Dorothy Noel Gale

Index

Dorothy Noel--Having been born of goodly parents, Frank Leland Noel and Mary Eliza Roberts, February 9, 1916 in Kirtland, New Mexico.

BROTHER CHAD

I guess one of the first things I remember would be the birth of our youngest brother, Chad, which was 29 July 1920. About one fourth mile from our house to the east was a sand hill which we kids were allowed to play on a lot. We had roads, tunnels, and all sorts of things around and through that sand hill.

The 29th of July was, of course, hot summer time in Vernal, Utah. That morning Father said to us kids, "go on the hill to play, you can eat breakfast when you get back."

We had never been allowed to do this before so we left before he would change his mind. We played much longer than usual and we could see people arriving at the house, so we decided to go on down to the house and see what was going on. We noticed two of our aunts (mother's sisters) were there. Aunt Daphne Cooper and Aunt Hattie Steel who both lived in the area. Also we were able to notice our family doctor was there.

Where the family lived at this time was on a farm three miles from the little town of Vernal, Utah. We did not own a car. We went every where in horse and buggy or ride horse back. Father had lots and lots of horses. However, we did see the doctor's car at the house as we came from playing on the hill. As I remember it now, I am sure one of the older boys had done some riding on horse back that morning to get the doctor there.

As we came in the house to find all these strange people there, mother was not in the kitchen getting our breakfast, but she was still in her bed.

Then father said to us, "come into the bed room and see your new little brother, your mother has a new baby boy." Now, my only reaction was not very good, all I thought was, "so Mama has a new baby, why don't she get up and make our breakfast."

That was very terrible of me. However Aunt Daphne took over and started doing every thing mother had been doing and things seemed to go on the same.

There were a few things I remember about living on that farm. I was about twelve years old when we moved away from the farm.

On the farm was the big house we lived in and a small house close by a two room brick house. Under this small house was a full basement. We would call it a basement these days. In those days it was called the cellar. A door from the out side went into the cellar and all sorts of things were kept down there. Big bins which the folks kept apples, potatoes, carrots and things like that in. Not all in the same bin, each vegetable or fruit had its own bin, also squash--how I remember those large, delicious squash. The cellar was also used for general storage.

However, one of the first things I remember is that grandmother, mother's mother, lived in the little house. Now grandmother took care of herself. She did her own cooking, etc. However, we children did things for her and mother was always sending things over to grandmother.

On the farm all cooking was done on a wood or coal stove and there was no running water, so we kids carried a lot.

Grandmother always had round white peppermint candies up in her cupboard and you could go in to visit her and get some candy, but first you would have to fill her wood box or bring in a bucket of water or get a bucket of coal or sweep her floor or do some other chore she wanted done. You never got any candy without doing some work first.

Her stove usually needed to have the ashes taken out. As I think about it, we kids surely should have done all grandmother's chores. We didn't have to do the chores, but you didn't get any candy until you did.

Grandmother was always very nice to us. I don't remember that she ever scolded me for any reason.

Grandmother was a hunchback, at least in her later years. I don't know that I ever did know what caused her physical problems.

One day my sister Virginia went to see grandmother and grandmother was on the floor. Grandmother said to Virginia, "go and get Mary." I have a sister Mary, also my mother's name is Mary. Virginia, of course, got her sister Mary, which made it that much longer before grandmother got some help.

We kids didn't seem to know anything was wrong if grandmother was on the floor. Grandmother didn't live much longer after that.

I had a hard time for a while. I couldn't understand why I couldn't go to the little house and find grandmother there.

Soon father put a couple in the little house. The man would work for father on the farm and the woman worked for mother in the house. That first couple didn't last very long. Father learned they were taking things from the farm and the house into town to sell it. So they had to be let go.

One thing I remember about the cellar under the little house there was a old heating stove stored down there and almost anytime after Thanksgiving you could find things in that old stove that Santa Claus's helper had left there and the things would always be under the Christmas tree Christmas morning.

On this farm we lived in a two story house. Up stairs there was four bedrooms. As you go in the front door in the front entry way was the stairs to go up to the bedrooms also the door into the parlor. When I was a little girl this special room you kept nice all the time and only used on special occasions was called the parlor. These days its called the living room.

Also in the front entry was the door to the dining room and family room. These had doors you could shut. In those days the ceilings were so high that between the top of the door and the ceiling was a long, narrow window glass which you could see through. As you go up stairs about eight steps then you turn and go eight steps more to get where the bedrooms are. This wide step in the middle where you make the turn was called the landing way. You could set down on that landing way and look through the glass window into the parlor and see everything that was going on in that room.

On Christmas Eve now you could go to bed and wait until father had come up stairs to be sure you were asleep. Then, when father had gone down stairs and shut the parlor door you could go down and sit on the landing way and watch Santa Claus helpers put things out. You could watch Santa Claus's helper play with things to see if they worked. Virginia and I did this more than once.

When I was a little girl always we had a Christmas tree. You made your own decorations for the tree. Paper chains, string pop corn, string cranberries. The paper chains were from colored paper and apples you would tie a string on the stem of the apple and tie it on the tree. Most apples then were small. These big, big apples we have these days have come to pass in the last few years.

On the tree you also had clip on lights. A small clip to put on the tree which held a small candle. There was no electricity on the farm. Now you had to be careful where you put the candles on the tree so nothing would catch on fire. Father always had all the candles lit before we children came into the tree Christmas morning.

Sometimes Christmas morning Santa Claus would wait at our house and pass out the gifts to every one. One time Santa Claus wasn't careful enough and his beard caught fire from one of the Christmas tree candles. Now Santa Claus didn't run out of the house, he just took off the top part of his costume. The Santa Claus helper was my oldest sister's boy friend, Ronald Preece.

Christmas was always very special to me. My parents were great at celebrating what ever occasion was because it only comes once a year.

Our big deal during Christmas holiday was to all go to town to a movie. We had a bob sleigh which was on the ground pulled by two horses. This sleigh would be twelve feet long and four feet wide. Father would put hay in the bed of the sleigh for us to sit on. Mother had put bricks in the oven all afternoon to wrap in burlap sacks and put to our feet. We had lots of blankets to wrap up in. Father had bells on the harness of the horses so we heard this jingling as we went along in the sleigh.

Now it was three miles to town but it would take us about one hour to get there. The sleigh ride to town was as important to me as the movie. The movie in those days was 25 cents for adults and 15 cents for children.

The movie I remember was the first edition of "Ben Hur." They weren't talking movies, you read on the screen what people wanted to say.

One Thanksgiving I have no idea of how many people came to our house. Mother was making pies. I had to set by the stove and bake those pies. When we were finished there were forty. Some mince meat, apple, pumpkin, squash, cherry, and lemon. Cream pies are a new invention.

On the farm we could have home made ice cream all year around because in the winter time father bought blocks of ice from a man who cut the big blocks out of a big pond he had. Father would put the blocks of ice in what we called the ice house. The blocks of ice were buried in sawdust and they lasted all summer. The ice cream freezer we had held six quarts. This was turned by hand. You would freeze the ice cream, take it out, and then make some more while you still had ice in the freezer.

In the fall at harvest time the threshing machine would come to the farm. This was crew of about ten or twelve men. They traveled from farm to farm to harvest the grain. The farmer they were harvesting for would feed them, sometimes they would be there two or three days. Mother always had fried chicken and home made ice cream while the thrashers were there.

We raised lots of chickens on the farm. We ate so much fried chicken. Early in the morning you would catch the chicken, cut off their heads, dip them in boiling water so the feathers would come off easily and then get all the feathers off. The you cut them up, wash and prepare them for cooking. Quite different from how you fix a chicken for frying these days.

On the farm part of the chicken coop had a small room called the setting house. About twelve nests were prepared where hens could set on their nests to have baby chicks. Our chickens were never shut up, they went into the chicken coop to roost or to lay eggs. But they had free run of the farm.

One day Frank and I went out to gather the eggs. We wanted to really take a lot of eggs into the house, so we went in the setting house and took all the eggs from under the setting hens. Before mother found out what we had done the eggs there cold and therefore ruined. As I remember that was a very bad thing for us to do. Mother made deals with her neighbors to get more eggs so she could keep those hens setting. As the hens came off their nests with their baby chicks each hen would have from ten to twelve chicks.

There were lots of small buildings down by the corral. One day I was coming down off the roof of father's shop and right on the edge before I got down my clothes got caught and I was having a problem getting down. Right under the edge of the roof there was a honey bee's nest. I got stung many times. When I got back to the house we could count 27 stings on my legs. The swelling was very bad and I couldn't walk much for a few days.

Our Aunt Daphne Cooper lived in a small house about one and one half miles from our place towards town. One day my brother Frank and I decided to visit Aunt Daphne, so we walked over to her house. When we got there Aunt Daphne asked if our mother knew where we were. We told her no. We must not have been very old because Aunt Daphne got very excited. She said, "we must let Mae (my mother) know where you are." However, before long one of the older boys came on a horse. He said that the whole family was looking over the farm for us. He took us both home with him on the horse.

On this farm father and the boys put up lots of hay, alfalfa. When they harvested it first it was cut, then put in rows to dry, then put on the slide and brought into the barn and made into a haystack. A hayslide is several boards hooked crosswise on two long poles. The poles would be a few feet apart and the boards would hang over the edge of the poles a little ways. All this was fastened together and pulled on the ground by horses. The hay would be put on the slide and taken into the haystack.

The harvest of the hay was very hard work. About ten in the morning I would take a bucket of ice water out in the field for the men to drink. I had done this many times. You never jump on the slide to ride back to the house, that is very dangerous.

However, this one time I did. I ran up front and tried to jump on the slide by the driver. I slipped and fell under the slide, now my head went into the small irrigation ditch which the hay was watered with. However, the boards from the slide which hang over the poles was pulled the full length of the slide, scraping over my face. At this time the slide was loaded with hay headed for the haystack.

When we were living on this farm mother had a real problem with asthma. For some reason during the summertime she could not breathe very well, so she had to be taken up into the mountains. We have had to get up in the wagon and go up in the mountains in the middle of the night because her breathing was so bad. Father finally built a cabin up there. Before that, we had to camp in tents.

When I was in the first grade my two best friends were sisters, Marva and Marcella Kidd. We were always together. One day we had each taken lipstick and rouge from our sisters and put it on our face. That was not allowed in school. For our punishment we had to sit on a little chair in front of the whole classroom so that all of the people could look at us. We had to sit there until recess, from until about 9:00 until 10:30. We had both the first and second grade in one room, it was so embarrassing.

When I was in the third grade my sister Mary was teaching in the grade school at Naples. From the farm she would drive a small, one seat buggy. My folks had me go to Naples to school with her. It was about three miles to the school, but in a different direction than when we would go to town. It took almost an hour to get to school. I may be remembering that part wrong.

Then I went into town, Vernal, to Central School for the fourth grade. However, the next year my sister Bessie was teaching school in Naples, so my folks had me go to Naples School again. Bessie also drove the small buggy. As I think about it, I am not sure why the folks wanted me to go to Naples to school, but I went. The sixth grade was back in Vernal at Central.

About this time father lost the farm and we moved into the town of Vernal in a house on a corner about a mile and a quarter walk to the junior high. I, of course, didn't know how serious it was when father lost the farm, except that everybody worked.

The three older girls were married by now. Hank, the oldest brother was away to school. Floyd, the next brother was in California on a mission. Wright, the next brother was away to school. Bessie was teaching school. Howard was doing odd jobs where ever he could. Virginia and I were babysitting where ever we could. The little boys were doing yard work where ever they could. Mother, who had been to BYU two years, was running a paid kindergarten. Father was hauling coal from the coal mines to people's homes. It was very hard work. He used a wagon with horses.

This place up at Brush Creek was very interesting. It wasn't a big house but it had a full basement and the boys' bedrooms were down in the basement. It was a small farm with a creek of water running through it. We had cows, most of Dad's horses, chickens, and geese. The sheep herd was up on the mountains from our place on Brush Creek.

This creek of water was big and me from town were always coming there to go fishing. The creek had two different places big enough for us to go swimming in. Virginia and I had to be very careful when we went swimming because we didn't want father and the boys to see us, or any of the men who might be fishing. You see, we didn't wear a suit when we went.

From our house we would take supplies up the sheep herder. We would ride a horse and lead the pack horse, which had the supplies on it. I have done this myself. One time I took supplies up to the sheep camp. My brother Howard was the sheep herder. I went in the morning so Howard made lunch for me at the sheep camp. After I had visited a while Howard said, "Dorothy, you had better get on your horse and go home. It will be dark before you get there." I didn't have to lead the pack horse home because Howard needed the extra horse, so I left him there.

As I was going home it got dark. My horse did not want to go the direction I was trying to make it go. I soon realized I was lost, so I put the reins on the horses neck and just let them go. The horse knew the way home and it was light enough for me to realize that we were going in the right direction.

When I got home mother said that I was later than she thought, she said I shouldn't have talked to Howard so long. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to ride the horse away from the place again, so I didn't bother to tell her I had been lost.

On this place at Brush Creek we had several cows. I thought I could milk the cows as good as the boys, so I learned to milk. Virginia never did learn to milk, her hands were too weak, she said. Virginia was the smart one. Because I knew how it was needful for me to help milk the cows. We had a separator that you strained the milk through to get the cream. The cream they took down to town to sell at the creamery. Sometimes we took ten gallons of cream at a time.

By now, the folks had a car so it didn't take too long to take the cream twelve miles into the creamery. By now I had a driver's license and would drive the car whenever I could. This really wasn't the folks' car, it was the older boys and they did all of the driving. I don't ever remember my dad driving the car, it was always the boys.

One day it was time for the cream to go to the creamery and none of the boys were around, so mother told Virginia and I to take the cream to the creamery. It turned out to be my turn to drive. We were going along just fine, I thought, but as I came around a corner a big truck was there. I ended up in the bar pit. The cream had not spilled, yet. The truck driver stopped and came back where we were to ask if he should put our car back on the road. I was very grateful and asked him to please not spill the cream. We had five gallons of cream that time. I am sure we didn't get a lot of money for the cream, but it was enough to cover the list of things we needed from town.

We always had a big garden on this place. I can remember helping father plant the corn. Father would have a shovel and as we went down the row he would put the shovel in the dirt and bring the shovel forward a little ways. Then I would throw three corn seeds in the space. Father would take his shovel out and the corn would be covered up. This particular day I was getting tired and talked about all the hard work men have to do. I told father I was glad that I was not a man. Father said that someday someone else will be glad that you are not.

One summer on Brush Creek, Virginia was going to raise turkeys to pay for her way to college. We had all these turkey hens and all their little ones. I don't know how many hens but each one had twelve or fourteen little turkeys.

We also raised alfalfa hay. After the first cutting of hay the hay was in the field in little shocks waiting to be taken into the hay stack the next day. Then a flash flood came. A flash flood is caused by what we used to call a cloud burst. With no warning the water would come down so fast and so much that everyone would be flooded out. So we stood there in our house and watched all the hay be taken off in the water. We also watched all these mother turkeys and their little ones floating off in the water.

The summer between being a sophomore and a junior in high school my brother Hank had me come to Reno, Nevada to visit him. Hank was in Reno working as an engineer on road construction. He paid for my ticket on the Greyhound bus. When I got there he had a place for me to room and board.

I am afraid Hank didn't care much for the clothes I showed up in. The second day that I was there this lady I was boarding with took me shopping for new clothes. Dresses, shoes, you name it. Hank had given her the money. I went with this lady to a Ladies Aid meeting. All the ladies were older than I was and I felt wierd.

I was with Hank for one week. In the evenings Hank would show me the city of Reno. Now this was in the days of prohibition. That means no one could buy any beer, liquor or that type of thing. However, as Hank was showing me the gambling places we went to a speak-easy. We went up to a door and Hank would knock on the door three times. The little window in the door would open to see who was there and they let us in. Inside the speak-easy it was about like a beer joint or a tavern today. Only in there they had a room for gambling, a small area for dancing and a long bar where they served drinks.

So Hank says to the man behind the bar, "my sister likes to dance." The man put a record on and came out from behind the bar and we danced. The man was a little bit fat, but he knew how to dance.

My brother Hank had stopped going to church and wasn't living the Word of Wisdom. He had quit back in high school. The man I danced with even had some root beer for me to drink.

Hank showed me all the night life of Reno. It was certainly an education to me. I had never seen anything like that before or since. I am sure you could go to Reno today and visit church people and see a different Reno than I did.

During my junior year of high school I went to the Jordan High School in Midvale, Utah. My sister Mary and her husband, Roland Rigby, were very active in both church and civic affairs. They wanted a live in baby sitter, so I went to Midvale and went to Jordan High School. That school was so much bigger than the one in Vernal I rode a bus to and from school. I soon had friends from church at school. In fact, all through school 80 to 90 percent of the kids belonged to the same church that I did. None of my grandchildren have this experience.

In the first part of March, my brother-in-law, Roland Rigby was changing jobs and moving to Oregon. It was necessary to go back to Vernal to finish my junior year. The folks were still living at Brush Creek. Bessie and the kids were in town and had a small place about a half mile from the high school.

That spring both Virginia and Howard graduated from high school. At some time Virginia had skipped a grade which put her graduating the same year with Howard. After school was out we all went back to Brush Creek for the summer.

From March until the end of the school year I started going around with a group of kids that became very good friends. Some of them are still good friends. This is when I met DeMar Gale. At that time he was dating my girl friend. However, during the next summer he rode his horse up to Brush Creek to visit me. It was about a fifteen mile ride, which is quite a ways on a horse. When he got there I didn't know just how to entertain him, so I fixed a lunch and we went for a horse back ride. I don't know how dumb I could be, he had just ridden fifteen miles and had to get back home the same day. This was the beginning of our friendship.

By the next September when school was about to start Father had rented a house in town and we moved away from Brush Creek. In November of 1933 he was elected County Clerk and auditor. He kept this job for twelve years. 1933 was the beginning of my senior year of high school.

The senior year was a very good year. I was going with a good group of kids and it was a lot of fun. DeMar Gale was playing on the school basketball team and football before that. So, of course, I went to all of the sports events. However, until after Christmas DeMar was going with my girlfriend. When things turned around so I was going with him, my girlfriend and I were still friends. To this day we are still friends.

On the night of graduation DeMar brought me some beautiful silk flowers, which went very well with my dress. I kept those flowers for many years. When DeMar and I were dating he would walk from his house to mine, about three miles, and then we would walk to where we were going, high school, downtown, to a dance or whatever. Then DeMar would have to walk home after that. My folks did not have a car and DeMar's didn't have one either.

After graduation Bessie wanted me to go to college, but Father had already talked to me and asked me to stay home and take care of Mother. Mother was ill. Father's brother, uncle Edmond, who had never married, was with us also. There was lots of house work to do.

I gave Mother her pills every four hours and she would sleep a lot. The doctors thought Mother had cancer. No one knew this but Father and myself. In those days they would not operate for cancer.

One day Mother said that she was sick and tired of taking the pills and tired of sleeping so much, so she refused to take them anymore. I cried because Mother knew something was wrong. She called Father on the phone and told him to come home as they needed to talk.

At Christmas time DeMar and I became engaged to be married. We planned to be married the next May of 1936, which we did--the 28th in the Salt Lake Temple.

DeMar had made me a small red cedar cedar chest. It had my name in lighter wood across the front. This was the first I knew that DeMar could do such beautiful work with wood. At Christmas time he gave me a wrist watch. I had never had my own wrist watch before. DeMar gave me a beautiful diamond ring for our engagement. This time he walked uptown on a Tuesday night and did not even wait until Friday.

DeMar's sister Evaune was born the 27th of May. So the next day, on the 28th of May we left Vernal, Utah to go to the Salt Lake Temple to be married. None of DeMar's folks were with us. After the wedding we were going to Klamath Falls, Oregon. Mother was going up to Oregon to spend some time with Howard and Elna, so she went with us. My brother was going up to Oregon to look for work, so he went with us too. DeMar has always said that my Mother and his brother-in-law went with us on our honeymoon--which is true.

DeMar had his own car by now. It was a 1934 Plymouth sedan. Roads, etc. were different in those days. It took two and one half days to get from Logan to Klamath Falls, Oregon. After the wedding we went up to Logan, Utah, where my sister Virginia was. Mother and Doug visited with Virginia and DeMar and I found a motel somewhere.

The next April in Klamath Falls, our first baby, DeLoris, was born. She was such a miracle to us. We had both come from large families and had been around kids before, but this was our very own baby. She was so special, she came April 2, 1937.

In Klamath Falls, my brother in law, Roland Rigby, was the branch president in the Church. He made DeMar the Sunday School Superintendent, I believe it is now called Sunday School President. We enjoyed church activity and had lots of friends.

DeLoris was about two months old when we moved back to Vernal, Utah. DeMar went to work in the gilsonite mines where he had worked before we were married. We had one of the apartments out at the mines, which was 75 miles from Vernal. So, at first we didn't get to town very often.

After a while the mines closed temporarily and we needed to move back to Vernal. We lived with DeMar's folks for a short time. My father knew of a man who had a small farm three miles out of town. This man, Mr. Davis, lived in town but he wanted to put a couple on his farm. There was a small house on the farm. So we moved out on the farm. That first summer we raised beans and chickens.

Times were tough at this time, it was in the middle of the Great Depression. There wasn't any money to speak of anywhere, including with us.

I mentioned before that we had raised chickens on this farm. My sister, Jennie Weeks, decided to raise chickens on shares. She bought 200 baby chicks and brought them out to the farm. We were to raise the chickens and share the profits. This was a good arrangements as far as we were concerned. We could feed and water the chickens and watch them grow. The chickens were doing well, growing fast and looked good. They were about ready to go to market.

One day when we got home from church the chickens were gone. Someone had decided they needed those chickens more than we did. This was very discouraging, I felt so badly about Jennie's loss of money, but there was nothing that we could do about it.

I mentioned that we were raising beans on this farm also. It was a good crop of beans, everything was going as it should. However, the day before the beans were to be harvested it rained and the beans never did dry out so they could be harvested. They just set in the field and mildewed. Once more the possibility of us having the needed money was gone.

By this time my folks had bought a small home across town and were moving out of the house where we had been when I was a senior in high school. Mr. Davis concluded that we just as well move off of his farm. So we moved into the house that my folks had been in. At this time DeMar had learned he could work in the gold mines at Mercer, Utah. Mercer is about 30 miles west of Lehi. Now this was the situation, I was in this house with my two babies alone and DeMar was gone to work somewhere else. In this house there was very little furniture and very little money. That part I could handle all right. But having DeMar gone was not good at all.

My folks came by to see us once in a while and DeMar's folks came by to see us once in a while. DeMar did not get back from the mines very often, it was about 210 miles from Vernal to Mercer. DeMar had gone out to Mercer in September, 1938, while I stayed in the house by myself.

When the folks moved across town, it was more in town than the house I was in, so they left my brother Chad's dog with me. This little dog, Fannie, was a beautiful little dog. We got along just fine. After a while I knew Fannie was going to have pups and by now it was wintertime. There was an old shed that Fannie spent most of the time in, so I didn't worry about her, she could just have her pups in the shed.

One morning there was barking and scratching on the kitchen door. I opened the door and there was Fannie with a pup in her mouth. I let her in the kitchen but the pup was dead. Fannie had brought her little dead pup to me, so after I had taken care of the dead pup I got a box and went out to the shed. I found Fannie and three other puppies and brought them all back in the house and kept them in the back room in box for a while.

In Mercer it was a strange situation. DeMar's brothers, Donald and Eldon, and my brother, Douglas, had been with DeMar working in the mines. So the three of them just moved into our apartment with us.

It was an interesting situation in the gold mines where DeMar and our brothers worked. My brother Douglas was preparing to go on a mission. It was a good vein of gold, they were making good money at this time. It was said around camp "where ever the Gale boys put their pick there is gold." For a fact, when one of the boys was getting ready to go on a mission they found lots of gold. Douglas left for his mission and my brother Chad came out to work. He was also preparing to go on a mission.

DeMar's brother Eldon got back trouble, so he left and got a job somewhere as a truck driver. The DeMar's brother, Donald, went on his mission. Soon Chad had earned enough to go on his mission. After Chad was gone the vein of gold ran out. As soon as there were no more missionaries to send out the gold was gone.

Lets go back to when the boys were living with us at Mercer. One time I came into the living room and two of those men were throwing my baby across the room. Douglas Noel would throw him across the room to Donald Gale. I got very upset, as Donald threw the baby across to Douglas, I slapped Donald's face, hard, and told him not to do it anymore. It seemed to me they were using my baby for a football or something. The stopped throwing the baby.

Our baby Douglas was walking all over, the usual little toddler. One morning he started across the room and fell down and started to cry. He couldn't walk and if we touched his right leg he would cry. So we took him into Lehi to the doctor. This was the beginning of eight years of leg trouble, operations, hospitals, the whole business.

At first the doctor treated him for infection. But that didn't last very long. Then the doctor told us he had osteomyelitis, which is an infection of the bone. The doctor said he would have to have an operation. There was a specialist in Salt Lake City that did this type of operation, and he came to Lehi once in a while. Our doctor had this specialist come to Lehi and operate on Douglas.

I stayed at the hospital and sat by Douglas' bed. There was a diner nearby where I could buy food. DeMar went back to Mercer to work in the mines. The operation was very expensive, $75. Our Lehi doctor paid the Salt Lake doctor out of his own pocket and we paid him back a little at a time. Douglas was 18 months old at this time.

Douglas' problems with his leg were taking so many trips to Lehi so we finally found a house in Lehi and moved in from Mercer. The house we found was across the road from DeMar's folks. By now they had moved out from Vernal. DeMar's father, Luther, was also working in the mines at Mercer.

The day the baby came, April 10, 1940, right after lunch mother said to me, "get someone to get you a ride, I want you to go to the hospital now." It seemed to me that I would know when the baby was due. But she insisted, so I went up to the hospital. The baby was born at 3:30 in the afternoon. I guess mother didn't want that baby born at home.

The baby was another boy and that was exciting. My sisters were having so many girls that it was great fun to have another little boy. We named him Leon DeMar. Mother stayed with us for a few days. I am sure DeMar was grateful, as I was otherwise unable to take care of myself. DeMar would have had to quit work for a while.

About this time we moved to our second house in Lehi. The first one was sold. We were renting so we found another one to rent. We were now across town from DeMar's folks. DeMar was still working in the mines at Mercer. We were also in a different ward in the church.

Our baby Leon was such a healthy, active baby, he was starting to walk by the time he was eleven months old. Doug's leg was healed enough that he was starting to walk again also. I don't know if DeLoris can remember this or not, but she got very excited. She was so worried for fear the baby would walk before Doug did. So the two little boys, who were not quite 22 months apart, learned to walk together.

By now we were in our third house in Lehi. Kids who rent have to rent when the house gets sold. Doug was starting to have a lot more leg aches. It would wake him up at night. It looked like he would have to have another operation. This osteomyelitis is subject to reoccurring and when they operated this time they put a drain in the bone to keep it open and draining out the infection. So Douglas was down again, at least he couldn't walk and he had to be carried around the house. He got so tired of the other kids going out to play and he was sitting around the house.

The drainage from his leg had a very bad odor. So I didn't take my three babies and go to church. However, DeMar still went all the time. DeMar's mother worried about me. She thought I was becoming inactive. She said that I could go and sit on the back row and people would understand. But I didn't go.

On November 18, 1941 we had another baby boy, this was our first redhead. DeMar was very pleased to have one look like they are supposed to, red hair. At the time DeMar said, "we have a good start and had just as well have our own ball team." This little boy, Kenneth Raymond, as were the others, was a very welcome addition to our family. You will remember that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor December 5, 1941, we were in the middle of the war. We had four babies, the oldest one was not five years old yet. I thought I was busy.

At the time they were starting what was called the Kenney treatment. Now the important thing with this polio was to get it early. I will describe the Kenney treatment. First you have a 100% wool blanket. You put it in boiling water and put it through the ringer of a washing machine. The put the hot blanket on the boy's bare back. The 100% wool would not scald or burn. Then you put oil cloth over the blanket so the heat would stay in. You leave this on for 20 minutes then put the boy belly down across a barrel. With his hands DeMar would stretch his back. You put both hands on the middle of the back. Push one hand towards his neck as you push the other hand towards the hips, stretching the back was to keep the spine from becoming crooked from the polio.

Douglas could not be moved. He had to sleep on a table and have these treatments six times a day. He slept on that table about three weeks. I slept on the davenport beside him. He had to stay on the table all the time so his back would not be crooked. Now the minute that we knew he had polio the other children had to be kept away from him in a different room so they would not get polio. DeLoris was such a doll. She would take Leon and Ken out to play or play with them in the kitchen or bedroom. Doug was set up in the front room.

At this time Leon and Kenneth had the flu. The doctor thought they were both coming down with polio. So for a few days we had to keep them away from DeLoris. But they only had the flu.

While Douglas was on the table he did not like to take a nap in the afternoon. However, if I got everything off the table he would go to sleep. Even if he had a string six inches long he could keep himself awake playing with it. Douglas came out of the polio with no problems.

By now the Geneva Steel plant was hiring carpenters and DeMar could get work there, so we moved to Provo. DeMar bought a house on a corner, one and a half to two miles out of town. DeMar would catch a bus out to work. It wasn't very far to walk to church. And we were about a half mile from the grocery store. So we got along just fine in Provo without a car.

In Provo we lived in a new housing area. Almost everyone was a member of the Church. Almost everyone had just moved there to work at the Geneva Steel plant too. Soon we were in a new ward. This new housing area was a ward by itself in the church. DeMar was made president of the Young Men and I was Relief Society secretary. We were enjoying church activity as a family and soon had many friends. Over the years we have kept close friends. When we go to Provo we still visit with some of the same group.

In September of 1945, the baby Marvin was not yet four months old, we went to Vernal to visit my folks for Labor Day. Kenneth was not quite four years old. We were returning home when Kenneth opened the car door and fell out of the car. The back doors of cars in those days opened the opposite from the way they do now. Ken had rolled into the bar pit. DeMar stopped at once and backed up. When we got to where Ken was he was coming up out of the bar pit, crying, he thought he had left him. When he fell he had nearly scalped himself. He has a very long scar he can show you.

About now Douglas started getting leg aches again. Since we were not in Lehi, we went to a doctor in Provo. The first doctor in Provo was not very satisfactory. He told us the boy had a little rheumatism or growing pains, he just wanted our attention. Now we knew better than back. We went to another doctor and had the medical records sent down from Lehi. This doctor said that since he had already had two operations he didn't think the problem could be stopped with a third. So he would have to cut his leg off.

Now having Douglas' leg cut off didn't fit in our schedule at all. We, of course, were at the end of our rope. We had done all that we could do. So we went to the Bishop and asked to have Douglas put in the Church Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City. This we did. It was very hard to put our little boy in a hospital 60 miles away and go home. But it was all there was left to do. In Salt Lake there was a doctor who was a bone specialist, Dr. Oakleberry. He was a member of the Church. He had never gone on a mission, but he had taken care of the kids in the Primary Children's Hospital for free and called that his mission.

(Dr. Oakelberry also took care of Leon and his whiplash injury. That story will come later.)

Dr. Oakelberry operated on Douglas. As we brought him home he said, "this should do it, there should be no more problem with that leg." However, there was. Later Douglas had a very bad leg ache and I realized that I would have to take him to Salt Lake to the doctor. This was a Sunday and I was worrying about this. DeMar was not at home at the time. Geneva Steel had shut down for a short time and DeMar was working in Idaho.

This Sunday afternoon the three older boys were out in the yard playing. Douglas was out in the street and got hit with a bicycle. It broke his bad leg just below the knee. It is amazing how neighbors help when its needed.

During July of 1948 Leon had a situation. He had a double operation, a hernia and an appendix. He was only 8 years old at the time and in the hospital they put him in the same room with grown men.

We received another great blessing while we were in Provo. December 22, 1948, we had another baby. And this time DeLoris did get her sister. We called the baby Myrna, not only our family but the whole ward was excited when we got our baby girl. I had a lot of boy baby clothes ready. However, she wore the dresses I had made for Marvin a lot more than he did. Marvin didn't wear those dresses much. DeMar couldn't handle putting dresses on his boy. This was our second red head. She had such beautiful red hair.

When Myrna came the doctors had started sending new mothers home from the hospital early. So I went home on Christmas eve. When DeLoris was born the doctors kept you in the hospital for ten days.

DeMar and DeLoris were all of the help I had when Myrna came, also when Marvin came. It is amazing how young DeLoris was and she just took over and did a lot of the work.

Now, as I mentioned before, we were getting along just fine in Provo. Geneva Steel had started up again, DeMar had a good job, we lived in a nice house, the kids were happy, we liked it in Provo.

However, there was a situation or two now and then. We lived on the corner of a city lot and there was nothing for our boys to do. Not a half a mile from our house, upon the hill, was the city dog pound. One day the boys were up there looking at the dogs. They felt sorry for the dogs, so they opened the gates and let them out.

Also, not very far away was a wheat field. Just before harvest the boys (I say the boys, meaning my boys and several other boys in the neighborhood) went into the wheat field and played games running through the wheat. The juvenile authorities came from town to visit with me about that. Also, there was an apple orchard close by. The boys played games throwing apples at each other. Because we had not provided things for our boys to do, these kinds of things were happening.

The children and I stayed in Provo until school was out. It was the first part of June before we moved up to Moses Lake. At Moses Lake there was a small house on part of the Lybbert farming land that we moved into. We were about twelve miles out of town. Myrna, our baby, was not quite six months old at the time. The church was getting started in Moses Lake. There were about 130 members in the branch. At first the church rented part of the high school to hold meetings in. DeMar worked in scouting that first summer.

When the farming was over for the summer DeMar went to work helping on a church. By now the church had started our own building. So DeMar worked on the church. He would donate half of the time and was paid for half of the time. When spring came DeMar started farming again. He worked at farming with Lybberts two summers. We were also in our second house by now. It was even farther out of town and it was a basement house.

We also had our own car by now, which made things much easier. DeMar bought the car the next week after we moved to Moses Lake. Being out of town this way and being on a farm gave the children plenty of room to run and play and do whatever.

The summer of 1950 was very interesting. It was hot. This little house we were in was not air conditioned. The house was so small the four older boys slept on bunk beds on the front porch.

This summer we were trying to pick fruit, etc. We knew we were having another baby. I had not been to the doctor. I already had six children, what would I go to a doctor for.

Delivery day was only two months away when I went to the doctor. That was almost too late, my blood was so low there was not time to build it up before the baby was due. So on the 21 of September, 1950, when I went to the hospital to have the baby, the first thing the doctor did was start blood transfusions. Otherwise the baby could not have been born, we would have both died.

Next winter DeMar was working full time on the church. He had stopped farming with the Lybberts. By spring there was a construction company formed, DeMar, Glen Lybbert, Calvin Mortensen, and DeMar's uncle Albert Goodrich. This group started building homes for people. The church had been finished by now.

So many Mormons had moved into the area that the church was too small before it was ever finished.

Building homes was the beginning of a whole new way of life for us. DeMar loved carpenter work and it was obvious he was very good at it. We moved off the farm into town. We had a little place about a mile and one half from town, with a few acres. However, by now the children knew how to work and did very well. While at this little place, which was by Moses Lake, we had turkeys, ducks and one dog. We sold turkeys and thought we were doing well with them. Our neighbor did not like our ducks. One morning Myrna could not get the ducks to run, in fact, they just laid there. So Myrna went in the house after Douglas, she wanted him to fix the ducks. The ducks, of course, were dead. That was one thing Douglas could not fix for her.

At this time in the church, DeMar was the Young Men's President, and I worked in the Primary. We had lots of friends in Moses Lake and many relatives. Many of the people were related to DeMar. Also, my brother Howard and his brother Elna, lived in Moses Lake at the time. Howard had some ground and was trying to raise potatoes.

We knew we were having a new baby and this time I did what you were supposed to and went to see the doctor once a month. A very good friend of mine, LaRue Lowe, was also having a baby. We both had the same doctor and went for appointments the same morning. We would sit in the waiting room and would talk about the baby girl we were each going to have.

LaRue had her baby boy two days before mine came. But her little boy didn't live very long. The next day LaRue came out of the hospital and went to a graveside service for the baby. I attended the service. Then LaRue went home.

The next day, which is December 24, in the early morning, I was at DeMar's folks house, where we went to get our milk. (DeMar's folks had moved to Moses Lake, where Luther had bought a farm.) I looked towards the air base and the whole sky was lit up. One of the big planes, which was taking servicemen home for Christmas, had crashed. Two hundred and eight-five servicemen died that morning, December 24, 1952.

I had that to think about and my friend who had just buried her baby the day before and I knew that my baby would be born this day. I went home and did a few things to help get ready for Christmas because I knew that DeMar would have Christmas alone. I was able to get a lot done and kept busy all day.

It was 7:30 at night before I had DeMar take me to the hospital. As soon as I was checked in I told DeMar to go home because it was Christmas eve and the kids shouldn't be alone. The nurse would call him on the phone when it was time for him to come back to the hospital. Not very long after DeMar had left we had a beautiful baby boy, everything was fine.

The next morning, which was Christmas Day, I told the nurse about my friend's baby boy that had died. The nurse told me that my friend LaRue Lowe had died the night before. She had gone home from the funeral and just died.

Sometimes life does strange things to you. At this time the town had a big bus where you could go in and check your lungs for free for tuberculosis. Our children insisted that we go do it so we did. I was fine but they told DeMar that he had tuberculosis and to check in to the Selah Hospital, which is near Yakama.

Rex was about four or five weeks old at the time and this was very upsetting. There I was with eight children, the oldest was fifteen, and the baby was five weeks old. There was no money to take care of this family. DeMar had a good job but with this many children we used the monthly check up each month. DeMar was only gone seven weeks, but I didn't know how long it would last so I went to the church for help. The branch president told me he was not set up to handle it and to go to the county for help, which I did. This was a once in a lifetime thing, it has never happened before or since.

DeMar's uncle Albert Goodrich was going to build a house on a farm he had out of town. DeMar worked on that house a lot after his regular work. At this time Kenneth had a problem. The growing center of his hip on his right leg collapsed. The doctor put him on crutches, he was on them for several months. The doctor had to decide if they had to operate and put a metal pin in the hip joint to put it together or not.

DeMar's uncle Albert Goodrich had a house on a farm about ten miles out of town. He asked DeMar if he would like to move the family into the house and raise beans on the farm. We did that. We moved out to the Goodrich place, the boys worked for different people and the children rode a bus to school each day. Every thing seemed to be going along well.

One day our Relief Society President was talking to me and she said, "Sister Gale, you are the most patient old lady in the ward." I was less than 45 years old at the time. I really didn't think of myself as an old lady. However, when we first moved to Moses Lake a relative of DeMar's, Mae Lybbert, was the Primary President and she was 45 years old. At that time I thought that it was strange to be that old and still have an active job in the church. Forty-five seemed old then. The Relief Society President who called me a patient old lady is older than I am.

Our seventh boy came December 12, 1955. He was our third redhead. When DeLoris saw him she said, "oh, he is just like Leon only he has red hair." Floyd Leland surely had curly red hair. We were so thankful for him.

When Floyd was two weeks old DeMar, myself, DeLoris, Douglas and Floyd went to Spokane to the ice follies. Why I took that little baby and went to that program I will never know. It was a great show. I have never been to the ice follies before or since.

About this time the Church decided to build another building in Moses Lake. DeMar and the construction company he was in was coming apart. Two of the men went back to full-time farming, so there was just DeMar and Glen Lybbert working together. They had other men working for them. DeMar decided to go full time working for the Church, building churches.

This started something which would last many years. By now we had moved off the Goodrich farm and were ten or twelve miles out of town on a small place owned by David Stevens. Dave was our Bishop in the Church and DeMar was his counselor.

By now DeLoris had graduated from High School and had gone to Seattle, Washington to a technical school to become a dental assistant. Douglas had graduated from high school and went to BYU a year before he went on his mission to Canada.

Leon had graduated from high school and was helping DeMar on the church in Hazelton. Working on the church in Hazelton, Idaho, Leon met Judith Black. He was very impressed and very interested in getting better acquainted. Judy is a very lovely, talented, beautiful girl.

DeLoris came home from Seattle and had work in Moses Lake for a while, then she was also called on a mission. She went to the Great Lakes Mission.

In the meantime, Leon was called on a mission to the East-Central States. Ken graduated from high school and went down to Hazelton to help DeMar on the church. Left at home were Marvin, Myrna, Ron, Rex and Floyd. We were by ourselves most of the time in Moses Lake.

By now the Church had changed the age that a boy could go on a mission from 20 to 19. Ken would turn 19 in November, so the Bishop talked to Ken and he was called on a mission to the Southern States. We had four missionaries out right down the eastern coast, Canada, Great Lakes, East Central and Southern states. Ken's mission was soon changed and he became part of the newly organized Florida Mission.

There is no way to describe the great feeling of satisfaction it gives a mother to have four missionaries out at the same time. I wrote to the missionaries each once a week. On week I purposefully put the wrong letter in each envelope. I wanted to see what the kids would do. Only Leon said anything, he wrote back and said he surely enjoyed Ken's letter and wondered who got his.

For some reason Myrna kept having pain in her stomach, so as I took her to the doctor, he said, "I will make some tests and you call me at my office at 11:00 tonight." I can't believe I was so dumb to call a doctor at 11:00 at night, but I did. When I called he said I had better bring her right in and he would take out her appendix. She had the surgery in the middle of that night, there were two appendices. He showed them both to me, but there was nothing wrong with either one of them. I am sure Myrna will remember having her appendix out in the middle of the night. I took her home and she stayed home in bed for several days. I never did know what caused the pain in her stomach.

By now the Hazelton church was finished and DeMar was back home. He was contacted and asked to come build a church in Richland, Washington.

For a while in Moses Lake I was the Primary President. This is while it was still a branch in the Church and Melvin Jorgensen was the Branch President. We had a large Primary with lots of kids.

At this time Primary was held right after school on Tuesday, so always on Tuesday I would leave the house before 3:00 in the afternoon and didn't get home until after 5:00. Having something on hand for dinner was thing for me to plan ahead as I was gone all afternoon. An easy thing for me was to do was to make a large kettle of chili in the morning and re-heat it when I got home. One day one of the boys asked me if we were so poor we always had to have beans. My land, I had only been doing it once a week and only on Tuesdays.

Being the Primary President was a very good experience for me. I really learned a lot. The main thing I learned is that all children were not as willing to do what they were asked as were my children. All though the years I have been so greatful for my children, they were always willing to cooperate with their teachers in school or Church. We really have a great family.

In Primary I also learned there are two kinds of teachers. Those who are willing to work and those who would rather not. It was a great experience for me.

Later in Moses Lake we became a ward, and then there were two wards. David Stevens was the Bishop of our Ward and I became the Laurel leader in the YWMIA. These girls were the oldest girls in the MIA, that was a good experience for me also. I was the stake Laurel leader for a short time. However, this took so many nights away from the children that I didn't do that very long.

I was also a counselor to the Young Women's President for a short time. The President was Marilyn Stevens. Grace Jensen was the other counselor, and I did enjoy working with these women very much. The Church was almost all the social life we had. We had lots of friends in the Church and by the time we kept up with Church activities, we didn't have any time or money left for anything else.

Before we left Moses Lake my mother died. She had been very ill with asthma. She and father were living in a trailer at the time near my sister, Mary Rigby, in California. The funeral and burial was in Vernal, Utah. DeMar, DeLoris, Leon and I went to the funeral. Doug kept the rest of the family home and took care of them for us.

We moved from Moses Lake in the spring of 1961. DeMar was supposed to build a church in Richland but it was not ready to go and in the meantime Jack Nelson contacted DeMar and wanted the two of them to form a construction company and build houses for people. So Nelson and Gale was organized and DeMar built homes for a year before the church was ready to go. DeMar was partners with Jack Nelson for seventeen years.

We moved into the house into the Richland Village on Cascade Street. When we went to church, we found that DeMar was the second cousin to the Stake President, President Thompson. Soon DeMar was asked to be a high councilman, I taught Junior Sunday School.

It was different moving from a farming community into the city. At first we thought Richland was a big city. Because of the Hanford Atomic Energy Project, it was bigger then than it is now. However, we got used to it and it really isn't a very big place.

In the mission field Leon started having real bad headaches. Also, he could be sitting on one side of a room and not be able to see the people on the other side of the room. The mission president called us on the phone and told us how bad it was for Leon.

The president decided to send Leon to the LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City. It was here the doctors learned here that the whip-lash injury Leon had just before his mission was causing the problems. For a long time he wore a heavy metal neck brace. When he came home and I saw the brace I was very frightened. I was afraid to touch him for fear I would hurt him. The metal brace was worn for a long time.

Finally the doctors in Salt Lake decided to operate and fuse some of the vertebrae together. Leon still cannot put his chin on his shoulder, he can only turn his neck a little way, and then he must turn his whole body.

The operation was in the LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City. Doctor Oakleberry took care of him. This was the same doctor who operated on Douglas' leg years before. The doctor asked Leon if he hadn't operated on his leg a few years back. Leon said no, it was his brother.

Before Leon and Judy were married DeLoris had come home from her mission and started working as a dental technician in Kennewick. Our ward had what we called the investigator's class. People go to the class to learn more about the Church. The Bishop of the ward asked DeLoris to be the teacher of this class.

In this class was a fine young man, who had just joined the Church, Verne Fischer, who was going to the class to learn more about the Church. He was working out at Hanford and lived in West Richland. His folks lived in Sunnyside. After class DeLoris would wait until everyone had left to see if Verne would stop and talk to her. Soon he did and soon they started dating. They were married the next spring. We are proud and happy to have Verne in the family.

In the meantime Marvin graduated from Richland High School in the same graduating class with a girl Marvin knew and had dated, Claudia Harmon. Claudia also has many talents, is beautiful and is very lovely. Marvin worked with DeMar that summer then went to college in the fall.

DeMar was contacted to go on a labor mission for the Church. In those days the Church would sent a builder and his family in an area to build a church. DeMar accepted a call and we were to be ready to go by fall. We left the first part of October with Myrna, Ron, Rex and Floyd for Houston, Texas. DeMar was driving his pick-up truck and I was driving the stick-shift Rambler.

Before we started for Texas I had told DeMar I could only drive 500 miles a day. I had a mental block there. If I had gone 500 miles it was time to stop. If the motel room was 15 minutes away, I was in real trouble. On the way down the four kids traded all around, rode with me part of the time and with DeMar part of the time. It was quite an experience driving down to Houston. I was right behind that truck all of the time. If DeMar went through an orange light, I went through a red one. I stayed right behind that truck and went through one or two red lights.

In those days there were not as many freeways that would by-pass a town as there are today. As we went through downtown Austin, Texas, it was 12:00 noon with all the traffic we did get separated. I couldn't see the truck. I kept thinking that before DeMar would turn the corner he would stop and wait for me. I just stayed on the main traveled road, cars were everywhere, in front of, in back of and on both sides of me. Before long I could see the truck ahead pulled off waiting.

Our four children who went to Texas with us had quite an experience ordering food for their meals, etc. They certainly hadn't done much of this before.

When on a labor mission the Church Building Supervisor (DeMar) was sent six building missionaries. Young men who are not elders yet. They were over 20 years old and didn't qualify to go on a proselyting mission. Our four youngest children will remember these boys. We had nine all together, but only six at a time. They were: William Lindsey, Mike Hill, Mike Carpenter, Mike Wright, Craig Higgins, Collins Clark, Tom Mills, Carl Kauffold, and Jeff Wilkins. These boys lived with ward members, each boy in a different home. It was something like an exchange student. The family took them in and took care of all of their needs. The boys, of course, had restrictions.

Some of the boys had trouble with these restrictions. For example, Craig Higgins was very upset because he couldn't date. He told DeMar many times there would be nothing wrong with him dating Rena Eady. He would even let DeMar go along with them.

Rena Eady became a very good friend of Myrna's. She came to our home many times and Myrna went to theirs. One time Rena was at our place and was trying to teach Ronald how to talk. Rena was very southern. Ronald was also trying to teach Rena how to talk. They were working with the word "Colorado." Needless to say they both pronounced the word very differently and both thought they were correct.

DeMar had to have scripture study with the building missionaries each morning before they started to work. So from 7:00 to 8:00 they studied the Book of Mormon. At 8:00 am they went to work. It was hoped that in working with the boys they would become Elders in the Church before they went home. One of the boys has kept in touch with us, Tom Mills, he lives in Spokane now. Tom and his family has been to our home for dinner while we were in Richland.

Being in Houston was a very different experience for all of us. They do things quite differently in the south.

Right around the corner from our house was a grocery store which was very convenient for me. In the south on New Year's day you are supposed to eat black eyed peas with hog jowls and corn bread. That would ensure having good luck all year. On New Year's eve I was in the store and the clerk asked me if I had my black eyed peas and hog jowls and if I knew how to make corn bread. I laughed at her and she said that she would check with me later in the year. We didn't have the black eyed peas or hog jowls for dinner.

Now picture this in your mind, me driving that stick shift Rambler in downtown Houston to take DeMar and Ron to the doctor. Floyd and I went on the bus downtown to a movie once. I ended up knowing Houston better than DeMar did. Once in a while I even took the bus downtown to go shopping. In fact, I got lost once. I asked a bus driver, who was on the wrong side of the street, for directions to where I wanted to go. The bus driver told me that I had better get on his bus, it was the right one to take, but it seemed wrong to me.

When we went to Houston the kids were in three different schools. Myrna in high school, Ron in junior high, and Rex and Floyd in grade school. Understanding their teachers was hard for them. The two younger ones had a more difficult time since they teach Spanish in grade school in Houston. Everybody had to learn Spanish. Rex and Floyd could hardly understand their teachers in the first place. Speaking with a very southern accent, she wanted them to learn Spanish.

There was lots of volunteer labor on the church DeMar was supervising. Some of the me would come to work in the daytime and some could come in the evening. So DeMar had to work very long hours. He would come home for dinner and would then go back until about 10:00 at night. Myrna and Ron did lots of work on the building also.

Both Ken and Doug were dating while in Provo. The boys decided to get married. DeMar told the boys to get married on the same day and we would come to the wedding. So Doug and LaVon and Ken and Cherrie were married on the 28 of May, which was also our twenty-ninth wedding anniversary. We drove from Houston non-stop. Ron came with us on that trip and Myrna stayed in Houston and kept Rex and Floyd. We were very happy to have LaVon and Cherrie in our family.

One day the Bishop's wife took me on a tour of expensive homes. These homes were real mansions. On each estate there was a small house for the servants to live in. This small house was bigger than lots of regular homes today. I really didn't know that people were wealthy enough to afford to live like that. It was very educational.

While we were in Houston we were invited to dinner. Ron couldn't understand why the blacks and whites were so separated, which they were then. The negro maid would take a kid with her and go to work. The negro kid and the little white kid would play all day together. The two women would get along just fine. However, if they went out at night the negro woman would have to sit in the back of the bus or in a special place in the theater, etc. The white woman wouldn't even speak to her then. All that has changed somewhat since then.

The Church didn't use labor missionaries, either the men or the boys, for very long. When we had been in Houston for one year it was all changed. The Church started using local building contractors to build the churches. The men were told that they could stay if they didn't have a job to go home to. DeMar went home and started building with Jack Nelson again.

As we came home I have never seen anything as beautiful as that Columbia River. It was just good to get back in the northwest. Texas is a good place to visit, I am sure, but I like living in the northwest.

DeMar started building homes with Jack Nelson, soon we started building our own home on Lynwood Loop in Richland. It was exciting to finally build our own home. We all worked on the house, I helped with a little bit of each part of the house. DeMar likes to tell how hard it was to get me down after I had put a few shingles on the roof.

Verne and DeLoris, Doug and LaVon, Leon and Judy and Ken and Cherrie were all living in Richland at this time. It was really great having the children near us. Doug had graduated from BYU the same day he was married, which was also the day after his birthday.

Moving into our new home was really a great day for us. It had taken a lot of work for DeMar and the boys to get it done. Doug spent many hours on that house, for which we were greatful. At this time Leon was going to Columbia Basin College at night to become a machinist. However, after he got finished he choose something else for work.

At this time my father was not doing very well. After mother's death he lived with my older sisters, Jennie Weeks and Clara Preece. However, they finally put him in a rest home because they could not handle him in their homes any more. Father died in the fall of 1967. He survived mother ten years. Father was 94 years old when he died. My brothers and sisters who lived in Utah could go to the rest home to visit him. Sometimes he knew them and sometimes he didn't. It was a real blessing for him when he could go to paradise where mother was.

Father, at the age of 94, had never joined the Church. After he had been dead a year, we all went to the temple and had his temple work done. So we know mother and father are together again.

Myrna had graduated from Richland High School and worked for a summer and went to Provo, Utah to the "Y." Myrna went to my father's funeral with us. Myrna had a part time job at school, so she was very busy. She worked summers and then part time during the school year.

Ronald had graduated from high school and worked a summer and fall with DeMar, then in November of 1969 he went on his mission to New Zealand. This was our fist missionary to go overseas. However, in New Zealand he did not have to learn a new language.

Myrna in college and Ron on a mission we were down to two kids. In June in 1971 Rex graduated from high school, worked for the summer and went to the "Y." However, in February, 1972, he was called on a mission to South Brazil. Our second missionary to go overseas and he had to learn Portuguese. This was our seventh missionary.

Myrna graduated from BYU in home economics. She had tried many places to find a job. She wanted to teach home ec in high school. She was not able to find a job in the northwest, so she took a job in Douglas, Arizona.

Our house was becoming very empty. Floyd was still at home and in high school. He met Georgia Downey. Georgia was a very talented, lovely, beautiful girl. She and Floyd started dating during their senior year. Floyd did not go to Richland High School, there was a new high school, the Hanford High School, and this is where Floyd graduated from. Floyd and Georgia were in the same graduating class.

Rex came home from his mission and worked for a few months before going back to school at BYU. He worked with DeMar. He met Susan Kneeland at church. Susan was a dental assistant living with Mary Joyce. Her mother and family lived in Connell, Washington. Rex was very impressed with Susan and wanted to get better acquainted. Susan had many talents, is very beautiful and a lovely person.

As Rex went back to school, Floyd graduated from high school and left for Eastern Washington College in Cheny. Georgia Downey was also going to school at Eastern. I suspect that is why Floyd chose to go there for school.

By now Rex and Susan had decided to be married and Floyd and Georgia also decided to be married. We already had two boys that had been married on the same day and a boy and a girl that had been married within five months of each other, and now Rex and Floyd were talking about being married the same week.

Rex and Susan were married in the Provo Temple in June 1975. They went down to Provo to go to school. Rex had not graduated form the "Y" yet. They both worked in Provo as he finished school.

In 1963 Leon and Judy were still living in Richland, Leon was working out in the Hanford area. A very bad flu was going around Richland. Judy got very, very sick. DeMar and I happened to go past Leon's and Judy's about 8:00 at night and found Judy was sick. Leon had called the doctor and he had come to the house to see Judy. DeMar and I waited to see what the doctor would say. I knew the flu was bad, but thought she was having a really rough time. Judy, Leon and the doctor went into the bedroom to see what the doctor could do for her. When they came out the doctor said, "Mrs. Gale, how long have you been pregnant?" We knew we were going to be grandparents. We were so sorry Judy was so sick, but we were excited about being grandparents.

Shawn DeMar was born August 31, 1963. Shawn, then and now, has always a been a great blessing to Leon and Judy and us.

Of the 47 1/2 grandchildren, Shawn was the only one born in August. We are now expecting a grandchild that may be born in August.

Shawn DeMar is the only grandchild that I will talk about the birth of. We have 47 1/2 grandchildren and to talk about the birth of each would take another book or two. There are 27 boys and 20 girls and we are expecting one more.

DeLoris and Verne's oldest daughter, Marilyn Kaye, is married and has a little boy. So now we have one great-grandchild and expect many, many more.

At this time Nelson and Gale had bought 340 acres of ground on Rupert Road. This is located just as you leave West Richland, going into the first part of Benton City. It is about 9 miles out of Richland. We were talking about building a house out on Rupert Road on one of those lots. In thinking about retirement, DeMar needed a place big enough to put his carpenter shop on.

In Richland the boys had a large basketball court which would have been big enough for DeMar's shop. The city of Richland would not let him build a carpenter shop in the city limits. So we had to sell our home on Lynnwood Loop and move out into the country to build our house and start over. So DeMar contracted out some of the building and we built our house on Rupert Road.

In January 1978, DeMar retired from Nelson and Gale. We then got our place on Lynnwood Loop ready to sell. DeMar's brother, Donald, sold his place on Lynnwood and in April we moved into our new home. In moving out on to Rupert Road a whole new way of life started. There were no neighbors for a quarter of a mile, no fences, no nothing. Just us and the coyotes. We loved it out here, since DeMar and I have never been city people.

We became members of Benton City and the Benton City Ward. DeMar had his shop built close to the house, but at this point there was nothing in the shop, so we were really starting from scratch. We started getting a few horses. We started out with a black mare that we bought in Moses Lake. Then DeMar bought an appaloosa from Ken Allen. The first mare was a quarter horse. we have both been around horses and love to have them on our place. By now DeMar had fences up and a small orchard in, so we had a place to put these horses.

One time we went to Cody, Wyoming to visit my sister, Virginia, she took us for a horse back ride. Their horses are Missouri fox trotters. There is such a difference in riding a fox trotter. We just couldn't just be happy with our horses after we had ridden Virginia's.

In Cody there was a man who wanted some furniture made. He also had two mares he wanted to sell. The mares were both with foal. So DeMar made the furniture and took it to Cody in a horse trailer and brought the mares back home. They were named Jubilee and Cocoa B. That was the beginning of our Missouri fox trotter business.

At this same time there was a temple being built in Bellevue, Washington, called the Seattle Temple. All of my life I had thought how great it would be if I could be a temple worker. The temple would not be finished for a year or so, but it was exciting to think of having one so close. In early fall of 1979 people were going to train in Bellevue to be ordinance workers. We were called to be temple workers and needed to go to Bellevue real often to train.

At first, when we went to the temple, we stayed part of the time with Leon and Judy and part of the time with Floyd and Georgia. The two couples were so good to us, we really appreciated it very much. The temple opened in December of 1980. It was the first Tuesday in December. We soon got into our regular temple schedule, it means a lot to us.

We have had many interesting experiences in the temple. We were working in the temple when Doug and LaVon's Kimberly was born. Kimberly has Downs syndrome. It was very disappointing for Kimberly to have these limitations. In fact, I had some very negative thoughts concerning the baby. However, the next time I went to the temple and picked up my assignment card for that shift I was asked to help a lady in a wheel chair. This woman could not stand, dress herself, comb her own hair or anything. This kind of assignment can really change your way of thinking in a hurry.

In fall of 1984 we started getting ready to go on a mission. Many retired couples in the Church are asked to serve a mission. Our mission call was to the Missouri St. Louis Mission, and we were to enter the mission home training center in Provo, Utah, January 9, 1985.

There, of course, was the problem of what to do with our house while we were gone. We found a young couple who wanted to rent the place and thought this would work out just fine. It didn't work out very well, so Doug and Ken had the problem of finding someone else to rent while we were gone. Doug finally found a couple at work who were looking for a place and this couple worked out. They stayed here until we came home.

In the Missionary Training Center we had much to learn very fast. We enjoyed the experience and made many new friends. Our mission headquarters were in St. Louis, Missouri. St Louis is a large city right on the Mississippi River. As you cross the Mississippi River you enter East St. Louis, which is also a large city. East St. Louis is mostly negro people. As missionaries we were told not to go into East St. Louis, it was considered very dangerous. White people had gone over there and had been killed for no reason. The negro people did not want white folks in their city.

At mission headquarters we found out our first assignment would be in Pocahontas, Arkansas. DeMar had talked to the mission president and asked for a small place, since we were not big city people. Pocahontas had almost 6,000 people, but not a J.C. Penny store. That was small enough. It did have a gas station, grocery store, and a post office, what more do you need.

Our assignment was to meet with inactive families and teach the gospel to others. We enjoyed being there very much. There is a great satisfaction and joy in watching people change their lives and become active in the Church and accept the gospel.

We made many friends in Pocahontas and still exchange letters with some of those people. While we were there one of the Church members in Sikeston, Missouri, was burned out. Our mission president had DeMar and another missionary, Carmi Campbell, supervise and build the family a new home. It was about 200 miles to Sikeston from Pocahontas. So we would go up there and live with Church members while DeMar worked on the house. The lady we stayed with was from Vernal, Utah, which made us feel comfortable.

I should mention that the mission president's wife is my second cousin. Her great-grandfather and my great-grandmother were brother and sister.

In Arkansas they speak very southern. We almost had to learn a new language. We had to listen hard and as they would ask us "what did you say."

In October, we new we were going to be transferred. Just before this Leon and Judy were in Philadelphia. The stopped over in St. Louis as they flew home. Our mission president gave us permission to go see them. It was nice to see the kids while we were out. This also happened at DeMar's birthday, so when Leon and Judy got off the plane they had many gifts for DeMar and for me. In St. Louis with Leon and Judy we went up into the top of the big arch. You get a great view of the entire area from up there. We also went through a big museum in the basement of the arch. We had lunch in a place right on the Mississippi River, it was a great day for us to be able to spend the time with Leon and Judy. It was about half-way through our mission, so Leon and Judy could be considered the half-time entertainment.

While on our mission there were fourteen other retired couples in our mission area. Once ever two months we would have a conference with the other couples. The young missionaries did not come to these meetings. The mission president would talk about what we were doing and how well we were doing it and what we should be doing differently. After the meeting we would all go out to lunch together and spent the rest of the day together. It was very enjoyable.

We had meetings once in a while with all of the missionaries in our mission. There would be nearly 100 of the young missionaries plus the married couples. Those were very nice days also. Being on a mission is just like anything else, you have good days and then you have better days.

In the first part of November, we knew we were being transferred to Washington, Missouri. This is about 40 miles west of St. Louis. We went to Washington and spent a day with the couple that was there. They were being released to go home to South Carolina. The area that we would be responsible for was very large. You could visit families in the same ward and drive over 100 miles a day, which we often did. We moved to Washington, Missouri in mid November. Our first day at Church was the Sunday before Thanksgiving. We had left many friends in Pocahontas. Washington seemed a little lonely near the holidays. But we had been to church and met some of the people.

Monday morning one of the Primary teachers called us on the phone and invited us for Thanksgiving dinner. We had never met her. She told DeMar how to find her place. When we got there they had five children, that made Thanksgiving seem real good. Her husband was the first counselor to the Bishop of the ward.

Washington, Missouri is right on the Missouri River. It is a large river. Our trailer that we lived in was about a mile and one half from the river. The old part of town was built almost to the water's edge.

Washington, Missouri was much bigger than Pocahontas but we had about the same assignment, working mostly with inactive and part member families. For Christmas we invited other missionaries to our place and had dinner in the trailer. We just relaxed and visited.

Sometimes our meetings were over in St. Louis, so we had the experience of driving in the big city. DeMar, of course, did all of the driving. In Washington it took us a while to learn the area where the people lived, etc. The Church members were very friendly and nice and we had many interesting experiences there. In Pocahontas, Arkansas we were treated more friendly, it seems that people in a small place are more hospitable and friendly than ones in the big city.

On our mission we did help baptize a few people and many of the inactive ones started back to Church. We truly hope they are still going to Church.

In Washington, Missouri they talk like they do in the northwest. It is funny to see the difference there was only 200 miles apart. By now DeMar had traded in our car for a pickup truck with a canopy. It had jump seats behind the front seat. DeMar had found out where he could get lumber for about one-fourth what he paid for it at home. So he bought the truck so he could bring home a load of lumber.

Before we left Missouri the ward had a surprise party for us to honor our fiftieth wedding anniversary. It was so nice, they had contacted our children and had gotten a written tribute from each of them. These tributes were used as the program for the party. They also had decorations, a decorated cake, food, and lots of friends who were paying honor to us.

At the couple's conference a week before that they had a surprise party for us in honor of our fiftieth wedding anniversary. They had a decorated cake and sang us a song one of the missionaries had written just for us. It was so beautiful to know we had friends like that. The song the missionary wrote for us is sung to the tune of "Love One Another," found on page 308 of the Church Hymnbook. Here are the words: