Couple Returns to the St. George Temple 80 Years After Being Sealed There

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By Scott Taylor, Church News

Few people today can claim personal ties to the historic St. George Utah Temple that date back eight-plus decades. Even fewer can do that together with a spouse.

There’s a centenarian couple in St. George who can.

Parke Cox, 102, and Emily Cox, 101, were sealed in the St. George temple on July 8, 1943 — more than 80 years ago.

They recently returned to the same temple, visiting on November 11, the last day of open-house tours of the renovated edifice. They took with them the certificate of sealing they received 80 years ago, happy to show others the reminder of that sacred ordinance.

In the fall of 1941, Emily Brown had left her small hometown of Scipio in central Utah to go to St. George in the state’s southwestern corner to attend Dixie State College (now Utah Tech University). During her first semester there, she first met Parke Cox, who offered her a ride home after a dance.

“He was always so polite,” she recalled of the start of a relationship that led to marriage on September 12, 1942.

“I called up to Scipio and told my mom, ‘I’m gonna get married this weekend — if you want, you can come on down,’” said Emily Cox during a recent interview in the living room of their St. George home of 68 years, located in the shadows of the St. George Tabernacle and a half-dozen blocks from the temple.

Ten months after their marriage, Parke and Emily Cox were sealed. “It was quite a thrill to go in there for the first time,” he said of attending the longest-operating house of the Lord of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Parke Cox is a fifth-generation member of the Church, dating back to Jehu Cox’s 1838 baptism, relocation to Missouri and Nauvoo and then crossing the Great Plains to the Salt Lake Valley. His great-grandfather, Isaiah Cox, was sent in 1861 with his family to the “Cotton” mission and to help settle St. George, where as a skilled carpenter he helped build both the tabernacle and temple.

Warren Cox, Parke Cox’s grandfather, was endowed and sealed in the temple in 1877, the first year it was dedicated. Parke Cox remembers he was 12 when his 36-year-old father passed away prematurely from a ruptured appendix.

Emily Cox’s father, Lonzo Brown, passed away at a young age as well — she remembers growing up in Scipio with just her mother and sister, and going to be sealed as a family in the Salt Lake Temple. When the Coxes were a young married family and trying to borrow some money to buy a couple of cows to get started together, it wasn’t until they were referred to a central Utah bank where the name of Lonzo Brown was so well respected that they easily were afforded a loan.

“I didn’t have a brother, and I didn’t have a dad around, so I was just happy to have him,” Emily Cox said of her husband.

And Parke Cox was happy to take her new places when he could — like on the fall deer hunts with his buddies. “Wherever I go, she goes,” he recalled telling those in his hunting party that first time when they were surprised to see the husband-wife duo at what traditionally was a ‘guys’ activity.”

“I was the first woman out there,” Emily Cox said. “Pretty soon, another came and another — I must have started something.”

And what Parke Cox started — after serving in World War II — was a successful namesake business.

As a U.S. Army Air Force pilot during the war, he flew air freight and ferried military airplanes, including shuttling planes to Alaska for the Russians. In 1945, he was sent to Reno, Nevada, to wait for an overseas assignment, but after two weeks there, the war ended.

Adapting his airborne experiences into an on-the-ground career, Parke Cox purchased one truck in 1947 — still boxed in crates and needing to be assembled — to haul freight and goods, then another and another, creating a well-respected trucking company still run by the family 75 years later.

Of their marriage, their family of five children and their trucking firm that had him on the road a lot early in his career, Parke Cox said: “We’ve been together for quite a few years — we all work together.”

It’s what Emily Cox attributes the success of an 81-year marriage. “A lot of work — and we’re still doing it together,” she said, adding “Our family is the most important thing we have. I imagine it would be for anybody.”

Are the Coxes good for another 80 years of marriage?

“Oh, I hope not,” laughed Emily Cox at the thought of 180-plus years of mortal life. But she quickly and contentedly smiled when reminded of the promises of eternal marriage and family relationships because of their temple sealing.

Said Parke Cox: “We’re pretty proud of that.”

Added his wife: “It’s been quite a life,” she said. “It’s been a good one. … We’ll just keep doing the things we’re supposed to be doing.”