Rocky's third birthday

Miriam Elizabeth

Lacey and her quilt that I made along with my thumb in the way!

Peter and Bonni Riehle at the Billings Montana Temple

Dad gets Drafted: Mom Buys a Fur Coat

Mom and her Fur Coat
With Baby Rita

Daddy had been baptized LDS but he seldom went to church. His mother was not a member but his dad was. He and Mom began to get serious but Mom was very religious and since Dad was not active, it became a problem. She would never even consider a marriage outside the temple. Dad didn't know the first thing about the LDS and so he said he not lie to get a recommend. He knew he would be drafted soon and that would not give him enough time to get active and understand the Church's teaching. He and Mom did not want to wait until the end of the war to get married but her parents wanted her to wait  for Dad to come home from the war and get active in the church. Mom and Dad could not stand three or four years. Dad was so in love with Mom that he agreed to go talk to the bishop and see if there was a work-around. He really didn't have clue about the church and he really didn't want to ask for a recommend but he would do anything for Mom. So they did go to the bishop and told them their circumstances. The bishop agreed to give him a recommend if he promised to learn as much as possible while in the war and to pay his tithing and keep the commandments. He was totally holding him to the promise. Daddy was a good man and he did as he was asked even though he did not really understand any of it. Mom saw Dad's family as really odd. So different than her own. Dad's mom said she liked Mom but she was just too small.

Mom and Dad were married on November 4, 1942. They got married in the Salt Lake Temple. Their wedding night was spent in a hotel in Salt Lake. Dad had gone to California to be with Mom and work there. Then he returned to the farm. Mom returned later and that is when they got married. In less than one month, he was drafted. He went to Texas for his training. Mom went back to California and worked. She worked at the aircraft factory and she was paid  65 cents an hour. She paid $2.50 a month for health insurance and $1.50 for income tax. WOW!

The both missed each other a lot. Dad wanted Mom to join him in Texas but he was not sure how often he would get to see her if she came down there. Mom wanted to be with him but also wanted to earn money. They kept debating back and forth about her coming down to Texas. Mom had bought herself a new fur coat. Fur coats were the rage back then.  No, it was not mink but rabbit. The coat cost $49.99. She was making payments on it. She told Dad that she would come down after her coat was paid. Dad was a real penny pincher learning that from his dad. He got after he for buying it and for wanting a coat more than coming down to be with him. He saw the coat as a luxury she did not need. He wrote a letter telling her off. She wrote one back saying not to ever send her a letter like that again. He wrote back and apologized saying his morale was low he was so blue and he just wanted her with him. So in the latter part of March 1942, she finally paid her coat off and joined him in Texas. He had to live at the camp except when he had leave and so she rented a room from some people. Dad joined her when he could.  In all Dad's letters, he kept telling Mom to eat more and gain weight. She weighed 102. He liked women on chubby side. More to love he said.

Mom's Early Years

Mom and Sister Beverly Ann

Mom with her Brother Duane and their Doggy

As a girl, my mom grew up in many different places. Her father was a welder, a carpenter and a coal miner. He went where the work was. One of his first jobs was working in the coal mines of Clear Creek. That is where my mother was born. Later, he got a job in Salt Lake City. The year he got that job was a very wet and muddy Spring. He had to have his car shipped by the railroad to Salt Lake City because he could not drive it because of the mud.

Later the family moved to Hiawatha Utah. It was a little coal mining town. My mother had her happiest days there. Playing Tarzan and swinging from trees and going to the Tarzan movies. She made friends easily. Her brother Duane did not. He had a very hard time moving so many times. He and Mom were often picked on because of their Dad's name. (Goveita) They used to yell out: "Goveit Goveit, go home and wash your feet. They smell so bad I cannot eat." Duane would get all upset and would start to cry but Mom would throw them down on the sidewalk and hit their heads up and down on the cement."

Later they moved to Montana and then to Idaho. Mom's dad ran a gas station for a while. Grandpa and Grandma Sanders split up for a while. They had trouble getting along and it was mostly because my Grandpa wasn't religious and my Grandma was very religious. He was in Montana and she and kids were in Burley Idaho where she ran a hot dog stand. They rented a front part of a house. They did get back together and then moved to California where my Grandpa worked for the May Company. He had been looking for work for weeks when he finally got that job. They lived in a house right next the ocean in Ventura California. It was a rented house. Mom used to go daily and gather seashells. It was the time of the Great Depression and they often had nothing to eat but onion sandwiches. Grandma Sanders told Mom and Duane to drink lots of water to fill up their empty stomachs. She did say it helped a little with the hunger pangs.

Then it was back to Salt Lake again, where Beverly was born in 1933. And then back to Fairview. For a time they lived with Mom's cousin Alden. in Fairview. Mom said there was a billy goat there that would chase them everytime they went to the old outhouse. If he got near them, he would butt them. In the outhouse, there were always wasp nests and it was either get stung by a wasp or butted by Billy or both. They lived way out of town and had to walk to school in really deep snow for miles and miles. (parents always had to walk for mile to get to school it seems)

My mother's dad (Jordan Brady) and most of her aunts and uncles lived in Fairview. At first Grandma and Grandpa were renting a house in Fairview. Grandma Sander's  dad sold them some land next to his place and my grandpa proceeded to built their very own home. They lived in a big tent while he was building it.

Mom had many friends. She always had plenty to do. Most every night she went to the dance. Dancing was her life. She went rolling skating, to the movies and bike riding. She listened to the Hit Parade on the radio. She loved playing paper dolls and reading to Beverly. She had lots of chores to do around the house. There were lots of cousins, uncles, aunts and other relatives who lived near her. She had some health problems, mostly that she got sick easily and was always passing out because of low blood pressure. She was very cute and petite. More to follow.....

Mom and Dad: Dating



Mom (Fawn) Duane and Grandpa Sanders
In Californa 1942-1943

 Mom met Dad at a dance in Fairview. Her friend Ruby was with her. My dad was with another friend. They all got to talking and soon asked mom and Ruby to take a ride with them. Mom said they could not do that because you never go home with someone who did not bring you. Finally they decided they would as long as Ruby drove. Mom did not know how to drive at that time. It ended up that Ruby was actually with Dad and the other guy was with Mom.  After that, Ruby was dating Dad and I am not sure if Mom was dating the other guy.

A few weeks later, Dad went to see if Ruby was home (they did not have a phone) and she was not. He was bored and decided to go see the "skinny" girl, (Mom) Mom liked him but her mom said he was a hick from the sticks who lived a ways out of town (Mt Pleasant) and the family dressed funny and talked funny and was part of an odd farmer family that had no religion. But mom knew that he was the best guy she had ever met. Of course, her friend Ruby was a little upset but since she and my dad were not going steady, she finally forgave mom.

They dated for several months. This was on the heels of WWII and dad knew he would probably be drafted soon. He was hoping he could get out of it because he was needed on the farm. His family had a large sheep farm and needed all their kids to help out. My Grandpa Sanders was always changing jobs and going to where the work was.  At this time, he was working in Southern California at the shipyard where he was a welder. Grandma Sanders and Beverly stayed in Fairview. Grandpa Sanders was an orphan as a child and he had been raised by his mother's sister. Her name was Leona Halberg. All of Leona's family had moved to California. So my grandpa was renting a house near them. Mom needed a job and Fairview, being such a small town, could not provide her with a job. So she and her brother, Duane, went to California and moved in with her dad. Duane got a job at a factory and later; Mom got a job as a riveter for Douglas Aircraft. Most of the men were already in the war and they needed so many workers (a a lot of them women) to work on the planes for the war effort. Mom also took classes in PBX and typing.

At this time, Dad was working in the mountains for his dad on the sheep farm. Sometimes he would stay in the mountains for over a month at a time. One day he came down the mountain and went to see mom. When Grandma Sanders opened the door she told him that Mom was working in California.  His face looked like he was almost going to cry. I guess he got Mom's address in California and wrote to her and she asked him to come there and get work so they could be together.

He wasn't sure he could do that as the farm needed all the help it could get and he knew his dad would not be happy should he go to California. He and mom exchanged letters for a while. Dad often did not have paper up in the mountains to write on. So he used labels from canned peas to write to her. He had to wait from someone to spell him to mail the letters but often they would bring the letters to him and then he would give his letters to the person who brought them and they would take them down to be mailed.

After a while, Dad could not stand being without mom and being so long on the mountain. I imagine his dad was not happy when he told him was going California. He sold his car and quit his job (he worked part time for other farmers.)  Mom made sure to tell him in a letter that he needed different clothes. He simply couldn't come down there and have everybody see him looking like a hayseed. In her letter she told him what kind of clothes to buy. So he took the bus to California. The farmer who had never seen anything, was in a big and intimidating city. He got a job working with Duane. He was there for most of the summer but he had to leave and go back to Mt Pleasant and help on the farm and he knew soon he would be drafted.They continued to write letters back and forth and began to talk of marriage. But Grandpa Sanders and all the other relatives did not like the idea. They said she should not marry until the war was over.

More of this history will be added to in a later post.

Mom and Dad's Letters

From time to time I am going to put up my dad's and my mom's letters that they wrote to each other during World War II. I don't have many from mother to my dad. Most are from my dad to her. However, I did find a really funny one that was written on December 24, 1942. They had only been married a couple of months and my mom was living in Inglewood CA working as a riveter at Douglas Airplanes. My dad was stationed in Texas at the time.

I could only laugh when I read this that she sent to my dad: A bra, a pair of pants and a nightgown were hanging on the line. They were quarreling. The bra said, "I cover what men like to play with."  The pants said, "That is nothing, I cover what men want most." The nightgown was disgusted and said, "I'm up all night because of you."

Here's another one: A woman went to the DR and he told her she was going to have a baby. She denied it. Finally she said, "What's the world coming to when you cannot even trust a wiener." HA HA

Those are the exact work she wrote. She was nineteen years old and had married only a little over a month. It's hard to believe they were ever that young and had the same feelings we had.