I was born in Smithfield, Utah, and was the last of six children born to Martin Roskelley and Lila Hancey Roskelley. Father was born July 21, 1895. Mother was born Sept. 23, 1899.
Faye, the oldest child, was born Jan. 15, 1918. Jeanne came next, on the 12th of June, 1921. Wendell was the first boy, born on May 4, 1923. David was born Dec. 28, 1929, but lived just a few months and passed away on Mar. 7, 1930. Maurice was born on May 14, 1931. I was born on Nov. 10, 1932.
Father was a salesman for Wolverine Shoes and traveled throughout the Western States through most of my growing up years. He worked for the Wolverine Company for 21 years, until I was 14 years of age. During all those years he would be “on the road'' for extended periods of time. Often we would not see him for three weeks at a time, then he would be home for a few days. It would seem to some a rather strange life for a family to have, but it was all we knew and all of our lives went along rather happily, with the knowledge that we were a secure and generally loving home. Mother, was our mainstay throughout those year; always there, with routines of life that gave me a feeling of stability and safety.
In those early days, meals were always on time, with all of us together.
Mother was quiet a kind soul. She was always a loving mother to us, with a great sense of humor. All visitors seemed welcome in our home. Relatives were often dropping in, and when there, seemed always to enjoy themselves and add an extra dimension to our family life. Mother had desserts to offer them and the conversations were generally interesting.
I recall the first night I slept outside of our house. I was about 5 years old. Being an adventurous child, I made it all the way to our front porch. We were all there, Maurice, Mary Ann, our cousin from the next house to the west, and a bunch of unremembered peers. It was just getting dark, and we were curled up in our blankets which we had taken from our bedrooms. Our favorite pastime was trying to scare each other with wild stories. While we were engaged in story telling we saw a stranger coming down the sidewalk in front of the house. He looked like an old trap. It was the middle of the depression, and beggars came through town on a regular basis. This fellow looked unusually menacing, considering the following observations that were made of him. He held a crocked cane in a crocked hand. He had a stooped back, an unshaven face, and had a large hat pulled down over his forehead. He held a partially filled dirty sack over his shoulder. Stopping in front of our house, and looking our way, he slowly turned toward the house, and after staring at us for a minute or two, started walking toward us. If the stories hadn't done there job, the old man did. As we all leaped from our bedding and jumped toward the front door, the stranger spoke. The voice, though disguised, had a familiar sound. Yes, the stranger was no stranger after all, but my loving and caring mother trying to scare the wits out of us.
Mother was not only one of the world’s great characters; as well as being one of the world's greatest spellers. She could visualize most any word in her mind’s eye that you could conjure up and spell it to you as though she was reading it from a page placed before her. She loved to have her family and their friends around the house. Throughout her life she was surrounded with friends and relatives. She was a superb conversationalist, and had more people who loved her than anyone I will ever know. She loved to write poetry, and did so all of her life. It was a great being around her.
I recall as a young boy sitting on the kitchen floor rug during countless winter evenings with Mother settled in her corner overstuffed chair pealing apples, cutting them in quarters, and handing them to those present on the end of her knife. By that old chair set a rounded top radio on a small table, with a stand lamp between the two. I recall the many youthful hours that were spent sitting on the floor next to that chair, under the yellow warm glow of that lamp, listening to “I Love A Mystery”, “Lux Presents Hollywood'' and other weekly shows that played such an important part in the leisure hours of all our lives. There was a large, modern radio and record player in our living room. In my grade school years, I would run home from school and turn on KSL at 3:30 P.M., and be glued there for the next couple of hours listening to 15 minute shows of adventures. “Jack Armstrong”, “The Lone Ranger” and “Terry and the Pirates” were some of my favorites.
As a youngster, our home and back yard seemed wonderful. The home was well furnished and rather exceptional in many ways for a small farming community in the depression. Father had made the east half of the basement into a most attractive family room. The room contained a large stone fireplace that blazed merrily on many winter evenings. The room was decorated in Indian motif, with wonderful items of pottery and rugs that Dad gathered from the Southwestern States. Father loved his 8 millimeter movie camera hobby. He was very artistic and a talented photographer. He loved Logan Canyon and Yellowstone. Hours of our youth were spent in that basement’s “East Room” watching those home movies. Often the room was filled with company; with the fire blazing behind the projector, and mother passing out glasses of 7 Up and her famous date bread.
Our back yard seemed to be comparable to the Bourchart Gardens when we were three or four feet tall. Dad hired a fellow from Logan by the name of Swaybugh. He worked on the construction of fish ponds, garden beds, and a large fireplace in that wonderful back yard for a summer. We ended up with three fish ponds, each being ten to twelve feet wide, and about three feet deep. One had a stone waterfall with a four foot windmill standing by it. There was a wishing well, umbrella and chairs on the lawn area, flower beds with rocks from the local mountains, and the fireplace in the deep center.
Maurice and I spent much of our summertime weeding and edging those flower beds during our early years.
Faye and Jeanne were married by the time I was seven or eight years old,
but I still recall that before their marriages they seemed to be the social center of the town. Making chocolate cake and vacuuming the green living room carpet in preparation of the arrival of an ongoing series of boy friends was the order of the day.
Jeanne was a hard working student, along with dating the boys, and both were good workers in the home, especially when the fellows were on their way from Logan.
Faye had the ability to enlist help in her duties. One day the house was empty, except for Faye, Maurice, and myself. Faye told us that if we
would do the dishes, we could borrow Wendell's Model A ford convertible and take a ride. The dishes were soon done. We ran next door and bought a hand full of all day suckers from the grocery store. Off we went to deliver them to all the girls in Smithfield.
I was holding the candy, and Maurice was driving. We had made one or two deliveries, when Ed Pitcher the stopped us. He was the state patrolman who lived in Smithfield. He asked Maurice if he was ten years old. Maurice answered, “hell no, I'm twelve”. Mr. Pitcher gave no citation, but strongly recommended that we head for home, and wait a few years before we deliver the rest of the candy. We followed his advise to the letter. By the way, Maurice was only nine years old at the time.
When I was about six years old, Maurice and I both received the world's greatest BB guns for Christmas. We were up before the earliest light, standing at our open front door, firing away at the trees in our front parking area. This was one of the greatest gifts of my life. Our lives seemed to revolve around those instruments of terror and delight.
Countless hours of hunting birds throughout the neighborhood brought wonderful days to our lives. I shudder to think of the judgment when I recall all those birds, but at the time, their well being wasn't too high on our priority list.
In those days, all the young children had heavy snowsuits for the winter.
They seemed to be about an inch thick at the time. Maurice had a green outfit while mine was red. Wendell was ten years older than I and the man of the house when Dad was ''on the road". He was not so old that he couldn't join in on some of our ongoing mischief. Soon after that memorable BB gun Christmas the parents were away. Wendell had us put on our snowsuits, place wastebaskets over our heads, and run through the living room, while he set in the overstuffed chair and fired our guns at the wastebaskets. On occasion, we felt the sting of a pellet in the rear. I recall it was most exciting.
When W.W.II started, many items disappeared from the stores. Candy bars, Jello, much of the meat supply, were a few items in short supply. Tires for the cars, and gasoline were in very short supply. Traffic on the highways was limited to thirty five mites per hour. Nothing was so dear to us in those days as those little bb balls for our guns.
Our fish ponds had beautiful goldfish that were often ten to twelve inches in length., For us, the main attraction was the penny hoppers that danced on top of the water. These were our Japanese Battleships, and they were under constant attach from our BB guns. Every few days we were into the ponds, after lowering the water level to about half depth, and retrieved our ammunition. Shooting into the ponds was our only way of recycling that priceless ammunition.
We owned a long wooden sled that could be pulled by a car. Wendell was in high school at North Cache and was the proud owner of a yellow Model A Ford convertible. The radiator always leaked, and had to be filled before each use, but that was only a small inconvenience. He would tie the sled behind the Model A and pull us through the streets of Smithfield. In those days the city streets were plowed for snow, but the roads seemed to be covered with ice and snow most of the time. The streets must have been nearly deserted, for Wendell routinely would slam on his breaks in the intersections and spin a 360 degree thriller.
Christmas in the Roskelley house was something to behold. Dad had some beautiful ceiling decorations. We made the ceiling a checkerboard, with string attached to nails placed every couple of feet in the crown molding, and then stretched across the room from north to south and east to west.
Dad's decorations were hung from each point string crossing. They consisted of three foil stars, silver, red, green, in three dimensions, hanging down with a few inches of string separating them and holding them together. It was a beautiful sight. When the furnace fans were running they danced in the air. Over the fireplace was a silver reindeer, propelled by a small electric engine, swinging back and forth in front of the mirror. The Tree was always too large for the room, and had to loose its top. Each and every Christmas Mother would say, "Why didn't you get one that would fit” but dad paid no attention; the next year it was the same size.
Baseball played a major roll in our lives. Father had played catcher for the Smithfield baseball team when he was a young man. In those days, the team was semi-professional. They brought in players from as far away as Chicago. One of the Chicago players lived with us one season. Baseball gloves were always in our bedrooms, and in the summer months we were often playing catch on the east side of our house, which we appropriately called the east lawn. Wendell and Maurice played catcher for the school
teams and for the Little Leagues. I always wanted to be on first base.
I remember an incident involving Bob Adams. Bob latter married my sister Jeanne after her first husband, Boyd Sorenson passed away. Bob used to court Jeanne before she married Boyd. On one occasion Bob had parked his roadster automobile in front of our house while he was visiting inside. It didn't take a lot of effort for Maurice and me to take the emergency brake off and start the car moving west, down the slightly declining road. One and 1/2 blocks later, the road divided with a shallow ravine between the two roads. Bob's car came to rest on the incline to the ravine, just off the road, and far away from our home that it was out of sight. That little act caused a fare amount of commotion. No one in the family ever seemed to know how the car rolled down the street and nearly into the ditch.
The only time I ever saw Dad really get after us was the time that he tried to oil something with our favorite water pistol. Dad's oil can was easily converted into a water pistol. It was a much better water pistol after the oil was removed and filled from the garden hose. It could shot twenty feet with a pencil thin stream. So in Dad's absence, it never held oil. I remember having to remove the oil many times to return the gun to its most preferred function, but don't remember replacing the oil very often. On this occasion we should have done just that for when Dad tried to oil something and had water come out instead of oil, his face went a bright crimson, and I had the opportunity of seeing Dad run for the first time in my life. I vividly recall seeing him running north, across the street in front of our house, headed for the city park across the street, with Maurice approximately six feet in front of him. The space between the two never closed as the two winded their way through the bushes in the park and vanished in the distance. Dad never caught him.
One of Samuel Roskelley's old houses stood to the east of out home on the corner of 1sr West and Main Street in the earliest days of my life. It was a large wooden two story home and I don’t recall that it was ever occupied during my life. When I was about 5 years old the vacant home was torn down and replaced with a new American Grocery Store. Some of the boards from the old home were placed behind our garage in a vacant lot. Our garage was detached from our house and was located in the far south eastern corner of our gardened back yard. We owned unimproved property that was about 50 feet deep behind our developed yard. The two areas were separated by a row of tall evergreen trees and a fence. Some of the area behind the back fence was used to store our clinkers that accumulated during the winter months from the furnace, waiting for the spring clean up. The area was the home of our clothes lines, where all washed clothes were hung before clothes dryers were invented. Maurice and I spent many hours using those boards to construct cabins. Our greatest effort was a two room shack. We used empty cigar boxes obtained from the grocery store, nailed to the walls for cupboards. The first night following the construction of our two room masterpiece, we decided to sleep in it. We placed a candle in one of the open cigar boxes on the wall. By the light of the candle, we looked around the room from the floor, as we lay under our blankets. All seemed rather homey and secure until we spotted a large tarantula climbing down the wall, past the candle. Because we now lived next door to the American Food Store we soon found that the bananas being brought in from South America often were accompanied with unregistered wildlife. It took us about three steps to cover the distance between the cabin and our home, dragging the blanket and screaming. To this day, I don't know who turned out the lights (the candle).
In those days it was the policy of The Church to have two youth speakers give short talks in the opening exercises of Sunday School. They were called Two and a Half Minute Talks. When I was six years old the time came for my first invitation to be a part of our ward's forensic group of youth speakers. Mother wrote the little talk, and the family helped me rehearse. I had memorized it word perfect. I still recall the view, as I stood in front of our little ward membership, staring across the tops of the heads in a state of shock. Following two and a half minutes of silence, the gods were merciful and allowed me to take my seat.
The Ward Chapel was located across the street and two building lots west. The city park was immediately across the street. Dad was on the road, as a traveling salesman, on most weekends. Mother would get us ready for church, but I seldom recall her being there with me. Maurice and I would go together. When he was in junior high, he was the pianist for some of the ward meetings. As he approached high school age, I was the sole attender.
Those early years in the Smithfield Second Ward were viewed lightly at the time but, in retrospect, they had a profound impact on my lifetime beliefs. The bishop was Asa D. Weeks, who was a dairy farmer of large physical stature, and a man who possessed a great heart and a strong testimony of The Gospel. He lacked any real degree of polish and worldly professionalism, and for these reasons was a poor example for Maurice.
Sister Weeks was a bright woman. She taught me in one or two of my Sunday School classes. Through her efforts, some of the basics of the Gospel were brought to me.
Later in my life I learned that my great grandfather, Wm. Hyde, was a small boy, living next door to Warren Cowdery, when the first proof pages of The Book Of Mormon were being set to print. Each night, Oliver Cowdery would bring the new proof pages from the printers to his brother's home. Warren would invite the Hyde Family over, and together, they would read them. William Hyde stated that they read them no faster than they believed them.
Sister Weeks explanation of the restored gospel seemed as though
I already knew about it and knew what she said was true. My spirit had an open door to her teachings, and helped create a foundation for my life-long beliefs.
Martha Pederson was Sister Weeks next door neighbor. Martha was a convert to the church from Holland, and was one of Mother's closest friends. She was a plain and outspoken woman, but of great intelligence.
I was blessed to have her as one of my early church teachers, and learned much of what little I knew about the life of Christ and the restoration from her.
My years in Jr. high were best remembered as years of a love affair with sports. Football and basketball were my central interests. Our garage was located in the rear of our back yard, in the southeast corner. The rear of the garage was behind the fence that separated the flower garden from a no man's area. A basketball hoop was built on the back of the garage..
The playing floor was a rather uneven dirt surface. Much of my early teen years were spent playing there, often alone, occasionally with a group of friends. Basketball was an enjoyable and major part of our jr. high activity, but not our only interest.
We had a track meet scheduled with Lewiston Jr High in the spring of the ninth grade. The week before the meet our coach took all boys out to the football field and had us line up on one end of the field. I was lucky enough to win the hundred yard dash to the far end of the field, which qualified me to represent our school in the hundred yard race in Lewiston. I lined up against a boy that stood about four inches shorter than I from the Lewiston School. In addition to the height advantage I noticed that he had a limp.
For a brief moment I had a rush of compassion come over me, but very soon any sympathy vanished. The gun sounded, and all I saw was his green shorts fading in the distance, as he seemed to be taking two steps to my one. My sensation was that of being in concrete.
Grandmother Mary Jane Roskelley lived just east of our garage, on Main Street. She played a major roll in my early life. Grandmother was the oldest daughter of Wm. F. Rigby, the first bishop of Clarkston and Newton, two towns located on the western side of our Cache Valley. Her life was a living legacy of our pioneer heritage. She was a large, strong woman, with tight, gray, wavy hair. She died when she was ninety-four years of age. At that time I was about fourteen, so I only knew her in her latter years. She must have been an achiever in her youth, for I recall that she was a woman of great energy in those advanced years. She would still make her own soap every year. I recall seeing the concrete floor of her unfinished basement nearly covered with drying bars of homemade soap.
Grandmother was filled with common sense and wisdom. She seemed to live on green tea and toast, except for the many meals that we carried to her from mother’s kitchen. On more than one occasion she told Mother that she was more of a daughter to her than her natural girls. Because we lived so close to grandmother, we all felt a grater responsibility to her than others may have felt.
In the summer months grandmother would scrub her front porch on her hands and knees. The porch faced east to the main street of town. In the afternoons, she would sit on the porch and visit with the ladies who stopped for a chat on their way to or from the business section of town. We used to laugh at the fact that Grandmother could always tell us how many ladies would have stopped that day. The number was always in the twenties or thirties.
I never remember Mother being part of the front porch visiting society of grandmothers, for that porch was the center for an older generation.
When our house heated up on the summer days we would find Mother setting on our east lawn. We had a pleasant place there, with a table and umbrella, and four matching garden chairs. Mother seemed to have no trouble in attracting passers by. There were always two or three ladies sitting with her. (Not being on main street, Mother was at a disadvantage in not bringing the total daily count to twenty or thirty, as grandmother could attract).
Grandmother Roskelley would make us sugar sandwiches, made from white bread, butter and sugar. On at least one occasion we helped her make taffy.
Henry and Nellie Hancey were mother's parents. They lived in Hyde Park, Utah, a little town five miles to the south of Smithfield. We visited them often. Their home was a large two story home on a spacious corner lot. On the east side of the home was a large vegetable garden. Grandfather had raised a beautiful garden each year for decades. The straight rows were the envy of the neighborhood, and the harvest was mostly for the needy of the town and for the married children.Grandfather would pull into our driveway with bushels of potatoes, carrots, and other produce on a regular basis. All we raised at our home were flowers, so grandfather's vegetables were a great joy to us.
Grandfather was an Abraham Lincoln type of a man; tall and thin, with bony features. He had been a leading figure in the town for many years, being known for his honesty, wisdom, great farming ability, and general goodness. When he served as mayor, he personally hauled countless loads of gravel with his own equipment to the dirt roads of town in order to make Hyde Park a better place to live. He planted pine trees around the cemetery, and got up before milking time to water them during the hot summer months.
Grandmother Hancey was a real home-body in the years that I remember her, which were naturally her later years. Their home had a large kitchen that today would be called a kitchen-family room. I recall meals eaten with the family there around the Hancey’s large round oak table. The food wasn't prepared in the kitchen, but in an adjoining room called the pantry.
There was an open window with a shelf area between the two rooms to
Allow the food to be passed into the dinning area with ease.
When I was in the ninth grade in Smithfield Jr. High Dad quit his job with Wolverine Shoes. Wolverine had been a part of our family life. The sales manager for the company used to visit us for a few days each year. He traveled to our home from Michigan, and as children we were to be on our best behavior, because this was a big event in the home. Father was always listed as the company’s number one salesman. The success that Father had in the company had given us a sense of security and well-being.
Now those days had ended. Dad left the company and invested most of his life savings into a department store in Logan by the name of Tingwalls. Tingwall's was part of a five store chain owned by Mr. Tingwall, a large gray haired man from Idaho. Dad bought one half of the stock in the Logan Store and became store manager. That year we moved to Logan in the home that became the family home until the death of my parents. I started my sophomore year of high school in Logan.
Beginning in the second decade of our lives, working for wages was a part of our life. By the time I was ten years old, I was working at the next door grocery store. After we moved to Logan, when I was fourteen, I worked in Dad's department store with the assignment to print and place the price tickets on most of the merchandise that was in the store. One summer I worked on the railroad. That job was the worst job of my young life. Maurice and I got the job with Clyde Baugh, whose father was an engineer for the Union Pacific Railroad. We were known as gaudy dancers, using square nosed shovels to tamp gravel under the railway ties, after they had been raised a few inches into the air with jacks. This was called, “raising the track.” Each night we would come home and lay on the front lawn, too tired to get to the house, and say that it was our last day there; only to go back the next day.
Five summers were spent working ten hour days at the Del Monte Cannery in Smithfield. Some of the jobs I did there could only be done by the strong of body and the weak of mind. When I have tried to tell my children of the work I did in my youth, they would ask me if I also had to walk through the snow up hill both ways to get to school. Of course, I had to admit that I did. During my last year at Del Monte I was freed from the sweat shop of the Smithfield Cannery and worked in a warehouse in Logan. There, we were our own bosses. The trucks would come to the docking area of the warehouse and our job was to unload them and stack the case goods into the warehouse. After the cases were stacked, we would often have a short brake before the next truck arrived. I had taken a copy of The Book of Mormon to work and read it during those break periods. This was my first effort to do so in my life. That first time though, I found it very difficult to understand, but recognized it to be the word of God. That feeble beginning in scripture study has led to a life-long addition to studying the gospel.
I have many wonderful experiences and memories from my years at Logan High. I was there just a week or two when elections were held for class officers. My name was placed in nomination for class president. I made it to the finals, but lost in the final vote. It wouldn't have been so bad if I would have ended my political ambitions at that point, but my good friends kept running me for office through all the high school years. I may have been the only fellow in Logan High history to make it to the finals of the student body presidency and every class presidency and lose every final election. We always said that I had many good friends, but not quit enough.
Stan Hatch was the best friend I had in high school. He was a bright fellow, who extended himself to help me become part of the new town and school. We worked together in school projects, played tennis together for years, and rode the hammer together at the county far. Stan was always the social chairman for our group. We had many great parties that were of his making.
The year after we moved to Logan Tingwall's had a devastating fire that destroyed the store. The fire was on Nov. 9th. 1948. The store was overstocked with merchandise for the Christmas Season, so the loss far exceeded the insurance payments. I never heard Father complain over the great loss in our family’s lives. He went to work with the small resources that he had available and started in the direction of opening a new, smaller store in his Roskelley name. There had been a pool hall located two doors south if The Blue Bird Restaurant that had just closed. Dad leased the building. Maurice and I were assigned to do the preliminary cleaning. I shall never forget walking into that vacant pool hall. It was mostly empty, but there was no question what had been there. The stench of beer filled the air.
Empty beer bottles covered the floor. The footage for the store seemed a tiny fraction of our old store. We were a little sick, but went to work cleaning it up.
Dad went to work too. He built a fine store, and established himself as an outstanding businessman of the community.
The store prospered, and was later doubled in size. For his last twenty years in the store he had Wendell join him in management and ownership. Having Wendell there allowed Dad to have time off to be a temple worker. He served as an officiator and later as a sealer in the temple for nineteen years. In the last years of Dad's life, he developed Parkinson's disease which eventually caused him to fall and fracture his hip. Infection from the surgery was never brought under control and ended his life at age eighty one.
I met Joan during the first year I was in Logan High, which was the best thing that has ever happened to me. We dated through a good portion of high school. When I first saw Joan, I not only thought she was the cutest girl I had ever seen, I was presumptuous enough to tell a friend that she was the girl I was eventually going to marry.
I was interested in science and math. in high school, was a fare student, and was given some overly generous recognition upon graduation. I received a few nice awards for scholarship, which I was not worthy of, for there were several class members who were much brighter and more deserving than I Their successes in life in their professions proves the point.
I got my just does on graduation night. Frank Baugh was the teacher over vocal music. As I tried to give the first line of my graduation address, standing before a packed house, and representing the entire graduation class in the Logan Tabernacle, Mr. Baugh knocked over the music stand behind me, and I stood frozen in place as it rolled down the long flight of stairs. It seemed to me that it would never reach it’s destination and allow me to continue on. As I recall, the incident took about half of my allotted time to. But all storms have a silver lining. I had written the talk by myself. It was so melodramatic that the music stand incident was the the highlight of the talk.
My three years at Utah State University were filled with good times and growth experiences. I was not fully prepared for the difficulty of some of the pre-dental courses, and had a time of adjustment from the breeze of high school. Finally getting the hang of it, I had only one B grade in the last four quarters of class work at Utah State. We won't discuss the freshman grades.
I joined The Sigma Chi fraternity as a freshman. In those days, joining a fraternity was the thing to do. I made many good friends through the association and, because I was living at home, it did give me some on campus experience outside of the class environment.
When I started college at Utah State, the Korean war had just started. The concern of bring drafted was with all the males in school. R.O.T.C.
enrollment allowed you to have an exemption from the draft. In three years I graduated from the R.O.T.C. program and was ready to receive my commission upon graduation. But after three years of college I was accepted into dental school at Northwestern and I never received my B.S. Degree, so I never received my 2nd Lieutenant Commission. Acceptance into dental school gave me a further deferment.
Father was always a kind and patient parent. He never failed to support me when I most needed it. Without his financial support to pay the high tuition in dental school, I doubt that I could have received my degree.
Without that degree, my life would have been changed in a most negative way. This financial support came on top of his need to support Maurice in medical school, and was during the years that he was trying to get on his feet financially with his new store. We never thanked him enough for the sacrifice he made in our behalf to aid us in our educational endeavors..
Missionary work in The Church came to a near halt during those years because of the Korean War and I was happy to be going to Chicago to dental school instead of to Korea.
The summer before heading to Chicago was again spent working for Del Monte Canning Company, saving all the income I could to help Joan and me get settled in Chicago. The savings amounted to four hundred dollars. Joan and I had become engaged that past Christmas, but planned our wedding to be August 6th, so that we would be able to head for Chicago immediately after a fifty dollar honeymoon.
We were married in the Logan Temple, with most of our family members in attendance.
We had a wedding dinner in The Blue Bird restaurant and headed for Grandma Budges Bear Lake Cabin for the next three or four days. Joan's parents gave us the choice of a wedding reception or a new Ford Automobile. Roy was then half owner in the Ford Agency in Logan at the time, and a good car to carry us back and forth to Chicago seemed far better than a bunch of towels and dishes.
We had a honeymoon that was quite forgettable. We ended up painting Grandma Budge’s cabin floor, putting a shower curtain in the shower, and doing other fix-up jobs around the cabin. All this was done to make Grandma Budge feel good about letting us use the cabin.
We left the cabin long enough to adventure up to Yellowstone for one night in an inexpensive motel. Every penny was precious to us, as we were headed for Chicago the next week..
Back home, we loaded everything that we owned in the trunk and back seat of the new car and headed for a new adventure. We had no idea where we would sleep the first night in Chicago.
On our third day of traveling we arrived in Chicago. The first major street we pulled onto was the first one way street that we had ever seen. Only one problem so far, we were headed in the wrong direction.
We knew Dave and Mary Gittens. Mary was a Hansen from Smithfield and I had known her as a member of my gradeschool class. Dave was from Hyde Park and had attended Utah State with me. Somehow we found their street and their apartment. Dave had seen another apartment in the attic of a widow’s home and took us to see it. We moved in that hour and stayed for the freshmen year.
We two little souls in a new world got by rather well, but not without some fears and adjustments. Joan got a job in the medical clinic of the Northwestern Medical and Dental building. She worked on the main floor while I attended classes on the upper floors of the building. The first seven floors were used by the Medical School, while the top seven floors were the Dental School. The building was located in downtown Chicago, just half a block from the Lake. Joan worked in the records department of the medical clinic.
The patients were the welfare and the unemployed of Chicago. Fleas and dirt was the order of the day, and for Joan, who had been raised in a clear and rather upper class home, with a Budge for a mother and a retired dentist for a father, it was a change of worlds.
Our landlord told us that the apartment had a private bath, which we thought was unnecessary to explain, for we thought all apartments had private baths. The attic area housed two or three bedrooms for single men in addition to our apartment. The bathroom belonging to our apartment had been used by these men before we moved in, and continued to be used by them when we were not home. It was more convenient for them than going down a flight of stairs to the bath that they had assigned to them by the landlord. We would come home from work and school to find a dirt ring in the tube and a dirty sink. Just part of the new life.
I could write volumes on my dental school experience, but will spare my readers the pain.
One great thing was that almost a third of the class of ninety freshmen were Mormons form Utah or Idaho. The school loved Mormon Boys. This saved our lives, as we made friends with the married couples, some of them lasting through our lives.
For the next four years, our car pool to school was made up of my best friends from the West who we met in Chicago. The one exception to this Western group of friends was the fellow seated to my left throughout my years at Northwestern. His name was Eric Robinson. He was a Jew from Cleveland, Ohio. Eric was a very bright student. He had the highest score in the nation on the dental aptitude test. We enjoyed sharing the struggles and frustrations of school, and spent several Friday evenings together with our dear working wives playing games in our apartments.
Movies were out of the question because of cost. In four years of schooling we saw only one movie, and had hamburgers at the first Golden Arches in the world just twice. Joan made one hundred eighty five dollars a month. Rent averaged over one hundred a month. The few dollars saved over the summer helped on the emergencies, but the budget was close.
We looked forward to vacation time. The first two Christmas' and summer vacations were spent in Logan with our parents. We finished finals at five P.M.. Joan would be just finishing work. I would pick her up at work and start for Logan. Twenty-eight hours later we would pull into our parent’s home, with great rejoicing.
The last three years were spent in Evanston, Ill., a suburb on the lake just north of Chicago. The sophomore year found us in a one room apartment
located over a restaurant.
We purchased furniture for the little place from a warehouse on the Chicago Pier for under two hundred dollars.
Maurice was in the medical school at Northwestern during our first two years there, and did his internship there during our junior year. We saw him rather often and enjoyed his companionship through those years.
During the last two years of my dental schooling we lived in an English basement in Evanston. We spent the first few days painting and wallpapering, and had the place looking rather good. The owner of the building allowed us to deduct the cost of the paint and paper from our rent so that we could finance the improvement in a previously hideous apartment.
The air was filled with pollution and caused us to wash the windows every Saturday during the warmer weather. The place was crawling with a small insect called a silverfish. They came up the drains in the sinks and bathtub. Before each bath we washed all the little fellows that had crawled up into the tube down the drain, and cleaned the tube with cleanser.
Joan's mother was good enough to send us a wonderful box of home made candy for our last Christmas in school, which was spent in Chicago. We placed it under out little tree for a few days, waiting for Christmas, not knowing that the gift was eatable. When we finally opened it, the box was moving with sugar ants.
The North Shore L.D.S. Ward was located just two blocks from our apartment, and was a great support to us. We had many good friends in the ward. We team taught a Mutual Class for a couple of years, and got to know the teenagers rather well. Bp. Johnson was a big hearted man, and would have a special Thanksgiving Dinner at the ward during the week of Thanksgiving for all of us who were away from home.
As graduation day approached, it became apparent to the class that not all of the ninety remaining students would receive their degrees at that time. Northwestern had the tradition of requiring students to remain through the summer and into the next fall quarter if, in the facilities opinion, they had not met the standards set by the school. The criteria used were very arbitrary, and all feared that for some small reason they might be among the group retained. It was important to graduate on time in order to get to our respective states that we wished to practice in and take the state board exams. These were only given shortly after the normal graduation date each year. It didn't matter what your class standing might be, whether you were on the Dean's List or in the bottom of the class, if you were to have difficulty with any of the pre state board exams, within your control or not, you were placed on the retention list. If your welfare patient that you had chosen to be your patient for the test failed to show up, it was recorded as a failed exam. As those practical exams approached, you could literally say that our hearts were in our mouths. Jay Griffin, one of our closest friends and a traveler in our car pool for three years, became so tense that he couldn't swallow. thinking that he might have throat cancer, he had the medical school staff examine him. No cancer, but tension had nearly closed off his throat.
Only forty six of us left in June. My very good friend and brilliant student, Eric Robinson, was among the group retained. (We named our son Rick (Eric) after Eric Robinson).
Cindy was born to us just days before graduation, on May 8, 1958. Roy and Elma, Joan's parents, came back to stay with us for a few days following that great event in our lives. We followed them back to Logan shortly after they left. We rented a U-Haul, loaded up the cheap furniture that we had purchased to start our Sophomore year, and headed for Logan.
A huge chapter in our married lives had come to an end, and the beginning of the rest of our lives was just ahead.
We returned to Logan and lived with our parents for a time while a triplex apartment building was being built by the owner, Reed Nielson. We seemed oblivious to the inconvenience we caused our folks, but neither the Wilsons or the Roskelleys ever gave the least hint to us of any imposition. They must have wondered when we would be on our own, but were always kind, and continued to treat us as a vital part of their lives.
The state boards were passed, and office space was found. Dr. Horace Milligan, a distant cousin who had been in dental practice for ten or fifteen years, was good enough to rent me an operatory room. He and Dr.
Cragen, an M.D., were getting ready to build an office building with room for six dentists. I stayed with Dr. Milligan for a year, while the new building was constructed. I then moved into their new building, and stayed for thirty three years. After a few years we tenants bought the building. The first year or two saw a rather slow beginning in the establishment of a practice, but each month showed an increase and our needs were very modest. Dental school had taught us to get by on next to nothing.
As time passed by, the practice continued to grow. It eventually turned into one of the most productive offices in the valley. The last five years of practice I was unable to take new patients into the practice and still have time to give proper care to my established patients. This was an unusual situation to find oneself in, and I was most appreciative.
In spite of the many frustrations and nights of worry about the outcome of treatments and patient well-being, I found dentistry to be much more interesting that I had imagined in college
One area that made it an interesting profession was the constant improvement in materials and procedures what came with each passing year. Change and learning were the hallmarks. We were told at Northwestern that half of what we were learning there was wrong, but they didn't know which half to through out. We laughed at the time, thinking they were all so wise that they must have known it all. We later learned that their wisdom lay in knowing the truth found in that statement. Every passing year of practice brought new information which changed the way we thought. On many occasions, time would prove the new information to be only partially correct or even in complete error. This caused me to develop a feeling of concern about most everything we were doing. But in the end, the profession does much good and I believe is one of the most honest and sincere fields of labor that I could have chosen; one that really makes some contribution to the well-being of mankind.
Another rewarding area in dentistry was the fact that the dentist has the responsibility for the diagnoses, treatment plan, delivery of treatment, follow-through and accountability of the results, as well as the patient education process to improve the chances of a successful result. In so many jobs on the earth the worker is involved in only one phase of an ongoing process. We saw the problem, and had some major responsibility for the solution from beginning to end.
The profession as was practiced by us, was a one owner business, with all that that statement entails. Office management, personal management, inventory control, tax and investment decisions, and developing the ability to think like a business man were part of the job.
While these things were all going on, it was essential to always put the interest and well-being of the patient first and foremost and to treat him as you would desire treatment, and as you would like to be treated. This was one of the most interesting, challenging, and rewarding parts of the work, and one that gives the profession a small touch of grace. Every work on the earth has the opportunity to be touched with dignity and goodness through giving loving service to those we are involved with. It is up to us to make it happen.
Our office always had employees who were loyal and excellent in their work. We never had a personality problem, or a moment when everyone was not trying to do their best. This sounds like too rosy a picture to be reality, but it is the way it was.
We were also rewarded with patients that were generally of the highest order. They were most generally appreciative of the least service rendered. Many lasting friendships were created through the years.
Our dear Linda was born to us on Jan.18, 1960, and Rick came to us on May 9, 1965.
I recall that one evening an emergency called me to the office to perform a procedure called and apcoectomy. It required an incision through the gum tissue, removal of some bone over the end of a root tip, the trimming of the root end, placing a small restoration over that incised root, and finally the closure of the soft tissue. For some reason my assistant wasn't available, so I asked Cindy to come with me. The little procedure would be most difficult to do without a chair side assistant.
There we were, ready to start. Following the first step, the small incision, I happened to look Cindy's way. She had changed colors of skin, from a light pink to a pale gray. She spent the next half hour on the floor while I struggled through the procedure alone. She never really wanted to assist again. We used to tease her and say that even the word tissue would make her go weak in the knees. She had countless talents. Many we were aware of when she was a child, and many that didn't show until she was a wife and mother. It just happens that dental assisting didn't seem to be high on her list. Or maybe we didn't give it enough of a chance.
Linda seemed to have a little stronger stomach for the color red. I was lucky enough to have her by my side as a chair side helper two or three years. I enjoyed having her there and also enjoyed her competence.
During Rick's high school years we would see him in the office each Halloween morning.
He would come in to have his upper cuspids bonded with truth colored resin to double their length to turn them into vampire fangs. At the end of the day we were back trying to remove the composite. Each time we removed the restorative material we probably removed a little enamel on the natural teeth. I'm glad his desire to be a vampire ended before the enamel ran out.
FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
I have been very blessed in this world to have been surrounded by wonderful family members. My parents were good, kind and supportative.
They were among the most non-intrusive parents you will ever see, meaning that I received almost no council form them as to what I should be doing on a day to day basis, or in the long term future, for that matter. This could be interpreted by some as a non involvement type of child raising. I never felt that way.
Mother did teach us to be honest in all our dealings. She was there to visit with, to care for the house and her family, and to be loving and kind to me.
Possibly I contributed to the relationship by having it my nature to set my own course, sometimes with reasonable results. One more comment on my parents. In the twenty one years at home, and the life-time that followed, I do not remember one occasion when either Mother or Father showed anger toward me. Our relationship was most unusual in that way. I was there. They were there, love and acceptance was felt, and I was expected to innately know what I was to be about. This left the questions of religion, education, avocation, and life in general, in my hands. Though I gave no thought to it at the time, in retrospect, I see that I could have used a lot of council and direction. I have a great love for them and look forward to seeing them again.
Along came Joan into my life. We had just moved to Logan and I was starting high school. There she was, the cutest thing in town. That's about the time I told a new found friend in school that she was the girl I was going to marry someday.
From those early days of my life, Joan has been in the center of all, if not the center of it all, for me. She is the love of my life and the counselor and decision sharer that I have relied on for the last forty plus years.
Joan finished college in three years and we married as we left town for dental school. From then to now, it has been Joan and Sid in a most wonderful way.
We lived in an apt. building on Third East and Four Thirty North while we got our practice going. In the second year we built a home south of the Hillcrest School. We then had Cindy and Linda as our great joys, and life was wonderful. It was a thing with the Roy Wilson to not like basements, and under his influence we had no basement in that first home. The day we moved in we regretted that decision, as basement space is such a wonderfully inexpensive addition to a home. With no room for storage or to expand in living space we soon decided to build a second home. The house was put up for sale after eighteen months of occupancy, sold, and we moved to Hyrum in a home owned by John Lundall, a friend of ours.
We began construction on a second home just one block south of our first home, still in the Twentieth Ward.
We lived in that home for over 20 years. When the children were big enough to make the long ride to California, we made many trips to Disneyland. We were able to go as a family to Hawaii, and on a 3 week trip to Mexico, where we say vast ruins of ancient people as well as the culture of present day Mexico. After Cindy was married we were able to go to Europe with a large group of Logan folks and Linda and Rick enjoyed the trip as much as their parents.
Throughout the growing up years of our children we tried to have them the center of most activities. When they became interested in boating, we all went to Salt Lake City and found a nice boat that we all could enjoy. The following years found our family on the water a great deal of the time. The kids all enjoyed water skiing, and boating did a great deal to help keep us united as a family.
Snowmobiles and motorcycles also played their role in entertainment. But the majority of these hours were spent with Rick and his dad going together.
The kids had good friends, and some were with us so much of the time that they almost became family members.
Cindy married. Rick served a mission in California. Linda married. We built a new home after 20 years in the 20th ward. Rick married.
All the children are active in the church, and have wonderful families of their own.
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