Sister Shirley Allen Carmack, wife of Elder John K. Carmack, an emeritus General Authority Seventy, died Aug. 4, 2026, at her home in Salt Lake City. She was 91.
Sister Carmack and her husband were serving as mission leaders in the Idaho Boise Mission when he was called to be a General Authority Seventy in 1984.
They had planned to return to their home in Los Angeles, California, following their time as mission leaders. “But now the service will continue. The blessings always outweigh the sacrifices,” Sister Carmack said of their service (Ensign, May 1984).
After Elder Carmack was given emeritus status in 2001, he was asked by Church President Gordon B. Hinckley to be the inaugural managing director of the Perpetual Education Fund. These callings enabled the couple to minister to Latter-day Saints around the world.
“In all the places to which worldwide assignments have taken us, Shirley and I have felt [the love of the Saints] and tried to return it,” said Elder Carmack (“United in Love and Testimony,” April 2001 general conference).
Through the years, Sister Carmack served in a variety of capacities, including as a stake Relief Society and Young Women president. Her obituary states, “Shirley used her formidable skills of organization and leadership and her great capacity for charity to bless the lives of those they served.”
Shirley Fay Allen was born on Oct. 30, 1934, in Wendell, Idaho, to Cyril Stanford Allen and Mary Hildred Haight Allen and grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in food and nutrition from Brigham Young University and then pursued a master’s degree in dietetics from the University of California, Los Angeles.
While there, she met a law school student, John Carmack, at a young single adult activity. Immediately, “there was a high degree of interest,” Elder Carmack recalled. “The first chance I got I took her home to meet my parents in Santa Barbara” (“Elder John K. Carmack: ‘I had a thirst to know for sure,’” Church News, May 20, 1984).
The next summer, the couple were married in the Los Angeles California Temple. They welcomed six children — four daughters and two sons.
Sister Carmack was preceded in death by a son, Stephen Allen Carmack, and is survived by her husband; children Lisa Palmer (Brian), Paula Kinnison (Mark), Stanford Carmack (Heidi), Barbara Morrell (Glen) and Julia Jacobsen (Erik); 21 grandchildren; and 22 great-grandchildren.
A viewing will be held Friday, Aug. 14, from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Latter-day Saint meetinghouse at 1300 E. Fairfax Road, Salt Lake City, and Saturday, Aug. 15, at 10 a.m. prior to a funeral at 11 a.m.
Interment will be at the Salt Lake City Cemetery.
