Kyle V Johnson

Kyle V. Johnson passed away on February 13, 2025. He was born on January 18, 1937, to Mildred and Kennard Johnson in Orem, Utah. He grew up in Orem raising a ruckus and playing sports. He was a boxer and a baseball player, and he loved hunting, fishing, and golfing.

Kyle was an only child. He met the love of his life, Elaine, and the two were married on July 29, 1955. He went to work painting, and eventually started his own successful company, KE Painting, which still operates today. KE Painting has helped put kids, grandkids, and neighbor kids through college and given them a great start in life. 

Kyle had two children, Jodi and Kevin, and later adopted another son, Paul. 

He had a warrior’s heart and was one of the toughest men any of us has ever known. He had barroom brawls, basketball and softball brawls, and fought and broke every piece of painting equipment ever invented. He put his whole heart into everything he did, giving 110% to the things he cared about, and refusing to ever let anyone tell him he couldn’t accomplish something once he’d set his mind to it. 

He loved horses and spent many years riding them all over the mountains of Utah, packing deep into the Uintas and other mountain ranges for hunting trips. He was a savage hunter and once held the record for the number 3 typical Pope & Young mule deer in the nation, which he shot with a bow. One of his favorite adventures was catching a 63-pound lake trout at Great Bear Lake in Canada. He also got to hunt bear and caribou in Alaska, and he nearly got what’s known as the “grand slam” for big horn sheep by bagging a desert bighorn, a Dall sheep, and a stone sheep.

His favorite hunting ground, however, was Mt. Timpanogos. He never hiked it – he ran up and down it a thousand times, “shooting deer everywhere,” as he told us. He was able to keep hunting into his 70s, and he really enjoyed getting a giant elk at the Book Cliffs and watching as his son and grandsons hauled it off the mountain for him while he sat in the side-by-side, drinking Mt. Dew and laughing at them. 

He was a die-hard BYU fan and spent many hours huddled under a blanket at football games watching his beloved cougars on the field. He also loved yardwork and gardening. He had a huge yard in Genola, and it always looked immaculate. He kept his lawn so green and lush that it could’ve doubled as a golf course, and he actually used one section of it to practice his putting. 

He loved golf and spent countless hours golfing with his wife and his buddies, even in his later years, when he finally had to take over driving the golf cart for one of his friends. Kyle was in his late 70s at the time but decided his friend was “too old” when he kept driving them into ponds and over curbs. Kyle even received awards twice in his life for getting a hole in one. 

Kyle was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He served as a bishop, a temple worker, and in many other callings, but his greatest contribution was working with the young men. He had a huge impact on many of them, and he loved teaching them how to have fun. He once said, “There’s something magical that happens to a young man’s heart and mind as he stares into a campfire and contemplates life.” Kyle and Elaine also served a mission in Nauvoo, where he used his painting talents to beautify many of the historic buildings. 

One of his greatest callings in life was being a grandpa. He took his grandkids on all sorts of adventures and taught them how to fish, hunt, work hard, camp, and cuss with style. They loved these “Grandpa Kyle Adventures,” even though they always seemed to end with someone coming within inches of needing an emergency extraction off the mountain (Grandpa swore he was just building their character). 

He’s been blown up, rolled side by sides, jumped 4-wheelers, fell out of trees, had a heart attack, had multiple strokes, nearly got his head crushed in an apple tree by his favorites horse Peewee, had one arm swell up so badly he needed to have a rib removed, and jumped his Hodaka Combat Wombat off a sand dune into the top of a cedar tree. 

Kyle was always larger than life, and he really knew how to live.

He is survived by his children Jodi (Mark) Washburn, Kevin (Julie) Johnson, and Paul (Angie) Bellus Johnson, 11 grandkids, and 19 great grandkids. 

There will be a viewing Thursday, February 20 from 6:00-8:00 p.m. at the Brown Family Mortuary, 66 S 300 E in Santaquin, Utah. There will be another viewing Friday, February 21 from 9:00-10:30 a.m. at the Genola L.D.S. church on the corner of Center Street and Main Street. The funeral will be held directly afterward at 11:00 a.m. Interment will follow at the Santaquin City cemetery. 

We’d like to extend a special thanks to the hospice team at Orchard View Assisted Living for their kindness and compassion as they cared for Kyle during the last few weeks of his life.

We will miss having him call us hair bags, telling us to shut our pie hole, calling everyone a suck egg mule, and drinking Ruby Red Squirt until his lips were died pink. Thanks for all the Grandpa Kyle adventures. We will miss you!