(Cover page has two pictures one on top a Portrait of a young woman,The words Mabel Jensen, Holbrook, Idaho and the bottom picture of Mabel standing with her work boots on in a field.)
(On the other side of the cover page; is two portraits. On the upper right hand side is a picture of a toddler holding a doll under the picture it is labeled Mabel. Lower left hand side is a photo of an infant named Geneva and a young girl named Mabel.)
My story begins 8 June 1905, the day I was born in Elwood, Box Elder County, Utah. According to the history of the Elwood Ward written in January 1951, the first settler of Elwood was a Mr. Davidson, homesteading the farm that my father later purchased, and becoming my first home. I don’t remember much of these early years. My Mother has told me that I liked to play in the water. An irrigation ditch ran right in front of the house and the Malad River down the hill at the back of the house. I guess I almost drove her to distraction when I would run away and she would find me lying on my stomach hitting the water with a big stick, or else in the garden eating the tops of the green onions.
Sister Sarah Fridal, a midwife, brought me into the world and took care of me the first eight days of my life. She lived right there taking care of my mother too, and doing the housework. I was a small premature baby and needed a lot of care to get started in life. During these early years, my father had a sunstroke and became very ill. He couldn’t get around to doing all the heavy work on a farm so he decided to homestead in Curlew Valley in Idaho. He thought a dry farm would be easier on him. He went to Holbrook, where he had chosen his farm, and built a one room cabin and then moved the family there. By this time my mother had two more children, a baby boy that died of pneumonia when only a few months old and another girl, my sister Geneva. It was Spring 1908 when we moved. I remember the tent that was put up for our bedroom. This tent had a wooden floor and wooden side built up about three feet, then a canvas top. It held two big beds easily. While this was our bedroom a little baby sister was born. I don’t remember anything about this until after her death. All these women were there in the tent padding the little coffin. I think Father had made it out of pine boards and the Relief Society Sisters made it soft and beautiful. I also remember them laying the baby in the coffin.
I guess the living was hard for Mother but to me it was all fun. The ground was sandy and fun to play in. Father always took me with him and I adored him. The milk cows had acres of pasture to range on so he would get on old Bess bareback, and away we’d go. I was really thrilled when one would be lost because it would mean a longer ride. He soon built another room onto the house, dug a deep well and put a windmill on it so the wind could pump our water. The sagebrush on the land were as big as trees, to me anyway and I like to help clear the land of them. Life was sure exciting.
School
My first teacher was Miss Vera Burgon. She was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. This first school, Nelson School, was a one room log building which faced the East. On each side of the building were a couple of windows. As we came in the door there were nails hammered into the logs on each side of the door for us to hang up our coats and caps. Our lunch pails, usually an empty lard bucket, would be put on the floor underneath our coats. On the West side of the building the floor was raised a couple steps like a stage or platform and here was the teacher’s desk. Back of the desk was the only blackboard, and on each side of it cupboards were made to hold the books. Just off the stage, in the Southwest corner, stood a bucket of water with a dipper in it. Everyone drank out of this dipper. No one worried about germs in those days. In the Spring and Fall when we would get extra thirsty, a couple of boys would be excused to run to the nearest farm, about a quarter of a mile, to get another bucket of water.
The first year I was there the building was packed. The school was built by the Curlew reservoir, but pupils came from both sides of it. A Mr. Goss would watch for the pupils to come from the Western side of the valley, and when the reservoir was full he would cross over in a boat and row them across. They would come in buggies and horseback, feed their horses and then he rowed across to school. I always wished I lived on the other side so I could have that boat ride twice a day. The desks in the school were double so two had to sit together, but we smaller ones had to sit three in a seat. I don’t know how much schooling I got but I did learn how to cut out paper dolls in a long string, how to use crayons, and I really used them, and then the fun at recess and noon. I learned to play all the games children still love. The ground outside was packed as hard as cement. It was rough, shoddy school and was soon replaced with a new one a half mile further East, but to me it was beautiful and exciting. How I loved it. Sometimes I rode to school with the Haws children, when Father didn’t take me and we would walk home. Going home was fun too. Mother always packed a big lunch so there would be some left to eat on the way home. My friend Lola Haws and I played houses along the way. We would hurry to one of these playhouses and finish out lunch before we’d go on home. Sometimes I’d meet my mother pulling Glenden in the little red wagon with Geneva running alongside her, coming to meet me. This did make the day perfect as I always had so many exciting things to tell them. I only went to school in Fall and Spring the first two years. I was promoted each year probably because Mother taught me at home in the Winter. We had to go to school nine years to get out of the eighth grades because the first year was called beginners, etc.
When I was in the second grade we moved to Holbrook and went to a two room school. Mrs. James Blaisdell was our teacher. Geneva was in the beginner class that year. When I was in first grade I went to Holbrook in the Fall with Mr. Don Noble as a teacher. In the Spring I’d gone back to Nelson with a Mr. Fullen as teacher. So it was good to have a lady teacher again. I always liked school. In the third grade we moved to Malad for the beginning of school. Our brother Grant was born there, but it wasn’t long until we moved back to Holbrook and finished the year with Mrs. Blaisdell as teacher again.
I was baptized while living at Malad by Mr. Christian Hutteballe in Deep Creek, which wasn’t very deep at that time. He walked up and down the Creek to find a hole big enough and then I had to have it done over as I stuck my foot out the first time. I was confirmed in the Star Theater where the Second Ward held their Sacrament Meetings. It sure seemed funny to me going to school in Malad where everybody in the room was in the same grade. I never had this experience again until I was in high school.
My childhood was a happy one. In the summer we would go to the creek, which was West of our home about half a mile, and go swimming, but never on Sunday. That was one day we had to stay out of the creek. When we brought friends with us home from Sunday School it was hard. They sometimes would coax us to go anyway but I never did. Besides swimming we like to pick flowers. Mother had glasses of wild flowers in the house all summer long. We had a pony so we would play with and ride that, too. We weren’t allowed to have a saddle in case we fell off, because our Mother had caught her foot in a stirrup when she was a girl and had been badly hurt. We’d climb up the horse’s front leg, and ride like the wind. If we fell off, the pony stopped instantly so we never got hurt badly.
I also like to read and would read everything I could get my hands on. Mother would get out of patience with me because I would read a magazine while helping get dinner, setting the table, and even washing the dishes. I always could entertain myself and even as a child I liked to be alone at times.
When I was seven years old, Father was in the hospital in Salt Lake City when Mother became very sick. I didn’t know what the matter was when she woke me up in the night. All our neighbors had moved away for the winter but that evening a man had been seen at the Fred Palmer home. Mother wrote a note, lit a lantern, wrapped me up warm, and sent me after the man. I’ve never been so scared in my life. The man was a stranger just moving into our community, but he went after help. Before help came, Mother gave birth to a little premature baby boy. He only lived three weeks. He was named Dwight. The man, Will Palmer, has always remembered and commented on this night. We had the funeral in our home. Now there were two little graves in the cemetery up on the hill in Holbrook and one in the Elwood cemetery. His coffin was also a homemade one. Mother always said he was her prettiest baby.
When I was in the Fourth grade the teacher, Mr. Howard Grant, put me into the fifth grade after about one month of school. The Fifth grade was the hardest one I was ever in. That spring we moved back to Elwood. Father had bought his brother Andrew’s farm. He stayed out at Holbrook only coming to Elwood about every other weekend. That winter, 1916, was a terrible one. Snow piled up into big drifts, blizzards raged, below zero temperatures became quite common. Infact, the weather acted like it was rebelling against the world, for that was the time of the First World War. Times were hard. The fruit had frozen the summer before so we didn’t even have much canned fruit. For a long time we had no potatoes. Then Father sent a cardboard box full of potatoes not much larger than marbles, but oh they were good. The best I’ve ever tasted. In April our brother, Woodrow was born, and as soon as school was out we moved back to Holbrook. It wasn’t so good to live like we were, with our father away. Mr. Guy Johnson was my teacher at Elwood and I sure liked him. That was the only time that music and nature study were taught to me in the elementary grades. Carter E. Grant was my seventh grade teacher. The two rooms in the school wouldn’t hold all the pupils so the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades were held in a room in the basement of the church. This was a dark room with the basement windows on the North and up near the ceiling. It’s a wonder any of us had any eyesight left.
Flu Epidemic
The next year was the terrible flu year. Spanish Influenza was a disease that took the lives of many at that time. It just couldn’t seem to be controlled and everybody was scared of it. I guess our Father must have carried it home from some place because our family was the first to get it in Holbrook. Schools were closed and no one was allowed in any public building without wearing a gauze mask. Mother was very sick. When the Doctor finally got there he pronounced it pneumonia. Father was awful sick at the same time. He would lie in bed and give her the medicine, and also take his own, while I made mustard plasters. Someone would come down from town and bring us groceries and the mail. But they wouldn’t come any further than the gate. Father asked me to send for the Elders to administer to Mother. They stayed outside the house to pray for her. Finally the whole family was down but me. I don’t know how I could have stood it if our good neighbors, the Quicks, hadn’t come. They came right into the home to sit with the family at night, so I could get some sleep. They also cut our wood to keep the fires going. Our brother, Grant, was awful sick, too. He seemed to be the sickest of the children. Neither the Quicks or I ever got the flu. At Christmas time Father was able to get up and sit for a while, and some of the children. All were still weak. Mother and Grant were still in bed. I made ginger snaps for Christmas. I guess they were quite a mess, but I figured we had to have cookies. I was also Santa Claus. When Grant got well he had to be taught all over again how to walk.
When I was twelve years old I was put to work on the farm. I worked all summer long the next few years, until I was sixteen. By that time Glenden was old enough to take over. I did the plowing, harrowing, walking back of the harrow, drilling, mowing, raking, and loaded and stacked hay and grain. We cut the grain with a header and stacked it, then waited for the threshing machine. This was an exciting time. A cook shack usually came along so the men could be fed and the smells that came from it was enough to make one’s mouth water. Afterwards it was fun to play on and in the straw stack. At first we’d sink up to our necks but after it settled we’d climb to the top and roll down the sides.
After missing a year of school it was good to get started again in the Eighth grade with a Mr. George Chadwick of Burley, Idaho, as a teacher. He refused to teach in a cellar, his words, so we were moved up onto the stage of the church. We girls planned all winter the kind of graduating clothes we would get. We finally decided on white pleated skirts and light blue blouses. Mr. Chadwick had different ideas. He didn’t like it out there too well and he wasn’t putting himself out planning graduation exercises. As soon as the last day of school arrived he was off for home. Our diplomas were sent to us from the superintendent at Malad a few days later, minus our teacher’s signature. That was our graduation. But Mother got the skirt and blouse for me anyway, and it was my best dress that summer. She also gave me a jade necklace for a graduation present.
While I was in 8th grade I got my first job in the church. Maude Smith Burton was a teacher in the school. She was put in as Primary President so she got us 8th grade girls as Primary teachers. I was a teacher of twelve year old girls. They were almost as old as me and included my sister Geneva. I taught Primary until I went away to High School. I attended 9th grade at Holbrook though. Mr. Charles Simpson was my first year High School teacher, with his father teaching us English. My sister Mary Lou, who is twenty-three years younger than me, also had Mr. Simpson as a teacher when she finished high school, and he is now Superintendent of our school and our youngest son, Donald is in school.
High School at Bear River
As Fall approached the year I should have been a sophomore, we had quite a problem to solve. Should I go on to school, and if so where would I live? Holbrook was almost an isolated community in the winter. We would be snowed in for days at a time and to get to Malad was a whole day’s travel with a team and sleigh, so if we received any more education it meant leaving home.
Great Grandma Mortensen had died in July of that year and Grandma still had a houseful at home, five, but she said I could live with her and go to High School. Grandmother was a hardworking woman and very independent. They had a car but she didn’t drive it but she could handle her horse and buggy and that’s what she would do. When she wanted to go someplace she would harness Old Bonnie onto the little black topped buggy, and she was off to town, church, Relief Society or just to visit. She waited on me as well as her own family, and tried to spoil me. I was the oldest in our family and used to hard work, but she was almost afraid to let me do things that I had been doing for years, like ironing my own clothes. She saw that I attended church, M.I.A. and the school affairs that I should go to. I really enjoyed that year of school. I can’t say the same for the next two years.
The next year I started by staying at Alma Theurer in Tremonton working for my room and board. They had a large, beautiful house, and I would get up early enough in the morning to go through this house, sweeping, dusting, and then get breakfast, do dishes, do the bedroom work and mop the kitchen floor before I went to school. I would walk to school and would almost always arrive late. I was always tired but I will say this, when I arrived home the house would be as neat and clean as when I left it. I stayed there until Thanksgiving. Geneva had been staying with another family, the Gines. Grandmother said Geneva could stay with her the rest of the year so I went to the Glines. This place was just opposite from the Theurers. I would get breakfast and leave it on the back of the stove because the family was still in bed. When I’d get home from school the breakfast dishes would be piled in the sink, lunch dishes on the table. What a mess. I worked hard but it was after school, many a time though, I’d be hanging out the clothes at ten at night. I don’t see how they stood the upset house everyday, like having the work done at night.
I graduated in May, 1924. I had a new tan crepe and lace dress, with shoes and hat to match. Geneva had crochet a yoke and lace for the bottom of a petticoat for me to wear. I was really disappointed though, when Mother didn’t come for my graduation. Father came in the morning and then went on to Ogden on business. When evening came, I walked alone to the High School, but he did get back in time for the exercises. I went home that summer and wondered what I should do next. I didn’t see how I could go on to college. Mr. Glines died of appendicitis and Mrs. Glines was pregnant. She wrote and asked if I wouldn’t come back and live with her until she was up and around after her twins were born, so I went back again. It was a lot better this time. I had the whole day to do the work and no more to do than I’d been doing and now I was being paid.
College
Then here came a letter from our school district at home. They had been having quite a time getting teachers because there weren’t places for them to stay. They asked if I wouldn’t go to summer school and teach the following winter. I borrowed money from the bank in Tremonton. This summer course was a hard one. They tried to cram us into two years of teaching methods. In one class, geography methods, we had to read seventy-five outside references, two of them complete books, and make reports on them, as well as our class work, in just half the course. We didn’t have time to do any chasing around. I went to Albion on my birthday. I believe this was the first time that I was in a place alone, where I didn’t know one person. I couldn’t get into the dormitory, so I had moved into the home of Tremaynes. They had a large family and to help out with their living were renting two bedrooms to students. That evening I left that place to go up to the school dining room for my dinner, alone and scared, when someone called. I turned around and this girl caught up with me. Her name was Elva Hobdey. She was a beginner, too. She also lived alone at the home of Mrs. Chadburn, a widow with a forty year old blind son. Elva showed me around the school and then took me to her home. She had the parlor of this house. It was a lovely room. Her bed was a couch by day. A lovely carpet was on the floor and nice curtains and drapes at the windows and it had an outside door. Before the evening was over Elva asked me to be her roommate. I was so thrilled. We studied together all that summer and really enjoyed each other. Mrs. Chadburn was so nice to us. When we came home tired and hungry she would have something for us. I think we ate more than our rent for her lovely room. She enjoyed having us there, too.
Teaching Days
Then my teaching days began. I wrote everything I wanted to say that first day. As I watched the boys and girls coming to school my heart beat faster and faster. Because I was new I tried extra hard to be a good teacher. It was a one room school, but I only had three grades, First, Third and Fifth. The next summer I went back to summer school and lived in the dorm with Geneva as a roommate. The work wasn’t so hard this year. I had a lovely summer. Albion was a little town in a beautiful valley with creeks and streams, green meadows and the most beautiful wild flowers. I loved it, and had so much more fun in college than I had the last two years of high school. Elva was also back and lived on the same floor in the dorm.
Next winter I had a new First grade so I had four grades to teach. Geneva got married on the 1st. day of December to Charles S. Evans. I went back to Albion the next summer and again that winter. I didn’t live in the dorm that winter but lived in a little apartment upstairs in the Snodgrass home with Dollie Thompson as a roommate. She lived at our home the next winter and taught at my old school while I taught Third, Fourth and Fifth grades at Holbrook. While at Albion we both taught Sunday School classes. I also taught Sunday School while I was teaching. Now I was put in as supervisor of the Religion classes which were taught in the schools at that time. I was also put in the Stake Sunday School over the Book of Mormon Department. This meant visits to other wards, once a month if road conditions were okay. I taught a different class in our ward, which made it bad as I had two sets of lessons to prepare. I was secretary of the M.I.A. for two years at Holbrook and on the recreation committee of the M.I.A. with Fern and Golden Willie.
Marriage
It was this September that I met my future husband. I had gone to a dance at Malad and he asked me for a dance. Before the evening was over, he had asked me for a date. This started our romance. He went to Park City to work in the mines and me to my teaching but he kept the letters coming. The next summer I worked at Hoffmans in Cedar Hill cooking for men. This was a tedious summer and a lonesome one. I put up lunches for the men to eat at noon so the work wasn’t hard. A big breakfast in the morning and a big supper at night. Mrs Hoffman would ride off on her horse every day too, so I had the day to myself. The men worked long hours and were ready to go to their bunkhouse and to bed right after supper. I was glad when summer was over and I could get back to teaching.
In October Raymond had a ruptured appendix. He had been home all Fall helping with the harvesting. It took a long time for a ruptured appendix to heal. When he left the hospital he still had tubes in his side for drainage. We decided to get married while he was convalescing. We did, the day after Christmas, so we had the holidays for our honeymoon. We were married by a Judge in the Malad Courthouse. I went back to my school and Ray went up to Emmett, Idaho, to work with the sheep on Andy Little’s ranch. Ray came after me when school was out, but I got so sick at his Mother’s home in Malad that he called and quit his job and started working here. Our first home was a little rented house owned by Mrs. Pelton on the east side of town. It was fun to keep house but I was sick a lot. Ray would go to work early in the morning and not get home until late in the evening. I had one of my brothers taking turns staying with me. Ray only ate with us Saturday evenings and Sundays. In August it was my Sister Doris’s turn to stay with us. Because it had rained, Ray was home when on the twenty-first our beautiful little daughter, Wilma arrived. Although we were not expecting her for a while she was very welcome. She was blond as a little one could be with blue eyes and very pretty. We were so thrilled and proud of her.
That Fall we moved into Ray’s mother’s home as she went to California for the winter. We stayed there until January when we moved to the Ranch four miles north of Malad. Ray was going to run it for his Mother. This was the beginning of the Depression and times were rough. On November 10, another beautiful little girl, Nedra, joined our family. She was as dark as Wilma was blond. She had black hair and dark eyes which later turned hazel like mine. Her hair turned to a pretty dark brown. Both girls had lots of hair when born. One year and three days later Raymond Jr. joined our family on November 13th. He was all boy and looked it. We were so thrilled to have him after two little girls. This was our hardest year financially. I had milk leg and was a long time getting well. That year we had eighty-five dollars when we were through harvesting and paying our expenses. The nurse who came to the ranch each day to take care of me charged ten dollars and she took care of me for ten days. Things were cheap but even then it was hard to buy the things we needed. We had only received 25 cents a bushel for our wheat. I remember Mother bought me a pretty new house dress for 35 cents. All things were priced accordingly. After the nurse quit coming, my sister, Geneva, whose husband Charlie had died in April, came and took care of me for a while. Then Mother took her turn.
Those first years I made my own soap, nasty smelling stuff, but it did do the work. To wash clothes we would first run through a washer, which we turned by hand for twenty minutes each batch, then boil the white clothes on the stove. Even after that we sometimes had to rub the dirty spots on a scrub board. Washing clothes was an all day job, so it was quite a relief when, before our fourth child was born, Ray came home with a new Maytag washer run by a gas motor as we still didn’t have electricity. No more turning washer or boiling clothes.
Our son, Robert, was born on April 16, 1934, at his Grandma Evans home. He was our smallest baby and very pretty. He looked more like a girl. He was so finely featured. In January he had red measles along with the other children. These were very hard on them and it left him with a weak heart. From then on his life was rough. When he was only four years old, we had been to Sunday School and had just come home, when he ran into a pan of boiling water. The water ran from the top of his head down. As I pulled off his shirt and tie the skin came right off with it. We rushed him to the hospital. He got an infection in his head and was in the hospital for a while. It was all summer before all the scalds healed. This didn’t help his heart any. When in the third grade he got Rheumatic Fever and had to stay out of school the rest of that school year. During the next few years we were always worried about him. One teacher, Mrs. Zudel, told me she was almost afraid to look at him. He would play outdoors at recess and come into the warm room and pass out. He did this several times in those years. It would scare the children as well as the teachers. He grew up to be our tallest child, 6 feet 3 inches, and a fine man. I guess the cod liver oil we fed him paid off. (Marcia’s note: I used to resent Bob because Mother made ME eat cod liver oil because Bob was sickly!! AND LIVER!!!…Bob, you owe me one!)
On May 10, 1937, our daughter Marcia was born in the old Malad Hospital. She weighed 10 pounds at birth, with big dark eyes and black hair. Although there were seven babies in the hospital, she was so pretty, the nurses would run and get her and show her to the visitors. They also took her into the other patient’s rooms. I heard the lady in the room across from me say disgusted like “Well, I think my baby is beautiful, too!” The nurses got quite a laugh out of that. I think I would have answered the same way.
It looked like this was the end of our family, but seven years later here came Donald on June 26, 1944. I had to fight for him. The doctors didn’t want me to have another baby because of my health. Because I insisted, Dr. O.H. Mabey refused to take my case, so old Dr. Garst was our Doctor. When Don was born Dr. Garst brought me a beautiful bouquet of talisman roses, because we had kept the baby. Besides this, my room was filled with flowers. I’d never had flowers like this before. We’ve always felt like he was a little special because we did have to fight for the privilege of having him. He’d more than paid us for our troubles. He was only eight months old when I had to go to the hospital with my heart. From then on Don was his Daddy’s baby. I was in bed for four months and was then taken to Salt Lake City to the Holy Cross Hospital. There they found that my trouble was an inward goiter. I was there when Don had his first birthday. After an operation I was able to come home. My baby wouldn’t have a thing to do with me. He had forgotten me completely. My nerves were shot and it was a long slow pull to get really well again. It was during this sick spell that my sister Doris came with her two children while her husband was in the service, and helped us out. She cooked for men during haying, and took care of the children. Ray’s mother also did all she could. At times they were both here at once. After they left, our two girls, Wilma and Nedra, had the load on their shoulders. We are very proud of our family. Each one has learned how to work and be good managers. Each of the oldest five had married fine men and women, all in the temple, and each are raising families to the best of their ability.
It was a happy day for the family when Raymond was baptized on 1 December 1940 along with his son Raymond Jr. He had started going to church when the children had to give two and half minute talks in the Reynolds Branch where we attended church. This got him started reading and studying, until he was satisfied that this was the right church. The happiest day of our lives was the 9th, of July 1948, when we went through the Logan Temple and had our six lovely children sealed to us.
My Church Positions
While going to the Reynolds Branch I first taught in the Primary. We only held Primary in the summer months so would try to complete a whole year’s Primary in that short time. I was also secretary of the Sunday School beginning when Marcia was a baby. I’d hold her on my lap while taking minutes and take her with me to the classes to gather up the roll books, until she was old enough to go to class. I held this position until I was too sick to take care of it before Don was born.
I taught the Social Science Class in Relief Society for a couple of years. Then our Literature Teacher moved to Ogden. I was Second Counselor in the Relief Society beginning in 1946, with Leona Williams as President and Hattie Evans First Counselor. We could not get anybody to take those literature lessons, so I took the class. Plenty of sisters didn’t mind giving the Social Science lessons. I held these jobs until the Reynolds Branch was combined with the Third Ward at Malad.
In the Third Ward I was put on the Girl’s program until it was taken over by the M.I.A. I was also Historian of the Primary for two years and Teacher of the eight year olds. On 16 September, 1951, I became Secretary of the Third Ward M.I.A. In September 1953, I became a block teacher for the Relief Society of the Third Ward, the first time I’d held this position.
In August, 1956, I started teaching the 7 and 9 year olds in Jr. Sunday School. In December 1957, the Bishopric asked me to be age group Counselor in the M.I.A. This meant giving up my secretarial work. In September 1959, I went to Sunday School Stake Leadership Meeting, and the whole Stake Board was released and new members to conduct the classes were put in. I was chosen to take care of courses 4 and 5, the same classes I had in the Ward which I still had to teach. I was now really overloaded with church. I held all these positions until October 1961, when I was taken to the hospital with my heart. I stayed there for ten days and went home, but in about ten more days in November, I was back in the hospital for another twelve days. Because of this sickness I gave up the Stake job and the Sunday School class. For a few months I didn’t do anything except try to get well but I wasn’t released from the M.I.A. or as a block teacher.
For a few years I was the Corresponding Secretary for the War Mothers of Oneida County, I gave this job up because of the heavy load I was carrying in the church.
August, 1998
This is as far as Mother’s story went. Mother and Dad moved to a little house in Malad in 1971. They remained active in the Third ward until their health became so that they couldn’t go anymore. Mother worried about Dad’s health and he was in and out of the hospital, about 1978 Mother’s health started to go down. She had a multitude of problems and the Doctor just treated the symptoms. In July of 1980 she was diagnosed with advanced Breast Cancer and she died Oct. 14, 1980. During those 3 months she tried to make peace with everyone she thought she had offended. She also sold some of her handiwork for her funeral because she didn’t want her family to have that burden.
The last three months of her life were so very hard because she never left the hospital. She was in a great deal of pain but she never complained. It was interesting the last days of her life because she could see and was talking to people on the other side of the veil, calling them by name. Mother, at one time had a baby at 7 months which was either dead or died shortly after birth. Mother had an “unseen” little girl by her side the last four days of her life which she talked to and admired…she couldn’t believe that we couldn’t see her. Mother was perfectly rational except for these “unseen”people.
After all the Mother’s worrying, Dad didn’t die until July 1988. He would raise little pansies and walk up to her grave every day to give his little bouquet to her. He did this until he became too infirm to walk. He was always worried that after he died she wouldn’t accept him on the other side. I’m betting she was waiting with wide open arms.
Some of my earlier memories of Mother was how pretty she was. I never saw her in pants until after they moved down to the little house in Malad. She always had an apron on which really came in handy to carry things…garden produce, wood for the fire, kittens etc. It was also very useful to wipe things up with and wipe children’s noses.
Although Mother never mentioned it in her story, she would tell us how her Mother couldn’t sew so she had a woman come in once a year, stay a week or two, to sew clothes for the children…Mother caught on real quickly and not only learned to sew but started sewing everything…her daughters were the proud recipients of this talent. She always had darling clothes for us. (Well…there were the flour sack panties with “BIG C” across the bottom! They were a little embarrassing when we were swinging on the big swings at school!)
Mother was also very talented with her hand stitching. She made countless quilts for her children and one quilt top for each grandchild. Her crocheting was an absolute art. She always had a big huge garden and would bottle fruit and vegetables all summer long, enough to last the winter.
She was very proud of her six children and their accomplishments…she was very disappointed when Grandchildren didn’t come as soon as she wanted but when they started to come, they came all at once…so she was kept busy sewing and making quilts etc, etc. When the family came together, her and Dad were so happy…they loved their family.
The following paragraph was on different copy of her story that had a lot of pictures along the sides of her stories, the stories are repeats of the previous pages, only this last paragraph is different so it added here:
This is where Mabel stopped writing her life story. Mabel’s health did improve some for a few years until the last three or four when it was really poor. She and Raymond sold the farm in 1970 to their sons, Robert and Donald, and moved into Malad. She kept very busy with her American War Mothers activities (which she dearly loved), with her sewing (she made beautiful pieced quilts for each of her 25 grandchildren), with her handiwork of all kinds and she also liked to read and do crossword puzzles. She and Raymond also spent a lot of time doing temple work at the Logan Temple two or three days a week. She also continued her Visiting Teaching calling until her death and taught Jr. Sunday School until around seventy years of age. She always loved teaching, especially little children. She and Raymond celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary with a big party on the 24 November 1979 which was held at the Deep Creek Inn with most of their 6 children and spouses, 24 grandchildren and 8 great grandchildren in attendance. She passed away 14 October 1980, after a long illness at the age of 75 and is buried in the Malad City Cemetery.