Keith Sorensen Wood

Keith was born March 4, 1951, at St. Mark's Hospital in Salt Lake City, the oldest son of Collin Harding Wood and Ruth Sorensen Wood. His father had been widowed twice and already had grown children, so Keith arrived in the world a great-uncle. He grew up on the family's mink ranch on Creek Road in Sandy and dove for Hillcrest High School until an accident ended his diving days, graduating in 1969. An Eagle Scout and a Vigil member and lodge chief in the Order of the Arrow, he spent the summer before his mission running a weeklong wilderness camp for 34 Scouts as the only adult in camp.

A lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Keith served in the Southwest Indian Mission from 1970 to 1972, learning to speak Navajo and serving among the Diné in Sawmill, Arizona, and Crystal, Thoreau and Gallup, New Mexico. As a missionary, he taught seminary, organized Scout troops in his branches, and on Christmas Eve 1970 padded a borrowed Santa suit with pillows to deliver candy to families around Thoreau. In the decades that followed, he taught Sunday School almost without a break, served three times as stake Sunday School president, and served on the high council, in a bishopric and as a stake clerk.

Keith came home from his mission on a Sunday night and was in class the next morning. For years he worked nights as a custodian at the newly opened Church Office Building, and later as a night watchman, while studying English and history by day at the University of Utah. He earned a bachelor of science in 1980, and later a master of education in instructional technology from Utah State University.

Keith taught for 46 years. He spent the first 13 at Master Academy, an alternative school, working with young people who needed someone to believe in them and teaching himself the school's first computers along the way. That experience helped him land a job at Murray High School in 1987, just as its English department won a grant for a Mac lab. For 33 years he taught Honors English and AP U.S. History there, doubling as the school's resident tech expert, until retiring in 2020. He also taught English 1010 at Salt Lake Community College for more than a decade, and each summer he traveled the country training new AP U.S. History teachers for the College Board, calling himself a "College Board migrant worker." His many honors included, to name just a few, the U.S. Department of Education's Presidential Scholars Program Teacher Recognition Award (2000), Utah's Teacher of the Week from KSL NewsRadio and Zions Bank (2005), and the Murray Rotary Club's Meritorious Teacher of the Year (2008–09).

To thousands of students he was "Mr. Wood," and their stories share a common thread: he saw something in them they didn't yet see, and he raised their sights until goals that once seemed out of reach felt possible. His classes were known as the hardest and most rewarding in the school. Some students signed up for Honors and AP just to be in his room, and nobody dared be late. He was demanding, and in an earlier era he was famous for handing out "weenie points" to students who were being, well, you get the idea. He played devil's advocate, answered most questions with another question, and challenged both sides of every political argument without declaring his own, though anyone willing to wait long enough would get his opinion in one form or another.

Students arrived nervous about the teacher rumored to make kids cry, then discovered his humor and kindness. They copied his quips, known as "Woodisms," into the backs of their notebooks, remember his priceless facial expressions, and still laugh about the day he broke the silence after a test on Woodstock by blasting Bryan Adams's "Summer of '69." Whenever anyone called him scary, Keith insisted he was a cupcake; an earlier generation heard him call himself an Oreo cookie, hard on the outside and soft at the core. He was one of the most opinionated people his friends ever met, and heaven help anyone who landed on his bad side. But he was also a ferocious warrior for the underdog and, as one longtime friend put it, "squishy in the middle."

His care showed in small gestures that meant more as time went by. He opened his classroom before school to students who wanted to talk about the news of the world. He came to their plays, laughed loudest in the audience, and was there the next morning with praise. One arts festival he picked up the IHOP tab for some fifteen students, who then coaxed him into forming a school club, the Boys of Sparta (later the Men of Sparta). Lunch on Mr. Wood became a club tradition, along with service projects and burning the M at homecoming. He tagged along to laser tag and bought everyone pizza, too, all while pretending to hate every minute of it. He helped more than one student make it to graduation and off to college, first laptop in hand. Decades later, former students were still writing him letters, naming him in their dissertations and taking him to lunch, and some, like Corbin Edginton, became friends for life.

Colleagues loved him just as much, and many fellow teachers counted him among their dearest friends. He took new teachers under his wing and chaperoned AP Art History trips to San Francisco in 2018 and New York in 2019, where students trailed him like ducklings despite his best show of disinterest. Along the way he gave impromptu history lectures at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and on the Brooklyn Bridge. Efforts to win him over to modern art, at SFMOMA and again in New York, were less successful; the verdict is still out. His bouts of grouchiness, real or feigned, only made everyone love him more.

Keith never married or had children, though as he once wrote to an old mission companion, "I guess my students kind of fill in for the kids I'll never have." In truth, his family was enormous: nieces and nephews, neighbors and ward members, fellow teachers and former students, and many families who welcomed him as one of their own.

Among the longest and closest was the Lamping family. John Lamping wasn't even one of Keith's students when he arrived at Master Academy; he just kept ending up in Keith's room until Keith finally transferred him into his class. Keith always looked out for the lost and struggling students who needed help, and John became like a son to him. John credits the time Keith gave him as a struggling teenager with changing his life, and he remembers Keith as generous to a fault, always ready to share his time and whatever else he had, even if it was his last. Keith stood as best man at John's wedding, and for decades he was part of the family of John, his wife, Jill, and their children, Porter, Zane, Sadie, Myrrhanda and Truett, passing his love of reading on to all of them.

In later years the Irvine family took him in as well. Keith became the closest friend of Ryan Irvine, a student in his classes at Murray High, and was best man again when Ryan married Xochitl, another former student. He became a fixture at their family dinners, holidays and birthdays, and he delighted in watching their children, Ellie, Leo, Zoya and Alice, grow up. After one long drive to visit old friends in his final years, he put it plainly: we can't let the people who matter to us drift away.

He kept those people close over meals. La Frontera Mexican Restaurant was a favorite haunt for years, often with John. On the first Monday of every month he met former students Jed Burton and Brady Young there for lunch, a tradition that outlasted his move to memory care and continued until November 2, less than a week before he died. Brady was a steady presence in Keith's final year, too, keeping him company through a hospital stay and helping find him a new home at Meadow Peak.

Keith could rarely go anywhere without running into someone who remembered him: a former student stopping by his table to tell him how much they loved his class, or a parent thanking him for what he had done for their child. Ask him, and he would insist he was nobody special. His fame, or infamy, said otherwise.

Above all, Keith was a reader. He could devour a novel in a single sitting and start the next before bed, and his Kindle library alone grew to nearly 800 books, never mind the shelves of paper ones he read over a lifetime. American history by Joseph Ellis, Jon Meacham and Pauline Maier sat beside thriller series he followed for decades, from John Sandford's Prey novels and Lee Child's Jack Reacher to Preston and Child, Michael Connelly, John Grisham and Daniel Silva, plus fantasy epics like Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. Writing was a close sibling to all that reading. He kept journals and loved poetry, though poetry written by inexperienced students was, for the most part, another matter. He was just as happy watching a good story on screen, like Reacher, Jack Ryan or Tracker, ideally with friends and a treat.

All that reading made him one of the most engaging conversation partners anyone could ask for, even as his memory began to fail, moving easily from Plato and Marcus Aurelius to the Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King Jr., Bono or Greta Gerwig. When a former student took him to the Barbie movie in 2023, Keith spent the opening scenes asking, "What the hell did you bring me to?" By the closing credits he declared, "There will be whole college courses taught on this film someday."

Every summer from 1992 on, Keith made the pilgrimage to the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, usually for six plays in three days. He saw every one of Shakespeare's plays there, many four or five times, and in later years he loved sharing the trip with friends, including former student Parker Schofield and his wife, Mariah, who also visited him often in his final months. He was a runner for years, with the occasional 5K, and when his body would no longer allow it, he kept sharp on an elliptical at home.

Privately he loved to paint, though by his own design few people ever saw his work. He was also a gifted cook, turning out peach and cherry jam by the pint, kettles of soup in winter, lasagna with homemade ricotta, lemon bars, and chocolate chip cookies a colleague called the best she ever had. And if a box of his pecan or peanut brittle showed up at Christmas, you knew Keith loved you.

Keith was preceded in death by his parents; his siblings Robert Collin Wood, Lois Norma Wood and an infant sibling; and his younger brother, Wayne Sorensen Wood. He is survived by his brother Neil C. Wood (Geneva); his sister-in-law Jeanie Wood; numerous nieces and nephews; the Lamping and Irvine families, who loved him as one of their own; and generations of grateful students.

Keith could be famously stubborn, and on one point he would not budge: he wanted no funeral and no memorial service. Anyone who ever tried to argue with him knows better than to try now, so at his insistence there will be neither. He will be laid to rest beside his father and mother at Wasatch Lawn Memorial Park in Millcreek, in a private interment with no graveside service.

His friends, however, have found a loophole. An informal celebration of Keith is tentatively planned for his birthday, Thursday, March 4, 2027, at Murray High School, with treats, conversation and plenty of "Mr. Wood" stories. Please RSVP at the link below to let us know you're interested; more details will follow as the day gets closer. https://bit.ly/4iEMAbu

His headstone, chosen years ago, gives a lifelong teacher the last word: "Class dismissed." He is dearly missed, as he was deeply loved.