Married Life
Lary graduated from Marsing High School, and then went on his mission. His parents moved to Weiser while he was on his mission, and they had a picture of him on the board at church, and I …. Studied that like any teenage girl would. This was at the Stake Center in Weiser. Our two families attended the same Stake Center when that was necessary. He came home in July of 1962 and I had just been crowned Miss Payette County in June, right after I graduated. He served a two-and-a-half-year mission in Norway. We met in August at a fireside in New Plymouth. He came with his brother Wendell, and they got there right after I sang, which I was glad for – they were late – he never heard me sing. Wendell had actually taken me to a church dance, and I didn’t know he had another girlfriend, so I would have been interested in either of them. But he DID have another girlfriend, and he said he was “saving me for Lary.” Wendell introduced me to Lary and we spent some time talking that night, and he was always blushing – he always did; he was very shy, but he’s gotten over that. We both knew we’d be going down to BYU. We really didn’t date before we left for BYU. He asked me to ride home with him after a church dance one time. Then we left soon after that to go to college, so we didn’t have an official date yet. But we both ended up at BYU. One day I walked home down the stairs by the Botany Pond. I lived on 6th North in Provo. I decided to take a different way home by the pond, and he and his uncle, Bernie Parckard, who was the same age, were together and drove up alongside me. They tried to get my attention, but it was my second or third day on campus, and I was NOT looking at someone who was trying to get my attention from a CAR! Finally, he said my name to get me to look at them, and they picked me up and took me home. That was only two days after we got there. Then he invited me to the dance they had out on the tennis courts on campus.
We dated off and on, and he was also dating some other girls, but our first official date was the dance on the tennis courts. Oh, he’d study with some other girl and then he’d come and get me … he even called me the wrong name one time. He later said he was just testing me to see how I’d take it, but I knew that wasn’t true. I did date some other boys, but I didn’t date too much. I had a boyfriend that was on a mission, but he came home, and I didn’t even date him once. That was RUDE! He came to my door to ask me out, but I like Lary, so … it was over.
It was probably in December or January that we started getting serious and more exclusive with each other. Lary’s brother was killed in a truck accident, and I went home to the funeral. I felt comfortable with Lary right away because I had known his family before I ever met him. I always really respected his family, and I saw a lot of good things in his family that I wanted to be a [part of my family too. We were engaged in March and we went on a tour in California with the BYU Oratorio Choir. It was a big deal for me. I had never been to California – I was just a little town girl. We went on a bus to San Francisco and we sang in two or three different locations, but I don’t remember exactly where. The big city was just amazing. Boise wasn’t even very big then. But my mind was on other things. I was newly engaged, and I wasn’t really looking at the big city. But I enjoyed the music and the opportunity to perform there.
Oh, it was exciting when Lary asked me to marry him. He invited me to go to Salt Lake to have dinner with a Norwegian couple. Before the dinner hour we were walking around on the Temple Square. There used to an old log cabin there where the fountain is now. We were standing there looking at the temple and he asked me to marry him. And I said YES! No hesitation there. We’d known each other long enough and I felt quite good about that. He’d told me we were going to meet the Norwegian couple, but there never was another couple in his plans for that night. So, he took me to dinner across the street at the Sky Room on the top floor of the Hotel Utah. We set the date for July 23rd, which probably could have been a better date, because all the time we had the 24th of July celebrations jumbling up our anniversary plans. But it was good. That summer before we got married, I competed in the Miss Idaho Pageant. I didn’t win – and I didn’t; really want to because, again my mind was occupied with other things!
We were married in the Idaho Falls Temple, and his next to the youngest sister was born a week later. That was interesting because his parents didn’t come to the wedding. But his mom was that far along with their 12th child, so she couldn’t travel. I was 19 when we were married, he was 23. That summer, before we got married, he took a job in Moses lake, Washington driving combine and made $300. He just got home the morning we left and went over to the temple to get married, and that was the money we started life out with. We spent it on our honeymoon. We went to Yellowstone Park, and then went back and had a wedding reception. Then we went out to Portland and down the coast all the way into Tijuana, Mexico. All on Highway One, the road that goes along the ocean. The trip took about 10 days, and we did it all – the hotels, the gas, the food, for less than $300. Yes, life has changed! When we got back to Provo, we had 35 dollars left, and that covered the first month’s rent. Then he hurried and went and earned some more money. It was enough to pay the deposits or whatever needs we had right then. He worked at the Geneva Steel plant where they were tearing down some towers, so that’s what he and his Uncle Bernie did – they tore things down! Lary was going to BYU and earned enough money to pay his tuition and get started in school. I didn’t go to school. I worked at a five and dime store downtown in Provo. He worked at the Cannon Center too, doing the food. Sometimes he’d get up at 4:00 in the morning to go do the breakfast, and then he’d go to school. He was always a diligent worker and studier. He did a good job in school. We came back to Weiser for the summer and our first child was born in August. We stayed in Idaho, and he did logging in the winter. Crazy big challenge for him. We lived in Cambridge in the wintertime and then went back to school in January. In Provo we lived above the Wash Hut. It used to be a grocery store; then they made it into a Laundromat. It was quite an inconvenient apartment. You’d go up the stairs to get in it, but that’s what you get for 35 dollars a month, so you don’t complain. It was on a busy street – right on the corner of 4th East and 6th North.
Looking back on those early married days, I feel like we had less challenges then than we do now. We always have just tried to enjoy life at the stage we’re in, and we had two children when he graduated in 1966 . And then… we went back to Idaho to farm. We stayed there for two years, and then he went to law school in February of 1968. He started in Texas, and that’s another real story. We went there because that was the only school that would let him start at that time of year, after the crops were in. They accepted freshmen both fall and winter. So we moved to Houston to South Texas College of Law. I was very busy raising three kids by then. LaReesa was born in 1967. He went to summer school while he was there because we didn’t have to be to Moscow until September for their law school classes. Probably our biggest trial was automobiles and transporting that far with three little kids. On the way to Texas our youngest was sick, so we stopped and got medicine on the way. But eventually, in May, she ended up in the hospital with viral pneumonia. That was Lary’s first week of law school finals. So, the trials did start. One of us had to be with her all the time, so I would stay with her in the daytime and he would find babysitters, or do it other times and take his tests, and we somehow worked it out. LaReesa was in the hospital for a week. She was only 10 months old. We didn’t have insurance. We actually had a nurse that had compassion on us, because we didn’t have anything but a car, and it wasn’t a very good one. She somehow finagled to get her admitted as a birth defect case, which was probably not legal, but she had been sick for two or three months. And we both couldn’t go to sleep during the night because she had trouble breathing sometimes. So, this was the first miracle in our married lives, because she had one lung full and the other was filling up. There was a complex of hospitals in the Houston area, and the first one we went to was closed. There was a drive up window and they said, “Sorry, we’re closed, you’ll need to go to Texas Children’s Hospital.” We didn’t know it then, but that’s exactly where we need to go to ger the exact help we needed. The lady who admitted us knew our circumstances because she’d asked us all these questions and she just did the paperwork as if it was a birth defect. So, we ended up paying five dollars a month for a year and that was it! It was just amazing. We’ve thought about that a lot. She just told us to donate sometime to the Texas Children’s Hospital as we can. Now, if that’s not a miracle – I don’t know – It’s and amazing thing. LaReesa had a little trouble down the road with breathing sometimes. One morning I had to take her to the hospital and the doctor said, “I think she has an allergy to the bacteria that built up in her system when she’d begin to catch a cold.” So, we were able to clear up the problem. She’s had a very healthy life.
