I Believe – My Values

At 20 years old and after being interviewed by the bishop and stake president I was interviewed by Elder Theodore T Tuttle(who was a General Authority seventy) and lived in Lindon, Utah. Elder Tuttle bought a frame home that was owned by Boyd K Packer. However, President Packer had built a new home on the property where the first church had been built many years before. In front of his home was the first and only Linden tree which is where Lindon City got its name.

My MTC experience before leaving the mission was at a home in Salt Lake City, where they had added classrooms. There were over 100 missionaries there when I went. We lived in a home owned by an older couple. They fed us breakfast and dinner. For lunch, we were on our own.

Before I left, Sterling W. Sill laid his hands upon my head and set me apart as a missionary.

My Mission President was George Z Aposhian.

When I started my mission in the fall of September of 1959. I was assigned to work in Raleigh, North Carolina. The first week I was there, I wrote my parents a letter and told them that I was in the North Carolina State Prison (just to make them worry a little). The story behind that is there was a group of missionaries, in a choir group, and they were traveling the mission. They had previously arranged to perform at North Carolina State Prison so we joined them.

In Raleigh, the first lady that I was privileged to baptize was blind. One of her teachers at the school of the blind, who was a member of the church, started talking to her about Jesus. She was interested to know more.
This lady called and asked us to teach her. She eventually joined the church. It was the first baptism I had as a missionary. Her name was Agnes Creech. It was a special experience. Shortly after that, I was transferred to Danville, Virginia.

I had been home for 50 years from my mission experience. I had an assignment at a Missionary Training Center for new missionaries going out. One of those missionaries was leaving for Russia the next day after I met him. I found out he was from Raleigh. I asked him if he ever heard of Agnes Creech.

He said, “My goodness, she’s my mother’s best friend.”

He was going to call his mother the next day because he was leaving. I asked him to have his mother send me a postcard with Agnes’s phone number and address. Two weeks later, I got a full letter from his mother telling me about Agnes.

It was at that point I decided that it was time to take my wife back to Virginia and back to Raleigh, North Carolina and visit Agnes. Sister Querch helped set it all up for me. However, two weeks before we were to leave, Sister Querch called.

She said, “We have a problem. One of the neighbors had given Agnes a new waterbed. The fellows who installed it left too much water in it. The first night she slept in it, she rolled off the bed and broke her hip. She was in the hospital.”

She suggested that I get my airline tickets changed. However, they wouldn’t change it.

She said, “Well, go ahead and come. Agnes is supposed to get out of the hospital in the next couple days.”

She said, “Agnes doesn’t feel like going this morning. She’s still sore from her operation. But you can go ahead and come to the church. I’ll take you to her house after you can talk with her.”

We were at the church and they were having Fast and Testimony Meeting. That’s where people fast for two meals and then donate the money to the poor. They leave time for people to walk up to the stand and bear their testimony. I went up and told them my experience of Baptizing Agnes Creech 50 years earlier.  There was a brother and sister Bennett who were quite young when I was there as a missionary but now were in their 70s. As I bore my testimony I explained that they had something to do with my family that they were not aware of. While I was there as a missionary in 1959 they had a young son and a young daughter. Their daughters name was Sue Churé. So I told them becasue I liked that name we had named our first daughter, Angela Churé. And to keep the name going, she had twin daughters and the first one she had name Berkley Churé and the second one was Brighton Heather.  So, after sacrament meeting they came up to me and thanked me for carrying on the name.  After the meeting was over, I had six women come up to me. They told me what a neat person Agnes Creech was.

One of them said to me, “Are you aware of the new temple here in Raleigh?”

I said, “Yes.”

She said, “They were going to lift Angel Moroni up on top of the temple”. They invited the news media to come and observe it. Because Agnes is blind, we’d asked permission to go up and touch it.”  They had Agnes all dressed in white with white gloves on. She went to touch the Angel Moroni.

That night on the news media, the television showed a picture of her touching Angel Moroni. The next morning in the newspaper, it was a picture of her doing the same thing. Then she asked permission to go down in the bottom floor of the temple and touch the oxen, which hold up the baptismal font.

While she was touching the oxen, she found some cracks and holes in the oxen. She reported to the supervisor, and they had to change the dedication of the temples for two weeks later so they could fill those holes and seal them. Then I kept in touch with Agnes for the next year or two.

In May of 2011, Sister Querch called and told me that Agnes had passed away. I had planned to fly out to Raleigh and be there for her funeral.

In the meantime, I had contracted prostate cancer. I was scheduled for that day to leave for California to have treatment. I couldn’t go to the funeral. However, Sister Querch sent me a full copy of the whole funeral.

When we were teaching Agnes, she was married to a man who was also blind. Where they met was at the school of the blind. He told her if she joined the church, he was going to put her out of the house. She went ahead and joined the church. Years later, he also joined. Also, her mother, who lived in Durham, which was 27 miles away, joined the church. It was amazing.

My first date I took Jane Linebaugh to my Junior Prom.  We walked to the sugar and spice restaurant and went to a movie afterwards.

Some of the dances included Jr prom and Sr hop at the school we also had a Saturday night dance once a month at our stake center which is the building where Heather and Darren went to church up second south. That was the stake center. And that’s where they held the Homecoming celebration when the King Sisters from California who were LDS came to sing that year. They sang a song that was listed on the top 10 list on the hit parade in the United States and it was called “Autumn time in Pleasant Grove”. We had a lot of dances there at the Stake Center in addition to the old rec center/old high school where a lot of my kids played jr jazz.

 

I bought my first car just out of High School. I had saved money from Future Farmer projects and paid cash for my first car which was a blue and yellow 1951 Pontiac. I drove this car for 2 years while attending Utah State up until I left on my Mission in September 1959.

As I finished grade school, the principal, Mr Merril called 13 other boys and me into his office. He had the principal from Pleasant Grove High School, Mr Floyd come and meet with him in his office. He thought we were hellions, and we had to verify to the principal of the High School that we would act our age and be decent to go to high school.

You could say we were troublemakers. We had a few tricks up our sleeves like most kids did. We were always teasing the girls or playing tricks on some of the younger kids. It just caused them to think that we were somewhat of the problem.

I stuck by what I said to principal Floyd. However, I should tell you that the principal was only there until my ninth grade. He moved out of town and took a job somewhere else.

The principal, after him, (Mr Rogers) was a teacher that I didn’t like at all. He and I butted heads. He had me in his office several times and expelled me for little tricks that I had pulled.

It was Christmas time, and they gave all of us a bag of candy with peanuts. They took us to a show in the auditorium. While we were there, we ate the peanuts and threw the shells on the floor. He took several of us and expelled us. He told us not to come back until next year.
When he first said that, I didn’t catch it. However, it took a few minutes; he was talking about coming back after Christmas, which is the next year. My parents felt bad about it. They were not happy about it. I was disciplined hard.

I had friends whose names are Alton Hone, Eugene Keniston and Toby Bath. We did a lot of things together. We went on double dates in high school, and we played sports together. I have known these people all my life. I still remember every one of them.

In the summertime, my friends and I played softball a lot. Also, we would sneak over in the middle of the night to Saratoga Springs swimming pool which was 25 miles away and climb the fence so we wouldn’t have to pay to get in.  We would go to a lot of different outdoor movies. We would sneak up to Harry Loaders Strawberry patch and sneak Strawberries or we would go to Clifford Wadleys pond several hundred yards behind his house where he grew watermelons and would steal his watermelons.

My one friend whose name is Gerald Olpin, his father was a mortician. Occasionally, when his mother and father had to go to Salt Lake, they would come and get Jerry out of high school and have him come home to stay, in case there were any phone calls of clients or people who were telling of someone who had passed away.

Whenever this happens, Jerry would always get a hold of us boys and girls. We would slough school and go down to the mortuary for a couple of hours and play games.

The game that we played the most was called wink. That’s where you put chairs around in a circle, and you have the boys stand behind each chair. The girls sit on each one of the chairs, except one boy has an empty chair. He would turn to a girl and wink, and she would try to get away before the boy behind her touched her.

After five of those occurrences, he got to take the girl in the other room and kiss her. That got to be a little boring. Since this was mortuary, in those days, they had a rope that they used for their elevator. It would pull the elevator up and down because in the basement was where they kept the caskets.

We put the boy and girl on the elevator and rolled them down to the bottom floor. Pretty soon, we got them all down there. Jerry and I turned out the lights. He and I slid down the clothes shoot. We’d walk around the room in the dark, kiss the girl and slap the boys on the face. We picked up one girl and put her in a casket. Well, she passed out and was very upset when she came to. The only way we could get the lights on was, I had to put Jerry on my shoulders and push him up through the clothes chute to get up to the main floor and turn on the lights.
I played Ward softball and I pitched all the time while I was a Jr M-men (Ages 14-18). At age 17 Alton Hone and I were recruited on the ward M-men team. They were all older than us by 10 years but they needed extra players so they let Alton an I play at age 17. Some of the players on the team were Howard Walker, Gordan Allred, Bill Hoglund, Clair Lloyd and Ross Brady. Alton and I would played outfield.

The first time I remember going away and staying over someplace without a family member was when I was in high school and Future Farmers went up to Utah State for a judging contest and stayed for three or four days and that’s kind of when I decided I wanted to go to school up there.
Some of the places we would hangout or go on a date would be either the Sugar and Spice Restaurant in Pleasant Grove. (just around the corner a little bit from the Purple Turtle) or Kirks Restaurant in Orem. There were 2 outdoor movie theaters; one in American Fork named The Coral and one in Orem named The Timpanogas. If we had a car we would go out to Highland, Utah. There was a drop off on the road and if you drove fast enough you would catch air. We would go sleigh riding up American Fork canyon at Mutual Dell and get on our sleds and ride down the road to the turn off to Tibble Fork.

I graduated from Pleasant Grove High School in 1957.

There were 107 students in my graduating class.

I don’t remember what we did for graduation celebration but I was with Alton Hones cousin, Alene Gilbert. We dated for 1.5 yrs before I left for college.

When I was 12 I went with dad to cut grain down on the farm. And I was in this old Model T Ford truck and Dad was up on the columbine. I had to watch for when the Barley got up near to the top, it was kind of in a pyramid and you could see it, and I had to pull up with the truck underneath so he could empty it into the truck. While I was waiting I decided to try out the truck and move it and see how it went backwards and forwards. I backed up in the Hay field and it was wet and I got stuck. About that time I looked up and dad’s pyramid was full, it was time to empty and he’s looking at me to get up there so I was wondering what would I do now? I said a quick Prayer and received a prompting that I should put it into 2nd gear and so I did and I pulled it right out. I was so grateful for having the prompting and was thankful I was able to get myself unstuck.

I received my first gun which was a 20 gauge single shot shotgun when I was about 12 years old. On a Sunday afternoon, my friends and I decided to go down to the lake, which was about an hour away to do what we called Club Carp.

Carp is a poor fish that nobody wanted. We went down there during the spring when they come into the shallow water to spawn. We would take a club and beat it over the head. I had taken my gun, so I shot one. Shortly after that, two of the fish and game officers came in on a motorboat. I had hidden the gun in the bushes so they didn’t find it and they left back into the middle of the lake. A short while after I shot another carp and this time when the officers came they found the gun and took it and I never got it back. I didn’t tell my dad exactly what happened to my gun. He probably wouldn’t have been happy.

We always ate together for breakfast in our specific spots at the kitchen table before we went to school and in the summer months. When we were working in the fields after our noon meal we would always go in the living room and lay on the carpet because that part of the house was soft rock so the walls were very thick and that kept it very cool in the summer and very warm in the winter. Dad would let us lay there for only 15 minutes before we had to go work on the farm again.

When I was growing up, dad would come wake us up about 4:30 or 5:00 am to go out and do chores. And we knew that you couldn’t eat before the milking was done and that was the same at Christmas time, we couldn’t open any presents until the chores were all done. My Mother, had a way to teach us things. When I would come home from school, particularly in the winter months she had something hot for me to eat, like a bowl of soup or chili or something like that. And then while I was eating, she would teach me what it was, that she was trying to get me to understand. For example one year she decided to teach me how to lead the singing. Well, in my mind, that was way below my dignity. Because boys just didn’t learn how to lead the singing. But she kept after me, and the first branch I got in in the mission field I was asked to get up and lead the singing. I was grateful that my mother had spent the time to teach me how to lead.

My favorite teacher in school was my third-grade teacher. Her name was Mrs. Donna Ash. She was always my favorite.  Throughout my life, she was a close friend up until her death. She even came to our home and got acquainted with my children. She was just that kind of a person, she was a favorite.

Mrs. Ash was caring, but she was demanding. If I can recall, she kept me after school the first day and had me in tears. I must have done something that caused that. I don’t remember what it was. She was demanding and strict. However, she was also caring for each student.

Later on, whenever I would try to tell her how good she had been, she would always say, “But I failed one child.”

One of the children she taught ended up in prison. Mrs. Ash always felt that it made her a failure. However, that’s never the truth for her. She was kind and understanding with all of the students.

Heather and Angie will remember that Donna Ash came down to our home on Geneva road and the two took her down to show her their room in the basement. She brought a cake because she had asked me to bring the kids over to the tabernacle in America fork, where she was asked to speak in a Priesthood meeting which was unusual. And she used some of us as some kind of an example I don’t remember what it was but after that was over, she brought a cake down to the house. But she was always the most special of all my teachers in school.

My father raised several different crops but one of the crops was peas. I would go in the patch and pick peas and eat the pod and all. My uncle started calling me Pea pod poo. Later on, it was cut down to just “Poo”.

That was the nickname that I went all through high school with. “Poo”.