Longtime Heber City residents Ann and Michael Moulton have been practicing their regal waves in preparation to be parade marshals at this year’s Red, White & Blue Festival on July 4.
The couple, both approaching 80, has lived in Heber City for about 45 years and been community servants that entire time. But they were still shocked when festival organizer Rachel Kahler showed up on their doorstep on Mother’s Day and asked them to lead the procession from the comfort of a carriage.
For Kahler, the choice was obvious. The Moultons have been dressing up in Revolutionary era regalia for the festival since its inception in 2022.
Ann and Michael might dress as Abigail and John Adams this year, so long as that doesn’t upstage the cast of Timpanogos Valley Theatre’s “1776: The Musical,” who will also walk in the parade.
John Adams was not initially smitten with his future wife when he met her, writing in his diary that she and her sisters were “not fond, not frank, not candid.”
Michael sang a different tune when he recalled meeting Ann when they were studying at Brigham Young University.
Michael’s Latter-day Saint seminary teacher would often sing with family members around Provo. Michael remembered wishing from the audience that he could date a beautiful singer. Then he met his seminary teacher’s sister, Ann.
“We didn’t have television. My father had a great singing voice, and my mother played the piano. I came from a family of nine children. So in the evenings, we would often gather around the piano and sing,” Ann said about her upbringing in Star Valley, Wyoming.
Upon meeting, Ann and Michael quickly fell in love. They married in 1969.
Ann never finished her music education bachelor’s degree at Brigham Young University, but Michael joked that she’s earned several honorary doctorates from her vast experience: teaching vocal lessons, singing in the Utah Symphony, leading the Heber Children’s Chorus and founding Heber City’s holiday “Messiah Sing-In” tradition two decades ago.
Music, Michael said, was the couple’s gateway to community involvement when they moved to his hometown of Heber City around 1980, and soon enough, they were thrust into the world of the performing arts.
Ann was one of four co-founders of Timpanogos Valley Theatre, which began staging productions in the Midway Town Hall in 2004.
She’s no longer involved in the theater company, but a handful of her eight kids, children-in-law and over 30 grandchildren are choreographers, actors and members of the board of directors.
“We think that community theater is probably the best community builder that there is,” Michael said. “I would sit there in these early rehearsals, and I’d think, ‘Man, I do not want to be here. These are not my kind of people.’ Pretty soon, though, as we started to perform together and visit together, it made all the difference in the world. They became dear, dear friends.”
Ann sees theater as a great equalizer.
“You don’t look at anybody with prejudice. You all have the same goal in making a good show. You get to know each other at your best and at your worst and work together,” she said.
While Ann’s greatest passion is the arts, Michael’s is historic preservation. He started the nonprofit Heber Valley Heritage Foundation in 2022 and previously served as chair of the city’s Historic Preservation Commission.
The Heber Valley Heritage Foundation focuses on preservation through a variety of initiatives.
For example, the foundation created the Dr. R. Raymond Green Community Digitizing Center in the Heber City FamilySearch Center. The center allows residents to create digital versions of family history artifacts and documents, especially those that are difficult to digitize, like 35mm film slides.
The foundation’s most ambitious projects involve preserving historic sites and opening them to the public.
The foundation is eyeing London Springs, the first Latter-day Saint settlement in Heber City, near the corner of Fitzgerald Road and U.S. 40. Michael imagines a recreation of the settlement, log cabins and all. His wife’s not sure he can pull it off.
“It’s way too much. He put it all on a whiteboard, planned it all out, and I just looked at it, and I shook my head and rolled my eyes,” she joked.
Because his family has lived in Heber City for generations, Michael is especially passionate about historic preservation.
“We don’t want to turn things back the way they were. We just want to be able to remember and to celebrate our heritage,” he said.
That’s not to say Michael and Ann don’t miss certain things about Heber City that have changed since they moved there.
“We used to be able to go out the front door and get our cross-country skis and ski up through the fields. That was really sweet, but we haven’t been able to do that for years. So I miss the open spaces,” Ann said.
What was once horse and cattle pastures on all sides of the Moultons’ neighborhood is now developed.
That’s part of the reason Michael closed his father’s 54-year-old business, Moulton Farm Machinery Company, in 2001, after about 15 years as CEO.
Even amid the growth, the couple has preserved some of their peace and quiet. When they bought their home and an adjacent lot for $75,000, they also decided to purchase a small strip of land that split their road into two cul-de-sacs. A developer wanted to turn that land into a through road, but the Moultons and some neighbors conspired to stop that plan, at no small cost.
“(Those neighbors) all died, and I’m not sure who owns it now. I guess us,” Michael said.
“We pay the taxes on it,” Ann chimed in.
In some ways, the couple has embraced Heber City’s growth.
“I can remember driving through town years and years ago, when things were slow, and nobody had discovered us yet, and thinking that the economy was in pretty sad shape. We didn’t have any flourishing businesses on Main Street,” Ann said. “When people started moving into the valley, I thought, actually, it was a great thing that they stimulated so much growth.”
Michael’s favorite thing about his hometown is the “good neighbors,” though he doesn’t know as many of them as he used to.
“Sometimes I say I know more people when I walk through the cemetery than I know when I go down to Smith’s,” he joked.
Michael spends a lot of time at the cemetery. When he’s there, he often thinks about his ancestors, Thomas and Sarah Moulton, who traveled from Iowa City, Iowa, to Utah in a Latter-day Saint handcart company before moving to Heber City in 1860.
“My thoughts turn to them walking through ankle- or waist- (or) knee-deep snow with eight kids, two handcarts, freezing to death,” Michael said. “My thought often turns to, ‘If they can do it, I can do it.’”
The Moultons are also carrying lessons from the past into the present as they reflect on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. They have been most moved by learning more about the brutality and sacrifice of the Revolutionary War.
“I think that we’re at the same point in time where we’re really going to have to make some sacrifices to keep this, in this day and age, when things are kind of conspiring against democracy and freedoms,” Michael said.
The Moultons believe sacrifice starts with community service.
Ann, for example, set a goal in March to do 250 acts of service by the end of the year, as simple as picking up litter during a walk. She’s already done over 200.
“That’s the way we make friends. That’s the way we have community unity,” Michael said. “By serving together.”
The Heber Valley Heritage Foundation will conduct guided tours of the Heber City Cemetery on July 3, 9 a.m. to noon, and July 4, 10 a.m. to noon, as part of the Red, White & Blue Festival.