Jean Hatch on Miss Lehi, the Lehi Arts Council, and a Lifetime of Community Service in Lehi, Utah

Jean Hatch on Miss Lehi, Arts Council & Community Service | Lehi, UT

Jean Hatch shares growing up on historic Trinaman Lane, leading Miss Lehi and Miss Utah pageants, building the Lehi Arts Council for 18 years, traveling to Miss America during 9/11, and 25 years with March of Dimes.

Jean Hatch on Miss Lehi, the Lehi Arts Council, and a Lifetime of Community Service in Lehi, Utah

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Who Is Jean Hatch, and Why Does Her Story Matter?

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Episode Overview

Guest Name

Role in Lehi

Time Periods Discussed

Host

Primary Topics Discussed

Episode Highlights

Key Stories from the Interview

Naming Trinaman Lane — "When You're the Only Ones There, You Can Name It Whatever You Want"

The Hutchings Museum — From Private Home to Public Treasure

Saving the Miniature Parade from Its Own Success

The "Godhead" of Miss Lehi — Three Women, Decades of Pageant Leadership

Miss America, 9/11, and the Flight Nobody Wanted to Take

Trust Me — If You Do This Like I've Asked, the Audience Will Love It

Disneyland Paris — Lehi Roots, Global Stages

March of Dimes — 25 Years with Heroes in the NICU

"I'm Not Dead Yet!" — Grandchildren and Jewelry Claims

What This Interview Teaches Us About Lehi

Community & Legacy Themes

Memorable Quotes

Related Lehi Topics & Archive Connections

Explore More Stories from Lehi

Suggested Photos & Visuals

Full Transcript

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Roots & Branches of Lehi

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Born on historic Trinaman Lane, Jean Hatch helped build the first Hutchings Museum, standardized Lehi's beloved miniature parade, led Miss Lehi and Miss Utah for decades, chaired the Lehi Arts Council for 18 years, and traveled to Miss America during 9/11 — all while keeping family and community at the center of everything.

helps families achieve the dream of homeownership in Lehi and across Utah.

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Jean Hatch is one of those rare people whose life story is inseparable from the story of Lehi, Utah itself. Born in the old Lehi Hospital and raised on historic Trinaman Lane — a street named after her grandfather and great-uncles who built the first homes there — Jean grew up in a tight-knit farming town where dirt roads outnumbered sidewalks, Vets Park was the social center of the universe, and walking past a taxidermist shop on the way home from the movies was a rite of passage.

Over the decades, Jean became one of Lehi's most dedicated community builders. Her leadership in the Miss Lehi Pageant and the Miss Utah organization helped shape generations of young women. As chair of the Lehi Arts Council for nearly 18 years, she expanded youth theater, adult productions, music programs, and arts education in a city that was growing faster than its cultural infrastructure. She helped standardize Lehi's beloved miniature parade when wealthy wards threatened to turn it into a full-scale float competition. She even helped fundraise for the very first Hutchings Museum when it was still a private collection in John Hutchings' own home.

Jean's story spans some of the most pivotal moments in modern American history, too. She was in Atlantic City for Miss America on September 11, 2001 — one of the first commercial flights out of Salt Lake City after the attacks, landing in a changed world where sharpshooters stood on hotel rooftops and PT boats patrolled the shoreline. She spent 25 years with the March of Dimes , supporting families with medically fragile infants and calling NICU nurses her heroes. And through it all, she never stopped mentoring — still coaching young women for Miss Utah interviews every Sunday, still showing up, still serving.

For anyone interested in Lehi Utah history , Miss Lehi pageant stories , Lehi Arts Council history , community theater development , or the Roots & Branches of Lehi podcast , this interview is a treasure. Jean Hatch's memories offer a vivid, firsthand window into old Lehi's small-town charm, the institutions that defined it, and the people who ensured those traditions survived into a new century.

Prefer to listen? This episode is also available on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , and other podcast platforms.

Jean Hatch

Longtime community volunteer; Miss Lehi committee leader; Miss Utah board member; Lehi Arts Council chair; director and organizer of community theater and music programs

1940s–2020s

Ryan Harding

Jean grew up on Trinaman Lane , a street that didn't get its name from a city planner but from her own family. Her grandfather and his two brothers built the first homes in that small area, and because they were the only ones there, they got to name the road. Decades later, a developer built Trinaman Fields — an entire neighborhood where the family once had a monopoly on street names. It's a perfect metaphor for how Lehi's rural landscape has transformed into one of Utah's fastest-growing cities.

Long before the Hutchings Museum had its own building, John Hutchings kept his entire collection — rocks, minerals, arrowheads, and artifacts from canyon explorations — inside his private home. Jean recalls grade school classes touring through his house, and her family helping with salmon bakes and fundraisers to build the first dedicated museum space. She even remembers a teacher correcting her poster: "I don't think he wants these things called stuff."

Lehi's miniature parade originally grew out of simple ward "round-the-block" parades led by accordion players like Lucille Brooks . The first floats were wagons with plywood tops. But as wards grew wealthier, the floats grew larger — verging on full-size and threatening the parade's unique identity. Jean approached a McNaughton family member then overseeing Roundup celebrations and was promptly appointed to the committee. She established standardized dimensions, height limits, and spending caps so that every ward competed on equal footing. "Everybody was kind of on an equal playing field," she says, "and was able to win those coveted awards for best float."

After years of involvement with Miss Lehi, Jean joined the Miss Utah board under David Haw. When Lynn Smith stepped down after one year, Jean, Reneita Revel , and Bonnie Evans took over — a trio Jean laughingly calls "the godhead of the pageant." They guided the organization for years, ensuring financial stability and smooth leadership transitions. Even after Revel stepped down due to her husband's health, Jean stayed on to secure the pageant's future before handing it to a new generation.

Jean, her daughter, and a friend flew to Atlantic City to support Jackie Hunt , a former Miss Lehi competing at Miss America. Then the planes hit the towers. The pageant contestants voted unanimously to continue: "We don't want them to dictate how we live our lives." When airports reopened, Jean's family was on one of the first commercial flights out of Salt Lake City — nearly empty, staffed entirely by older crew members because younger employees refused to fly. They were upgraded to first class, flew over Ground Zero at the pilot's offer, and walked silent New York streets filled with photographs and candles. Two weeks earlier, they had stood atop the World Trade Center. Jean had felt an inexplicable unease and urged everyone to leave. Her husband later said he felt "something almost evil" in the building that day.

During a youth theater production of Honk , a young boy playing a bullfrog struggled with his stand-up comedy lines. He thought the jokes were stupid and wasn't buying in. Jean kept encouraging him: "Trust me." On opening night, Jared Ellison — father of theater contributor Kurt Ellison — sat in the audience. The moment the boy delivered his first one-liner, Jared nearly fell on the floor laughing, his joy echoing through the building. "It was like a light switch turned on," Jean recalls. "I'm funny. People like what I'm doing. I can do this." From then on, he owned the role. It's a lesson Jean has seen repeated countless times: one person's encouragement can change a child's trajectory.

Jean has watched children she taught in Lehi's community theater programs go on to professional careers. One young man who started in children's theater progressed to Hale Center Theater , then to the new theater in Sandy, and recently moved to Paris to perform at Disneyland Paris . Another boy from her 1970s children's singing group graduated from BYU law school, became a Las Vegas attorney, and now sings with a Gladys Knight group — having released his own CD. "His roots were in Lehi," Jean says. "It started right here."

Jean never became a school teacher, her original career plan. Instead, after volunteering with March of Dimes , she was invited to work part-time, then full-time, then as division director — a role she held for nearly 25 years. She calls the families she met her heroes: parents whose children were born with birth defects, told there was a 3-4% chance of recurrence, only to face it again. And the doctors and nurses who dedicate their lives to saving babies "no bigger than a dollar bill when they're born." The work changed her life, deepened her compassion, and connected her to people who "touched my heart and changed my attitude about things."

When Ryan Harding joked that Jean isn't dead yet and should keep working, Jean laughed and shared a running family joke. Her granddaughter regularly goes through her jewelry, admiring rings and trying them on. Jean's response is always the same: "I'm not dead yet." It's a lighthearted moment that captures her spirit — still active, still mentoring, still very much alive in the community she has served for more than seven decades.

Jean Hatch's memories provide an extraordinarily detailed portrait of old Lehi — the farming community that existed before Silicon Slopes, before the population explosion, before paved streets reached every neighborhood. She describes a town where dirt roads were the norm, where children walked to the church for concrete smooth enough to roller skate, and where families like hers built their own homes and named their own streets. Her recollections of Vets Park as the central gathering place for baseball, fireworks, and community events underscore how public spaces shaped social life long before shopping centers and entertainment complexes arrived.

The interview documents the origins of several beloved Lehi institutions . The Hutchings Museum began not as a modern facility but as a private collection in John Hutchings' home, visited by schoolchildren who toured through his living spaces. Lehi's miniature parade emerged from ward "round-the-block" celebrations with accordion players and plywood-topped wagons, not the elaborate float bases seen today. Jean's work to standardize the parade in the late 1980s preserved its unique identity against the pressures of growth and wealth inequality between wards.

The interview also captures the evolution of Lehi's cultural infrastructure . When Jean joined the Lehi Arts Council in the early 2000s, it operated out of the old Hutchings Museum building with mirrors being installed, a proper stage being built, and folding chairs giving way to real theater seating. Under her 18-year chairmanship, the youth theater program expanded from a single group to multiple age categories performing several shows annually. This growth paralleled Lehi's physical expansion — from a town where everyone knew everyone to a city of 90,000 where, as Jean notes, it's now hard to find a spot on the parade route.

Jean's reflections on Lehi's schools offer a multigenerational timeline. She attended Seagull Elementary (later the name changed), was among the first PTA presidents at Meadow Elementary when it was newly built, and watched her children graduate from Lehi High before Skyridge existed. Today her grandchildren have graduated from Lehi, Skyridge, Westlake, and Cedar Valley — a single family's educational journey tracing the district's geographic expansion across northern Utah County.

Finally, the interview preserves the texture of daily life in mid-20th century Lehi — the two movie theaters on State and Main Streets, the taxidermy shop that made walking home from scary movies genuinely terrifying, the Pony League games where her father coached and her mother kept score, and the family picnics in American Fork Canyon while her prospector father worked his claims. These are not just nostalgic details; they are the building blocks of community memory, documenting how ordinary routines and local landmarks created a sense of place that newer residents are still trying to replicate in a transformed city.

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This episode connects to broader themes explored across the Roots & Branches of Lehi archive. Listeners interested in Jean's story may also want to explore these related subjects from other interviews:

The Roots & Branches of Lehi archive captures the voices of educators, entrepreneurs, public servants, artists, farmers, and families who have shaped the city. Each episode adds another thread to the story of who Lehi is and who it is becoming.

To enrich this archival page and preserve the visual history of this conversation, the following images would complement the written record:

This transcript has been lightly formatted for readability while preserving the complete conversation. Speaker labels and paragraph breaks have been added; minor verbal filler has been trimmed for clarity. Chapter headings organize the interview by topic.

An oral history archive capturing the stories, people, and traditions that make Lehi, Utah unique. Hosted by Ryan Harding.

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