Provo City Half Marathon

Grace Joy Netland, 49: Atlantan fostered Japan-Atlanta relations

Netland, who grew up in Japan and spent years in the country off and on during her parents’ mission work, knew the Asian country like the back of her hand. She was fluent in its language, an expert on its culture and a former executive director of the Japan-America Society of Georgia.

She also used her expertise as a volunteer guide and interpreter during the 1996 Olympic Summer Games in Atlanta and the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

She was the perfect choice to provide language tutoring services and to act as an interpreter and guide, said longtime friend Yoriko Matsui, a Japanese native living in Atlanta.

“She was really outgoing and friendly, and always a joy,” Matsui said. “She had a big smile, and was very caring about people.”

In addition to Japanese, Netland was fluent in German and Norwegian, her father’s native language. And she was studying Hebrew at the time of her death.

Grace Joy Netland died Aug. 11 at age 49 after a long battle with breast cancer. A memorial service will be held Sept. 9 at 10 a.m. at The Church of the Apostles, 3585 Northside Parkway N.W., Atlanta. SouthCare Cremation Society and Memorial Centers of Marietta is handling arrangements.

For nearly 19 years, Netland was a flight attendant for Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, often on overseas flights.

Joel Netland said his youngest sister’s career at Delta set the stage for a rewarding life of adventure, which included globetrotting and volunteering around the world.

“She traveled internationally as comfortably as most of us use a car,” the brother said from his home in Park City, Utah.

The late Rev. Benton and Bernice Netland instilled the importance of faith and mission work in their children, and both areas were important to Grace Netland as she grew older. She traveled to countries such as Turkey and Nepal to help local communities.

But adventure was equally important, and one of the highlights over the years was climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, Joel Netland said.

wasatch and beyond: Provo City Half Marathon

Yesterday we ran the Marathon of the city of Provo half ... Long story short, we both ran really well and came away with great PR. Andrea ran amazing, taking first place in the women's race (and incredibly 7th place overall) in 1:21:43. J have had a very nice race too, finishing second with a 1:10:52. In my opinion these are great shows at 4500 feet. I had my mind set on City Marathon Half Provo since the beginning of this year. I really liked the look of the course, because it was just a course at altitude.As many races here in Utah raising large drops to account for the altitude, but I was looking for a relatively flat course naked. My training has focused on the distance of the marathon and a half for this race (and half of Utah Valley in the coming months). That said, I'm very excited about my performance. I won the race! But more importantly than that, I have improved significantly in recent months and I exceeded my goal race time by over two minutes. It's a great feeling to know how I trained hard this winter / spring and how it helped.Honestly, I have about half the credit to Jake because he has run about 70% of my mileage with me, and has been a great resource (I'm starting to call the coach). About the race: My plan was to run 6:20 miles for the miles the first year, then try to break away from negative outside based on how I felt. Once the race started, I settled into a rhythm that felt relatively easy - for the first 6:00 mile. Another girl (Kassi Harmon) was there with me, and I decided to just go for it. Try to keep pace. About 5 of us ran into a pack of about 4 miles. 6:16, 6:06, 6:13. People started dropping off one by one, until I was running alone. I was determined not to drop off the pace at this point because I couldn't handle the idea of going out too fast. I was feeling pretty good.

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