2015 University Award winners, Distinguished Service Award
Ruth Methvin (BS ’60) and Rex G. Maughan (’62) met at BYU when he volunteered to help her improve her tennis serve. The term love soon applied to more than tennis, and the two eventually married.
The Maughans have also long shared a love for BYU, and, as they have built their successful business, they’ve been generous in giving back. Serving on the President’s Leadership Council, Rex and Ruth have a particular passion for BYUtv, and they spearheaded fund-raising efforts for the Broadcasting Building, dedicated in 2011. “BYUtv can bring happiness and meaning, even the gospel, to people,” Ruth says.
Derek A. Marquis (BA ’88, MBA ’03), general manager of BYU Broadcasting, says, “Rex and Ruth have an expansive vision of the blessings BYU
Television brings to the world. Their generosity is overwhelming and has made possible much of our growth.”
The Maughans also support charitable efforts around the globe, whether that be providing clean water for communities in Samoa (where Rex served a mission), wheelchairs for people in Japan, or catering trucks for hurricane-ravaged cities in the Gulf of Mexico.
“We give because we have received so much,” says Rex, the founder, president, and CEO of Forever Living Products.
In Samoa the Maughans have made the home of Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, who migrated there near the end of his life, into a museum. And Stevenson’s own words, written more than a century ago, provide a fitting tribute to the Maughans, recipients of BYU’s 2015 Distinguished Service Award: “Every heart that has beat strongly and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.”
Orginally published in BYU Magazine: https://magazine.byu.edu/article/celebrating-exceptional-alumni/
Full Name: Ruth M. and Rex G. Maughan
Grad Year: BS 1960
College: Education
Major: Elementary Education
Post date: August 13, 2019
Author: Charlene Renberg Winters (BA ’73, MA ’96)