{"id":3305,"date":"2020-03-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/?p=3305"},"modified":"2020-06-12T15:22:02","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T15:22:02","slug":"robert-h-garff-businessman-politician","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/?p=3305","title":{"rendered":"Robert H. Garff, businessman & politician"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Robert Heiner Garff \u2011 an American businessman and politician who served as chair of the Ken Garff Automotive Group – died of Covid-19 on March 29, 2020.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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He also served as the speaker of the Utah House of Representatives from 1985 to 1987.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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Garff was born on September 15, 1942, the son of Marjorie Heiner and Kendall D. Garff. He attended the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1966 and an MBA in 1967.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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The Ken Garff Automotive Group is a large car dealership conglomerate, founded in 1932 by Bob's father. The company or one of its dealerships, according to a January 2004 survey conducted by Dan Jones & Associates, was the second-most mentioned car dealership by Utahns when asked to name a car dealer. On October 18, 2007, the David Eccles School of Business announced that the automotive group donated $3 million to renovate the Garff Building.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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In 2007, Garff launched a program to significantly expand the size of his dealer network with the backing of Jefferies Financial Group. At that time, the Garff Automotive Group had 40 dealerships in Utah, California, Nevada, Texas, Iowa and Indiana.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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In addition to his family's automobile dealerships, Garff served in other business and civic roles. He was chairman of Intermountain Healthcare and chairman of the board of directors of the Deseret Book Company. He was also the owner of the Utah Blaze.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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Garff served as speaker of the Utah House of Representatives from 1985 to 1987. He was chairman of the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, and chairman of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics. For his service and leadership, Garff was given the Distinguished Utahn Award by the Salt Lake Chapter of the BYU Management Society in 2008.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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Garff was married to Katharine Bagley, with whom he had five children, including politician Melissa Garff Ballard.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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Garff served in various callings in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including bishop and stake president. From 1987 to 1990, Garff served as president of the church's England Coventry Mission. He later served as a member of the church's Sunday School General Board in 1991 and as a regional representative, beginning in 1992. In 2003, he became an area seventy, serving in the Fifth Quorum of the Seventy. From 2012 to 2015, he served as president of the Bountiful Utah Temple.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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On March 29, 2020, Garff died at the age of 77 in Utah of COVID-19, in the United States.<\/p>\r\n<\/p>

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<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Heiner Garff \u2011 an American businessman and politician who served as chair of the Ken Garff Automotive Group – died of Covid-19 on March 29, 2020.   He also served as the speaker of the Utah House of Representatives from 1985 to 1987.   Garff was born on September 15, 1942, the son of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[47,7019,15],"tags":[6246,883,6160,6159,6237,867],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/wp-content\/uploads\/imageholder\/uploads\/Robert_H_Garff.png?fit=%2C&ssl=1","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3641,"url":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/?p=3641","url_meta":{"origin":3305,"position":0},"title":"Philippe Bodson, businessman & politician","date":"April 5, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Philippe Andr\u00e9 Eug\u00e8ne, Baron Bodson, a Belgian businessman and politician who served in the Belgian Senate from 1999 to 2003, died from Covid-19 on 4 April 2020. Bodson graduated as civil engineer at the University of Li\u00e8ge (ULg) and obtained a Master of Business Administration at INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France) Bodson\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Belgium"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1867,"url":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/?p=1867","url_meta":{"origin":3305,"position":1},"title":"Jack Taylor, politician","date":"April 22, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Jack Taylor an American politician and businessman died from COVID-19 on April 21, 2020, at Casey's Pond Living Facility in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, at the age of 84. Taylor was born in Chicago, Illinois and served in the United States Navy. 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Glanzer and Mattie\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "High Profilers"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3500,"url":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/?p=3500","url_meta":{"origin":3305,"position":4},"title":"Makbul Hossain, politician","date":"May 25, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Makbul Hossain \u2011 a businessman, Bangladesh Awami League politician who served as a Jatiya Sangsad member representing the Dhaka-9 constituency \u2011 died on 24 May 2020 undergoing treatment for COVID-19 at Combined Military Hospital. \u00a0 Hossain was born c.\u20091950 in Bikrampur. He earned his MA and LLB degrees from the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bangladesh"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11286,"url":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/?p=11286","url_meta":{"origin":3305,"position":5},"title":"Herman Cain, politician","date":"July 31, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Herman Cain \u2013 a US politician and former presidential candidate \u2011 died of coronavirus on July 30, 2020. He was 74. \"Herman Cain \u2013 our boss, our friend, like a father to so many of us \u2013 has passed away,\" editor of the website Dan Calabrese wrote. \"He's entering the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "High Profilers"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3305"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3305"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6354,"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3305\/revisions\/6354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/personmatters.com\/Remembering_Covid_19_Victims\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}