She was born on June 20, 1931, in Salt Lake City, Utah, the first child of Ruth Jacques and James Joseph Featherstone and married Glen Calvin Collett on June 7, 1950, being a caring, loving wife for almost 66 years, until his passing in 2016.
Shortly after their marriage Marvis and Glen moved to Texas where she worked as a secretary while Glen was in basic training for his service in the Korean War. She returned to Salt Lake to live while he was overseas. When he was discharged, they lived for a few years in Tulare, California, before returning to Salt Lake City and beginning their family, having four children to bring happiness and adventure to their home.
With young children in the home, Marvis helped support the family by teaching piano. Her love of music encouraged her children to play a variety of instruments through the years.
As her children grew older and entered school, she returned to the University of Utah to complete her Bachelor’s degree in Education. She taught in the elementary schools of the Salt Lake City School District for many years then returned again to the University of Utah to earn a Master of Science degree in Special Education for which she wrote her thesis, “Learning Performance of Underachieving Boys on a Paired Associate Task as a Function of Bidirectional Recall.”
She spent the next portion of her professional life as a special education teacher in the Salt Lake City district where she pioneered the use of computers in special education classrooms. Since there were few software programs to be found for such use, she designed them herself, supervised their programming, and founded the one-person corporation “Educational Priority Systems, Inc.” which then sold the software to schools nationwide. She was also a co-developer of the Keyboarding, Reading, Spelling (KRS) computer program for teaching reading and language skills to elementary school students. The latter part of her career was as an administrator in the Special Education department of the school district.
A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, she enjoyed family history work and in her later years was an avid indexer. Even through her final illness, she tried to find time every day to spend indexing.
Other hobbies included bird watching and photography. Several of her bird photographs were published by the Utah Birds website.
She always had the full support of her husband throughout her career as a teacher. She likewise always supported him throughout his years of employment and they worked unitedly together in running their home and raising their children. After both had retired, they became world travelers visiting Russia, Egypt, Italy, Peru, China, and many other countries.
Marvis is survived by Robin Collett, Deb Bennett, of Ivins, Utah, Steven and Stacy Collett of Tualatin, Oregon, Gordon and Siv Collett of Billings, Montana, Jill and Mark Filicetti of Boise, Idaho; grandchildren Wesley (Anna), Ryan, Mason, Glen-Olav, Synneva, Torstein (Emma), Kjetil, Solfrid, Breena, Anthony, Angela (Matthew) Miller, Abigail (Logan) LePage, and Olivia (Dawson) Griep; her brothers James Dee (Sally) Featherstone and Keith Featherstone, and two great-grandchildren, Phoebe and Max Miller.
Services will be held on August 28, 2019 at Wasatch Lawn Memorial Park and Mortuary, 3401 Highland Drive, Salt Lake City, Utah. Viewing at 10:00 a.m. followed by graveside services at 11:00 a.m.
Special thanks to the doctors and staff of the Dixie Regional Cancer Center who provided excellent care throughout her illness and the staff of Dixie Rehabilitation and Hospice for their tender care for Marvis during the last months of her life.
