01-03-2025
UVU President Astrid Tuminez at funeral for husband: ‘May Jesus hold you till we meet again'
OREM — Utah Valley University's 'first gentleman,' Jeffrey Stuart Tolk, filled the nine years that he lived after he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease with vigor, humor, Christlike love for others and devotion to his wife, UVU President Astrid Tuminez, and their three children, speakers said Friday at his funeral.
Tolk died Feb. 5 at age 61 after suffering a pulmonary embolism while climbing Cotopaxi, an active volcano that rises 19,347 feet above central Ecuador. It was an exercise he intentionally embraced to combat the symptoms of Parkinson's. Months earlier, he went skydiving for the first time.
Tuminez, who is on sabbatical until March 31 to mourn her husband's death, spoke at the funeral at the UCCU Center on UVU's campus. She remembered the family's last trip to a remote island in the Philippines. While kayaking in the setting sun, the couple suddenly saw flying fish break the water and fly up in the air, and Tolk told Tuminez God was there and speaking to them.
'Your absence is like the sky, spread over everything,' Tuminez said at the funeral. 'I don't know how to rebuild my life, honey, but I will look to the sky daily. I will see you climbing and flying. Thank you. I love you. May Jesus hold you until we meet again.'
The funeral was lyrical, poetic and emotional, and it included videos of Tolk actively pushing back against a disease that disrupts the brain's dopamine supply, making it difficult to feel good and to be motivated.
Speakers honored him as 'The Incredible Tolk,' an eclectic renaissance man who was both lawyer and humorist, banker and poet, drummer and missionary, intellectual and sports fan.
The funeral itself exhibited Tolk's personal range. The musical numbers varied widely, with the Latter-day Saint hymns 'Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing' and 'If You Could Hie to Kolob' interspersed with soulful performances of Queen's 'Another One Bites the Dust,' Coldplay's 'Fix You' and an Indonesian song performed by a Balinese percussion orchestra.
'Through the way he lived his life, my dad taught us that when your own mortality and your own frailty feels so starkly imminent, instead of succumbing to despair, you can instead choose to climb mountains,' said his daughter, Michal Frances Tuminez Tolk. 'His absence leaves a hole in me and in our family that will always remain, tethering us to heaven.'
'Jeff's self-discipline was an example and inspiration to all who paid attention. He showed us what courage means in real life, day to day,' said Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Elder Christofferson noted that Tolk was brilliant, humble and delighted in serving others as a disciple of Jesus Christ.
'Jeff was committed to high standards in his own life, and while not imposing them on others, he used that elevated character of his to lift and encourage others,' the church leader said. 'As he grew, so did his love and compassion, and he loved to help others shine. He was certainly determined and disciplined.'
Elder Christofferson said he took comfort in the knowledge of Jeff's present place and happiness in the spirit world, because all suffering, all injustice, all hurt and pain are made right by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
'He is the end of the human predicament, the great light of hope and happiness,' Elder Christofferson said. 'And I take joy in bearing my own witness of the reality of that resurrection, and what that means for each of us, eternal life and immortality.'
Tuminez talked about meeting Tolk at Harvard, their courtship, his proposal to her on Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, and how he was capable both of studying poetry with the legendary Seamus Heaney and helping to structure credit derivatives, a complex Wall Street investment product. She thanked him for the power-couple relationship they built, having recognized him previously as her soulmate.
'As a husband, you felt amplified, not diminished by your wife's hard work, talents and accomplishments,' she said. 'I was responsible for my happiness, but you made it all possible.'
When she became UVU's president in 2018, the family moved west together for her executive suite.
'Jeff believed the only true way to rise was by lifting others,' said Ryan Schill, who was with Tolk when he died on Cotopaxi. 'He gave up Wall Street for University Parkway, commerce for community, ego for egalitarianism.'
Tuminez said that soon before he died, Tolk held her hand in his study. 'We looked at each other and felt the tremor of a storm, but we were not afraid,' she said.
She quoted the poet Stanley Kunitz, who said, 'In a murderous time, the heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking. It is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark and not to turn.'
'I am deep in the dark,' she added, 'but today I turn to the light of love and life that we built together.'
Tuminez also quoted her husband's statement when he shared his diagnosis with the world in 2021, after he already had begun climbing the world's highest summits — Mt. Kinabalu in Malaysia, Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Mt. Whitney in the United States, Mera Peak in Nepal and Thorong La Pass on the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal.
'For me, nothing compares to the thrill of reaching the summit of a mountain after a long, difficult climb,' Tolk said. 'The natural beauty and stunning vistas are a big part of the thrill, but more important is the feeling of accomplishment that comes from doing something daunting and difficult. The exhilaration challenge and danger that I feel in the mountains sweep away the symptoms of Parkinson's for me, and during those precious times, under the eaves of heaven, I feel total clarity and vitality. I will keep climbing mountains.'
His teenage son, Leo Tolk: 'I couldn't wish for a better father. He did everything in his power, even though that was limited by Parkinson's, and he did it all to help me, my siblings and my mom.'
His oldest son, Whit Tolk: 'My dad was caring, comforting, strong, smart, but also humble and incredibly funny. As previous people have mentioned, my dad had a very dry wit, but not a mean sense of humor. We would often have competitions to see who could come up with a worse pun for a given subject, and it would always end pun-believably bad.'
His daughter, Michal Frances Tuminez Tolk: 'Thinking about my dad now, my heart softens. My bones feel solid. I feel held and safe. He loved us unconditionally, and he did everything he could to take care of us. He was the ground that supported and held our family together, and I can feel the truth of that continuing even now. He was absolutely Christlike in his quiet service and care, and I pray that all of us can feel his love and allow his goodness to ripple through us into all of our relationships.'
His sister, Rebecca Tolk Clark: 'I want to thank you, Jeff, for your example of being a hilarious, brilliant, humble and kind human being. I love and miss you so much, and I don't like a world with you without you in it.'
His niece, Cassandra Sutton: 'We who love Jeffrey wish for him to keep climbing and keep flying.'
Schill, who called him 'The Incredible Tolk' for climbing mountains with him, noted that Cotopaxi is so tall that if you look at Utah Valley's towering icon, Mount Timpanogos, you'd have to stack another Mount Timpanogos on top of it to make Cotopaxi: 'It's super extraordinary what Jeff was able to accomplish. Jeff taught me, it's not the mountains we conquer, but ourselves.'
In Tolk's obituary, Tuminez asked for donations in lieu of flowers to 'Dare to Dream Philippines Foundation,' a 501(c)3 organization, by emailing dare2dreamphilippines@
