Alan Franklin Heap

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Alan Franklin Heap

1941 ~ 2022

Alan Franklin Heap died in Salt Lake City from declining health. Alan, the third of four boys, was born on August 7, 1941 in Tooele, Utah, to Jenny McCoy Heap and Ira Heap. The McCoys, recent immigrants from Ireland, named him after Franklin Roosevelt. Alan had a happy childhood and was often seen smiling to himself over some inner joy. In 1960 he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, where he was able to take classes at Napa Junior College. He entered the University of Utah in biology, eventually graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree. He graduated from the University of Utah with his M.D. in 1977. Following medical school, he completed a residency in psychiatry and was board certified. Alan practiced psychiatry in Utah for over 40 years.

In addition, Alan was a veteran of the United States Air force, having served in the enlisted and officer ranks over two separate times of service. He achieved the rank of major in the Air Force’s Medical Corps.

Alan had many talents, with musical composition as a favorite, and was able to transfer some of his inner joy to creative musical expressions. Among his numerous friends were well-known musicians such as Joel Rosenberg, Ricks Knudsen, Eric Arnal and Maurice Abravenel, conductor of the Utah Symphony. Abravenel liked to have Alan drive him around.

Alan was stationed near Dayton, Ohio for about four years, when he worked on his most ambitious prose work, “The Chasm,” about the heroic Indian warrior Tecumseh (unfinished). He also toured, delivering lectures such as “The Lost Chord,” about his experiences with forgotten or submerged memories in patients under hypnosis.

Throughout his life, Alan cultivated a large number of friends. This included undergraduate friends from his days at the Newman Center at the University of Utah and the monks at the Trappist monastery in Huntsville. The monks had provided him a permanent room to help them screen potential candidates for monastic life.

Alan had two older brothers, Arnold [Felix] (1934), Patrick (1939), and one younger brother, John, who died in 2021. He was a lifelong devoted Roman Catholic and a member of Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Catherine of Siena Catholic parishes.

He was a mentor/friend/family to several international students, who nicknamed him “Grandma Heap.” He was generous, humble, spiritual, a humanitarian, an intellectual, and loving to all who had the good fortune to know him.

A funeral Mass was celebrated on October 8, 2022 at St. Catherine Of Siena Catholic Church. Interment, Holy Trinity Abbey cemetery, Huntsville, Utah.