Ruth May (1853-1958)

Memories ~ Life History of Velda Baird Olson, written by Velda in 1991

MEMORIES

(Life History of Velda Baird Olson 1913-    )

~Written in 1991

            The first things I can remember in my life was in 1918.  My younger brother was just a few days old.  my sister Lila and I were at my Aunt and Uncle Warren Bairds place in Fairview about a mile from our home when someone came on a horse and rode up to the house.  I can remember of going out on the porch.  It was a large porch enclosed in screen.  The other kids including Aunt Coras and Uncle Warrens ( Evelyn and Lorraine) were there and knew who the man was.  He told us that our brother Vernal had just died.  This was in 1918, the year that so many lost their lives to an influenza  that was so terrible that hardly a family escaped losing at least one member.

            I cannot remember Vernal.  I only knew him from the stories my parents told us.  He was a

frail child and was bothered by kidney trouble.  He just wasn't strong enough to survive the flu.  I can't remember him or my  mother or Dad before this time but I can remember the message we got that day.  I don't remember that it had much impact on me as the seriousness of that message.  The reason Lila and I were at Aunt Cora's  was so they could care for us because Mom and Dad were very sick with the flu. 

            I can vaguely remember my dad leaving on a mission.  He moved Mom and us kids:  Lila, myself, and six-month-old Demar into my Grandmothers old log home in Fairview.  My uncle, my mothers brother, Walter Smith and his family lived in half the house, we lived in the other half.  

            Dad left for his mission and Mother milked 7 or 8 cows night and morning  in the cold winter and summer to get money for Dad's mission.  I can remember getting letters and cards from Dad telling us how much he loved us and to be good kids and treat our mother good.

            Demar was just learning to walk.  Mother was out milking.  Either Lila or I shut Demar's finger in the door.  He cried and cried.  When mother came in from milking Demar was still crying.  She took the dish towel we had wrapped his hand in off and the end of his little finger was hanging by the skin so Uncle  Walt took  Mother and Demar to Lewiston to Dr. Parkinson.  Lewiston was about 4 miles.  They traveled by horse and buggy.  The Doctor sewed the finger back on and it was a success.  His finger healed with no impairments.

            I have always been active in the church.  As a child I was sent to primary, went to Sacrament meeting with my parents, attended mutual, religious classes, and seminary.  All of these meetings and activities have had an impact on my life and helped me gain a testimony of  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- Day Saints.  But I think the most important of all was my Fathers mission.:  the letters Mother had to read to us because we were too young to read ourselves, the pictures of people my dad baptized, and the sacrifice my mother made by caring for three young children milking cows and doing the farm work.  They say the right time to start teaching and training a child is when they are first born.  This I truly believe.  The training and memories of my early life and the examples of my mother and father have had a great influence on my life.

I can remember one of the very few spankings I received.  I kept going over to the neighbors when my dad told me not to.  He gave me few good spats on the rear end.  I was devastated to think my dad who had just returned home after spending so much time away from us would spat me.  I wondered if he really loved me.

            After Dad come home from his mission he built a new  three room house plus two large porches.  The one at the back of the house was enclosed in screen, sort of a store room.  This house was built just a half a block or so to the east of the house we lived in while Dad was in the mission field.

            My grandparents had settled in Fairview.  In their later years they divided their farm among their children.  My mom was heir of 20 acres and it was on this land Dad built our new home.

            Mom's Dad and Mother both immigrated from England to America with their parents when they were small children.  They were converts to the LDS church.

            I have many happy memories of the early years of my life in Fairview.  It's a sure thing  we weren't rich.  In fact, I believe my dad had a hard time making ends meet but I believe economically, we were perhaps a good average.

            It was while living in Fairview that another brother was added to the family.  Burnice Robert (Bob)  Baird  was born September 15, 1923.

            I always had black and blue bruises on my legs and hips from falling off the pole fence surrounding the cows corral.  While Mom and Dad milked cows we practiced walking the top pole.  Mother was sure I would break a bone but I didn't.

            We were taught at an early age to work.  In the summer, we pulled weeds from the garden and around the fences or pluck alfalfa and carried them to the pigs locked in a pen.  Each of us was required to deliver an armful.

            My brother Demar was very frightened of toads.  When we were pulling weeds or hoeing garden and found a toad he'd about scream his head off and we'd have to carry him to the house.  I think the reason he was so frightened is he never had shoes on.  He'd rather be frightened than wear shoes.  His feet would get so rough and dirty Mother would take the scrubbing brush to his feet when she helped him bathe.

            Talking about bathing we had no bath room in our home.  Our kitchen served many purposes--one was bathing.   Three or four chairs placed in a circle in the middle of the room with quilts draped over them provided us with little privacy.  A large tin round tub was placed in the center of the chairs.  Water from the only running water tap in the house furnished the cold water.  It was warmed with a tea kettle of boiling water from the top of our coal and wood burning kitchen stove.  Only on special occasions did we have more than one bath a week.  That was a Saturday night ordeal.   W e spent so much time swimming in the irrigation canal and water fighting with the garden hose and bucket in the summer we didn't need many formal baths. 

            There were two irrigation canals that run through our farm between the barn and the house.  We used to call them the big ditch and the little ditch.  The neighborhood kids gathered two or three times a week.  We'd use Uncle Ernest Smith's old granary for dressing rooms.  The big kids went swimming in the big ditch.  The little ones in the little ditch.  I loved water so I graduated from the little to the big when not so big myself.  I can remember bouncing down stream on my toes in order to keep my head above water.

            As a result of swimming in the big ditch I learned to swim quite well.  In fact I can say it turned out to  be my favorite sport.  During the coming years, whenever a class or group were planning an outing or party I always suggested a swimming party.   I have had lots of fun at Lava Hot Springs and at Logan Swimming Pool in Logan, Utah.

            There was one store in Fairview.  We had a small flock of chickens.  Every once in a while Mother would give us one or two eggs each.  We would walk the mile and a little more to the store and trade our eggs for candy.  We'd sometimes take a small bucket of eggs and trade them for groceries for Mother.

            Dad owned some more land one mile south from our house.  He raised lots of sugar beets.  Any one who has had the experiences of raising sugar beets especially in those days when all of the work was done by hand knows  that it was a lot of work.  First the thinning that consisted of bending over a row of beets with a short handled hoe chopping out the excess beet and weeds and leaving a  single beet about every 12 inches.  This required pulling out beets so just one single beet was left.  It was a back breaking job.  When you got so tired you couldn't stand it any longer you crawled on your knees down the beet row.  Then to help insure a good crop they had to be hoed three times during the summer.  In October we topped beets and loaded them by hand with a beet knife which was a long knife about 12 or 15 inches long with a hook on the end.  You would hit the beet with the hook, bring it up and grab it with the other hand and then chop the top off and throw the beets in a row.  When we had several rows topped, they  would bring a wagon along side the row of topped beets and we would throw the beets in the wagon.  Most of the time the beets were cold especially in the morning and we'd about freeze our hands and feet off.

            Many times we'd walk through the fields to our other field.  Mom, Dad, Lila, Velda and Demar.  That's when I learned to thin beets.  Mom and Dad used long handled hoes.  Demar and I went along behind them picking out double beets that they couldn't get with their hoes.  Lila was using a short handle hoe by then.

            A few years later we as kids went to the field alone to thin and especially hoe beets.  The beets  were getting big.  It had rained so we stayed home because the tops of the beets sere so wet it made our pants and legs wet.  After the sun had been out long enough to dry the beets off, Mom told us we  had better go to the field and finish  hoeing the beets.  Reluctantly we went.  When we reached the beet field we decided we just didn't want to hoe beets so we poured the water we had taken to the field to drink, over our legs and pants.  We went back home and told Mother the beets were still wet and showed her how wet our legs were.  I can still hear Mother saying, "My, I really thought those beets would be dry by now."   Lila and I still laugh about that.  I still have a guilty feeling about that.  We finally told Mother what we had done.  She sort of laughed but let us know that it wasn't anything to be proud of.

            One time my parents were going off.  I stayed home.  Mother made arrangements with her sister, Carrie Hall that I should walk to primary then after walk over to Aunt Carries and stay all night (one and a half miles).  I walked to primary with a neighbor, Ora Hyde, who taught a primary class.  The primary was a rehearsal for a Mother's Day program the coming Sunday.  When it come to our class we were to sing Oh I Had Such a Pretty Dream Mama.  I happened to be the only one there from our class.  The teacher wanted to  know if I would sing it so I got up there in front of all those primary officers and kids and sang  Oh I Had Such a Pretty Dream Mama.  At that time I didn't know what all those primary officers were smiling about.  I often laugh and feel a little embarrassed since learning the truth about my musical ability.

            At the  Fairview church were two outside toilets.  One for the boys and one for the girls.  Each was enclosed by a board fence you couldn't see through.  It was the same then as now.  Little girls teased the little boys so they would chase them.  When we thought we were about to be caught we'd run into the enclosure around the girls toilet.  We knew the boys didn't dare go in there.

            One time I had just about made it to the safety zone when I fell down.  Four boys pounced on top of me.  Each had a handful of burdock burrs, all ripe and sticky.  Each left their burrs in my thin fine white hair.  Oh, what a mess!  After a lot of crying on my part a lot of combing and pulling by several primary officers they got the burrs out.

            My Grandma Smith lived very close to us.  We,  Lila and I each had our turn sleeping with Grandma.  She didn't like being alone.  There is a song they sing about  "Grandmas feather bed"  I believe that's why I liked to sleep with Grandma.  She had a tick soft feather mattress tick on her bed.  When you got in bed it felt like you were sinking in some soft clouds.  I can remember how Grandma would shake her feather tick to fluff it up every morning so it would be soft and fluffy at night when we went to bed.

            There weren't so many mattresses those days as now.  The mattresses they did have weren't spring filled.  Most of us slept on straw ticks.  Each  fall after the grain was threshed we'd take the straw ticks out to the straw stack and empty the old straw out and refill them with new fresh straw. 

            Each year we'd help Mother clean up after the threshing machine.  This consisted of taking the straw and heads of grain that had fallen from around the thresher where we thought there would  be grain.  We would put it into a tub.  Then we would take turns stomping on it .  We would then pour it from one tub to another and let the wind blow the shaft and straw away.  We'd save a lot of grain that way or at least we thought it was a lot, enough to feed the chickens for a while or another sack of grain to sell or take to the flour mill and get flour for it.

            Uncle Edis Rawlings was really a cousin of my mothers, but he was such a good friend of my dad.   Aunt Leah, his wife,  was my mothers best friend.  The two couples spent a lot of time together.  They were married the same day.  The four of them traveled together by horse and buggy to be married in the Logan Temple.  They remained friends the rest of their lives.  For all my life they were Uncle Edis and Aunt Leah.

            Uncle Edis owned and operated a threshing machine.  Each fall all of us kids and neighbor kids would line the road to watch the threshing machine go by.  It had a loud steam engine whistle.  Uncle Edis would always pull the whistle when they went by.  That was quite an event for all of us kids.

            The year Dad was in the mission field Uncle Walt Smith milked Mom's cows while she cooked for the thresher men.  Uncle Edis had a covered wagon like the pioneers used to cross the plains.  The wagon followed the threshers around  and Mom cooked for the men who worked on it.  The wagon was equipped with stove and supplies.

            I  remember there was a bed in a wagon.  It could have been in another wagon but we slept inside a covered wagon  The things that had more impact on my mind was the sage brush smudges they made and burned to drive the mosquitoes away.  The whopping cough resulted in Mother quitting her job and taking us home.  I'd cough till I had to get down on my hands and knees.  From what Mother told me Demar had it so bad they thought they were going to lose him.

            I attended school for four years in Fairview.  My first teacher was Leara Smith , my cousin.  Maybe that was the reason I was promoted from the first grade to the third grade.  When I was in the fourth grade my dad had to take back his farm in Lewiston, Utah, which he had owned and operated before going on his mission.  He sold it to a John Cunningham.  He couldn't pay for it so we moved back to Utah just across the Idaho line.  The house on the farm in Lewiston when Dad sold the farm burned down.  As the story goes and we believe it was true, Cunningham burned the house to get the insurance money.  So when Dad had to take the farm back he moved a house with two large rooms on to the old homestead and that is the house we moved  into.

            Another brother, Claude, was born the 26 the of March 1926.

            Dad  and Mom wanted us to finish that school year in Fairview so we drove a horse and buggy the three miles to school.  I guess I should say Lila drove.  On our way to school we stopped for a neighbor girl., Mary Jane Hubble.  Mary Jane was probably a year older but she was behind me two grades in school due to health problems.  She was about as wide as tall and she never grew taller.  She was a midget.  It was hard to get her in and out of the buggy.  We'd lift, boost, pull and laugh.  Mary Jane would laugh too.  I believe we were the best friends she had.  I understand she is still alive today.  They say she is an immaculate housekeeper and does beautiful handwork.  Her mother died and her father married again.  He died a few years after and she has lived in her fathers home with her step mother.

            We lived about one half a mile closer to Lewiston school than Fairview school.  I missed all my friends in Fairview and even today I have many friends there.  I didn't take much time to make friends in Lewiston.  That  is one thing I've been able to do.  I can never remember being lonesome.

            When we started school in Lewiston we still drove our horse and buggy.  One day the kids hung on the back of the buggy when we were going home and broke the buggy.  I remember Lila was older and probably felt more responsible but she cried.  They made up a song and sang to us:  "Don't cry little girl, don't cry.  We've broken your buggy, we know, but your horse is white so you'll get home all right.  Don't cry little girl, don't cry.

            It wasn't long before we gave up our horse and buggy for a covered wagon driven by a little old man or his wife and their skinny horses.  We'd walk one half mile to a corner where we'd meet the school wagon.  I'm sure we could have walked the remaining two miles in about the same amount of time it took the school wagon to make it.  Sometimes a boy friend would pump me part way home on his bicycle.  I could walk and run the rest  of the way to the corner and beat the school wagon.

            One spring we trapped seven or eight weasels from one hole.  We'd set the trap in the morning on the way to school and empty it on the way home.  

            Each spring we would see the rows of sugar beets showing up and we knew that they would be big enough to be thinned by the time school was out and sure enough they would.  Dad would take Lila, Myself and Demar over to the Cornish store, buy us each a straw hat and a pair of canvas gloves.  We'd cut the thumb and first finger out of the left hand of the glove so we could get hold of the beets that were so close together that we couldn't hoe out where we needed to leave a single beet.  Those beets really stained our fingers.  We'd go for a month or so with a black finger and thumb.  As we developed our beet working skills we took on more jobs for our neighbors and relatives.

            We earned enough money to buy practically all our own clothes.  After topping beets for our Uncle Warren Baird.  I well remember the first coat I bought myself.  It was a light rust color with a pretty fur collar.  It was the fur that caught my eye.  I was so proud to wear it, and to think I bought it with money I had earned made it even more special.  

            We always walked to Primary, mutual meetings, 4-H meetings, and to any other activities such as house parties with our friends or just to spend a few hours visiting.

            We lived near the farm my Grandma and Grandpa Baird homesteaded when they first came to Lewiston.  We'd go to Grandma Bairds and help her gather eggs.  Their chickens run all over the place.  They had a large hay barn.  There were dozens of chickens nest in the barn on top of the hay in every nook and  cranny they could find to lay eggs.  It was so much fun finding those eggs.  Grandma would take some of them to the stores and trade for groceries.  Thinking back on those days I'm sure those eggs were not very fresh.  I really don't think they'd taste very good.

            We had a wonderful childhood, not only were we taught to work but to have fun, to go to our church meetings and activities, to bring our friends home.  Whenever we planned parties, everyone wanted to come to our house because they loved our parents so much.  The kids had as much fun with Mom and Dad as they did with us.  There was always some of our friends sleeping overnight.

 We attended the Stephenson Elementary School located diagonally across the corner  of the church house where Bill Hall now has a grocery store.  It was called the Lewiston 3rd ward when we went to church there.  Now after combining some wards and adding more it is called the Lewiston 2nd Ward.

            I graduated from the 8th grade in 1929 and from North Cache High School in 1933.  During our high school  years we rode on the Cornish  school bus  to a rail road crossing south of the church house 1/2  mile.    It was the Quinny line of the railroad that ran through Amalga, Benson, Trenton, and Lewiston, picking up school  kids to take them to Richmond to North Cache High School.

            I graduated from high school in 1933.  I always thought I wanted to go to college but the folks were in no condition financially to send me.  In the summer of 1933 I had an operation for appendicitis in the Logan Hospital.  I became acquainted and especially liked one nurse, Mrs. Laurel Freeman.  She was married and had a little boy.  A year or so after I ended up going to live with her and taking over the job of tending her little boy and keeping house for her and her husband while she worked.  It was a good experience.  They treated me like a family member.

            I had a lot of good friends in Logan.  Every Saturday night a group of girls would get  together and go to the dance hall.  In those days you didn't  need a  date to go to the dances.    Mostly everyone went stag or without dates, usually a boy would take us home.  We had a lot of fun.

               My best girl friend was Margene Danielson.  She was a step niece of my Aunt Melba Baird. 

She used to come to Lewiston to stay with my Aunt so I knew her before going to work in Logan.  We got along so good together.

            After working for Freemans  for a year or so  I got a job working for Charles D. Tate.  He had a small potato chip factory he started in his garage.  He had an automatic potato peeler.  It spun the potatoes around like clothes in the washer to get the skin off.  When he'd get them sliced and cooked, he would bring them in his little grocery store.  My job was to weigh and bag the potato chips as well as to wait on customers that came to the store.  That was the best paying job I had ever had--$13.00 a week.  I was used to doing house work for women getting paid $2.50 and $3.00 a week.

            It was sort of awkward living with the Tates.  They were good to me.  They had six children ranging in age of about 12 to 3 years old and I had to sleep with some of them.  Margene and I rented a one room apartment and lived together.  She worked at a cafe in Logan.  She was one of the best people I have ever known.

            One day when I was at work at  "Tates" in walked my mother, Father and my sister Lila.    They all had grins on their faces.  I knew something was up.  They handed me a letter .  I opened it and found out it was a mission call.  I was to report to the mission home in Salt Lake City the 28th of January 1936.  This was for a ten day missionary training before going to the Mexican Mission with the headquarters being in El Paso, Texas.  I would have to learn the Spanish language.  I had never thought of me going on a mission.  It was always my sister Lila that wanted and talked about going on a mission but by now she was married and had a child.  I knew how disappointed my mother and especially my dad would be if I said I wouldn't go.  Dad was always missionary minded.  He loved his mission and wanted the same experiences for his kids but as it turned out I was the only one who went.  My worst problem was leaving my friends and the dances.  The following February found me in El Paso, Texas.  I loved my mission and have never regretted going.

            Soon after beginning my mission the Mexican Mission as divided.  The mission in the border towns where there was a lot of Spanish speaking people was known as the Spanish American Mission and the other which was south of the border became the Mexican Mission.  The reason of the division of the mission was because of a new law in Mexico that only Mexican citizens  could preach or hold meeting in Mexico.        

            In those days the missionaries held "street meetings".  We had a corner in downtown El Paso and other cities I worked in.  My companion and I and usually 2 or 4 elders would go to the street meetings.  Most people walked past us.  Others stopped to make fun of us and  ask foolish questions.  It was hard making people hear what we were saying with all the traffic, grocery carts, drunks and all the other confusion going on.  I think the biggest thrill was getting a crowd to stop at a street meeting and being sincerely interested.  I did just that a few times with the help of the Lord.

            We had a lot of spiritual experiences in those humble little homes.  I worked in San Antonio, El Paso and Los Angeles.  I have always been thankful for the Spanish I learned.  It has been interesting through the years to read road signs and names in Los Angeles, Arizona and to surprise some unsuspecting Spanish person by speaking a little Spanish to them.  It was especially useful in the name extraction program.  We worked in doing Spanish names in 1983 and 1984.

            While I was working in Los Angeles we received word from our mission President that  there would be several missionaries coming through Los Angeles.  They were going to have to change trains in Los Angeles and there would be a 4 hour layover.  We were to meet them and take them up to our apartment until it was time for their train.  

            There was four or five elders and a couple of sisters.  We got them all on a street car.  One elder was from Glence Idaho ten miles northeast of Preston Idaho.  I knew him because we used to live six miles south of Preston, in Fairview and I was well aquainted with his sister and her husband, Welland Smith, who taught school in Fairview.  He was also the principal of the school and very good friends of my parents.  The missionary's name was Delmer L. Olson.  When we got well on our way in the street car, we looked around.  There was no Delmer Olson.  He and another elder named Cutler  were missing.  They had gotten off the street car in the middle of downtown Los Angeles.

            We were really worried about them and thought that it was dumb of them to get off the street car in the middle of Los Angeles.  We worried about them until we met back at the train station.  The only explanation they had was they said someone had said, "I guess this is where we leave you two."  I still don't believe anyone said that.

I was released from my mission the first part of January in 1938.  One night I went to Preston to a dance.  A young man came up to a friend of mine and asked her if she knew a girl by the name of Velda Baird.  "She's standing right over there."  The girl answered.  That's the way I met Delmer L. Olson the second time.  Six months after that we were married in the Logan temple on July 5, 1940.

            We moved in with Delmer's father who was a widower.  Delmer's mother died when he was twelve years old and his father never married again.  We lived in the same house Delmer was born in, located in Glencoe, Idaho.

            I wasn't used to a lot, but I was used to electricity and running water.  Here we had no electricity and one pipe of cold water piped into the kitchen.  I had lived under these conditions earlier in my life so it wasn't hard to adjust again.

            We started soon after we were married to modernize the home.  It took quite a few years.  We'd have about one project a year- to build kitchen cabinets, install a sink, build an extension on the back for a bathroom and a small bedroom with a basement under it.

            In 1946 electricity was extended up Station Creek Road where we lived.  In a few years, we installed a furnace. had our front room enlarged, made the old screen porch into a nice utility room with cabinets and a closet, made a large patio and fireplace out from the north entrance of our home.  Now we had a nice comfortable home up in the hills of Glencoe.  We have enjoyed this home and surroundings for fifty years.  Its where we have raised six wonderful children, four sons and two daughters:

                         

                        Nathan B. Olson                     born August 9, 1941

                        Jimmie Delmer Olson             born March 27, 1944

                         RaNae Olson Mellor              born March 28, 1946

                        Jeffrey E. Olson                      born April 6, 1950

                         Charles Kevin Olson              born February 9, 1953

                          Millie Olson Mower              born July 27, 1955

            Two months after we were married, Delmer was sustained as a counselor to the Bishop Hyrum Jepson in the Glencoe ward bishopric.  I was really proud of my tall, handsome, curlyheaded husband.  He performed his duties so well.  Everyone loved him.

            It was then I started sitting in the audiences taking care of the family.  That lasted for a long time because after a few years Delmer replaced Hyrum Jepson as bishop.  When the Glencoe and the Mink Creek wards were combined in 1955, he was the bishop of the new Mink Creek ward.  In the few years he wasn't a bishop or in the bishopric, he served as a high counselor, in the stake MIA Presidency, and other capacities, especially the Gospel Doctrine teacher in the Sunday School.

            I didn't mind taking care of the children on Sundays.  Delmer was always considerate of me and included me in all the activities he could.  Every year we always made time to take the family to Yellowstone National Park for a few days.

             

I was kept busy in church work too, in the ward MIA, and I served as Relief Society president three times.  Once in the Glencoe ward and twice in the Mink Creek ward.  I was also a counselor in the Stake Relief Society Presidency for five years and a Laurel stake leader.

            Our life was busy and happy.  Grandpa Olson, Delmer's father (Gustaf E. Olson), had a large room with his oil stove, easy chair, roll-top desk, dresser, and bed.  He ate with us and used the living room and the kitchen whenever  he wanted.  We got along remarkably well.  I know it was hard for him at times, with the small children and so much going for us with our church jobs.  We all put forth an effort to make living together as pleasant as possible and it worked.   He died in January of 1953 just a month before Kevin was born.

            All four of our sons fulfilled successful missions for the church and our girls married returned missionaries .  All have been married in the temple except Kevin and as yet he has never married because of bad health problems and his accident.  At our youngest daughter, Millie's marriage in the Logan Temple., all of our children and their spouses were at the temple to witness the marriage.  I though that was wonderful.

            Kevin had been home from his mission for about six months and was going to school at BYU in 1975 when he noticed a lump in his groin .  He went to the doctor.  They made an appointment the following week for an operation, which tested positive for cancer.  About three weeks later he had surgery to remove some lymph nodes which also tested positive for cancer.  He received radiation and chemotherapy treatments for the following year.

            He was back in school at BYU the following year and due to the treatments he developed bleeding ulcers.  He then had five major surgeries and ended up spending 2 1/2 months in the University of Utah Hospital. all but one week being in intensive care.  He had 98 pints of blood.  He was bleeding so fast.  A lot of times he was losing blood faster than they could put it in him.  In one night  they gave him 36 pints of blood.  They put a dye in his blood and took pictures and traced the bleeding to a large artery behind his stomach.  They operated again and repaired it.  From that time he began to get better.  They couldn't sew him up after the last operation for fear of infection.  He wound had to heal from the inside out.  It was over a year healing.  Every night before going to bed he's sit with a pair of tweezers and pull the dry skin from around the sore so it could heal.

            It was after he had his stomach operation in Provo that we took him to Pocatello for radiation treatments.  It was closer for us to go to Pocatello (65 miles) .  He had 25 treatments.  After every treatment we'd have to stop five or six times on the way home for him to vomit.  He was having chemotherapy when he had his hemorrhage in Provo.  He never finished the chemotherapy.  From the time of his stomach operations he has never been free from indigestion and stomach trouble.

            Kevin finished his mission  May  20, 1974.  He said he wanted to earn some money to go to school.  He figured it was time for him to be on his own, that he had depended on us long enough,  so he worked for some time then registered for school in January 1975 at the BYU in Provo.    Soon after enrolling in school he noticed a lump in his groin.

He went to a dr.   The doctor scheduled him for surgery with in a few days.  The growth tested positive for cancer.  They decided it would be best if they removed his lymph nodes so he went back in the hospital for his third operation.  A year after this operation he became sick, vomited and it was plain blood.  His roommates called the ambulance and again took him to the hospital.  They operated again and took most of his stomach out.  "stomach ulcers"  No one had suspected he had ulcers.  

            After this operation he came home to recuperate.  When he got feeling better he started going to the young singles activities.  One night he was going to see some of these young people.  He got down the road from our home about a mile.  He passed out and the car went off the road and down in a deep gully.  He had enough strength to get out of the car and crawl up to the road and lay by the side of the road until our neighbor came along, got him into his car and brought him home.  He was so weak it was hard to get him to the house.  Again the ambulance was called.  When the medics and ambulance arrived his blood was so low they called the hospital and they called the Logan hospital and told them his blood type.  They sent some blood with a policeman who met a Preston police at the state line.  He remained in the  Preston Hospital several days.  They gave him about twelve pints of blood.   His body began rejecting the blood.  The doctor accompanied him to the Utah Medical Hospital in Salt Lake in the Ambulance.  We followed in our car.  There was a team of doctors waiting for him.  

            There was 5 or 6 doctors using suction tubes .  They put ice water down his stomach and then would suction it and blood back.  They worked hours with Kevin.  They put him in intensive care.  They operated again and couldn't find where the blood was coming  from.

            One night soon after that he had another bad hemorrhage.  One doctor and several nurses worked all night giving him blood and trying to stop the bleeding.  They gave him 36 pints of blood that night.  You couldn't believe the looks of that room.  There was blood everywhere on the bed and the floor and on their uniforms.  Everywhere there was blood. 

 One of the nurses was complaining because no one came to change her off.  Kevin was awake and realized everything that was going on.   He said, "I wish someone would change me off for awhile."

            They tried to keep him warm but working with the ice water and suction machines made him very cold.  He was so cold he was blue.  His teeth were chattering but they were warming the blood that they were giving him.  The next morning as a last resort they shot dye into his blood then took pictures following the dye.  They showed us the pictures and you could see where a big artery behind his stomach was bleeding.  They opened him up again and fixed it.  All this was caused by stomach  ulcers.  He had seven draining tubes in his upper body.  He didn't have anything to eat for at least two months.  Every thing was intervenious.  They gave him a special liquid that the hospital had to send to the Mayo Clinic to get.  It contained all the amino acids.  They said it was like a balanced diet.

            He was in the U of U Medical hospital for two and a half months.  They didn't sew the incision up after the operation.  They were afraid of infection.  They said it was better for the wound to heal from the inside out.  When you looked at the wound you could almost see his entrails.  It did not heal completely for a year.  Each night before going to bed Kevin sat with a pair of tweezers and cut all the dry skin from around the edges of the would.  It looked like a piece of raw beef stake.  When it started to heal there were spots on the sore that looked like a drop of cold grease.  Then another spot would come.  They became larger and grew larger until they joined the other spots.  It was skin.  It took a long time before it healed completely.

            The night they gave him 36 pints of blood the whole family was at the hospital waiting.  Early that next morning we asked it there was a place we could meet as a family.  We got together in a little room for prayer.  It was a very spiritual meeting.  We all knelt down and asked the Father in Heaven for his blessings.  It was a few hours after that meeting the doctors told us they had found the source of the bleeding.  Kevin told me later that he didn't know if his spirit left his body or not but he said he knew all the family was there around his bed and he tried his best to let us know that he knew we were there but there was not one thing he could do.  He couldn't open his eyes .  He couldn't wiggle his finger.  He had no control over his body at all.   That was a testimony to me that prayers are answered.

            Kevin stayed home for the rest of the summer and registered at the Idaho State University that

fall.  He graduated in January 1979 with a degree in accounting.  While attending ISU he was very active in the LDS Institute and student activities at the college.  He was elected student  senator of business when he was a senior.  

            Despite all this sickness he has never lost the faith.  He's still active in the church and every one likes him.  He has hundreds of friends.  He worked ten years for the Utah Power and Light as an accountant before the next tragedy occurred.

            In 1990 He bought himself a horse and brought it up to the farm.  On September 17, 1990, he came up from Salt Lake to spend the week and shined up his saddle and bridle before going for a ride on his hors.  He also came home because we were having a family get together.  Jimmie and Anna Beth's son Jerry had his call to go to the Dallas Fort Worth Mission.  His farewell sacrament meeting was the next day.

            He got on the horse.  It was like the horse went wild.  It reared over backwards on top of Kevin.  He hit the back of his head on the ground as he fell.  He horse came down on top of him.  Once more the ambulance was called for Kevin.

            They took him to the Logan hospital where they stabilized him and then flew him to the U of U Hospital in SLC in a helicopter.  With Jerry's testimony meeting the next day we decided it was better it Jeff and I go to the hospital to be with Kevin and the rest stay at home.

            Jeff and I were at the hospital until the wee house of the morning.  They informed us that  Kevin was not going to die that it would be better if we would get some sleep and come back in the morning.  We went to Kevin's  condominium for a few ours of sleep. 

When we returned to the hospital the next morning there lay Kevin with a bolt in his skull  to monitor his brain to measure if it was bleeding any more or swelling.  He had all kinds of apparatus and tubes attached to him.  He lay unconscious for 5 days.   He had severe head injury.  This  injury resulted in 4 1/2 months  in the hospital in which Kevin suffered pneumonia, several bouts of allergies.  They cut a little incision just below his navel, put a tube into his stomach and this was a feeding tube.  They put all food through this tube. 

            He had to go through the process of learning to swallow properly so he wouldn't choke on his food or drink.  He had to learn to talk, walk, use his hands.

            They put him in therapy as soon as they could  get him on his feet.  They would hang his feet over the side of his bed and have him try to stand even if it was just for a second or two.  There would be a person on each side of him to keep him from falling.  At the end of the 4 1/2 months the insurance company would not pay for any more therapy on a inpatient basis.  The nearest place from our home in Mink Creek where he could get the therapy he needed was the U of U Hospital which was a 250 mile round trip.  The Doctors told us about the Neuro Center in Magna.  That is where we took him.  He was so disappointed because he thought he was coming home.  

            He stayed there for 2 1/2 months.  The advise of the therapists when he left there was to take him to his own condominium.  This would encourage him to move around more and to do things for himself.  He was at this time using a walker.  His right hand and arm were impaired from the head injury as was his left leg and speech.  Jeff and Jimmie got a stool with wheels so he could scoot on that from stove to fridge, a table with long legs so he could sit on his stool to eat, and a grocery cart to move his dirty clothes to the washer etc,.  He rode a handicapped bus to the hospital for therapy.  He hated that.  It took hours to make the trip because they went all over the city picking up handicapped individuals.  He got so depressed that we brought him home.

            He was home several months.  We took him back to Salt Lake every week to keep doctor appointments.  He had an operation on his eyes to see if it would help his double vision.  He had trouble with his equilibrium and at this time he still is having trouble and still has double vision when he looks down.

            In February he applied for his driver s license and passed the test.  Two months after he got a nearly new used car.  Now he is living in his own place in Salt Lake, driving himself to therapy  and coming out of his depression which has been one of his worst problems.

            I have never seen a person who has more friends and such good neighbors and ward members who help him so much.  The Utah Power & Light employees have been especially good and faithful in helping and visiting him.  He still has a job at Utah Power and Light when he gets well enough to work.  He is thinking he'll try it soon.  It has been one year and seven months since his accident.  He has a long way to go yet.  I hope he makes it.

            A lot of our farm is side hills and it requires lots of safety precautions to work the land without having accidents.  He have had our share.  

            Delmer was farming the hill we call the knoll across the creek.  I was upstairs doing house work.  It was warm and the windows were open.  I thought I heard a voice.  I went to the window and listened.  Sure enough some one was calling "Help, help."  It was Delmer.  He was cutting hay around the side of the knoll and ran over a badger hole.  The ground caved in and the tractor tipped over.  His leg was pinned underneath the machine.  I called the neighbors and they came and dug him out.  His leg was not broken and he was all right.

            One time Jimmie and his friends were hauling hay just south of the house.  The ground was damp and slippery.  They drove up a hill and the tractor dove tailed.  Both the tractor and hay wagon tipped over.  This time it was Jimmie that was pinned under the tractor with the steering wheel in his stomach plus the whole weight of the tractor.  His brother Jeff knew there was a jack in the back of the pickup.  He ran as fast as he could to the house and drove the pickup back up to the scene of the accident and jacked the tractor up off him.  If Jeff had not run so fast Jimmie probably wouldn't be here today.  He did get a broken arm.  There has been other near tragedies.  I think the good Lord has been watching over us as we've had no deaths from injuries.

            We have been fortunate in having some of our children near by.  Jimmie and Jeff bought the farm.  Jeff lives in Preston and Jimmie across the road from us.  Kevin in Salt Lake.  Nate has been in the Air Force since graduating from University of Utah.  He has now retired and lives in Highland, California.  They call us every week.  Our girls are super ladies.  They each have good hard working kind husbands.  RaNae and Doug did live in the San Francisco area but are now in Boise.  Millie and Ron live in American Falls, Idaho.  There is nothing they wouldn't do to help us if we needed it.  They each have six good children.  Jeff and Jackie have six.  Nate has two and Jimmie and Anna Beth five.  Who knows maybe some day Kevin might have some.

            A lot of years in our married lives we raised chickens and sold eggs.  We made a lot of money off chickens.  In the spring we'd  order a thousand baby chicks just 1 or 2 days old and raise them.  By fall we'd sell our old chickens and put our young ones in the coops and they would soon start laying eggs.  It was a lot of work.  Sometimes we'd get both hen and roosters and other times it would just be the  hens.  If we had roosters when they got big enough we'd kill and bottle some for our own use and sell the rest.  It was and is one messy job to kill , clean and bottle chickens or take them to the cannery and can them.  I hated doing that but they did taste good.

            We had to be so careful with the little chickens.  They were so fragile.  They had to have the right kind of food and fresh water all the time.  The incubator had to be at the right temperature.  After they got big you still had to feed, water and clean coops  and put in dry straw.  Besides that you had to clean and case the eggs.  The poultry truck came around once a week to gather eggs and take them to Preston to the poultry house.  This lasted  for some years and then the bottom dropped out of the poultry business.  Everyone soon went out of the chicken business.

            Another thing that happened during our chicken days was we always had a lot of nieces and nephews who liked to come to our place for  their vacations.  I always said when I got married the second time I was going to live in the city and send my kids to the country for their vacations.  They all liked the chickens and gathering the eggs.  I know one of my nephews from Blackfoot, Reed Morrell was gathering eggs one day in our large wire basket that held ten or fifteen dozen eggs.  He turned around quickly and stepped right in the middle of the basket full of eggs.  He still remembers that plus all the fun he had on the farm.  Delmer's nephews liked to come because their parents wanted them to get to know the place where they lived and grew up and their great grandparents homesteaded when they came from Sweden.  They appreciate the time they spent here.  When our kids and their cousins get together they like to talk about the good old times they had .  In these later years we've even heard about the good times they used to have throwing eggs at each other.  Jeff even tells us he and Kevin had egg fights and threw eggs at the barn or the cows or anything.  Good thing we didn't know this much sooner.  They are all good kids.  I'm glad they had fun and liked the farm.

            Other than Kevin we have been quite fortunate as far as sickness goes.  Delmer had seven hernia operations during the years.  In 1979 he had open heart surgery.  That was when open heart surgery was not so common.  I took him to the McKay Dee Hospital in Ogden.  I stayed with my cousin Bernice B. Alvard until he was ready to come home.  Everything went well.  He soon recovered.

            I had a bout with bleeding ulcers and ended up with having 2 quarts of blood.  I became so tired and weak I could hardly go.  I had been to the Doctor several times.  He told me it was flu.  I went back again the nurse tested my blood.  She said, "I either made a mistake or you haven't got any blood."  That is when I was put in the hospital and received the blood.

            Another time I was told I had cancer of the colon after having tests done in Preston.  Our local doctor made an appointment with a specialist in Ogden and told me to take my suitcase with me because he was sure I had a serious problem and would have to be operated on.  Several doctors had read the x-ray from Logan and Preston.  After many prayers we went to Ogden.  They told me nothing was found to even give them a reason to think I had cancer.  I was one happy person.  I have always had a testimony of prayer.  At that time my testimony was strengthened a lot.

            We hadn't traveled much in comparison with others .  Other than our annual trips to Yellowstone Park with the family.   In 1970 Jeff was in the Hill Cumorah Mission.  We decided to go back to New York for the Hill Cumorah Pageant.  After all Jeff was going to be in it.  We traveled in our pickup with a camper shell on it.  Mostly we stopped at night at camps along the road or rest sops.  The first night we parked off the road.  It was after dark when we stopped.  Unbeknown to us we were parked next to a rail road and with the highway on the other side of us.  You can bet we didn't sleep much that night.  I didn't know that trains and railroad cars traveled that often.  The shook the whole truck as they passed.

            Another night when we reached Hamble, Missouri there was the Mississippi River right in head of us.  Delmer didn't want to cross the  Mississippi River in the dark.  We wanted to see all we could.  There was a cafe very close to the river.  We went in to get something to eat.  We got visiting with the owner of the cafe.  We told him we wanted to wait until morning to cross the river, and we didn't know where to park our camper.  He said why don't you leave it right where it is, in front of this cafe.  So we did.  That was another night that we didn't get much sleep.  The cafe didn't close until late.  People were  coming and going  and laughing and talking right outside our camper. 

The worst was the barges on the Mississippi, blowing their whistles, horns, and whatever they do.

             

 The Cumorah Pageant was very interesting.  We sat outside on benches facing the hill.  There was a large crowd.  The stage was the hill itself.  The lighting and sound effects were really impressive.  I

believe they could be heard and seen for the lights miles away.  Jeff was one of Mosiahs sons.  After the pageant all the missionaries went through the audience with their Books of Mormon and explained the gospel to all who would listen.

            A few years after we were there, Kevin was called to the Indiana Michigan Mission.  One day he bought some post cards in a drug store.  After he got out of the store he recognized his brother Jeff on one of the postcards representing the Sons of Mosiah.

            We had a good trip.  On the way back, we went through Illinois and Missouri and visited the church historic sites.

             

            In the 1980's for five or six years we'd go to Quartzsite, Arizona and stay with my sister and her husband Lila and Ade Morrell.  While in Quartzite, the four of us would go to Phoenix and Tucson Arizona, to San Luis, Mexico, across the border from Yuma, Arizona, and other places sightseeing.

             

            Our most interesting trip was with our daughter and her husband,  RaNae and Doug Mellor to Europe in 1985.  Doug was an engineer for Hewlett/Packard company and had made trips back there for his company.  They made out an itinerary.  We had hotel rooms reserved and car rentals waiting for us  everywhere we stopped.  We visited in Germany, Sweden, Austria, England, and Wales.

            In Sweden we visited Vingaker where Delmer's parents and grandparents lived.  We saw the Lutheran Church where they went to church before joining the Mormon Church and the Railroad Station where they started their trip to America.

            In England we went through Wiltshire County where my grandparents Charles and Honor Rawlings Smith lived before coming to America  because they too had joined the church.

            They were beautiful countries.  It must have been hard for them to leave there to come to some unknown country  .  In 1985 we received a call to work in the Logan Temple as officiators.  It was a beautiful experience.  We made many new friends and enjoyed the work although we came home tired every day.  We still keep in contact with some of our temple friends.

            On the 28th of January 1989 Delmer  had a stroke so that was the end of our temple work plus many more things we enjoyed doing.

            The day before his stroke he bought a new car.  It is a pretty white Crown Victoria a 1988 Model with 15,000 miles on.  I'm glad that he drove it home because that is the only time he's driven it.  Because of his stroke the following morning I have become the chauffeur.

            Before this time I was always happy to get in the car by Delmer and tell him how to drive rather than him sitting by me telling me how to drive.

            I've had a lot of practice at driving since Kevin had his accident.  We made a lot of trips to Salt Lake with me at the steering wheel.  I thought I could never drive through all that traffic or let alone parking in the big parking terrace at the hospital.  I've decided you can do what you have to do.  Now days that's our main source of recreation --going for long rides.  This seems to take Delmer's mind off himself and his troubles.

            His stroke so far has not totally incapacitated him.  He can still both keep himself clean, although he has lost his ability to speak.  He can say some things but as far as speaking at funerals or talking in church or bearing  his testimony he cannot.  Its hard on him.  He has always loved people, visiting and making new friends.  He was the type that drew people to him.  Even the  doctor we took him to in the Logan Hospital to get him stabilized after his stroke told us how he liked him and how efficient he was in the temple.

            I think we really made a good move when we decided to get married.  He's always liked to look good.  He had good taste in clothes.  He always encouraged me to get a new dress or shoes or whatever.  He's been a good hard working family man.

            Kevin brought a friend home from the BYU to spend the week end.  He introduced his friend to his dad.  The friend said to Delmer, "I know what kind of a guy you are.  Kevin has told me that you've never hit him and have never cussed him out.  I'll tell you that is different from the home I came from."

            I do not know what the rest of our lives has to offer.  Maybe a rest home in a few years.  My big concern is that I may live longer than Delmer so that I will be able to take care of him.  I don't dwell too much on Delmer's disabilities.  I know it could be much worse.  So I still think we are blessed.

            The most important blessing is our good family.  If Kevin can just get back to a normal life is our big concern at the present.  He has been blessed to have such good brothers, sisters and friends who have really helped him this far.  We pray that he may continue to improve.  The best thing we have done for him is giving him these brothers and sisters plus their families.

            Finished this in May 1991.