The friends and family of Yvonne Hiss, a local playwright, thespian, artist and writer, have spent the weeks since her death and funeral reminiscing about her impact on Tooele’s faith-filled and artistic communities.
“She always made you feel like you were the smartest, best, most capable person ever,” said her daughter, Kari Sagers. “She brought the best out of everyone.”
Hiss, a long-time Tooele resident, died on June 23 at the age of 83, after several months of declining health following the death of her daughter, Lexanna Hiss, earlier this year.
While her artistic work had a significant impact on the Tooele community, and especially local congregation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints, those closest to her remembered her primarily for her unfailing ability to see value in everyone around her.
Hiss grew up in Tooele’s outlying communities, primarily Mercur and Ibapah, where her mother worked as a school teacher. Her family later moved to Tooele City, and Hiss attended and graduated from Tooele High School. While there, she quickly developed a reputation for her creative and artistic abilities as the yearbook editor and in other roles she took on at school.
In addition to renaming the yearbook “T-Leaves,” Hiss was also instrumental in re-arranging the school song, according to Sagers.
Hiss also played the marimba for a band in Stockton — the same band for which her future husband, Frederick Hiss, played the trumpet. Frederick made a point of helping her carry her marimba to and from performances, and later took an equally important role in making his wife’s theatrical visions a reality.
It’s not entirely clear just when Hiss began writing musicals, but her daughters said it was likely she started writing “Roadshows” — community-created plays that one LDS ward would put on for others in the surrounding area — while she was still in high school.
She would go on to author dozens of such musicals, and would often direct her own productions, as well. Her husband and his friends would create the scenery and props, and the couple would work together to enlist local youth for actors.
Hiss would go on to achieve state-wide acclaim for her work in 1957, when a two-act musical she authored was selected by the LDS Church to be published and performed at what was an early equivalent to BYU’s modern Education Week. The success of her play, which followed the adventures of a tribe of Native Americans, garnered attention from church-affiliated magazines and news media.
Hiss authored musicals that featured everything from fish in the ocean, twisted fairy tales, haunted windmills, and even a true story about Chinese immigrants in early Tooele history, but two common themes run throughout the body of her work: a moralistic theme that leaned toward her own deeply religious upbringing, and an emphasis on the worth of the individual. In one play, a large jewelry box is opened to reveal all the actors dressed as unique gemstones. In another, an unloved caterpillar transforms into a butterfly on stage.
Her plays reflected her own belief in the innate value of all human beings, her daughters said, and her desire to make everyone feel worthwhile became a driving force behind her art.
“Mom always felt that music was a universal language, that you could reach anyone with it,” Sagers said.
As a consequence of her personal beliefs, Hiss’ various theatrical productions became community endeavors that reached out to local youth in general, and those youth who were often left by the wayside in particular.
“The kids that were shy and didn’t really think they could do anything, she really brought them out of their shell,” her husband, Frederick, recalled.
Later in life, Hiss turned her attention to the community’s elderly when she took a job as the recreation director at Rocky Mountain Care Center. She developed programs such as center-wide road trips and sing-alongs, and was especially known for the amount of effort she devoted to learning each patient’s favorite songs — even for some patients who could not speak English.
“If anybody said they had a favorite, she would dig it up — and that was before the Internet,” Sagers said.
Sagers said that even after Hiss became a Rocky Mountain Care patient herself, she continued to visit each of the rooms with her ukulele on a regular basis.
In addition to her regular work as the center’s director of recreation, Hiss also began writing personal histories for each of the patients. She would post each history on the patient’s door to remind everyone of what individuals accomplished during their lives.
“That’s what she did,” Sagers said. “She made people…”
“… worth something,” her sister, Becki Young, finished.