Paige Pratley Obituary

Paige Pratley, youngest daughter of Sue and the late Brent Pratley, passed away in Salt Lake City, Utah on July 10, 2025 after a period of acute health decline.

Three days after her Provo birth on January 9, 1983, Paige debuted at the home of her adoptive family. Her five older siblings were delighted, especially the brother who nixed the provisional name "Quincy" the day before. When her oldest sibling Darren arrived that fall, their enduring "family bookend" friendship began.

For Paige, meeting Darren was itself an accomplishment. At five weeks, Paige contracted pneumonia; at eight weeks, she had surgery on a digestion-inhibiting pyloric stenosis; at four months, she suffered the first of several acute apnea episodes. Family members soon learned how to strap a sensor across Paige's chest and attach it to the monitor which sounded an alarm whenever her breathing stopped.

The group effort that sustained Baby Paige was the Pratleys' finest project ever. (Even as an infant, she galvanized people behind a good cause.) Its second-finest project was the organization of annual California vacations at Capistrano Beach. The ocean was Paige's ultimate happy place. Fearlessly amphibious, she would shock her brothers by donning a life jacket and blithely bobbing into the deep water alongside them.

The Pratley family had lived sixty miles away from Capistrano Beach before moving to Provo in 1977 to be closer to BYU sports. Paige loved cheering the Cougars and loved the father whose BYU zeal she shared. After witnessing his death in 2017, Paige mourned her dad deeply and remembered him fondly on Instagram.

Another bereavement shared over Paige's social media was the death of a niece from a fentanyl overdose in early 2024. At only six years apart, Raelyn felt less like a niece to Paige and more like a younger sister. During summers when the "bookend" brother's children lived with him in Florida, "Aunt" Paige would fly out to play with and supervise Rae and her three siblings. (Exact figures are not available, but at least some of that time must have been spent away from the beach.)

Rivaling Paige's love for beaches and BYU sports was her passion for theater. While at Timpview High School, she received awards for pantomime at regional drama competitions and sang in the chorus of Fiddler on the Roof. The ultimate combination of her love of acting with her love of animals ("It became clear that I loved animals." -Paige, 1987) was a show-stealing turn as Nana in Peter Pan. In recent years, she became a doting dog mom to Lulu and Othello. Snuggles with these two good doggos gave Paige, and now give her family, abundant emotional support.

In 1993, Paige wrote that she wanted to be a teacher when she grew up "because it seems fun". As a student, Paige was a proud Edgemont Eagle and an ambivalent Farrer Whatever-that-was. As an adult, Ms. Paige returned both to Edgemont and to that-which-replaced-Farrer (Sunrise Preschool) to work as a special-needs preschool aide. In 2022, she left employment at Edgemont to begin her final job at Spectrum Academy. Children from all three institutions benefitted from Paige's achievement of a Level 1 Professional Educator License for Preschool Special Education in 2015.

Before school began every fall, Ms. Paige and her mother would decamp to Cedar City, another Paige happy place. Paige was a proud alum of Southern Utah University, where she joined the sorority Delta Psi Omega and graduated in 2008 with a BS in Theatre Arts. Paige's mother, her plus-one for travel to high school drama competitions, went on to reprise that role during their beloved August trips to the Utah Shakespeare Festival.

Mother and daughter also teamed up for temple visits. Paige, a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, received solace from regular temple service. She sought this peace, in part, to counteract the painful emotional riptide arising from her adoption. Its associated mysteries grieved Paige and stimulated intense curiosity about her birth family.

Seven years ago, Paige managed to contact her birth mother, Sherry Smith. Adoptee reunions with biological parents can run the gamut; luckily, Paige hit the jackpot. Sherry, her husband and their five children warmly welcomed her into their lives. They invited Paige to holidays in Vernal, introduced her to demolition derbies, dressed her in matching plaid pajamas for a Christmas picture and tolerated the spontaneous loss of a chicken to her ravenous dog, Lulu.

Sue was Paige's constant and her rock, while Sherry was her fresh pair of open arms. She truly needed, loved and cherished them both.

Paige's final Instagram post from April 20th showed Darren holding a portrait of Raelyn. Without telling him, and with deep-water fearlessness, she submitted the photo to Utah Naloxone for consideration in their anti-overdose campaign. To everyone's surprise, the picture was selected and now appears on billboards currently visible across the Wasatch Front. Glimpsing even tiny, phone-screen pictures of that billboard in her hospital room brought Paige immense satisfaction. Even during her final weeks, Paige had rallied people behind a vital cause.

Paige was preceded in death by her father Brent and her niece Raelyn. She is survived by her two canine loves, Othello and Lulu; her mother Sue and her mother Sherry; six Pratley siblings (Darren, Heather, Brooke, Jaron, Gretchen and Jordan); five Smith siblings (Carter, Alicia, Mindy, Christina and Jacob); and twenty-three Pratley/Smith nieces and nephews (Chance, Demi, Taylor, Madison, Henry, Noah, Emma J., McCoy, Isaac, Sydney, Aveline, Max, Caroline, Corbin, Aleah, Samuel, Emma S., Sean, Teagan, Mila, Declan, Nora and Jaden.)

Funeral services for Paige will be held on Friday, July 18th at the LDS chapel located at 4220 Foothill Drive in Provo. A viewing will take place from 9:30-10:30 a.m., followed by a funeral service at 11 a.m.

Interment will take place at Eastlawn Memorial Hills, 4800 North 650 East, Provo.

A webcast of the service will be available at www.walkersanderson.com.