lake City, Dave was hired in 1950 by U.S. Steel at their Geneva plant as a training instructor in the industrial relations department. Later that same year, the military recalled him to Seattle, Washington, for active duty for
