Audrey Sampson Clark created a huge life. She loved people. And though she took excellent care of herself and was extremely healthy, she passed unexpectedly at age 76 of a natural cause on Saturday, July 26, 2025 in the morning. She was surrounded by her loving family. A proud wife, mother of 8 children and grandmother of 26 grandchildren, Audrey was a lifelong faithful member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She served in innumerable church callings from teaching children's Sunday School classes, to being a beloved Girls Camp leader, to ward organist/chorister, to leading the presidencies of Children's Primary and the Women's Relief Society. She devotedly served in whatever capacity she was called to and carried her responsibilities with faith, grace and creativity.

Audrey was a lifelong musician who taught piano for decades, and served as President of the Washington State Music Teachers Association of which she was a longtime member. During her service as President, she modernized the Association, bringing it online and starting the WSMTA newsletter that continues to build the community and expand its mission successfully. She campaigned and was successful in having harps donated to local high schools. She played the piano, violin, harp and organ, beginning organ lessons in her 40s and continuing through three decades to the recent past. It was quite a sight to see her 5'2" frame sitting at the massive 3 tier organ with 2 foot panels at the LDS Thayer church, playing Bach, Mendelssohn and Handel along with the hymns she loved. Through her teaching, hundreds of children learned to read, play and love music.

In the 80s upon finding the educational system was failing family members, Audrey spent months researching to finally find a reading/phonics program nationally that would successfully help members of her family transcend learning disabilities. She discovered the Writing Road to Reading Program through the Riggs Institute (founder, Myrna McCulloch) (developed by Harvard education pioneer, Romalda Spalding) and it worked so miraculously that parents began seeking her out to teach their struggling children to read. She soon realized the much greater need and founded the Spelling Camp, taught for 22 years working through local community venues to make WRTR available to all. She also taught this program successfully for a time at Franklin Academy. Audrey worked tirelessly against prejudice and educational territorialism to bring this stunningly effective program to children who could not learn to read through the modern "look-say" method. Through Spelling Camps, Audrey and her team taught thousands of kids who were failed by the traditional educational system, to read, write and spell. More importantly, Audrey was a child whisperer–she saw every single child as smart, valuable and competent–and made certain every child she taught came to see this in themselves too. She was fierce and loving in this vision and mission.

Through her whole life, Audrey followed the example of her parents to use her numerous gifts and talents to serve God through all she brought to others and the legacy she left in the world.

Audrey was born in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1948. She was the fifth child of nine siblings to Arden James and Carol Bradshaw Sampson. She grew up in the home on North 9th Street that her father built, graduated from Las Vegas High School and attended Brigham Young University in 1967 where she was studying Biology when she met L. Lavelle Clark II (Lavelle), and fell in love. They married May 31st, 1968 in the St. George Utah temple. They were both attending BYU and had their first three children while Audrey worked and Lavelle finished his MBA. They moved to Richland Washington where Lavelle had accepted a position with Battelle Northwest Laboratories. Audrey and Lavelle raised their eight children at their home on Cedar Avenue where she lived for 51 years.

Audrey has a gift of deeply connecting with people and of being a strong lifelong friend. She has cultivated hundreds of friends across her life. From her time as a young mother in a new neighborhood bringing people together, to people coming from across Washington and from out of state to hers and Lavelle's 50th wedding anniversary, Audrey's vast community of friends continue to love and revere her. She always took time to know people, to find out who they were and if they needed help. She always quietly and consistently provided whatever she could to help every person, with nothing needed in return. It was friendship. This trait of seeing the "one" and serving people without it benefiting her, she learned from her father growing up. After a full day's work, he would take his kids to help people in the community. Audrey taught this to her children. She would send us to different people's homes to rake leaves, remove snow, weed flower beds, take loaves of homemade bread, or simply check on them. In a world where transactional relationships are the norm, Audrey lived a life of seeking to exemplify Jesus Christ through serving the greater needs and possibilities of others.

Even at a young age, Audrey was a person of devout principle which she also taught to her children and expected them to grow into adults who could contribute to the world in ways that would help and improve the lives of others. Her core principles that she lived and taught, include:

Be true to principles and not to people

Always leave people better off than you found them

Always do your best

Never take council from your fears

Hard work is its own reward

Any job worth doing is worth doing well

Return what is loaned to you better than you received it

Defend the absent

Hold the confidences of others like a vault

Be honest and trustworthy in all your dealings–starting with yourself

Being well liked is not as important as having deep self respect.

"Never let others' issues get in your tissues"

Audrey played sports growing up, and swam a mile a day while she was pregnant in her first three pregnancies. She sewed her own wedding dress. As a teenager, she put a dead cat in a lye bath to clean the bones for her biology project. She learned professional cake decorating and created wedding cakes for a handful of lucky people. Music was constant in Audrey's and Lavelle's home, and the kids grew up well-versed in a wide range of classical music because of her and Lavelle's love of it. She and Lavelle built onto their Richland ranch house themselves, adding double the home's square footage. They taught their children the value of hard work as the kids helped with the building at each stage. She created the most ingenious halloween costumes from what she had at home. Her kids often won prizes for her halloween costumes.

Audrey and phenomenal pianist and teacher, Richard Williams (Richland), were an unstoppable creative duo in their 30s in the LDS Richland Stake. Between Audrey's brilliant playwriting abilities and she and Richard's incredible musical talents, they would deftly script the plots and original vocal musical compositions for one award-winning Roadshow after another, performed by the kids and adults in their local LDS wards.

After a "legendarily rocky start" with her "#1 son-in-law" ;), Audrey embraced and loved each of her sons- and daughters-in-law as her own, and her family expanded. Audrey loved to engage her grandchildren's wonder, curiosity and delight. One Thanksgiving, she reached out to all her friends to get as many headlamps as possible. After dinner, she secretly left the adults behind and took all her grandkids on a scavenger hunt across several blocks of the neighborhood after dark!

She was a prolific logophile her entire life, continually collecting new and obscure words that she would add into her vocabulary and tack to the bathroom wall to increase her children's vocabulary too. She and Lavelle loved to share new words they found with each other throughout their lives.

Audrey LOVED gardens and flowers. At one point as young parents, she and Lavelle had four different vegetable gardens as well as fruit trees–at home, at Battelle garden plots, and with an MBA colleague in Pasco, for a total of about an acre of garden space!! Her children grew up with an inordinate amount of experience weeding, as well as with bowls of fresh tomatoes, peaches, cucumbers, peas and cherries at summer meals. And they canned fruits and veggies with her in the summer just as she had done growing up. She instituted the "No Thank You Serving" when her kids pushed back against beets, sauerkraut and spinach. Early on in the Tri-Cities, Audrey sought out farmers who did not use synthetic fertilizers or pesticides and returned year after year to buy from them. She did organic and farm-to-table long before it became a cultural phenomenon. She instilled this love of health and clean natural eating in her family.

Audrey was also a prolific journaler. She chronicled her life and her experiences with others continually, starting from her teenage years. At her passing, her children found her latest journal open on her bedside table with the previous days' thoughts and events penned in precisely. They also discovered printed yearly calendars in her office for the past 8+ years with careful listings down the side of the deaths of people in her vast sphere of friends and family. She paid attention to others. She cared deeply and was meticulous about chronicling and remembering others.

Audrey was deeply in love with her sweetheart Lavelle, and he adored her and wrote her love poetry and love notes throughout their lives. Her children remember him coming home from work to find her in the kitchen and would take her in his arms and dance with her across the room. They were–are–an unstoppable team. Audrey became caretaker as Lavelle's health declined in past years. He died on March 27, 2023. They had been married 55 years and her life changed dramatically. She missed him deeply every minute of every day since, and so it is a beautiful consolation to all their loved ones that they are reunited now.

Audrey's legacy is vast, brilliant and deeply impactful. It includes her children: Carmell (Jess Gainer), Brett (Kim Borders), Ryan (Ronica Bayes), Melissa (Douglas Stoker), Wendy (Adam Bowers), Annalyn, Rosalie (Ken Peterson), Sarah (Adam Howard), and 26 grandchildren. She is also survived by her siblings, all of whom are very close: Allen Sampson, Larry Sampson, Carmen Sampson, Tonna Bounds, Ilean Sullivan, Marlene Mott, Ellen Mott, and Mark Sampson. She is preceded in death by her loving husband of 55 years and by her parents and granddaughter, Patience Howard.

Audrey, mom, grandma… you are beloved, and your constancy, devotion, love, humor and presence will be missed every day.

Viewing: Sunday, August 3, 4-8pm Einans at Hillcrest 9353 W. Clearwater, Kennewick.

Family viewing 9:00am Thayer building.

Celebration of Life: Monday, August 4, 10:30am LDS Church 1720 Thayer Dr., Richland. Graveside service to follow: Sunset Memorial Gardens, Richland

Zoom link to join Celebration of Life remotely: https://zoom.us/j/99403948255

You may also use the QR code located on the tribute wall to share your memories of Audrey's wonderful life.