If you have to pick the one thing Senator Keith Grover does better than anything else, you might talk about his selflessness, or the way he listens, or his honesty. Or you might take a look at how he gained all of these valuable skills and simply think, he’s the guy that always rises to the occasion.
Born and raised in Provo, Utah, Keith’s unconquerable spirit and compassion for others has led him down a tumultuous, winding, incredible path that few others would have followed.
Keith’s mother passed away just six days after he and his identical twin brother were born, leaving his father alone with six children, two of them being the newborn twins. His father soon remarried, and the blended family moved to a farm in Spanish Fork, eventually to have 15 children in total. It was a difficult childhood, with strained relationships and no end of hard work to be done.
Keith found refuge in school, where he excelled academically, and extracurricular activities, which he joined in spades to avoid family difficulties. At one particularly difficult point in his life, Keith was shown the empathy that he so desperately needed by a lunch lady at Spanish Fork highschool, who took notice of his pain and let him know he was cared for. Her kindness to him at a vulnerable moment has always stuck with Keith, reminding him that everyone, no matter their background, race, ethnicity, occupation, or any other factor, is deserving of love and understanding.
At seventeen, Keith left home. He took whatever jobs would help him and his twin brother pay the rent on their basement apartment, including hauling chickens, shoveling manure, and odd jobs. At every opportunity to earn his own way, Keith enthusiastically rose to the challenge.
Keith graduated from Spanish Fork High School with high honors. After a year at college, he said yes to another challenge, serving in the Paraguay, Asuncion mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter–Day Saints.
While on his mission, Keith contracted meningitis and nearly died in a Paraguayan hospital. Despite a long recovery and relapse six months later, he served the people in his mission diligently for two full years. Keith loved meeting new people, providing what help he could, and gaining a new perspective through the lens of a new culture.
Upon returning to BYU, Keith was looking for a way to build a life of service and make a strong impact on the world. With this in mind, he chose to become an elementary education teacher. Not one to do things conventionally, Keith took a position as an aide in a migrant classroom and then as a student teacher in the colonies of Mexico. He found both experiences incredibly rewarding, and they helped inform his open, honest and meaningful teaching style as he went on to become an administrator in an inner city school.
Keith has always supported Julie through her aspirations to be a medical doctor. He spent many hours caring for children, running carpools and participating as an equal partner in all things as his wife completed medical school and is now, according to him, “one of the best doctors in the valley.” Julie is now a practicing OB/GYN in Provo.
As a young married couple with a one-year-old baby at home, Keith and Julie rose to meet yet another impossible situation when child protective services asked the Grover family to take a girl into their home as an emergency foster situation. She immediately became part of the family, and currently lives down the street from them as an adult.
As Keith progressed in his professional career, his thoughts turned back to the people of Paraguay. Seeing a severe need for housing options, Keith checked another impossible goal off of his long list, taking his savings and investing it in a large property parcel that he subdivided into affordable housing for the area. One of the last houses in the development went to a 78-year-old woman who had lived through the oppressive dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. As they drove to her new property, she told Keith, “Now I can die,” to which he emphatically replied, “No! Now you can live!”
That attitude carried him right into the state legislature, when Keith attended a community caucus, and noticed an opening in the Utah House in his district. To run for the position would only cost him $17. What else would someone like Keith do but rise to the occasion, saying to himself, “I could do that!”
During his time in the state legislature, Keith has been a champion of education, government efficiency, and government transparency. He consistently seeks to make sure the voices of his constituents are heard. Keith strives to help people from the neighborhoods he represents whenever and however he can, whether or not it benefits him politically.
Keith, Julie, and their seven children continue to call Utah home. Keith looks forward to many more years of representing the people of the 23rd District.
