Alice Elaine Miles died Thursday, May 11, 2023, after a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer. She was born July 24, 1939, in Idaho Falls, Bonneville County, Idaho, to Lowell Franklin Jeppson, and Alice Beth Sant. Her parents divorced when she was in grade school and her mother later married Ray Cope. Her father later married Louise Lish. She and her older sister Lois moved with their mother to Ray’s farm in Terreton, Idaho, where she attended Hamer Grade School. During this time two sons, David and John, were born to Ray and Beth. During Elaine’s eighth grade year in school, a hailstorm wiped out their crop and they were forced to move back to Idaho Falls for financial reasons. Ray was able to obtain work as an electrician, and Elaine attended O.E. Bell Middle School, and later Idaho Falls High School where she was a member of the Tigerettes dance team. She graduated from high school in 1957 in the top 10% of her class and moved to Pocatello to work in her father, Lowell Jeppson’s tire dealership.
After two years working at the dealership, she enrolled at Kinman Business School in Spokane with her good friend Marge Bramwell. Upon graduation she returned to Idaho Falls and worked for Rogers Brothers, a large potato processing company. She met Paul Miles who had recently moved to Idaho Falls to teach school and the two began dating in 1962. They married June 7, 1963, in the Idaho Falls Latter-day Saints Temple.
Paul decided to enroll in graduate school, so the couple moved to Provo to attend summer school, after which they relocated to Tucson to complete studies at the University of Arizona. After graduation the couple moved back to Pocatello where Paul began a teaching job at Highland High School. It was there, their first child Michael was born. In 1965 the family moved to Moscow, where Paul accepted a teaching position at the University of Idaho, where five more children were born and reared.
Elaine loved Moscow and made many good lifelong friends. She spent many hours volunteering in various Latter-day Saints congregations in Moscow. In 2013, Paul and Elaine moved to Springville, Utah, to be closer to their family. They quickly made friends in their new town and enjoyed living minutes away from their children and grandchildren. In their retirement years they loved spending winters in Queen Valley, Ariz., and summer months with their children and grandchildren at their cabin located on Rocky Point on the south end of Lake Coeur d’Alene.
Elaine blessed the lives of all she met and will be greatly missed. She was a model example of Christian living and tried to lift and be kind to everyone she met. Elaine left a remarkable legacy and is survived by her husband Paul, sister Lois Zweiful and brother John, children Michael Miles (Ann) of Springville, Utah; Mat Miles (Debbie), Rexburg, Idaho; Nate, Lindon, Utah; Mary Wagstaff (Michael), Spokane; Amy Weiss, Gilbert, Ariz., and Suzy Hinckley (Marc), Alpharetta, Ga. She had 22 grandchildren, who loved and adored her, and five great-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her brother David Cope.
Services will be held on Saturday, May 13, at the Springville Latter-day Saints Stake Center located at 245 S. 600 East Springville, Utah. A viewing will be held from 1:30-2:15 p.m. and the funeral will begin at 2:30 p.m. Interment will take place at the Evergreen Cemetery in Springville.
