Biography
Chiyo Thomas Telford was born on December 25, 1910, in Japan. Her parents were Mormon missionaries. Her father, Elbert Duncan Thomas, served as United States senator from Utah (1932-1950), chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee and high commissioner for the Pacific Islands Trust Territory (1951-1953).
Chiyo Thomas Telford grew up in Salt Lake City, attended Latter Day Saints High School, and was graduated from the University of Utah in 1931. After teaching school in Salt Lake City, she went to Washington, D.C., where she worked in her father's Senate office. She joined the American Red Cross after the outbreak of World War II and in 1943 was sent to the Philippines as a recreational therapist.
After the war, she returned to Salt Lake City and earned a master's degree in education from the University of Utah in 1947. In 1950 she married Horton Telford, an official with the U.S. State Department. After a series of overseas assignments, they returned to the United States in the mid -1960s and settled in California.
From the guide to the Chiyo Thomas Telford Papers, 1939 - 1953, (University of California, San Diego. Geisel Library. Mandeville Special Collections Library.)
