June Leifson: A Nurse by Nature

After being turned down by three nursing programs at three different universities, June Leifson thought she would never fulfill her dream of becoming a nurse.

“I was turned away because of my speech and my face,” explains June, who was born with a severe cleft palate. “One nursing program head even said, ‘Oh, no, you could never be a nurse with your speech—and your face would frighten the patients.’”

But June’s fighting spirit and determination have enabled her to become not only a nurse but dean of the College of Nursing at Brigham Young University.

Ever since childhood, when she was in and out of the hospital many times for operations, June had wanted to be a nurse. “I saw the compassion of the nurses and the difference a good nurse can make, and I thought, ‘Oh, if only I could become a nurse!’”

After being rejected by the universities, June began taking intense speech therapy. “Listening to my voice on tape almost destroyed me, but I never gave up,” she remembers. Finally, she was allowed to enter BYU’s nursing program on a provisional status, meaning she had to be evaluated every semester to make sure she could “handle it with her speech impediment.”

“I really had to prove myself—be a fighter,” June says. She graduated from the nursing program, worked at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City for almost two years, and then went to Hawaii to work as a nurse.

While in Hawaii, June helped start a Primary in a little shack with a dirt floor. With no lesson manual, June prepared the lessons, using Bible pictures she had drawn herself.

One day, while in Hawaii, she was called in to be interviewed for a mission by Elder Spencer W. Kimball. “It was the most spiritual experience of my life up until that time,” she says. “Elder Kimball said to me, ‘I know you have a speech problem,’ and he told me many personal things about his own problem with his voice and cancer.”

June served a mission in Japan. She found it difficult at first, but she made up a motto that encouraged her: “If you do your part, God will do his part.” She eventually discovered that she could pronounce Japanese more easily than she could English.

After her mission, June earned a master’s degree at the University of Michigan and taught nursing at the University of Utah for six years. She earned a doctorate in family studies at BYU, where she became a faculty member, then director of the graduate program in nursing.

The thought of becoming dean never occurred to June. But one day BYU President Jeffrey R. Holland called her into his office and asked her to be the dean of the College of Nursing. “I was petrified,” June says. “I didn’t know if I could ever do it, but it has been four years now, and I’ve survived. It’s a real challenge, yet it brings me so much joy.”

June receives great support from her family. Her parents and five brothers and five sisters have always loved and encouraged her. The Church, too, has been a great help. She has served diligently as a Relief Society president and as a Young Women president, adamantly refusing to let her speech get in the way of her accomplishments.

“I have never married, and I have no children, yet life has been so meaningful,” June says. Besides her responsibilities as dean, she keeps busy with her huge garden of herbs, flowers, fruits, and vegetables. She loves to travel and has visited Japan, Israel, and the Soviet Union, among other places.

June has worked hard to overcome her handicap. In the process, she has learned to accept herself. “When I was young, I would pray that I would wake up in the morning and be beautiful and my speech would be perfect,” she says. “When I woke up and it hadn’t happened, it was very hard on me.

“Then I finally realized that God wanted me the way I was and that I was all right. I can do a lot of good in this life without being beautiful or having perfect speech.”

June Leifson didn’t let her speech problem be a problem. She has earned three degrees and is now dean of the College of Nursing at BYU. (Photography by John Luke.)