My Personal History Part One

I was born of a rich pioneer heritage. My mother’s grandfather Jordan Henry Brady and his wife Levee Sanderson were born Nauvoo, Hancock County Illinois. Originally from Kentucky, Mormon missionaries visited and they were converted. They later crossed the plains with the saints. They settled in Fairview (a small town in Sanpete county) A town which they was settled by them and few other Mormon families. My Grandma’s grandmother was the second wife of a polygamous (Henry Weeks Sanderson.) Her name was Sarah Jane Cole. Between her and his other wife, there were 31 children.

On my fathers, side it was an entirely different story. He grandfather was from Sweden and his grandmother was born in Denmark. They met each other on the ship to America. Neither spoke each other’s language but somehow they must have spoken because they married. His grandma had been married before and was a widow with a child.

They had come over because the Mormon missionaries had given them the gospel. The missionaries told them about the land in Fountain Green UT and that is where they settled. They joined the church but were never that active.

My grandmother on my mother’s side was Christa Vale Brady. My grandfather on that side was Goveita Sanders. From that union came three children, Duane, Fawn and Beverly Ann. My grandfather was orphaned at an early age and he was raised by his aunt Lydia Halberg. From that union, my mother, Fawn was born.

On my Dad’s side, my grandmother was Katie Larsen. She came straight from Denmark with her family. Her family came because the missionaries told them that it was beautiful in UT. They had not converted yet. After arriving they had bad luck in that their young son died of appendicitis right after their arrival. They hated the sage brush and the landscape of Sanpete County. Denmark had been so lovely and green. They left for Portland Oregon feeling cheated by the missionaries about who wonderful it was in Sanpete County. Only my grandmother, Katie Larsen remained and she had a job working for my grandfather’s father (Alfred SR born in Fountain Green) in their household. They had many duties as they owned sheep farms. My grandfather was Alfred JR and he and Katie got married. They lived on a sheep ranch far out in MT Pleasant UT. My father Kenneth Johnson was a son of that union. From this point on, I am not going to talk about my extended family history, only some of my memories with them as I grew up. I just wanted everyone to know roots of it all.
I came about on a cold January day the 11th day of the month in 1944. Weighing in a 7 lbs and 8 oz. After a long and brutal labor, I arrived. My mother was ill right after my birth. She lost her milk and I was allergic to the replacement milk. My father was serving WWII and my mother living with Grandma Sanders. From this one event, (my allergy to formula.) I myself believe caused both the history of myself, my motherland father to change radically.

In all the photos I see of myself as a baby and young child, I look so very happy. In spite of my health issues, I was always happy and full of life. I was very thin because of my allergic issues but I never knew I was any different than anybody else. I was blonde and blue-eyed and very curious. My parents moved into a new small home in Orem when it was decided that my father didn’t want to be a sheep farmer any longer. He planned on going to school full-time on the GI bill and get his diploma. He had not been able to finish school because his father wanted him on the sheep ranch and so no need for him to go to school after grade 8. But ever since my birth and mother’s infection, she had not been well. She had several operations and had to go to SLC to have them done. My dad had to scale his schooling to part time and get a part time job. They wanted to have my Grandma Sanders come take care of me and my mom but there was an emergency in Fairview and Beverly was still a child and so she had to go back to Fairview. My father had to hire outside babysitters to live in. The DR told my mom if she wanted another child, she better get one as she had too many cysts and soon it would not be possible to become pregnant. She had my brother Chris. And then she had a hysterectomy at 25 .

My mother spent most of her time on the bed, even after her hysterectomy she was still very ill. My baby brother slept most of the time and I ran the streets of the sub division. I got in fights with kids and knew how to stick up for myself. My mother told me to fight my own battles when I told her about the mean kids on the street. So it was all up to me. My dad was not home very much because he was working two part time jobs. He got his diploma and wanted to go farther in school but they were very poor with no health insurance. So he worked on a job at Ralph’s Radio in Provo learning how to fix electric appliances and electronics. He also worked part time at a gas station.

I was a very smart vivacious little girl. When I was two years old, I recited a long poem at a family reunion and sang Jolly Old ST Nicolas with all the verses at a Christmas party. I was not at all shy back then. Many people told my mother that if she ever wanted to let me go, they surely wanted to take me home. I did suffer a lot from throat infections and colds, probably because I was so run down.

The problems that would haunt me for many years to come define most of my life started when I started school. In the neighborhood, I had been able to defend myself well and was very outgoing. I guess the kids in the neighborhood knew me and didn’t make fun of me. However in school, the minute I sat at my desk, the kids all pointed at me and said “skinny, skinny. Skinny.” And then they would grab my arm and compare it to theirs and tell me I was just way too skinny. Nobody wanted to play with me. One girl was very nice to me but she never became a real friend. I did not even know what the word “skinny was until then. I thought it meant I had too much hair on my arms. My parents had to take me out of school and they took me to the DR who told them it was their fault because I was skinny. They were told that any kid would eat on their own before they got that skinny. The wanted me to go to Primary Children’s Hospital in SLC. In the meantime, my dad made me eat and I had to force it down and it took me hours to eat a small plate of food. I did gain weight however and my stomach stretched so I could eat a little more without being sick. I never went to Primary Children’s Hospital as I had improved so much in one month. I know whoever reads this will think my being skinny is very strange as today I am far from being thin.

I will write more on history in the days to come if I don’t die before I get it completed. There is a very dark side of me and feel like I need write it down. That will come sometime down the road. I do need to explain what school bullies can do to ruin a life and the saying “sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me,) is not true at all even though my mother told me that every time I came to her over being bullied.

Christmas Memories of Old

As a kid it seemed so long for Christmas to get here. After Thanksgiving, a Christmas parade was held on Center Street in Provo. And Santa Claus would ride by on his sleigh. Then we looked at all the windows at the glimmering lights and toys.

Scene from The Snowman

We would visit Toyland where all the stores put out their new toys for Christmas. There were no Barbie dolls, electronic toys or games and no Play Stations, Wii's or X boxes. I loved baby dolls and little china sets, paper dolls and perfume. Blue Waltz was my favorite. (it smells like Taboo) I often got a soft flannel nightgown. My brother got tinker toys and erector sets, play guns and dart sets. We did not get a tree until the week before Christmas. It was a real tree. We loved to look at it with it's glowing lights and shimmery balls, bubble lights and icicles and of course the star on top. It was as if we were flown away to a distant land of magic and wonderment. Christmas Eve was waiting and the time passing so slowly. If anyone has the video of The Snowman, watch it. This is exactly like I felt around Christmas time. It will take you to a very magical and wonderful journey.

The Snowman

I loved the music in which in those days was mostly about Jesus but also there was music of Santa, and snowmen too.  Then lying in bed all night waiting for morning to see what magical things were under the tree, when we finally got up (my brother got several times and sent back to bed.)  After the gifts were opened there was a little feeling of now everything was over for another year.

I believe that time and wonderment in the days leading up to Christmas is really more wonderful and magical than Christmas Day itself. We had to wait another year for that wondrous magical day once more. We sang carols on Christmas Day and sometimes re-inacted the Nativity.

Chris and I with Some of Our Christmas Toys in the 50's

Snow Man Scene

As I get older, I wish I could capture the wonderment I had as a child. Children see the world in a different way than adults do. Sometimes we just live in a world of reality but children feel the fantasy and beauty in things adults do not. Everything seems bright glowing and wonderful in their eyes. And Christmas to me today is just too commercial. So I do try to see Christmas through my eyes as a child and never forget those Christmas' I loved years ago.

Thanksgiving Memories

My memories of Thanksgiving were always driving to Fairview to my Grandma's house. I was always so excited that I could hardly contain myself. I thought we would never get there. Those were the days when there was no freeway and we had to take HWY 89 all the way. We used to sing Over the River and Through the Woods to Grandmother's house we go. When we got to the railroad bridge which was called Hill Top, I knew we would soon be there and the my excitement grew more intense. My cousins were always there as well and would help my grandma, my aunt and my mom make the fruit salad by whipping the cream and stirring the gravy.

My grandma had a big dining room where we all sat. I remember she had glasses with pictures of horses on them. We got to use the good china. We got to have orange Kool Aid. I never got to have Kook Aid at home. We always had to have milk. So I was so glad to drink Kool Aid.  My cousin Bessie and I always got the giggles and we would get angry looks from my mom and grandma. We stuffed ourselves with the turkey and all the trimmings, the cranberry sauce and all the pumpkin pie. We got so full that we thought we might die and my mom would tell us to go and walk up and down the road to wear off the food. But we too full to move. All the adults sat around and most of them fell asleep. The rest of the day was kind of boring. We wondered why we had gotten so excited in the first place.

We left for home when it was getting dark and I liked to look at the mountains in the twilight and imagine there were ghosts looking down on us. Those days are long gone. Bessie died when she was only 16. Grandpa Sanders died in 1956. Grandma Sanders is gone too. She died in 1993. Mom and Dad left in 2003. My uncle and many of my cousins have left this world as well. But I still remember those days like they were yesterday. I am so glad I have those memories. Death is inevitable but we live on through our memories and children.

The Mysterious Spencer

When Mom was young and living in Fairview she had quite a lot of crushes on lots of boys. But one them who I could not figure out and who she really had it bad for was Spencer. Now I would have thought that Spencer would be a classmate. But no, it turns out he was her music teacher. His name was Spencer Covert. Why she called her teacher Spencer instead of Mr. Covert was weird. I had a crush on my music teacher in 10th grade and he was Richard Dastrup but I never called him Richard.

Reading her diary, almost every page from 1939-1940 contained all her feelings for Spencer. One of her entries was: "I saw Spencer today. He hardly noticed me. He probably doesn't even know I am alive. Oh Spencer!! Every night before I lay down in bed, I call out, Spencer, Spencer, Spencer. Oh MY Heart!!"

Spencer Covert
Mom's Crush on Her Music Teacher 1939-40

I was reading mom's history the other day and I found Spencer's obituary. He was teaching in Fullerton, CA and also been a superintendent of schools there. He was born in 1917 and died in 1986. He was the father of three children. My mom still cared about him til the end. I miss Mom and I wish I would have asked more questions about her life while I still could. It's so nice she kept a diary. (She had many but I only found one.) And those letters from my Dad and hers to him. What a wonderful thing!  I am going to read them again and again.

My Birth and Early Years

As soon as Mom got home from the hospital my dad had to go back to military training. She lived with my Grandpa and Grandma Sanders. Not long after, the pain that she had when she came home got much worse. She got a high fever and nearly died. She had what they called Child Bed Fever. An infection some women got after giving birth which was more common back then. They did not have penicillin so they gave her sulfa drugs which finally helped and she got well. The DR had sat by her side for hours until she got well. He was scared and he should have been, it was probably he that caused her infection and he had dismissed her pain. due to her illness, Mom had been nursing me and lost all her milk. They then tried to give me canned milk and I immediately got very sick and vomited for hours. They did not make formula then. My mother's cousin had a baby my age and so she took me there once a day for my feeding. That is the only thing that sustained me. I did not do well or did gain much weight. I could take a little boiled milk but not much. I refused to put anything in my mouth because even at that young age, I had learned that I would get sick.  This affected my life throughout childhood and early teens. I remained malnourished. When I got older, I could drink milk but as a baby, it made me very ill.

The DR's accused my parents of my being malnourished as they said any kid would eat if hungry enough. My dad got very strict with me and made me eat everything on my plate. My stomach was so small from not eating that it hurt terribly when I tried to eat. But Dad was persistent. I finally caught up with my weight but not until my 20's. Now I am overweight. I thought that could not happen to me.

My mother had problems related to that infection even though she got well. She had many surgeries to remove uterine cysts and eventually had to have a hysterectomy at age 25...,.More to follow...

Dad and Mom get a Baby Girl but Not Without Complications

After my dad was drafted in WWII, he was sent to Texas for training. Mom went back to CA fo work at the aircraft plant. In late March of 1942, Mom joined Dad in Texas. She rented a room there. Dad visited her often when he could get leave. Mom suffered appendicitis and had surgery. She had a terrible recovery period and during this time, she found out she pregnant with me. They were going to wait to have a family but they had decided it would be nice for Mom to have a baby when Dad went overseas so she could have company.

In the summer, Mom went back to Fairview. Dad was stationed in LA. Mom had was terribly sick during her pregnancy. I was due January 20. Dad was able to get leave on January 10 and barely made it to Mt Pleasant where I was born on January 11, 1944.
7 pounds 8 OZ. Mom had a very long and hard labor. Dad did not get the boy he wanted. In those days they made women stay flat on their backs after the baby was born. They did this because they thought women would bleed to death if they did not stay down. After 10 days, they sent Mom home. She told them that she had a very bad pain in her left side but they sent her home anyway. Complications came about for both Mom and me that would change things for the rest of our lives
.....to be continued.

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.