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Lt. Gov. Greg Bell was a new Farmington City Council member in the occasionally heated world of local politics when he met Marda Dillree.
That was in the mid-1980s, and his fellow council member was an island of calm when issues divided neighbors and friends, he said.
"I think the hardest thing a person, a newbie, has to deal with is the public clamor that all of a sudden you are thrust into," he said. "Marda was just a champion. She'd been thrown into it many times before."
Dillree, who went on to represent Farmington in the Utah House of Representatives for 12 years, died Thursday at age of 64 after a long battle with cancer. During her time in the Legislature, perhaps her most significant accomplishment was becoming "the mother of Legacy Parkway," in the 1990s, as her cousin, Debra Ricker, said.
Dillree knew that the bottleneck of congested traffic on Interstate 15 through Davis County would only become a bigger problem as the area grew, her husband, Steve Dillree, said.
"Everyone, in some ways, would like to see things stay the same: small, rural and peaceful, but that's not the way it is," he said. "She knew that if something wasn't done, no one would be able to go from Weber County to Salt Lake County because Davis County would be all plugged up."
The idea had been kicked around for several years, but it was Dillree who knew how to package it effectively, bring all the players to the table, and doggedly pursue
"She is definitely one of my greatest mentors," he said.
Though the project later bogged down in environmental litigation, a compromise was eventually reached and the road opened last year.
Dillree grew up in California, moved to Utah in 1965, and later settled in Farmington. A mother of three sons, she became a Boy Scout leader, then president of the PTA, a member of the school board, City Council member and state lawmaker.
"I think she loved the way people were so willing to help one another, serve one another, watch over and take care," her husband said of her connection to the Farmington community.
As a representative, transportation and education were her biggest issues, and she also worked to establish charter schools, Ricker said. She was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1997, and later underwent a stem-cell transplant.
She retired from the Legislature in 2004, and last year, the cancer returned "with a vengeance," Ricker said. She is survived by her husband, three sons, four grandchildren and one grandson.
