Merrill Walters

Funeral services for Merrill Walters will be held Monday, October 12, 2026, at 10:00 AM at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 470 Munkers Street in Buffalo Wyoming. Interment with Military Honors will follow at Willow Grove Cemetery. A visitation will be held on Sunday, October 11, 2026, at the Harness Funeral Home Chapel from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests a donation to SBL Hospice, 497 West Lott Street, Buffalo Wyoming 82834, a service project in Merrill’s name. Online condolences may be made at www.harnessfuneralhome.com.

Merrill Bowen Walters, 92, a retired Air Force colonel, NATO senior civilian, beloved husband, father, and grandfather, and devoted fisherman, passed away on October 4th at his home in Buffalo, WY, surrounded by family and loved ones. 

Merrill was born on September 18, 1934, in Wellsville, Utah, the only child of Daniel M. Walters and Wanda Bowen. He arrived so early and so small that no one expected him to live, and family lore held that he could have fit in a cigar box. He spent his first years in the sheep-shearing camps of the Intermountain West, where his father sheared and his mother cooked, and he grew up in Cache Valley, Utah, surrounded by grandparents, aunts, and uncles who considered him a miracle.

He studied at Utah State University while working a string of jobs, including milking cows, driving a delivery truck, installing TV antennas, and working in a bean cannery. He graduated on June 6, 1956, and received his commission in the U.S. Air Force through ROTC. Nine days later, on June 15, he married JoAnn Bowen in the Logan Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They honeymooned in a canvas wall tent at the head of the Green River in Wyoming.

Over a career that spanned more than four decades, Merrill served in Louisiana, Ohio, Labrador, Washington, Alabama, North Dakota, Nebraska, Belgium, and Washington, D.C. Merrill began in aircraft supply and maintenance and became a Minuteman and Atlas missile crew commander. He went on to serve at Strategic Air Command headquarters in Omaha, where he worked on the nation’s nuclear war plan. He then went to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Belgium, where he directed nuclear and chemical policy and represented the Supreme Allied Commander at NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group. His final posting was at the Pentagon, where he helped lead U.S. work on the NATO decision to deploy new intermediate-range missiles in Europe. After retiring from the Air Force as a colonel, he returned to Belgium to serve as NATO’s Director of Nuclear Planning. In later years he was also involved in projects in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The center of Merrill’s life was his family and his faith. He served as a Scoutmaster, a bishopric counselor, a stake executive secretary, a member of the Belgium stake high council, and later as an ordinance worker and temple missionary in the Billings, Montana and Nauvoo, Illinois temples. He called being a Scoutmaster the best calling in the Church, and his family is grateful that he passed along this love of scouting: his son and many of his grandsons have also earned their Eagle Scout awards.  He is preceded in death by his wife, JoAnn, and is survived by his children Tamra, Kurt, and Jaclynne “Jackie,” 10 grandchildren, and 14 great grandchildren. He also loved and helped raise his cousin Lynette and was known for his generosity as a host and friend by many globally.