I Believe – My Values

After I accepted my first position at San Mateo, they sent me back to New Jersey for a six-week training course. And since Carol’s family was from that area, she stayed with her parents while I was at training back East.

While staying with her parents in California, her mother took her to a doctor. They checked out her thyroid and iron and found that she was deficient in both of them. So she was prescribed some medication, and shortly after that, we were expecting our first son.

April 19, 1967, our first son was born, Aaron Larry

Our second son was born March 9, 1970. His name is Brook Thomas.

Then, November 23, 1971, we had twin sons born to us, and we named them Chadley Joseph and Christopher Paul

Then came our first daughter, Angela Churé on November 2, 1974.

Next came Heather Ann on October 3, 1977.

Then 5 years later on October 14, 1982 came the caboose, our Son, Lafe Steven.

*7 kids,

*2 miscarriages

*24 Grandchildren

*5 Great Grandchildren

When I was a missionary, Elder Hugh B Brown of the 12 Apostles came to visit us in Raleigh and during his talk indicated that when we got home and found our eternal companion he would perform the sealing in the Temple if we were to ask him.

I called him and arranged for him to perform the sealing.  Two weeks before our sealing his secretary called and said that he had accepted another assignment and could not perform the sealing for us. Then she said that some other General Authority would be happy to perform that for you. She told us that LaGrand Richards was available and would be happy to perform our sealing for us.

Gary Pierce said “Hey, let’s go out on a double date.”  My date was Linda Nielsen, and I drove to Orem to pick up Gary. We then drove to Heritage Halls at Brigham Young University to get his date.  Her name was Juanita Carol Hood.

He went into the dorm to pick up his date, and came out and got into the back seat. It was dark. So I turned on the interior lights, and we introduced the four of us to each other. The moment he introduced his date to me, I knew that his date, Carol was who I was going to marry.

I noticed after that date that he never dated her anymore. So I got him lined up with a girl that I knew who he started to date on a regular basis. He wanted to go on another double date, and at first, I acted like I didn’t know who I could get a date with. But I finally got the courage to say to him, “Well, why don’t you see if that girl that you took out a month ago would go with me.” So he got me a date. It was our first date, and we courted for five months before getting engaged in May of 1963.

Interestingly enough, when I started to date her, she was dating a fellow at Brigham Young University, who was running for the student body president of the school. After I proposed to her and she accepted, he was just positive that she had made the wrong choice. He wanted her to go up the canyon with him and pray about it.

She said, “No. I’ve made my decision. This is who I’m going to marry.”

When school was finished at the end of May, Gary Pierce, his date and I took Carol to California to meet her parents and her sister and brother. We visited for 2 days then Carol stayed with her parents for 6 weeks until closer to the wedding. Carol made the trip back to Pleasant Grove on a bus and stayed with Grandma Gertrude until the Wedding.

Most of the time, when we were courting, we would go to movies and dances. We always went to church together every Sunday. She was very strong in living the church standards and always concerned about the other person more than herself. I found that she was a very genuine person. She wasn’t one to put on any airs at all. She was very down to earth.

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.

I do have an interesting story. My bunk mate, who slept on the upper half of the bunk, was a young man from San Diego, California. His name was Rudy Sanchez.

He was kind of a party nut too. Every month when we got paid, within two days, he’d party and use up all his money. Then he would come to me and borrow some money until the next month when he got paid again. He would pay me back, go out and party for two days and then he was broke again.

I had an interesting experience with him. He was a young Catholic man, and he found out that I was a member of the Mormon church and soon discovered that my underclothing was different than normal. I didn’t make a big deal about it because at 10 o’clock at night the lights would go out in the bay where the sleeping area is. They would leave a light on in the showers, and where you go to shave, and so on. So I would disrobe my underclothing, put them under a pillow, and then I put the towel around me, and went to take and shower and shave and then came back and put on a clean pair. Then I would go to bed.

In the morning when I got out, it was always after the lights were on in the bay, and he soon became aware of that. I told him about what they were.

One morning, a young man from West Virginia who was very foulmouthed, happened to see me in this different underwear and started to make fun of me for having them. Rudy Sanchez jumped off the top bunk, ran down and got a hold of this guy and threatened to kill him if he ever said another word about my religious garments, which I thought was quite interesting.

Later on, I don’t remember the occasion, but one day I started to say swear words. He got up in my face. He said, “Hey, that’s okay for me. But that’s not all right for you,” which I also thought was interesting.

He became a very close friend. That ended my active duty in the military because I was brought home at that point and then had to go each week to meetings, and then in the summer, we had a summer camp.

When my 2 year mission was over my parents came out to pick me up. We toured my mission for three days. They met some of the people I had worked with. It was a unique experience for them because they had never done much traveling before.

Before they left home to come out to my mission, I sent Texaco Corp. a letter and asked them to show me the best direct route from Utah to Virginia. Instead of telling me the best route, they showed me the straightest route. My parents were approaching Denver, and they were going up over the Continental Divide. It snowed early that September. They had to go back down another 50 miles and buy some chains to put on the car because they were required to go up over that mountain, which was covered with snow. By the time they did that and got back up there, the snow had melted, and they didn’t need the chains.

When they got into Denver, they didn’t have a good direction on the map that Texaco Corp had sent them. Twice they left Denver and ended up heading back to Utah before they found the correct route on Highway 80 all the way to the east. Then, they dropped down to Virginia.

When we left the mission field, the last thing we did was to have an interview with our mission president.

We were studying in the living room of the mission home. I was with my parents, and he was taking forever. He was on the phone. I came to find out he was talking to one of the leaders of the church. They were instructing him to start looking for a piece of property in the east where they could build the new temple. Later on, it became the Washington D.C. Temple, which is still there today.
After I got home, they always had the missionaries get up in church and take about 30 or 45 minutes to give a report of the mission experiences. It was a good opportunity, and it helped me a lot. I appreciated that.

The next place I was assigned to was Danville, Virginia. I became acquainted with two men, both named Harold. The first one was Harold Lewis, and he had been in the military. He was stationed in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he met a girl by the name of Diane. They were married.
After the military, they moved back to Virginia, where he had a small grocery business out in the rural community. She had asked the missionaries to come and teach her husband. We taught him the Gospel, and then he was baptized. They have stayed close friends all these years. We correspond at Christmas time and they come out to Utah to visit because her family lives here.

The second Harold that I met, his name was Harold Reynolds. He had married a woman who was a member of the church. She asked us to come and teach him. We had to talk loudly all the time to communicate with him. This was probably before they did much in the way of hearing aids. We talked to him about the gospel, and he was baptized by his wife’s uncle. He and his whole family have been good friends over the years. They also correspond at Christmas time.

I was transferred to Richmond, Virginia, for the last three months of my missionary experience. We met a family, the Shepard family. Their mother, father, and two daughters all joined the church. I can’t recall whether I baptized them or not. It was a great experience before I was released to come home.