I Believe – My Values

s annual series, “Proud To Be: Writings of American Warriors”, Volume 9. This poem can be purchased on the SMSU Press website. A photo of the book with Robert’s poem is included here.

You can’t berate your shipmates; they didn’t know this would happen. What I couldn’t figure out was, what to tell the brass? What do I tell the CO? The XO? I didn’t know what to say. I settled on telling them the truth. The Communications Office said, “Petty Officer, how did it go up there?” I told him the truth. I said, “Sir, everything was cool.” He said, “Well, great. That’s great.” That was my report. “Everything was cool.” The literal truth. I was on duty in an American warplane listening to modern jazz. What could that be except cool? So that’s what I said. He said to me, “Terrific. That’s great to hear.” What a weird story: to be on a military frequency and hearing, you know, American jazz.

They always looked at me in a strange way when I was at DLI, because I would read the poetry, no one else. Most people, most students stuck to the military terminology, the weapons systems that they had, the guns that they had. I never did that. My research paper was on the Albanian Renaissance, the poets and the writers. I knew that I knew the military language just as well as anybody. I could speak about and understand the military just as well as anybody. But I also did non-military things like the arts, the sciences, the languages, and that’s what I did a paper on. We had to write a paper. I did a paper on the literature of the Albanian Renaissance. Turns out that they were sort of centered around the 1880s for their renaissance. And I think that helped me understand them better. It gave me an insight into the culture and who it was on the other side of that radio call. 

nds. So he waits until you’re almost in panic. And then he tells you, it’s just a big joke. That was a transition, we had to get used to his sense of humor, you know.

I grew up in a New Jersey orphanage with bullies, cretins, and a great baseball team.  I had good grades in school, did well in school.  

Robert with his sisters Pat (left) and Theresa

St. Michael’s Orphan Asylum and Industrial School Hopewell, NJ

After graduating from 8th grade I went to live with a foster family.  In my junior year, I asked this family to take me to sit for a test called the SAT at Rutgers University.  To me, it was a train. All of my friends were taking this test. If you don’t take that test, you can’t get into college. That was the rule. You’ve got to be on that train. I saw all of my friends doing it in school.

I asked my foster parents, “Will you take me to Rutgers so I can take this test?” They said, “No.” So I got up and left the house at 6am.  I hitchhiked to Rutgers University to take that test. I had to be there, take the test, because that was the key you needed. That was the train ticket! I could sense that at 16 years old. I could sense this is an absolute requirement and if you don’t have it, the train is leaving the station and you’re not going to have a college career.

It led to a breakup between me and the foster family where I called the state of New Jersey and I said, “You got to get me out of here.” And they did. The police went into a conference of teachers at my high school and they said, “We have a kid who needs a home. He’s somewhat of a smartass, but he’s not the criminal type.” Then one of the teachers said, ”Okay, I’ll go home and talk to my wife.” He did. And the couple said, “Okay, yeah, we’ll take him.”

And that’s how I spent my senior year in high school, and all through college. That was my home of record in the Navy. And they were very supportive when I decided to join the military, because they could see the inflation, they could see the interest rates moving up, they could see employment opportunities down. The Vietnam War hung like a cloud over the economy. I went to my foster parents and said the Navy had a place for me to use my degree, to use my expertise, and they were supportive and encouraging.

I was drawn to the Navy because it was an opportunity to have a job at a time when the economy was flat out stagnant. This was 1974, early 1975. We were in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Gerald Ford was president, and he had a big campaign called WIN. The full name was “Whip Inflation Now” (WIN). Inflation was huge in the Vietnam War. The reason was that goods and services were dedicated to the troops and to the Vietnam War. The war sucked up goods and services and caused a pent up demand that couldn’t be satisfied since goods and services were going to the war effort. Consumers and businesses couldn’t buy the things they needed.  Too much money chasing too few goods, you know, and there’s too few goods in the stores because everything is being shipped off for the Vietnam War effort.  Demand builds up that can’t be met.

In 1981 and 1982 Fed Chairman Volcker said, “Okay, to crush inflation we have to cut down the money supply.”  In short, he just cut off the money. Volcker could have controlled interest rates, but he said “I’m going to let interest rates float.” And so interest rates floated to around 16-17%. To buy a house, you took out a mortgage for 15% in 1982, and that killed inflation. Gerald Ford tried to control it in the 70s and he just couldn’t.  That was one of the big reasons that I ultimately joined the Navy. There was a lack of jobs, a lack of economic opportunity overall really.

That economic opportunity peaked my interest. But I was really sold when I went into the recruiting office and they actually valued what I did; they actually valued my undergraduate degree. That was contrary to every other employer I visited. I was an English major, and everyone else I visited really didn’t see a way they could use what I’d studied. But when I went to the Navy recruiter, and told them I was an English major in college, they perked up right away. “Oh, you were an English major- we’ll send you to the Defense Language Institute (DLI) and you can be a linguist.

While civilian employers couldn’t find any value to an English degree, the Navy saw that value right away. Frankly it was shocking that the military was the employer that thought they could use what I had studied. Within five minutes, the recruiter had a career path for me. So when you combined the economic opportunity with that career path, it  was a job that made sense to me.

For me, joining was a choice. Before I joined, the draft was still in effect. My school had what they called The Fishbowl on campus. This is a public spot on campus where they posted all of the  important news items. They had a  lottery for the draft, and on the left, they would put numbers from one to 365. Then on the right, they would put a birthday. My birthday, April 20th, came as number 320, something like that. So I had no obligation because they weren’t drafting down to 320.

People I knew thought that my decision to join was fantastic. The draft had ended and there were fewer and fewer people with military experience. It became more and more exotic to people that you were doing it. With the salary you had an even more elevated position now relative to other people in what was then a depressed economy. I saw this in the baseball park when we left boot camp, it was clear people were not as well off as we were. We went into Chicago to see a baseball game at the old Comiskey Park, and every one of us had like $2,000 cash in our pocket. The rest of the people at the park basically had enough for the ticket and that’s it. They had enough money to see the game. So here comes this group of sailors, we bought them sodas. I can personally remember saying to the hot dog guy, “Just stay here. Just stay right here.” He started putting hot dogs down and I just passed them down to people that we met, people we didn’t know, because they weren’t affluent, had no money for drinks, no money for food. We were affluent compared to them. We had steady jobs, $2,000 in our pockets, so we were buying drinks, popcorn, ice cream for people. I must have bought at least 20 hotdogs and passed them down the aisle. It was the middle of a recession and we felt like we should help out in some small way.

In 2003 I was able to qualify for a fishing or golfing trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico which is on the south end of the Baha. We were there for 5 days and they gave us a choice of either deep sea fishing or golf. I said I could golf at home so I chose to go deep sea fishing. We fished for 3 days straight and I caught one blue Marlin which was 10.5 feet long and weighed 300 pounds.

As we were coming home a good insurance friend from Florida said to me “Larry, they don’t know how to taxidermy fish in Utah because you’re to far from the ocean”. He said “If you will send me a picture and the measurements I will arrange to have it mounted in Florida and shipped to you”. So, I sent him the pictures and the measurements and he told me what it would cost to get mounted. They then shipped it to me and I had it in my Insurance office until I retired in 2006 and my son and daughter told me to “take my fish home with me” so I took it home with me and it now hangs in my garage.

FINANCIAL BROKERAGE TRIP TO CANADA ~ 1989

I had never read the book of Mormon cover to cover until I had been out on my mission for about 3-4 months. After reading and praying about it I received a personal recollection that it was true. So that I have never questioned since that day the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon or of the Prophet Joseph Smith. I learned in several places in the scriptures that the way we receive a personal witness is through promptings from the Holy Ghost. And that whenever we ask for a specific witness or testimony of something, if we have prepared ourselves we come to know the truthfulness of the thing in question. I have had numerous impressions in my life of things that I have questioned in regarding the gospel of Jesus Christ and my personal life. One of those happened the first time I met Carol and I knew that was who I was suppose to marry.

While I was serving as the Elder Quorum President in the Pleasant Grove first ward in 1970, the Bishop asked us to contact every family in the ward who at one time had been given a temple recommend, but subsequently had not renewed it. Every Sunday as a presidency we would have our meeting, then we began to visit every family that the Bishop had listed. As we did so 90% of all of those members indicated the reason they had not renewed their temple recommend was because they were not full tithe payers. We had many great experiences with these people getting to know them and encouraging them by teaching them the principal of tithing. For example, one young returned missionary said that he got behind paying his tithing about a year before and so he was trying to catch up but it became harder and harder so we explained to him to forget about catching up and start paying a full tithing now because he had already forfeited previous blessings. He said that he had never thought of it that way .

I remember as a return missionary attending General Priesthood with my Father in my old Timpanogos Stake Center. He was a Bishop so he had to sit on the stand, and also my Seminary Principal from High school was sitting on the stand. When Harold B. Lee was speaking regarding the correlation program of the church I noticed my father on the stand had his eyes closed. And my seminary principal also had his eyes closed. However, the difference was when my father had his eyes closed he was asleep. When my Seminary principal had his eyes closed it was his form of concentration. Every new program that has come out since I was a missionary has been very easy to accept because of the testimony that I have of the truthfulness of this work. I have had the experience of receiving impressions regarding different people to be called to different church assignments. Also, for things in my own life.  One example would be when my daughter Angie and I were on our way to my first treatment of radiation and chemo.  Earlier that day I had an impression that it would not be necessary for me to wear a catheter, as the doctor had earlier indicated. On this appointment he confirmed my impression that I would not need to wear one. Some of the greatest blessings from receiving the impressions regarding truths of the gospel always come in the form of greater light and truth as I have studied the scriptures and new truths have opened to my mind. Generally speaking, the easiest way to receive impressions come from total and complete obedience. Also, we are told in the scriptures that these things will come when we are steadfast and immovable in keeping the commandments of God. Outside of my family, my personal testimony is the strongest influence that directs me in decisions and things which will bring me piece of mind and complete joy.

It has been my experience in studying my patriarchal blessing and finding out that I am from the tribe of Ephraim that has truly helped me as I study to help me find out personally how I can help with the gathering of Israel and with spreading the gospel throughout the earth.

One of the things that I have observed in my later life is how important it is to developed a personal relationship with God our Eternal Father and his Son Jesus Christ through the media of personal prayer. I have learned that through this relationship when I live worthily I can expect personal promptings from the Holy Ghost for all personal requests on my part. Interestingly these promptings don’t always come when I expect or through the means that I would expect to receive them but generally these promptings come when I find quiet time to listen and observe those promptings that I receive which always come whether my request is for members of my family or people I administer to or answer to temple questions or to questions that I have after reading the scriptures. So, my personal testimony is that each of you find quiet time where you can meditate and make requests of your Heavenly Father which always come though the Holy Ghost or the Light of Christ.

The other thing that I have observe is how often I might receive personal revelation as it relates to questions which I have after reading the scriptures and those enlightening moments have been a real source of peace and love that I feel for my Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and for my Eternal family. And more especially for the prompting that I feel about your Mother and Grandmother through these very special promptings. And I look forward to the time when she and I can be reunited eternally.

This is my Testimony, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.