The first summer camp that I went to, we were building a road from Provo Canyon to Hobble Creek Canyon. That was our summer project. Since I was in transportation, I had been assigned as a jeep driver. The whole 1457 engineers unit had to stay up on the mountain and camp out for two weeks, except I was driving for a lieutenant, and he chose to come home every night, which meant that I would drive him home. Then I would drive him to his home in Provo and then drive 10 miles to my home. Then the next morning, I picked him up at 7 a.m., and we had to be up on the mountain by 8 a.m., so I didn’t have to spend any nights sleeping over on the mountain.
One day while we were driving up around the road, they had cut down a large tree, and one of the infantrymen was underneath the tree and got hit. It knocked him to the ground and gave him facial cuts. So they put him in the jeep and asked me to take him to the doctor. When you’re in the military, you don’t go to regular hospitals to be treated. You have to go to the fort. The closest one was about 45 miles away, so I had to drive him there to be treated for his injuries. We became very good friends, and thereafter I always told him that I was the one that saved his life, which I didn’t have anything to do with; it was just a joke.
We’ve always been good friends, and he teases me back about it. So the lieutenant that I drove for his name was Ralph Ladle. It was about a week after I was in the military, or on that summer camp that I got married. He came to my wedding and brought an interesting wedding gift, a registered black Labrador for my wedding gift.
After coming home from the military, 12 of the fellows who were returned missionaries and were with me in the military became good friends over that experience.
I got a job at Allred builders (now its Ace Hardware), and I had 800 lb of cement fall on my leg. I had to have surgery on my knee. They put a cast on my left leg from my crotch down to my ankle.
