Note: Martha was a fabulous writer and left many different articles about her life: "Story of Two Lives, no date; "Life Story of Martha Weber Kennington", 1959, and "Martha's Personal History", 1959. The last two appear to be the same piece with some minor editing and revisions with the "Life Story" being the finished product. Helen and Alyce have typed them both and made them available to the rest of us. I have gone paragraph by paragraph looking for any differences in the two. There are a few minor editing changes such as paragraph breaks, etc. Any major additions from the "Personal History" I will show in italics in the "Life Story" below. Kathy LIFE STORY OF MARTHA WEBER KENNINGTON
By
MARTHA WEBER KENNINGTON
Written in 1959
The first home I knew was a little log cabin in Freedom, Wyoming, though I was born six weeks previously in Providence, Utah, the 11th child and third daughter of Swiss migrants. The home in Freedom could not have been much different from the one in Utah—two white-washed rooms, two many-paned windows. But there was a lot of land, sufficient to provide work for my brothers and two sisters.
My parents were humble, hard-working people who were willing to devote all their time and energies toward making this venture in a new land with an unfamiliar language a success, and more than all else to live the Gospel worthily among people who believed as they did. My father had worked in a mill before emigrating. Whether a flour or lumber mill we do not know, but certain it was that it was totally unfamiliar to him when confronted with ground to be cultivated and planted. That was early in the 1890’s.
Their conversion had come almost miraculously through the long illness of an older brother, their third son and fifth child. He was afflicted with what is now known as eczema. No doctor seemed to diagnose it as anything but a surface disease. As a result his condition worsened until his entire body was one solid mass of itching, running sores, his little hands encased in soft flannel mittens so he could not further injure himself.
Then came a young Elder---Mother said he looked like a young boy---and his companion as young, an Elder Arnold Schulthess of Salt Lake City. But of the two it was Elder Schulthess who impressed them. Perturbed as the young parents were, we are not sure whether their young son’s plight was obvious at once to him, or just when he explained the principle of healing. But it must have been during one of his early visits that he explained to them that the Restored Gospel which he represented had within it the principle of healing by faith. We can imagine the scene in that household, the wide-eyed children standing about and the young elder speaking with such earnest conviction—the parents so willing to believe because to them he was their last recourse after the months and weeks when doctors had vainly tried their remedies and potions on him, all to no avail. So it is small wonder that, though they knew little about any religion and as little of God, they summoned the faith within them to heal their afflicted little son. Almost immediately mother said he sank into a restful sleep. Very soon their little son was as well as he ever was.
From that incident stemmed their conversion. The young elder explaining the principles of the Gospel resulted in their migration to the new world, while the young child whose miraculous healing had resulted in their conversion had been killed in his 7th year, the result of a school accident. He was born 25 December 1880, died 28 August 1887. Two other sons, both of them infants, died before their migration. Walter, born 9 January 1883, died 26 July 1883. Another, Erwin, born 7 October 1887, lived to migrate with his parents and family to die in the new world 5 October 1888. John William was born in Switzerland and died and was buried in Providence; he was born 9 December and died January 1889.
We can imagine the scene with all these bewildered migrants and their large families of small children shepherded through the various duties by young elders who were conversant with the languages and dialects. Almost all who came from a different Canton spoke a different tongue or idiom because Switzerland, that alpine country, has no distinctive universal tongue.
It must have been almost like being near Babel to have been aboard the ship. Mother and Father with their brood of six young children: there was Eugene, he of the fine intellect and quiet manner, father of four sons and one daughter; Lena, that friendly laughing little girl who meant so much to me, mother of six girls and one son; Robert, the roistering happy boy, father of two sons and four daughters; Ida, the one who sacrificed much for everyone’s well-being, mother of four sons and five daughters; Walter, whose happiness was children and music; Erwin, named for the boy whose miraculous healing we credit our parent’s conversion, died the fall the family arrived in the valley of the mountains.
Our father, blessed with a beautiful tenor voice and an outgoing cheerful disposition, must have enjoyed the voyage more than Mother did. She was shy and retiring and the heavy responsibility of many children could have been hard on her, and probably was. She gave birth to two more sons, the John mentioned earlier and Charles Samuel, who lived to maturity. The rest of us were born in Star Valley.
Father and Mother, unacquainted with New World conditions, found it hard to adjust. Mother, an expert seamstress, found ready market for her skill among her neighbors and the stores at Logan. She and Lena attended to a sizable garden and strawberry patch, and Father and Eugene found work on the many church projects. But they had heard of Star Valley, and besides several of their fellow emigrants had moved there. So Mother and Father decided to come here, too, where there was land and room for expansion.
So the summer of 1893 they, too, came but while most of them moved to Bedford, my Father bought a farm for $500 in Freedom. There was not much of a house. In fact, it had a two-room log cabin on it. But the farm was good and within four years a four-room house of logs was built on it. The two-room cabin was the first home my brother Fred was to know.
Our parents hated debt like the plague and sacrificing until the new home could be adequately financed seemed preferable to them; besides luxury was an unknown word to them. Four stark, bare rooms were all it had besides a small pantry which had shelves and a root cellar some distance away. Here Lawrence, the 13th and last child, was born. To my parents there must have been many hardships but I, in my blithe ignorance, noted them not at all.
I remember when Father had Typhoid Fever contracted at the Caribou mines. How ill he was for six long weeks; he was attended by elders and a Dr. Stoughton. I remember his kindly smile as I was playing outside one day. I remember, too, when my brother had appendicitis, and I remember his screams of pain and how fearful the older ones of the family were that it may be just the stupor preceding death. Because he was better or the appendix had broken—either was beyond his skill. Though Dr. Stoughton was a Christian, he couldn’t quite subscribe to the idea that our Father in Heaven could or would intervene enough to save a life. But for the rest of his life, Robert testified that it was the power of God which saved his.
I had a pleasant childhood. Even in that small town one is not lonely in a busy household, particularly when possessed of the inquisitive curiosity I had. I remember having whooping cough. That was my only childhood disease. It seemed that each time I had a cold until I was a young woman the cough would come back but, of course, not in contagious form.
Our two nearest neighbors were my childhood friends, Libbie and Sylvia Clark. They were half-sisters, each mother living. But I enjoyed them and hated it when their father took them away into Mexico where they both died.
Lena was my guide and mentor in my childhood, just as she was in later life. Strongly religious, she loved all things of a spiritual nature. I, too, enjoyed it. However, I must have been a greater nuisance than I realize for she told me in all seriousness that candidates for baptism were supposed to memorize the “Articles of Faith,” the “Decalogue,” the “Word of Wisdom,” and “The Beatitudes.” I tried to learn them all. The Beatitudes were a bit beyond my depth so she compromised by letting me learn the hymn “Oh My Father”. I loved that, especially when she sang it. She had a lovely soprano voice and when she and my sister Ida would sing duets, I loved it.
I am sure I was a nuisance, forever in their way when they had romance on their minds, so that must have been the easiest way to get rid of me—to set me to memorizing something. It was rather easy for me to memorize and the things I learned then remained with me into maturity, which I believe is characteristic of all children. But that I was naïve enough to believe that they were required before a candidate could be baptized seems stupid of me, but anything Lena said seemed right.
Of all the dear friends I ever had, Minnie Luthi was the closest. Her father and mother had immigrated to America with my own. They had come to Star Valley a little while before we did, but had located in Bedford. The rocky surface and gravelly soil did not long attract them and a few years following our parents’ arrival, they, too, moved to Freedom. Minnie was always a lovely girl with abundant beautiful hair, though she bemoaned the fact that she did not share the curly hair of most of her brothers and sisters. Mine was thin and straggly, though strangely I can never remember being envious of her serene lovely face, almost classic in its regular features. That I wasn’t envious of her could have been the fact that Mother was such a good seamstress and that most of the girls were kind enough to express envy.
School was held in a small one-room school house. Not until I was in the 8th grade did the school trustees deign to add another room. Spelling matches were the rule of each week, Friday preferably. We enjoyed them. The older boys pretended that they were beneath them and so would not participate.
The teacher always fed Minnie and my vanity by saying the words were too easy for us. Then we would continue spelling harder words until I had emerged the champion. Though I was the better speller, I am sure Minnie was the better all-around student and we continued to be fast friends all our lives.
I remember a swing up by our home composed of two large poles supported by cross arm from which hung a swing. I became quite adept at “working myself up” where there was no one to give me hand, as did the other young people and children who came to enjoy it.
I remember one Sunday our parents were away at Bedford attending a German meeting. The Luthi girls were responsible for herding their cows out of the grain so we all went there, the Haderlie girls as well as I. They were expert riders and I think Minnie was better than I. But, because I was more obvious about my fear, the Haderlie girls preceded to bait me. Lula was to take the reins and I was to get up behind her. I clung tightly and Lula fell off and I fell on top of her, knocking myself unconscious. When I came to, my dress, a pretty new pink one, was drenched with blood and my front tooth was gone. I was terrified for fear of my father. Those kind sweet girls washed out the dress for me, but not being colorfast, it lost much of its brightness in that first laundering. I remember one of the Haderlie sisters saying, “I wouldn’t care about the tooth but look at the dress!”
To my father, accidents didn’t just happen. They were always someone’s fault. The accident happened soon after my second teeth had come in and how I prayed for some miracle to restore my lost front tooth, though a new one never did come in. The remaining teeth did seem to close and make the gap less noticeable. My family and friends were kind in that they never made me conscious of the dental defect.
When I was a child, I would find choice little rocks and they became a community I could manage all by myself. And I drew endless crayon figures supposed to resemble something, I knew not what except they were supposed to be men and women going and coming from church.
The only contact I had with friends was at Sunday School and Primary. We loved our Primary president, Sister Lizzie Warren. The counselor, Mrs. Amelie Bracken, would not conduct when left there alone but always asked us to do it. We of course thought it was because she was possibly a little queer, but since I have wondered if she knew we eager beavers well enough to know that we wanted to conduct, too, as tell as teach.
How we enjoyed all the activities! Children’s dances were held on holidays and the children were not allowed to go to grown-up dances. But I liked reading and to me there was no fascination like a book. A salesman had come to the house and when Father refused to accept payment for his horses care, the salesman gave me a book of fairy tales. In it were all the lurid stepmother tales and other stores. Minnie and I would spend Sunday afternoons reveling in it. I wish now that our reading had been guided and had not consisted so much of romantic light fiction of the Mary J. Holmes and Augusta J. Evans variety.
Mother, who all her life had been so busy and worked so hard, now found pleasure in reading the books I brought home to read. A Mrs. Emma Ames and I would exchange books and she would always read them before they were returned. To my knowledge her contemporary migrants learned to read, but did not enjoy it as Mother did. Father had little patience with light fiction. He could read English well enough to enjoy the newspaper and books on doctrine but had no patience with anything light. Therefore, Mother never read much until after he died.
Father died the evening of October 10, 1906, in my 13th year. On a Sunday I had spent the day with my good friend Minnie and was supposed to milk cows, but was just learning and was frightened of the creatures. He had spent a pleasant leisurely day at his favorite pastime, singing, with two of his daughter and with his son-in-law at the organ. Lena and Ida joined him in song. He was not feeling well so had not gone to church. He had scolded me for not being home in time to milk but had retired early to bed. In slept in the same room on a couch and when a fearful gurgling sound issued from his throat, I rushed to the kitchen calling our, “Ma, there is something wrong with Pa.” I had spoken to him two or three times. Mother came hurriedly in and tried to rouse him and the rest of the family were called but it was too late. He was dead.
They were bleak and sorrowful days that followed. Ida came to stay with her three children, and I remember the severest earthquake while she was there, which caused milk to be spilled that she was proffering to one of her children.
Four of us---Minnie, Chlomania and Olive Robinson and I---constituted the first graduating class ever to emerge from the Freedom Grade School. Olive and Chlomania had a year in Richmond High School. Minnie and I talked endlessly about the possibility of our attending also. Mother was not at all intrigued with the idea. Besides, people kept reminding me that it was my duty as an only daughter at home to forget it.
I did have a chance to go to Fielding High School. My sister-in-law, Sister Amy Cook, when her own young daughter had died, would have liked me to live with her and go to school. Eugene, who was married to her daughter, tried to persuade Mother that it would be a wonderful opportunity for an education for me. Mother countered with the statement that from her observation I seemed to be as well educated as those who had higher learning. Eugene said if I had more capacity I would improve that much faster. But Mother thought a man should be educated but a girl’s need for it was limited. Anyway, they felt I was needed at home since Walter had received a mission call.
Minnie and I were Freedom’s correspondents for the Independent. I had once told Mother that I believed I could write. Possibly that was because I had written a successful theme or composition. My Mother’s cryptic smile told me that she did not think much of the idea, so the little community of Freedom continued to be my world.
My first and only venture into radio was a fiasco. A delegation enroute to Laramie stopped in Rock Springs. Phyllis Richards, then our County Home Demonstration agent, was acquainted with the man in charge of the Rock Springs radio station. She promised him she would have a story for him on our return. I had no idea it would involve me and had completely disregarded the promise. Nothing was said while we were in Laramie. I wrote a talk for a delegate from Uinta County to give over the radio. I loved doing such things and it was no hardship, mental or physical.
As we were on our way home, Phyllis again mentioned it and urged me to write something suitable which would in a measure outline Extension work for the listeners. I wrote it in the form of a discussion, intending that the man in charge of the station would M.C. the program and interrogate the co-delegates, leaving myself entirely out of it. But, to my consternation, he insisted on my doing what I had planned for him with the rest of the women obediently reading the lines I had written for them. I never have had much poise in such circumstances. The element of surprise was too obvious but somehow we got through it. I was thoroughly annoyed because Phyllis laughed at my discomfiture. I was annoyed, too, that I was taken in so easily, though I do believe Phyllis intended that the M.C. read that part of the program.
I stayed with Lena the whole time her husband was on his mission, enjoying her and her three small children immensely. Since Walter had returned from his mission, there wasn’t as much need for me at home and Mother could spare me better than her sons who always had much work to do. We had moved to the newly acquired farm on the east side of the river. I did what I could to help her. We cleaned barns, pitched hay and milked cows.
My family was truly religious. Father never did one unessential thing on the Sabbath, but they were far from pious. Father, under Lena’s surveillance, succeeded in quitting the use of coffee but Mother never quit though she seemed the stronger character of the two.
Every morning and every evening we had family prayer and were expected as a matter of course to have our secret prayers. Mother enjoyed going to church and I am sure Father did, though they never participated in class discussions. Mother would say when a discussion interested her she wished she had command of the language and how she would have enjoyed to participate.
Mother was a superb manager and under her stewardship a new house was built on the original farm. The boys willingly cooperated and were never late to do chores nor shirked their duties. No matter how a competitive baseball or horseshoe games might have interested them, work and duty came first and I never recall a serious disagreement nor one of the boys being unfair.
We moved to the new house in about 1910. Though it was well built, it was not modern with hot and cold running water or with bathroom and all its facilities, though they were rather common then. We had gas lights but no electricity. It seemed very nice to us who had been accustomed to less.
The house was sturdy and well built. It was made of logs and later covered with clapboard. The families were expected to and did work. The young people spent their summers in Glen milking cows and even made cheese. Their market was Montpelier.
I remember well when George entered the picture. I was living with Lena while her husband was on a mission to the Central States. He seemed old to me because young as he was his hair was already gray over the temples. He took Lena to see his bachelor quarters which adjoined the store. He had a sign over the door reading, “Welcome to Bachelor’s Hall”.
George Seward Kennington was born in Ovid, Idaho, the son of William H. and Annie Rebecca Seward Kennington, September 29, 1879. His father had two wives and found their lives constantly harassed by officials. They possibly found more security under Wyoming laws and its Governor Moonlight than in Utah or Idaho. Grandfather Kennington was a school teacher, itinerate perhaps, but nevertheless taught school, as did Grandma Annie. Grandmother came to Star Valley a little while after Aunt Elizabeth did, approximately in 1886.
Both families were kind to each other and the father spent his nights alternately at the two homes. There was never any serious contention; grandmother was charitable and kind. So the years passed and the families matured and married.
George had been sent down to be manager of the Burton Store, a branch of the Afton store. His friendly genial personality endeared him to everyone. Young and old would go there to shop and exchange ideas and maybe gossip. Lena asked him why he didn’t get married. He replied he was waiting for an Apostle’s daughter. That statement spoken in jest may have said more of his high ideals than he realized.
George and Sam herded cows for the L.D.S. Church in Bedford near the vicinity of Forrest’s present farm.
School was of the sporadic variety; extreme cold or threatening weather seemed excuse enough to dismiss it. Leisure time was spent hunting and fishing. George’s good friends were Ern and Carl Roberts and Pat Yeamens. They enjoyed dancing and theatricals and there was culture of a sort.
In 1905 George was called on a two-year mission. Before his mission he had done a good deal of freighting for the Burton Creamery and Mercantile Company, and after his return they asked him if he would consider being manager of the Freedom store. Obediently he went down and here romance found him.
Miss Ada Kimball went to Freedom to care for a patient of the Budge doctors. A Mrs. Granwell McNiel called the doctor for a registered nurse, and almost like a stroke of fate, Ada was called to go down. Ada told her father-in-law the moment she heard George’s voice she felt he was the one she was to marry. It must have been love at first sight, for there were only two weeks of companionship and the rest was correspondence. They were married in the Logan Temple 24 June 1908, and made their home in the apartment adjoining the store. They were active in the Church at Freedom. George served in the Sunday School and M.I.A. and Ada in the Relief Society and M.I.A.
It was the custom to send delegates as representatives to the annual conventions, and most of the organizations collected money to defray expenses. By coincidence Ada and I were assigned to go together to Glen to collect money. George drove us as far as the George Rainey home and since neither of us dared to take care of a horse our self, we trudged all over Glen on foot. Though reared on a farm, I had never enjoyed horses and was as inept about their care as the city slicker.
Their son, George Winston, was born October 30 and died November 3, 1910. Ada had never enjoyed good health and when she again became pregnant they decided better medical care was available in Thatcher, Arizona, and where she could be with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Kimball. When the news came that George and Ada had a set of twin girls, everyone was happy for them. Lena in particular was interested since Ada was still her second counselor in Relief Society. Women in those days were not released at once because of pregnancy. Then news came that everything was not well. George left immediately for Thatcher but arrived too late to see his wife alive. She died 12 April 1912, surviving just nine days the birth of her babies, who were born 3 April 1912. Their mother was born 4 January 1886, and was buried in Thatcher, Arizona.
Everyone sorrowed for George. He was so popular and well liked and his sad gray face struck a note of sympathy in every breast.
When the transition came that changed his liking to love for me, I have no idea. I always enjoyed talking with older people. He was easy to talk to, so kind and congenially fine and good that I never knew when he singled me out. Except one time when he and my brother-in-law William E. came to Stake Priesthood Meeting he told William that he was interested in me but had not the faintest notice that I would reciprocate since he was so much older. But deep regard can change to affection. I was never in the least flirtatious but awfully sensitive to being teased by my contemporaries. So, though he would come to see me twice a week, I would go to dances and parties with other boys, secure in the love of a good man whom they knew nothing about only as a much older figure.
I lived in Providence the summer before we were married and took a course in the Kiester School of Dressmaking. I lived with a family of girls and their parents whose habits and way of life were far from what I thought ideal. Their idea of fun left me sick; however, I will concede that my ideals were too puritan and strict for most young people, even though I was just 20. I told them that to me the stories they told were not funny but crude and smutty. Another custom the girls of the Logan community indulged in which I, a bumpkin, thought reprehensible was that of girls sauntering along streets and boys hooted and stopped to invite them to ride. I asked them, horrified, if they knew boys they accepted rides from. Airily, they replied that they wished they had a dime for every boy they had never seen before. This was in the horse and buggy era.
That fall, 23 October 1913, George and I were married in the Logan Temple. I was home for six weeks before we were married. George was as dear as ever. We had no honeymoon. People rarely did in those days and one of the twins, Clarissa, was not recovering from her bout of whooping cough satisfactorily. I was of a mature turn of mind and probably would have been unconcerned with anything gay and lighthearted anyway. George had brought me up to see the house we were to live in. There were no conveniences but we did have electric lights.
I remember the fun my brother Fred poked at the disconsolate rig George brought to carry me away. To tell the truth, I was a little taken back when I saw it, too. His reason was that the one-seated rig would not carry my trunk.
As Clarissa was still recuperating from her illness, it was thought best that she remain at Aunt Mollie’s who had cared for the twins so tenderly since their grandmother had brought them from Arizona the July after they were born. After a short visit in Freedom, George came to get me and I immediately became a housewife. Jennie Gardner was there to help me over the first months. I loved the children and enjoyed taking care of them. In six weeks time Clarissa was considered well enough to entrust into my tender care but Jennie stayed with us the entire winter. George was so kind and affectionate and I loved him devotedly.
My mother said once, “Martha, have you considered well what it will be like to be a second wife? Are you sure you won’t mind?” I thought the idea somewhat preposterous but I reckoned without knowing myself. Though never in my life was I ever jealous for a single instant of the love their father gave the twins, there were times when I felt not quite big enough for the role of second wife. Had our roles been reversed and had we lived in pioneer times, I was sure I could have measured up to any sacrifice required of me but even that would have remained to be seen. But I could not do anything but love the little girls George entrusted to my care. He had faith in me and I never consciously betrayed his trust.
There were electric lights but heat and power had not come into being yet. Our heat came from a new cook stove and a Wilson heater. I wasn’t a cook, and one of the first things I asked George was what he liked to eat. His reply was, “If I ever drown, I hope it is in soup.” I experimented and tried all kinds of new innovations and was rewarded with lavish praise. Though inexperienced, I must have learned a good deal from my mother by the indirect method called osmosis and maybe I had inherited from her a talent for cooking and blending foods. There was no such thing as electric refrigeration but George bought me a new icebox affair which was highly unsatisfactory, chiefly because ice was hard to get. People used to store ice in saw dust bins to keep it from melting. In the winter the more enterprising would store enough to sell in the summer for ice cream and refrigeration. Interesting how they would get the ice---they would freeze designated pond by nature’s process, freezing a deeper area than ordinary and then with a rotary saw mark out blocks and store them in sawdust to better preserve them. Strange how many unusual things people did because science had not yet pointed a better way.
Though life and living were crude according to present day standards, I was happy. I loved my husband and I loved the children as though they were my own. I enjoyed the twins. They were lovely little girls and though my heart was fearful, they didn’t catch a single thing. They had had measles and whooping cough previously and bouts with pneumonia tends to weaken and make one more susceptible to another attack, but fortunately there were no others.
I was always public spirited and I regarded it as a means to education. As I said before, we both worked in the M.I.A., George as Superintendent and I as second counselor. George would have preferred to stay at home but he always did his duty and his duty was in serving to the best of his ability in the Church. George continued his work in the Church but I stayed home until my baby arrived the following April. When the boy finally arrived after 30 tortured hours, I think I would have died if the doctor had not announced, “It’s a boy”. It mattered not at all that his head was miss-shapen, a condition the doctor and more experienced women assured would correct itself with time. I was happy to have fulfilled my husband’s wishes on the day before my 22nd birthday.
On the day I returned from the hospital the twins came down with the only communicable disease left to them---mumps. They ran to me and I took them unhesitatingly in my arms. As a result I had them within two weeks. Contrary to medical opinion even today that nursing babies do not get communicable diseases, Garth got them. At any rate, he never did get them again, though the signs were hardly noticeable in a baby.
Garth was born 19 April 1915. He was rather cross and that was the era in which mothers were instructed to let babies cry it out. According to the books, crying was the way the babies got exercise. I think I did not cuddle him once. With a backward glance over the past, it was because I feared to show undue affection for my own baby when there were two others not my own also clamoring for affection. But I never knowingly showed any discrimination between my own children and the girls.
Garth was an apt student when he and the twins went to school in the old school house.
I regret now that there was not a more open manifestation of love and affection in the home. All my concern was to please my husband and I was not concerned with how it was achieved.
On October 11, 1916, a sweet little daughter was born to us, whom we named Guinivere. I was given to fanciful names and George indulged me in it. We had planned to name her Elaine but just at that time a movie serial was running weekly in the local theatre called the “Exploits of Elaine”. When people heard the name we planned to name her, they would say, “Oh, you are naming her for the movie thriller.” So a few days before she was to be blessed I said, “Let’s name her ‘Guinivere’”. That name is from the “Idylls of the King,” by Alfred Tennyson.
She was the only child we ever had named in Sacrament Meeting. When the Bishop inquired of the name, George forgot and had to ask me what it was. I am sure that was embarrassing to him and was probably the reason, along with the communicable diseases always in the community, and we had none of the other children blessed in Church. They were all named by Bishop Osborne Low.
Gordon was born on 26 October 1918, the month before hostilities of World War I ceased and the month when the Spanish Influenza epidemic broke out. Out popular and well-liked Dr. Lafayette Rees died as a flu casualty, one of the first. Everyone was terrified and in some instances terror was held responsible for death. I, too, was afraid but got along fine with Sister Sarah Hurd as nurse and Dr. West in charge.
Soon after Gwen was born Sister Martha E. Roberts came and asked me if I would take an extension course in Home Economics which had been offered to the Stake Relief Society. This was the first time I had ever heard of food classifications and their places in the nutritional field. I was not yet a member of the Relief Society but gladly accepted. Church work of any kind had always been a joy and an opportunity to me. I enjoyed every lesson and got thought with an A-minus.
Bertha Kennington helped care for the children after Jen Low left. Then Esther (Matthews Crook) lived with us through 1916 to 1924. In between there were Maud (Kennington) and her brother Harve and sister Annie. Harve came to help with the chores while going to school. Annie, three years younger than Maud, stayed with the family and helped us all.
I enjoyed every nurse I had and every girl who helped as a hired girl. That, I know, implies that I was not too attentive to details, not critical enough of small things as a homemaker. But I loved Church and everything that went into living the Gospel.
The Afton Ward was divided in June of 1919, with Gilbert Tayson as Bishop and George and Ben Nield as his counselors. There was so much for them to do by way of planning and division of property. All the Church buildings were in the North Ward so it was necessary for an immediate building program. Competent, well-qualified men were sent out to make a survey of possible building plans. They returned but seemed to have reckoned without the church architect, so they were one by one disregarded. The site for a new church had been selected. As the building rose to the square, many were dissatisfied with comments as to the suitability of such a structure in this climate. Still, there was no plan to disobey in word or deed the word and edict of their peers.
Bishop Taysom was a leader in every sense of the word. He organized an efficient ward out of what had been considered but 10 percent of the active membership. People rallied around him wonderfully and of course his two faithful counselors were with him.
The building was completed but not yet paid for. Everything seemed as right as could be with the architectural design. Then came the spring rains. I shall never forget the look of consternation which came over our Bishop’s face when he saw the wet walls and the water on the floor. He, too, had had little faith in the design of the building. From that time until it was torn down, it had a long history of patch and repair.
In 1921 Bishop Taysom died of a strep throat. George was called to him in the early morning and was with him frequently during his illness. He died in November 1921 and everyone grieved at his untimely passing.
The new ward needed his leadership so sorely. But as always, the ward rallied around the new bishop, who was contractor C. J. Call. He chose as his counselors the same men who served with Bishop Taysom, George and Brother Nield. During this regime the indebtedness of the Church was paid and within five years George was chosen as Bishop, serving in all for 11-1/2 years, giving to the Church all that was good and praiseworthy, doing it all willingly and conscientiously. I never remember his shirking one of his duties no matter it was a call on the sick or attending to the needs of those who were called to mourn, or administering to those who were ill. He chose to act with him Ben Nield and Joseph E. Linford. Ernest Clark was clerk.
Brother Clark had a high regard for George and admired him for the good man he was. While he was clerk, his wife, Esther Pratt Clark, who was also my very good friend, died. She had been such a good friend. We had worked together in the YWMIA and had found in each other good congenial spirits. Only in Minnie had I found a better friend. She was a gifted musician and an intelligent sincere woman. Both George and I felt that had her diagnosis been better, she need not have died. But then there is a destiny that rules our ends.
George was released as Bishop in September of 1931. He had served valiantly in a cause he knew to be true and worthy of his best. Before the bishopric, he had served in a number of auxiliary and Priesthood organizations and had been a Stake Sunday School Board member. He served as councilman in the city organization and as mayor for two or three terms, giving to everything he did his most sincere conscientious efforts.
We had moved from the original house to George’s mother’s home. We had renovated the house with the addition of a bedroom before Gwen was born and had made the room really attractive with shinning varnished floors and new rugs. Gwen was the first born in the newly renovated room.
When we were first married George continued his work in the store. But since he felt there was money in cows and land, he relinquished that effort and went to dairying exclusively. Prices were fairly good until the depression.
Beverly was born 14 April 1920. We had moved from the first house to his mother’s soon after Bev was born. The living room was lovely but there was no bathroom, and since a bathroom was a must, we turned the small impractical kitchen into one and for the first time we had plumbing and hot and cold running water.
Forrest was born 10 August 1923 and was the last one to be born while we lived in the old house, but was born at Aunt Belle’s recently established nursing home. For a short time Arling and Ruth lived in the house. That is where her son was born at 7:00 that morning and my son was born about 8:00 that night.
We bought our first electrical sewing machine shortly after Forrest was born.
Audine was born 19 December 1924. She was a good baby when small. For some reason my girls were better natured than the boys. Perhaps it was because my own health was better then, whether psychosomatic or real, I don’t know. Audine was a sweet girl and the only one of the children who ever suffered a broken limb, breaking her arm when playing with the rest of the children.
Craig was born 11 April 1929. I tried giving him sun baths and all the health rules for which that era was famous. Club work had made its impression on me and of course the clubs I belonged to received all the nutritional and health guides. Homemakers were given monthly lessons through extension service.
Eugene Seward was born 26 August 1930, after we had moved down to Uncle Oz and Aunt Mollie’s brick house. In effect we had exchanged houses. The house, though impressive to the observer, had all the undesirable features of a high-ceiling fortress. The walls were brick throughout and as implacable to possible change as any house could be, and there were no convenient features, no running hot or cold water, and no plumbing.
The depression had lowered prices and it was the worst possible time to assume new obligations. But George had a large and growing family and felt he must do something. Uncle Oz felt that n exchange of houses might be the answer. There was a large barn to house the cows—as many as we could care for. So he persuaded George to that effect. He, too, was heavily in debt and felt that an exchange would solve his problem, though he liked George. I am sure, as is natural to human nature, his concern was mostly for himself and his welfare.
Ruth was born 21 October 1934, and was a pleasant little girl. She had whooping cough before she was a year old and I am convinced would have died had it not been summer and we were able to keep her out of doors all the time. It was a strange thing about that whooping cough. I was sure Audine had contacted it at school. She whooped and, though not severe, she coughed and had all the symptoms associated with the disease. But strangely enough, Craig and Eugene did not get it. I was disturbed about it since I had hoped they might get it because I knew there would be a new baby the next year and I did not want it to catch anything—least of all whooping cough. The next summer Audine did not have the disease but Craig and Eugene did and as a consequence so did Ruth. But she survived, for which I was so grateful.
Martha was born 8 September 1936. I was ill for a month before she was born. We seldom if ever had prenatal examinations---our medicos were not that far advanced, nor were we. I had some knowledge that I had high blood pressure but was not in the least hypochondriac looking for a real or fancied ailment. Dr. West had attended me and the last thing he would have looked for was high blood pressure. And the doctor who had warned me about my HBP was now dead. Because I felt ill, I had Dr. Worthen, a new doctor in town, come. I had a urinalysis ready for him. He took it and returned to the hospital, making an appointment the following Monday. Instead he called immediately requesting my immediate presence. He told me I must stay in bed until my confinement, six weeks distant, that I had dropsy, high blood pressure and albumen. I returned home protesting that I could not go to bed and do as the doctor said, but he insisted. Events were taken entirely out of my hands. Pains real and earnest began and George returned me to the hospital where I lapsed into a coma and to all intents and purposes unconscious of all my surroundings. For three days I remained in the coma to rouse to a vague unrealistic world. Everything seemed so weird and strange. Even the flowers assumed strange forms. My little daughter was born six weeks prematurely and weighted only two one-half pounds. But she seemed to be healthy. She was a beautiful little baby, exquisite in form and feature. She lived until 21 November 1936, when she succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage. A private funeral was held with Bishop Franklin Gardner in charge and she was buried in the lot at the city cemetery November 23, 1936.
Life went along quite uneventful until George’s health began to deteriorate. We tried to urge him to consult a doctor. He did have his bad teeth removed in the vain hope that they were the cause. It was an ordeal for him in every way. After they were gone, he continued to lose weight. At our Thanksgiving dinner he had an awful spell of nausea, though I had prepared only easily digested foods for him. I called the doctor and he came down immediately. He made an appointment for him to go to the hospital for a thorough examination and consultation. Uncle William E. Jenkins accompanied him to the hospital. He was told he would require surgery but first there would be intravenous feedings to make his strength equal to the ordeal facing him.
I know he feared a malignancy, because I did. Always that fear was in the back of my mind. When he returned from the hospital, I burst into tears. He took me into his arms to comfort me and tried to believe and make me believe that he was like his brother Bert, needing only to have an ulcer removed to be alright again.
That night he went to the hospital again prepared to stay until his operation. I remember the bottles suspended above his head containing strength-giving fluids and glucose. He was operated on 27 November 1938. His brothers Henry and Lon watched the operation performed by Drs. S. H. Worthen and Spencer Wright. The brothers reported that his condition seemed identical with that of Bert’s, so that gave us the hope that he would eventually recover, and soon.
Dr. Worthen heard me utter the blithe hope to one of my friends over the telephone, so in a very short time he returned from his office with a book containing pictures of colored plates on which were the words CARCINOMA. I am not sure whether he thought I understood the term, but I did with all its dreadful implications. I asked the doctor why he told me, that I would have been as kind and good to him without the fearful knowledge he had chosen to impart. He said only that, “He thought I would like to know.” I said flatly, “Well, I didn’t.” Then he began to try to make amends. He said he could live five years and he could put on weight. And there always were drugs and opiates to relieve pain.
So I began to rationalize to believe the doctor could be wrong in his diagnosis. I asked only that he not tell anyone of his condition. I thought I could bear it without the constant expressions of sympathy well-meaning friends are so apt to pour upon troubled hearts. The doctor told Clarissa and Berniece but out of consideration they never discussed it with me. Always there was the rationalizing that he could recover if God willed it so. So it was that I mentioned the hope that consecrated oil would help him. He said submissively and sweetly, “If you think so, let’s have some consecrated.”
That night he was in more distress than he had been at all. It was as if someone had told me he could not recover. That was in the last part of June. Some say that he must have suffered more than we knew, but I am inclined to doubt that because the dreadful agony that is associated with intestinal cancer, or carcinoma, would be very hard to hid from loving and observing eyes, much as he might have wanted to hide it.
Clarissa went to the doctor to get his first medication of drugs. He said he would give her the mildest, saving stronger tablets for the future when, as the disease progressed, he would probably require them. I knew then that he was not destined to recover, when he had been so distressed after my well-meant dosage of consecrated oil. All night he complained of what he called gas pain. After the birds began twittering in the trees he fell into a restless sleep. I know, because he always wanted me to sleep by him, restless when I wasn’t there.
My dear sister Lena knew nothing of his condition because I had not told her of any of the things that worried us so, nor did my brother Charles know until near the end. I knew that some people find relief from the sympathy they get from others. All I could do was lock my worry tight within me and tell myself that he would be alright. He had a father, mother, son and daughter over there, as well as a wife, and if I felt grief it would be for myself I would be grieving. So I determined and prayed that I would not ever know too much pain or the grief that draws one within to canker and fester. He died the 20th of July 1939, after almost a week of semi-consciousness, rousing only for nourishment and then three days in a deep coma.
Never once could I acquire the courage to ask him about our financial affairs. Had they been such that he could have discussed them freely without worry to me, he would have done so. Before his operation he had me go to the bank and bring back the necessary papers for his signature. After his death were the loneliest days I ever knew. My family was a constant source of comfort. Bernice and Clarissa had been such a comfort to me and strength to their father during his illness. Arthur had shaved and cut his hair during his illness. Clarissa and Oz moved down to help manage some of the work at the farm after her father died.
It was Minnie, as if sensing my loneliness on the Sunday following the funeral which, too, had been on a Sunday, came down to ask if I would write a pageant for the 25th anniversary of the extension work in Wyoming. I had through the years written much: plays, skits, and even drama. It had always been easy for me to write. I enjoyed it and it required but a request and the inspiration seemed to come.
After George died my sweet sister Lena invited me to go with her, her husband and daughter and son-in-law, who were Mr. and Mrs. Eli Hanson, to pick up Evan, their son, who was returning from a mission in Texas. I had all sorts of misgivings and told her so. No money, the children to care for. But one by one they were all swept aside to clear the way. Gwen would give me the money to defray the expense. Clarissa would look after the children, Gordon and Beverly would be there to look after them, too. Everyone was so good and kind. The Afton Home Economics Club in which I was a charter member honored me with a going away gift and party at Minnie’s home. We left on the last day of February 1940.
It was a wonderful trip of six weeks duration. We went to Rawlins the first night, the most Wyoming territory I had ever seen. Then to Colorado, Oklahoma and into Texas to Old Mexico and Juarez where, for the first time I enjoyed bargaining with natives, having been warned by a guide not to pay the first price asked for.
We found all sorts of leather goods, textiles and linens but our cash was limited so our enjoyment was short. From there we went to Arizona and through the Temple at Mesa. We saw lovely Phoenix with its newly erected Wrigley Building, its lavish tourist attraction. Then we went to see Carlsbad Caverns. What a sight that was! Miles and miles of underground corridors to traverse, its stalagmites and stalactites formed through centuries of dripping hard water, its beauties obscured by darkness and known only to men who because curious on seeing swarms of bats enter the hole in the ground at day break to emerge at dusk or nightfall. Tons of guano fertilize the ground, proving their centuries of habitation. There but for the science of electricity and man’s ingenuity that wonder might never have been discovered. Without it or a candle light, whatever that first explorer used, it might still have been a hole in the ground.
Then we went to San Diego, visited there and saw the Balboa Zoo. Subsequently we saw other zoos but none had the strange exotic animals this had. In addition, it had such an interesting monkey colony ranging from huge gorillas to tiny spider monkeys. Perhaps what intrigued me most was that it was the first collection of strange animals and birds I had ever seen.
From San Diego we went to Los Angeles where we were guests of Myra Jenkins (Lena's daughter) in a house she rented for our use. We saw a radio cast in action. I was terribly disappointed. There was no action, only dialogue. For contract I should like to see a televised cast.
We saw Griffeth Park with its lovely flowers and sparkling water falls. Then we watched Aime Semple McPherson give her Palm Sunday sermon. Her four square church was full. Representatives form many states, even from foreign countries, were gathered there. I enjoyed it and told Lena I would rather pay her than for many shows. But when the plate reached the end of our row it was empty, and to show us up for the niggards we were, the collector turned it bottom-side up. We spent a day in lovely Forest Lawn Park. There was truly “Music in the Air”. Lovely soft music, beautiful strains, floated over the grounds and we saw the exquisitely carved statuary with its telling inscriptions. Three chapels for use at weddings or funerals were on the grounds. The main building housed the funeral parlor and its beautiful paintings of “The Last Supper”. We attended a lecture telling about the difficulties encountered when the head of Judas was cast in stained glass.
We went to Hollywood Bowl, rising at 3:00 a.m. to be sure to get there when the services began. It was a thrilling sight to see that vast panorama spread out before us, the number of people all gathered there in a worshipful service to honor the Risen Lord, knowing there were similar gatherings in other areas.
From Los Angeles we went along the coast to San Francisco, where we saw many interesting things. The two famous bridges—Golden Gate and Bay Bridge—the Fisherman’s Wharf and a zoo. The most interesting thing to me was the topography of San Francisco. I understood then why they had to have the kind of cars they did—ones that could negotiate those hills.
We saw Alcatraz, so near the shore and so far by inaccessible swirling waters. We drove around San Quentin prison and I felt pity for the men incarcerated there.
We expressed a desire to see Hoover Dam and though that meant almost a complete return to Los Angeles, Eli and Edyth obligingly took us to Las Vegas. There we wandered through the gambling casinos, which were then void of glamour. The “strip” of which we read about with its sumptuous hotels and night clubs had not yet been installed. But we did see the drab and sordid—its old men and women gambling and indulging in all forms of games of chance. I should have liked to linger, not that I found it fascinating, but it was interesting to see old people enjoy a way of life so foreign to our own.
The dam was interesting with its massive cement bulwark and the placid Lake Mead nearby.
We came home by way of St. George to see Alice and Mel Hamilton who were there employed by the Agricultural Adjustment Act. It was now annual conference time and we returned to Salt Lake City. There I learned that Craig, Eugene and Ruth all had had the measles. The family had conspired to keep the news from me. Since there were no complications, they saw no reason to worry me needlessly.
In Salt Lake City we learned of the reorganizing of our Stake Presidency. Richard R. Lyman presided over the details. Royal S. Papworth, Carl Robinson and Ralph Hyer had been sustained during the March 1940 Stake Conference.
In retrospect, I can see how selfish my pleasures have always been in respect to the family and I regret that I found so much pleasure away from them.
Soon after I returned home I was asked to be a delegate of the Extension Club to their annual convention at Laramie. Miss Richards was the Home Demonstration agent. Because I could write reasonably well, I was asked to write talks to be given by a delegate besides reporting on the work in Star Valley. I made three convention trips in all, twice for the Extension Service and once for the Farm Bureau in which I was SW representative. I am sure the contact with these women broadened my mental horizons and gave me a knowledge, that other fine women not of our Church had high ideals too for life and for their families and home as well as we who were L.D.S.
Minnie Luthi Robinson went with me on the second trip to Laramie. We did enjoy being together. This was in the spring of 1941. Later that summer she was taken ill. Since her health had never been robust we thought it not out of the ordinary when she complained of pain near the region of her heart. But Dr. Worthen thought it serious enough to warrant further diagnosis and analysis from specialists. She was taken to the L.D.S. Hospital in Salt Lake City where she stayed for three weeks submitting to X-rays and diagnostic treatment. When she returned she was no better and an attack of yellow jaundice revealed the seriousness of her condition. She was operated on and an advanced malignancy was found. She died 17 December 1941. She was the truest and most loyal friend anyone ever had and I shall always cherish her memory.
Later I went on one trip for the Farm Bureau to Themopolis. It was rather interesting as it was I who recommended the quota system for Farm Bureau membership and the establishment of a definite outlined educational program.
All of my conscious life I have been public spirited, enjoying whatever opportunities were there for participation. I know I was a gauche and awkward when young and very likely retained that quality beyond my years. I remember when a phrenologist, Dr. John R. Miller, who by reading the bumps on one’s head pretended to tell character, came to town.
But the most memorable were the troupes who would come to our little town. These were interspersed with theatrical troupes from the Stake. We usually had one from each little ward, only Fairview who had such a wealth of talent would come with a repertoire of several plays a season, a thing we always looked forward to. These are just reminiscences.
Clarissa lived down by us after her father’s death. It was she who made it possible for me to go on that extended trip. Her husband took care of the farm and milked the cows.
Because my children lived, I, too, found interest in living. Beverly had worked as dental assistant for Dr. Papworth since her high school graduation. When prices were so depressed Gordon was almost our only source of maintenance. How heartening it was to have him open the door and call out, “What’s there to eat?” He paid the grocery bill until he decided to go to school in Logan. Before that he worked at Charles Call’s hardware. We were deeply involved in World War II at this time. Wages and prices were soaring; boys were being drafted for the Army, though Forrest was not old enough to be drafted. Clarissa had gone to Salt Lake City to join Oz who worked at the Remington Arms plant. Forrest worked at a railroad tie camp one summer, and that is the summer I suffered my first and the only stroke I can associate with undue exertion.
It was late in the afternoon of a summer evening. I thought the currants, of which I had a few bushes, needed irrigating. There was no ditch so I energetically began to dig one. Before I was through numbness went down my entire right side. I recognized it for what it was—a stroke. I dropped the shovel and went to the house. I could not write and my right had did not have its usual maneuverability. The next morning the tingling numbness was gone and I prepared to do the week’s washing and then go to town, a distance of about a half-mile; this time it was not easy and I was bone weary, as the saying goes. So I relaxed and tried not to do anything over-taxing.
In several days time it wore off and aside from unusual weariness, I thought myself recovered.
On the morning of the 4th of July when I was getting the youngsters ready for the annual celebration, the same numbness returned. This time it was general but another stroke nonetheless. Berniece consulted Dr. Treloar and he told her to keep me completely idle, not so much as try to lift a pin. Because I felt so terribly tired, I was rather glad to obey him and Audine had come home to help with the work. The next summer when I felt well enough, she, too, went to the Remington Arms plant to get work.
Beverly was married and had gone with her husband when he was stationed in the South. When he was ordered overseas she returned home and after a short stay in Salt Lake City, she and Audine rented a newly constructed home for the family in Lake View in Clearfield and had us move down there with them. Beverly was wonderful—her impulses so generous and kind. I always enjoyed her. I had apparently recovered completely from my stroke now.
Eugene had an appendectomy the week that Forrest and Arth were called into the Army. I described his symptoms to Dr. Treloar on the phone and he told us to bring him up. There was no way to bring him up for the examination. I think I have never felt so alone—every male member of our family was gone to war or was away from the Valley doing war work. Then it occurred to me to call Bishop Gardner. Besides being Bishop of the ward he was a close friend. It was revealed the appendix was broken and the operation was performed immediately. The doctor charged his usual fee but the Bishop insisted that the Ward Welfare pay the hospital bill. It was my new experience accepting what I knew was charity. I tried to refuse it but the Bishop was adamant. And now later in perspective I am deeply grateful.
In August of that year I, with the children Craig, Eugene and Ruth, went to Clearfield to make a home for the duration of the war. Eugene attended Davis Junior High in Clearfield. Craig was a student at Davis High and Ruth attended an elementary school. The influx of people had left the schools poorly prepared for the students and were thus victims of a housing and teacher shortage.
Forrest, who had done so much to help me financially, returned from his overseas experience to help me move home. The war was over and things were beginning to return to normal. Clarissa and her family had moved back to Afton. Beverly’s husband had returned, too.
I had happy memories of the stay in Clearfield where, with so many Army installations, they had neglected their missionary opportunities unduly. For my family we might have stayed cloistered indefinitely had I not had the Church-going habit and encouraged my family to participate in Church activities. At first I had the idea that I would rather not take our membership down there but when I could see what it was doing to the children, my notions went glimmering. I could see that even though the idea of visiting various chapels might be all right for me, there would be no anchor for the boys who were old enough for Priesthood activities and who needed the strength and encouragement it provides. So for their sakes I sent for our recommends.
The Clearfield Ward soon took us to their hearts but I am sure that had I not taken the first step, the ward authorities would have been content to let the years go by without letting us know of the Church and the wonderful plan for education and development it offers its members.
Bishop Woods who was Bishop of the Clearfield First Ward asked me if I would give my consent for Audine to go on a mission. He and six men from the ward would provide for her maintenance. She was then just 20 years old. I was humbly grateful for the Bishop’s offer; he was kind and flattering in that he thought us worthy and desirable enough to help.
The mission might have turned out but the plan was terminated by romance that found Audine—one of those impetuous romances with a boy whom she knew too briefly. But they were so sure they could live happily forever. All thoughts of a mission fled from her mind, since the Church encourages marriage for girls in preference to a mission, career or anything else, which is as it should be. And I, since he could go to the Temple to be married, made no protests.
Then we returned home. Forrest had thoughtfully disposed of that implacable house and bought a little house near Uncle Henry. It was he who freighted our household belongings home, disposing and arranging all the details. The house had many undesirable features but at least it had hot and cold running water’ though there was not a tub, it did have a shower. Though never a good housekeeper, I did have innumerable ideas about arranging. It was a story and a half with a basement but the floor space in each was small.
I did not enjoy the good health I had been accustomed to. I tired much too quickly so I did not accept any Church assignments for the first time in my life. In Clearfield, though active, I had the reason that we would not be permanent enough to be of any use nor well enough acquainted with the people to be of any value.
In midsummer Stayner Call asked if I would come to work in his bookstore. Almost simultaneously an oil investigation was beginning—that is, oil was thought to be hidden beneath the surface of the ground. One of the accounts rented the house while I took an apartment in Call’s apartment house. Craig was graduated form high school and ready for a college or university. We really could not afford college and Gwen and Jim offered to have him stay at their house near which there was a junior college situated in Ontario, California, a fact I appreciated.
Forrest had a farm that he had acquired in a veteran’s lottery at a newly opened area, or should say a newly drained area of rich soil near Tulelake in Northern California. He had always been so generous with me and his brothers and sisters. While he had been in the service he sent his allotment check to me each month.
Arth negotiated the rental of the house to an itinerant worker and his wife. They did not stay long and Arthur was able to rent the little house for more money to a man who was in charge of drilling operations and who stayed until the work stopped and the company decided the venture would cost more than it was worth, although they were reasonable sure there was oil.
After I had had one stroke and felt reasonably well after recovery, G. W. Yeamans asked me if I would be candidate for County Representative. The idea intrigued me for an hour or so—not much longer I am sure. I called the Dr. Treloar and he said he certainly wouldn’t advise going into a campaign with all its pressures and excitement in my condition which might be worsened under stress. I had enjoyed the political field. Marrying before I came of age automatically threw me into the Republican camp which George ardently espoused. I may not have thought it through very thoroughly but to me the principles of the Republican Party were always on a higher plane than those of the Democrats. No doubt I was more fervent in my objections during the New Deal Era than at any other time. I rather detested Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) for his hypocrisy and the way he behaved toward President Herbert Hoover before he was elected. I am sincerely glad that he has been able to regain some of the public esteem lost to him by the vicious way in which FDR tried to down-grade him in every way. Though I have sense enough to know that something had to be done to help the people and ease the financial structure, I still believe that much that was done was totally un-American and done for political expediency and not because principles or policies warranted it.
I remember before World War II. It seemed that everything he did was designed to get us into the fray—warning Japan to get out of Indochina or face an ultimatum, etc. Most of all, it seemed he was courting Churchill to try to get the United States into the war. And when on December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor it seemed ironic that instead of declaring war on Japan that he declared war on Germany. Of course, the world knew that Hitler was a bigger menace than was any other target.
Speaking of FDR, I had even less regard for Truman, though he did not have it within him to be as clever as was his predecessor and was much more immature in his reaction against criticism which every political figure must take in his stride.
Tillman, Beverly, Tillman’s mother, and I went to see the Yellowstone National Park during the summer of 1948. To me it seemed so wonderful with its steaming pots, gushing geyser. I was so glad to be able to see it before a stroke ended my activities.
I was clerk of the primary and general election. Though the election trend was not at all to my liking, with Truman winning unexpectedly over Dewey, I tried to take the returns as graciously as possible. Just a week after the election I had my third and crippling stroke. It seemed no worse than the previous ones. I was at work in the bookstore but immediately I recognized the familiar numbness. I said, “I believe I have had a stroke.” “Oh, No! Come quick and sit down,” he said. I did but it was not to be so quickly shrugged off. Finally I said, “If I don’t go at once I won’t be able to walk across the street to the apartment.”
As a matter of fact, I could not walk even then without help. Stayner was on one side and Lloyd Taysom on the other. I had no pain—just the familiar numbness. I had no idea it would be of long duration. Stayner phoned Beverly and she came at once, frightened and shaken, from her apartment just a few doors away. Berniece and Clarissa had gone with their husbands to the Idaho Falls Temple. When they returned I was taken to Berniece’s home. I had no idea but that I would be able to return to work within a two-week period and said as much to Arth. But he smiled and said, “You had better plan to stay for the winter.” Things happened fast then. My family was summoned. The doctor advised it because the third stroke is often fatal. They all came but Garth who called on the telephone from Wisconsin.
Berniece and Arth were so kind to me, giving up their room to me while they crowded themselves into the small room with their baby Marie.
I felt no worse than I had felt but I didn’t try to get up and perhaps would never have done so had not a naturopathic doctor visiting neighbors and who persuaded us that he had great healing powers been called in. I had small faith in him, particularly since he began trying to massage the left side of my skull. I knew that if his training hadn’t made him more knowledgeable than that, it was not for me, so we stopped any further visits. But not before he encouraged me to try to walk, which I did, haltingly of course. But at least I was on my feet and I am grateful to him for that.
The children’s visits bewildered and cheered me at the same time. To Gordon I shall be forever grateful. I thought my ability to write would be lost but he suggested the typewriter to tap out my letters and whatever I had on my mind. It seemed a discouraging prospect. Besides, I used to love to write anything on request and now I could no longer be in charge of whatever I wrote and that seemed a bleak prospect. But the children rented a typewriter for me to see how satisfactorily it solved my problem before they made a purchase of one. Though it annoys me to be so slow and inept, it has helped me to get rid of my frustrations. I feel a part of the world in that I can write and put thoughts on paper. Christmas time the children bought a typewriter for me.
I loved staying at Berniece’s. She would come and visit with me in the room and I soon learned how to adjust to a life of idleness. I had learned not to feel self pity and welcomed any constructive assignments. While I was so definitely right handed, the right hand was now useless. I think had I had therapy it might have helped. The doctor said that had the medicine and the shots been available that are now available, I would not have been the incapacitated person I am, but science is slow and painstaking. But there is no use crying over spilt milk.
In 1950 my youngest brother, Lawrence, died suddenly of a heart attack. I remember when my sister Lena and my brother Charles came up to break the news to me. They were so very kind and thoughtful and have been through the years of my invalidism. As I learned to walk better I felt more self-sufficient. The children did all that was humanly possible to make life pleasant for me. Forrest gave me a radio which has been so wonderful to while away otherwise monotonous existence. Had I been the type of self-sacrificing mother I should have been, I would feel possibly more deserving.
In 1951 Gordon asked me to come to California and stay a few months in the hope that my health would improve. Garth and Agnes took Ruth and me down in August. We stayed one night with Forrest at Tulelake and then rode down the length of the California I had never seen before. Though I had been to Sequoia Park, I had never been so near the giant redwoods. I loved the Rogue River Valley with the interesting camps situated along the way, and the beautiful Mount Shasta is unforgettable.
Ruth was so solicitous of my welfare as were Garth and Agnes. During our stay at Gordon, he and Carol gave up their bed and slept on the floor, letting Ruth and me have their bed—a gesture so characteristic of Gordon and Carol. We went to see Gwen and Jim, too. They are the souls of kindness and thoughtfulness. Now, two years after his conversion, I am forever grateful to our Heavenly Father to let him see the truth and beauty of the Gospel and its ideals and standards.
During our stay at Norwalk the State Fair at Pomona was scheduled. Jim, in his kind way, tried to persuade me to go but I just couldn’t bring myself to be driven around in the wheel chair. Foolish what pride and a feeling of independence can deprive us of. I have often regretted not accepting Jim’s sweet kind offer. So much could be added to the enrichment of my life with the scientific and technological marvels I might have seen.
Around Thanksgiving time I caught my foot in the hem of a housecoat hanging on the closet door knob and was pitched heavily to injure my knee. It hurt me so badly. Though it was my knee that was injured, it hurt as much below the knee so was sure that the paralysis had distorted the sensation. I did not know what to do except to pray. I depended on Ruth for nurse care. She was so sweet and thoughtful throughout that for the first time the thought entered my mind that she would be a fine nurse. Her touch was gentle and kind. She was already in high school at Norwalk.
Fred, my brother, and his wife Hazel had come to California to visit their son. He tried to urge us to return with them but Gordon would not listen to the idea, insisting that we stay through the colder months at least. But Fred returned to Star Valley and reported that Gordon lived in a house resembling a chicken coop. Truth was that it was one of the earlier housing units constructed at Norwalk. However unimpressive the exterior, the interior contained all the essentials to modern comfortable living.
After the Holiday Season began, I think it was on December 17, 1951, my ever-solicitous sister Lena and her husband, along with Charles and his wife, drove them to see for themselves how I was and to bring us home. I remember so vividly how incongruous it seemed to me to see ripe oranges hanging from a tree next to tinsel and glittering ornaments, all amid green foliage with none of the look of the festive Christmas Season I had been accustomed to.
It was wonderfully kind of them, but I am sure that our being with Gordon and Carol was an inconvenience. They were so kind and thoughtful to us. But the Christmas Season was out of character to what we were accustomed so we were glad to return home and so grateful for their thoughtful kindness.
We stayed the first night at Cedar City. It was either my unaccustomed thirst or because Cedar City’s water tasted so good that I drank prodigious quantities of it and made myself severely nauseated enroute to Salt Lake City. I was so glad to arrive at Edyth’s home without incident. So many miserable things might have happened. I fainted once enroute.
I remember when we arrived at Edyth and Dr. Romney’s apartment we interrupted a dinner party Edyth had arranged for her husband’s relatives. I was so impressed with the courage of his brother, Eldon Romney, who had achieved a degree of fame as a lawyer and in the political arena though he was a victim of poliomyelitis when he was three years old. He was an ardent Republican as I was and was particularly devoted to Robert A. Taft, his policies and principles. I admired him in that he had not allowed is handicap to shadow his life and because he was a useful citizen, husband and father of six children.
When I came home where previously I had been with the girls almost exclusively, I did not feel the apprehension and fear of falling. I had often accompanied Gordon to the Bellflower chapel but, despite the fact that cripples are common in the sunlit land, I nonetheless felt conspicuous. I had been moored to the girls like the “Old man and the sea.” I was welcome in the homes of the girls. Ruth stayed exclusively at Bev’s until she graduated. Summers she spent in Jackson with Audine working at drive-ins and saving enough to go to college at B.Y.U. She was so good at saving her money with the objective of school in mind.
Eugene had gone to the Southern States on a mission, though not before he spent a quarter at Ricks College to qualify himself further. Eugene was home with us but when we mentioned his going on a mission, Gwen said Craig ought to go, too; he expressed himself so well and participated in the ward and was so faithful. How I wished we could send them both, for I am firmly convinced there is nothing to develop a young man who really wants to develop as does missionary service. And since his stay at Fontana and his association with the Thorup twins and others of similar inclinations, he had developed further. Strange how one’s true nature is sometimes smothered because of adverse criticism if well-meaning parents. Failure to understand, to be tolerant and always never allowing children a free expression of their true nature were my besetting sins, particularly through adolescence when they needed love and understanding the most. With Gwen and Jim and their tolerant kindliness, Craig had developed into the intelligent, spiritually minded youth I always wanted him to be toward his full potential.
Eugene filled his mission honorably and well. For the latter part of it, he was Presiding Elder. All my sons have given military service to their country.
In 1954 I suffered two more strokes. The first of the two affected my left side and speech. For the first time I felt hysteria, not to be able to express myself and to have my left side so cruelly inescapable of serving my slightest needs made me feel that I was almost in a straight jacket. The stroke occurred in the night when I was at Beverly’s home. Though I felt no pain, I was aware early in the morning that something was wrong, particularly when I spoke to my little granddaughter Judy and found that my speech was blurred and indistinct. I had told her to run and tell her mother there was something wrong. She did, of course, and Bev came in to tell me she had called Berniece. She came at once. Arthur and Oz administered to me and Berniece called the doctor. He, of course, administered a shot in a hypodermic needle. He called twice more through the day. He said the medicine was so effective that had they had it five years before I would have recovered from my crippling paralysis and would now be normal. Rather small comfort for me but hopeful for future victims.
That evening they brought me back to Clarissa’s. Berniece was teaching school and Beverly was employed at the telephone office. A month later I suffered my fifth stroke. Again I was unaware of its stealthy approach. This one covered the same general area as the first three, a fact I was not aware of until I tried to put my foot into my shoe and found my ankle too weak to hold firm, and when I tried to walk I would have fallen had I not had a firm hold on something. I thank Clarissa who helped me to my feet and to do the few things I was still able to do. Thereafter I walked by aid of a chair propelled before me and would have fallen without it. I was so grateful to Forrest for getting it for me. With it I could go wherever I chose on one floor, of course.
My beloved sister Lena died that spring after a two-month illness followed by an operation for an intestinal obstruction. She died a week after she had submitted to the operation. I had been in Freedom at her home until her daughter Myra came. There was little I could do to help her because of my incapacitation but I loved to visit with her. She was well enough to come up once after I left there, just after I had had my fifth stroke. She was so sorry for me but was her usual cheerful self the evening she came, which was the last time I ever saw her alive.
It was as she would have wanted it, I know. Though I missed her so much, nothing would have been harder for her to bear than to be inactive, so I was reconciled. Besides that, our faith in continued never-ending existence made the pain of separation easier to bear. Her funeral was held on the 17th of March, a day so memorable to her because of her activity in the Relief Society organization. On that day in 1954 she was laid to rest beside her beloved husband.
My difficulties were far from over. I was now living with Beverly in her new home. I was left alone during the day while the children were in school, which I minded not at all since my eyes permitted my reading and writing. I tried to be as independent as possible, which was not much. But due to my speech difficulties—I had never completely recovered from my fourth stroke—I still found it difficult to enunciate clearly and when I tried I spoke more blurred than ever. So I could not read to the children as well as formerly. But I was grateful that my eyesight seemed unimpaired.
One day in late March 1957 Beverly had prepared lunch for her husband and me and called us to the table. I came with my small chair propelled before me as I usually did. I did not square myself at the table carefully enough and the wheels let the chair slide away and I fell to the floor. I knew I was hurt and Tillman carried me into the bedroom and laid me on the bed. I hoped that I was only badly bruised.
Beverly returned to work but first phoned Clarissa to come and stay with me. I had not too much pain except when I tried to move my right leg, and then it was as much below the knee as elsewhere, as it had been when I hurt it in California, so I knew the pain did not register right. I did not have Beverly call the doctor except for pain. He gave her a prescription to alleviate that so I slept fitfully through the night.
Finally I could see that the doctor would have to see it personally and Beverly called him. She stayed at home all that day to do what she could, which was not much. Finally at dusk he came bringing his wife with him, saying she was his go-between between him and the patient. He asked that they take me to the hospital for an X-ray to determine whether there was a possible fracture. The fact that I could not move my foot led him to suspect that. Berniece accompanied me over to the hospital, as did Forrest, using Lloyd Robert’s station wagon. The x-ray revealed a fracture of the femur bone. The doctor recommended that we go to the L.D.S. Hospital in Salt Lake City for immediate surgery. Within the hour we were on our way to Salt Lake City and the L.D.S. Hospital. Tillman, Beverly, Berniece and I in Lloyd Robert’s station wagon. We were there in less than three hours. I did not suffer pain enroute. Even without the pain tablets I had, I doubt that pain would have been intense.
At once after arrival Berniece went in to make negotiations for my admittance to the Orthopedic Ward. Dr. Hess, who was to be in charge of the operation, did not come to introduce himself until later than evening. I was put in a ward with three women who smoked. I did not mind it so much until the smoke became stale, then it was nauseous. The operation was slated for 10:00 Sunday morning. I am sure that those in charge would have liked to delay it until Monday but Berniece had to be back to her school, Beverly to her office, and Tillman at the automobile agency where he was employed as a mechanic. So the surgeons complied with their request.
It was so heartening to have the family gathered around me as we were taken swiftly in the elevator to the surgical ward, then they were all dismissed. There were Berniece and Beverly; my dear brother Fred and his wife Hazel; Audine had come from Layton; Craig and Helen who lived in Salt Lake City were there; and Edyth had come.
I had a spinal anesthetic. I was conscious of all the proceedings. There were several doctors assisting Dr. Hess but they all submitted to his decisions. I had no fear and would have cared little if I had died. I heard the doctor discussing where to place the pin. Instead of splint and tractions, surgeons were using the simpler method of fastening a fracture with a pin or nail.
I was returned to the ward I left. I had thought I would ask for a transfer to a ward where no one smoked but dismissed the idea thinking that surely I could endure it if they could endure themselves. Besides, I recognized that to them smoking was an innocent legitimate habit and who was I to judge them. That night one of the nurses must have sensed my disfavor of the surrounding atmosphere and moved me to another ward where I was much happier.
The children returned home but I was never lonely. The nurses were congenial and pleasant, besides my brother Charles and his wife had come down from Freedom to be with me, Ruth came from Seattle with her nurse friend Lois Abbott, Sharon Crook came every day and Craig and Helen were so attentive, too. I met so many lovely women who, like me, had broken their hips and were therefore in the Orthopedic Ward. I especially enjoyed the relatives who came to see them.
Exactly a week from the time I was operated on I was released. No one can know how deeply I appreciated Charles and Joanna’s trip down to be with me. How I loved them for all they had done for me over the years—their wonderful kind generosity.
Then Clarissa and Oz came down to bring me home in Bishop Mosers’ station wagon. I enjoyed the ride home listening to the annual Conference of the Church that was on the radio. I remember the address of Brother Sill and the address of Elder Adam S. Bennion as he told how the truths of Mormonism had enriched the world. I always enjoyed his discourses—they were so profoundly spiritual. Elder Sill was a psychological giant.
We arrived home without incident. I was told to report to the doctor every month or six weeks. When we arrived at home (I call Clarissa and Oz’s home mine), Clarissa was as proficient as a nurse as those I remember at the hospital and was as kind and attentive. I had been warned not to try to walk or stand for six months.
Clarissa even moved out of their room to give it to me, a thing I protested to no avail, but how I did appreciate it of her, or rather of them. I dared not try to walk, of course, and though ironically how I had chafed at my former incapacity to walk and now I could not even stand. In addition, I was almost in constant pain. X-ray revealed that the bone was not mending satisfactorily and the family persuaded me to return to the hospital for a check-up. That is what I thought it would be. Instead the surgery was as extensive as it had been the first time.
Forrest and Dorothy took me down. Aunt Joanna, that dear devoted sister-in-law, accompanied us. My brother Charles, who had been so kind and understanding, had died in August of a heart attack. But dear Joanna accompanied us down. She was extraordinarily brave through the ordeal. Forrest took me to the hospital and was the soul of kindness and consideration, saving me all unnecessary worry. Craig, who had kept in touch with Dr. Hess, was on hand when we arrived at the hospital.
With utmost naiveté I expected merely to spend the night there, probably be examined and nothing further. I was surprised to have to return for more X-rays and the examination must have revealed that the bone was not knitting satisfactorily and that the pain was caused by nerve damage. Consequently, they gave me this time a total anesthetic so that I was completely unconscious throughout the operation. The nurse administered two shots before I left my room and told me I would soon get drowsy.
I was dimly aware of being wheeled out of the room but was fast asleep on arrival to the operating room and stayed asleep during the removal of the nerve and a deeper driving of the pin or nail.
The first thing I heard was the voice of the nurse calling loudly, “Martha, Martha.” She told me the operation was over. I had no undue pain. But I must have looked a total wreck because the family was concerned about me. Forrest and Audine were with me though hospital rules would not allow them in the room. Sunday I insisted on returning home and Beverly and Tillman came down to get me again in Bishop Mosers’ station wagon. So kind and generous of him.
The doctor warned me not to try to walk. Another fall and another break would lead to serious consequences. Dr. Worthen repeated the warning that a paralyzed limb does not heal as a normal one does. So in view of that, I shall have to be content to remain an invalid to the end of my days. When I think, too, of the work I left undone because I enjoyed doing other things more, I realize I have been basically selfish all my life, not giving credit where credit is due, criticizing too much and not loving enough. I love my wonderful children and realize that I have not been worthy of all my blessings, but perhaps through an endless eternity I can compensate if I remember to be kinder, more patient and understanding. Whether life is long or short, no one can afford to neglect the spiritual side of their character. True, the practical and temporal side often causes us to detour from that which promises the priceless things in life.
I am the last survivor in my father’s family of ten sons and three daughters. My dear brother Fred left us only last year, October 8, 1958. I was bitter at first. It seemed while the last three brothers were suffering from heart conditions, they could enjoy life in moderation while I was not able to do one constructive thing except read and write haltingly.
But in thinking about it all, I know there is a long future ahead for us all. It depends on us whether that future is limited or one bright with promise for eternal living. We must choose. For me, I am so glad to have a testimony of the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ to give me guidance and the objectivity we all need when the clouds lower on the horizon of life. I know that God lives and that His son Jesus Christ, himself a God, came to earth in the Meridian of time and atoned for Adam’s transgression, and was crucified for our transgressions, dying the death of a sinless man and gloriously rose again, living that we might live whether we live worthily or not. It is entirely man’s free choice.
The principles of the Gospel as enunciated through the Restored Gospel are of eternal value. I know that we all must render obedience to the principles and ordinances of the Church if we are to have eternal life. Though there is immortality for all—a glory for every degree of salvation, but only those in the Celestial degree are candidates for exaltation—I feel sure that there is nothing discriminatory about the plan. It is here for all to participate in. God is ready to inspire and bless His children.
When Christ, His Son, was on earth, He admonished those who believed His divine message to “Pray always, that you re not led into temptation.” Now after 2000 years we still need that admonition, seemingly less willing to be humble and obedient than men were in his day.
Perhaps Satan, that arch enemy, realizing his time is short, is stirring his poisonous brew in all corners of the world with the assistance of his emissaries.
I have said little about the happiness I have had through my Church affiliations. I was a member of the Stake YWMIA board for a number of years, being a member of the first recreation department when the MIA was first given the responsibility of caring for the recreational work of the Church. I was a member of the Stake Relief Society soon after my second baby was born, as I stated earlier, but enjoyed working in the MIA better, particularly enjoying the congeniality of its President, Sister Eliza Bagley and her counselors, Lettie D. Campbell and Maude C. Burton. When released from there in1928, was counselor in the ward Relief Society and president in the newly organized south ward YWMIA.
As if all that weren’t enough I was active in civic affairs and club work and helped organize the “Star Literary Club.” For Church service I was made an Honorary Golden Gleaner after I was incapacitated. Something ironic about being rewarded for something one has enjoyed so much, for I did love every form of Church service. The “Glory of God is intelligence”, and I believe that men are saved no faster than they get knowledge and apply it wisely.
I know I was selfish in my application of that principle, since though I loved my children, it was not with the unselfish devotion that characterizes true mothers. My children are wonderful, far beyond my deserving, giving me the tender care that I so often failed to give them. Though not of my flesh, the twins, Berniece and Clarissa, are loyal and true. Their undeviating kindness has made my ordeal easier to bear. I love them for their dear father’s sake and for their own as deeply as though they were my own, which in a sense they actually are.
Bernice has a husband and three children: husband Arthur H. Roberts and children Bruce, Marie and Carolyn. She is a housewife and school teacher and active in the Church.
Clarissa, in whose home I live and who cares for my needs as a skilled nurse would, and her husband Ozro H. Merritt, are so kind and good to me. I often fear when will they weary with well-doing and hesitate to go the second mile. They are parents of four children and two of their children are married and active in the Church.
Garth Stanford, my oldest son, has turned to the intellectual and scientific field for his greatest achievement. He has a Ph.D. in Biology and the study is closely allied with the search of radio active particles since the furor over fallout has so obsessed the scientific world. His wife is a career woman, Agnes Klein.
Guinevere is the wife of James E. Ray. She, until last year, was exclusively a housewife and mother of their two children, but then she applied for and was qualified to assist in a school for retarded children. Her husband was baptized a member of the Church two years ago and since has taken his family into the Temple for their endowment and sealing work.
Gordon is a foot specialist or podiatrist. His training as a foot specialist came after his Army service. He is married to Carol Graham and they have two children.
Beverly is the wife of Tillman Lovelace and they are the parents of two children. Besides being a housewife, she is financial clerk in the local telephone exchange.
Forrest is a farmer and construction worker. He is married to Dorothy Eckersell of Rexburg, Idaho. They were married in the Temple and have two children. For a short time he was second counselor in the Bedford Ward bishopric.
Audine is the mother of seven children including two sets of twins. They were married in the Temple but the pressures of maintaining his rather large young family was too much for him and they were divorced. Since then she has tried to make a separate life for herself and children and has enrolled as a student in Weber College where she is keeping a high standard of scholastic achievement.
Craig, his wife and child, live at Bountiful while he teaches school in that city. They were married in the St. George Temple. He has a master’s degree in education. He married Helen McMullin.
Eugene Seward is the only one of my sons who had the opportunity of going on a mission. They were married in the Salt Lake Temple and have two children. He is a member of the Air Force.
Ruth Mignon is a trained nurse now with a master’s degree. She received her training at BYU and at the LDS Hospital, and is now on a scholarship attending the University of Washington.
Here is the story of my life. Many things I am sure are omitted from the record simply because they may seem trivial to me in retrospect.
One thing which made a joyous occasion—all my life I remember beautiful Christmases. I am sure we spent more money than we could well afford. And often I would wish that I could sleep from Thanksgiving until after the New Year because we just hadn’t the money, particularly through the depression and well beyond, to satisfy longing eager eyes. But then it is good not to have all we want. Each birthday was remembered with a cake and some small gift. But at least it contains the gist of things I may have glamorized and things I did. But it is better to remember happy events than to recall the sad.
But for my faith in the principles and doctrines of the Restored Gospel my inactive existence would be intolerable and end in nothingness. Because I believe there will one day be a bright eternal tomorrow, I only pray for patience and strength to endure to the end. Because Jesus, our Savior, dispelled death and because He rose, we, too, shall live constructively eternally.
Life is one glorious eternal round. The learning process never ceases but goes on forever. I have loved and enjoyed the world God created for us, though I knew only a segment of its people and its scenery. I have said half facetiously that when I die I would like to be a ghost flitting about interesting places.
I have loved the seasons in Star Valley, even the deep snows of winter symbolizing death and burial, the gaiety and tinsel of Christmas, and above all to know that Christmas means that God sent His only Begotten Son to live on earth, to heal the blind, to make the deaf to hear, to raise the dead from their sleep and give His sinless life as a ransom for our sins that we, too, might live.
Then I love the springtime and beautiful Easter. Nowhere I have ever been is the winter with its heavy white shroud so truly typical of death with design. Frost has truly wrought on nature her wondrous holding everything within its thrall; bulbs sheathed in their worn-out garments, lying deep in the earth; trees having lost their leaves except for the evergreens standing stark and bare; then comes springtime with its gentle rains and warm sun to waken all nature to life.
Then comes summer—too short, it is true—burgeoning with life and beauty, fulfillment of all the promise of springtime, with bees lazily droning among the flowers, the fulfillment of fruits, flowers and vegetation.
Then autumn with its varied hues and gorgeous tree-covered hillsides resembling as nothing else can a Persian carpet. Truly the Lord created a beautiful world. To me, it was truly exquisite in all needs.
I have wished that I might be useful to serve my family instead of their serving me. But I have seen the need for repentance and meditation. I think we do far too little of that, particularly people of my temperament: impatient and hasty with my opinions. Maybe it was a good thing for me to be taken away from the active scene that I might be better fit to enjoy the plans and peace I will be sent to in the hereafter.
I know I wasn’t the kind of mother I should have been. Often I knew better than to do as I did but was too selfish to try to see. Forgive me for it all.
