Audrey Chase: The Life Story of Audrey Melissa Wardle Chase: Chapter 8: Parenting Friends of Roger, Roger's Mission, Move

 After Roger graduated from high school, he enrolled at I.S.U. in a general program. He played football. He made many new friends on the football team. At Thanksgiving we invited a lot of them for dinner. We had about 30-35 people. It was a great day. 

 Roger was again having a great time—but doing little studying. His grades were poor. He had to retake some classes because he failed. It was just a terrible year for me because I was so worried about him. I had hoped he would go on a mission, but when he became 19 he was not interested in going. He started school again the next year. He wasted so much time and money on classes where he didn’t study!

 Roger worked for Talent Search at college, as Dale had done. All through high school and college Roger worked for the Pocatello recreation department, full time in the summers and part time during the school year. 

Roger always had lots of friends around. For a couple of years he and his friends played games at our house on Sunday evenings after church. Many kids lived with us, beginning with a friend Dale brought home. I can’t even remember all of the kids who lived with us for a semester, or a few weeks, or a month or two or for a few days. I got so I was never really sure who I’d find sleeping in the basement bedrooms.

In December of 1972, Roger asked me if two boys could come and live with us until basketball season was over. They were Rick Edwards, a ninth grader, and his brother Jeff Edwards, a tenth grader. Roger had gone with the boys’ older sisters, Lynette and Derra Lee, all through high school. He had been sort of a big brother to the boys. The boys’ mother and stepfather were moving to a small farm west of Blackfoot and the boys did not want to go with them. They were both playing basketball and wanted to finish the season. None of the four children got along with their stepfather. In fact, the girls had already moved out. Rick and Jeff moved i. Only Roger and I were at home so we had plenty of room. They stayed for 7 ½ years. They left for some things for a while but it was 7 ½ years before they moved out permanently. I learned to love them both. I consider them my sons. Their mother gave me $50 a month and then $60 to help with groceries. But I largely supported them. I did their laundry, helped them with their studies, let them use my car as my own sons had done, attended their games and did all the things a mother does. Their own mother bought their clothes. 

At the beginning of the second semester, another friend of Roger’s moved I with us. Dale Morrow lived with us during the school year until he graduated from college two- and one-half years later.

An ironic thing happened. As soon as Roger had gotten these three fellows moved in to our home, he began to think about going on a mission. When he went, the three boys stayed with me. I was glad to have them all. I’d really been lonesome without them. Derra Lee also came and lived with me during this time for three years. Lynette lived with us a little too. 

The only bad thing was that Dale and Jeff didn’t like each other. We never had any real problems, but they were not friends. 

Having Jeff and Rick with me was great. They each had lots of friends who were at our home. They also each had steady girlfriends who were around a lot. Jeff decided to run for student body president. I helped him with his campaign as did some teachers. He won and was the student body president at Pocatello H.S. his senior year, 1974-75. It was great for him!

The fall of 1973 I transferred to Pocatello H.S. to teach English. I had been at Irving for nine years teaching English and literature. I had such dear friends, especially Sharon Fleischman and Sharon Call. We all went to Poky together. Sharon F. went first. She found out they needed another English teacher and told me. I went two weeks after school had started. Then a couple month later Sharon C. joined us. She had planned to lay out that year, but changed her mind when a position at Poky became available. We taught together there for eleven years. Ronda Black was also teaching there. I had taught her in fifth grade many years before. The four of us became such fast friends and had such good times together! We still go to games and dinner together. We think alike. Once Sharon Call told me that she had quoted me to someone. We really laughed about it because I had not said what she credited me with. But she said, “I knew what you thought about it.” And she did. We four still do not have to express our opinions vocally to each other. We just all think about the same. We are also four opinionated, confident, vocal persons. When we are together, we have two or three conversations going at the same time. It’s stimulating! We all taught English, too. We were all working on advanced degrees, but so far, I am the only one who has gotten a masters.

I found some other dear friends at Poky, but they were not a part of our little group. There was Beryl Taylor, Arlin Walker, Louise Hunt and Karen Hunzaker. I truly liked and admired my principal Dale Hammond and Dick Fleishmann, Sharon’s husband, who was vice principal. It was a great faculty—not a single person I didn’t like. 

Jeff and Rick, reared in the same home, were quite different. I tried to get them to go to church and take seminary. They had been reared in a totally inactive L.D.S. home. Weekends, and especially Sundays had always been the time when they rode horses, skied and worked around the barns. After they came to live with us they saw me going to church all the time, and Roger frequently. Rick began to attend church too, but Jeff always had some excuse.

Both boys had a large group of boy friends who did the same things the boys had always done on Sundays. Jeff stayed with his friends. They were no bad boys—in fact, were good boys—but they did not attend church nor have many goals. Rick, on the other hand took seminary and began going with a very active L.D.S. girl. She was a good influence on him. He hated to lose his friends, boys he’d known and played with since grade school. I felt badly about it too, but Rick decided he wanted to be a different kind of person, so he gradually did a complete turnaround. He graduated from seminary, advanced in the priesthood ad studied hard at school. He stopped running around with and of his old friends. Later he made good friends in the groups he now chose to associate with. It was fun to have the boys at the school where I taught. Rick had evidently thought about it q lot and finally decided he was making too much work for me and decided to move back with his mother and stepfather. I was just heartsick because I’d miss him and he really didn’t ant to go. His locker was outside my room where I could see him when he came to it. He packed everything he owned in an old jeep he had, came to school early and checked out and went out to the new high school, which was about 45 minutes away in time to enroll and go to his first class. About third hour and looked out of my room and there was Rick at his locker. I went running out to see what was wrong. “Audrey, I just can’t stand it.!” I went to class and walked around the school and realized no way was I going to that school. I’ll work hard at home to make things easier for you, but I want to stay!” I was of course delighted. The school he would have attended was a dinky rural high school with poor offerings. Pocatello H.S. was a superior school. 

Rick did work hard. He did well I his classes and was active in seminary from which he graduated. He was vice president of the seminary student body his senior year. He has always been a source of pride and joy to me. 

Jeff had a great year as student body president. I just couldn’t get him to go to church. In his senior year I asked him if, as a favor to me, he would take seminary. He said yes. He took it all year and liked it. I should have approached him that way sooner. He still ran around with his old boy friends and did some partying. Jeff played football and was one of the starters. He played in the backfield. He was very quick and very tough. He dropped out of basketball because he was too short. Rick dropped out too. But both boys were always jocks. 

Jeff did not attend church. He was never ordained to any priesthood office. Two boys raised the same, encouraged the same, but quite different. Jeff had a lovely girl he went with all through H.S. until the end of his senior year. Then he began going with Katy, a doll. Both boys were well liked. Jeff was more outgoing than Rick.

Jeff got a scholarship to I.S.U. for being student body president. He began the fall after he graduated, but he didn’t like it. He was never really interested in academics. He quit and tried several different jobs. He finally got a job with the railroad and made this his life work. All the Edwards kids are great skiers and ski at every opportunity. My own kids were not. I worked so much I didn’t have time to take them and besides I couldn’t afford it. 

After Roger moved the three boys in with us, he decided to go on a mission. I knew nothing of his decision. He wanted to do it all on his own with no pressure or influence from me. When he was presented to the people of the stake to be an elder, I was not there. I knew nothing about it. Roger and I were going to conference, but I was sick. Roger persuaded me to stay home and he went himself. No one mentioned it to me. I knew nothing about it until Roger received hi mission call. Then he told me and showed me the letter. I don’t think he’d have told me then, but he had to have my financial support. I’ve always felt badly that he did not want me to share any of this time with him. However, the important thing was that he was going on a mission, leaving July of 1873. He served one year in his mission. He worked a lot with the Indians and became a district leader and then a zone leader. After one year, the mission was split and his final year was in the California San Diego mission. His mission was wonderful for him. He gained a testimony of the gospel, developed a talent for leadership and helped many people.

I had begun working at a sort of fast-food place because I just couldn’t make it on my salary. It was a place where there was no tipping. I worked there two years. But with Roger leaving for a mission, I had to have work where I would make more money. I began working at the Highwayman Café of Althea and Ted Marshall. I stayed 8 ½ years and loved it all. I stayed until they went out of business. The tips were good and I liked the people—both customers and my fellow employees. It gave me plenty of money for Roger. In fact, I just stayed on after he came home from his mission. I worked three or four nights a week from five till eleven and Mon. and Wed. and from five till one on Fri. and Sat. They were open on Sundays, but I usually didn’t work, except on holidays. For the about twenty years I worked in cafes part-time, I always worked all holidays. We arranged our family activities around my work. However, holidays were always very busy and I’d be so tired when they were over that I could do little more. We were closed on Christmas but all other holidays I worked. I came to not like Mother’s Day because it was one of the worst days—but good tips!

While Roger was on his mission, Carolyn and her three boys, Steve, Chris and Adam, came home to live. Rick had been sent to Germany and there was no housing available for his family. They stayed with me for seven months. The house was full! Rick and Jeff shared a downstairs bedroom. Dall Morrow had the other one. Carolyn, the boys and I were upstairs. It was during this time that Rick thought he’d better move back with his folks but, as already stated, he didn’t stay. 

Steve was about four, Chris about two and Adam about six months. What a delight they were! I had the most food storage I’d ever had, but we used all of it, my money, Carolyn’s money and the token amounts from my foster sons. There were seven of us to feed. Carolyn did a big share of the work. I still taught and worked at the Highwaymen.

After Christmas that year, Carolyn and I decided to go to Salt Lake to see Ann. We had planned on taking my car, but at the last-minute Jeff needed it so we went in Carolyn and Rick’s new V.W. van. We had a terrible wreck on the interstate down near Downy. If we had taken my car, it probably would not have happened. The roads were not too back but we hit an icy spot and began to slide. It was very windy and just as we started to slide a very strong gust of grabbed the van. It was tall and a little top heavy. We were thrown into the air and then bounced back to the ground three times. We ended up on our side between the lanes of the highway. Carolyn was the only one hurt. She had a broken collar bone. One funny thing happened, though it wasn’t funny at the time. Adam was in a car seat in the second row of seats. We had a big bottle of cranapple juice on the floor near him. In the wreck, the lid came off the bottle and Adam was drenched with red juice. When Carolyn looked back at him, she thought he was covered with blood. The wind shield popped out and Stephen who had been on my lap was thrown into that empty space. We were bruised and sore but not hurt. The new van was totaled.

Carolyn went to the hospital and had a cast put on. The stupid incompetent doctor put her in a body cast from her neck to below her buttocks. It was agony and unnecessary for a broken collar bone. One arm was out of the cast. Carolyn worked at caring for her children as best she could. I remember her trying to hang up clothes. With her one hand she would lift an article of clothing from the basket, then hold it in her mouth, get a clothes pin on her one hand, and some way, get it fastened to the line. Rick was given emergency leave and the Red Cross brought him home for one month. 

 We really had a full house. Everyone helped. A couple of Rick’s sisters came and stayed with Carolyn while I was in school. They each stayed a few days, but there was little help from the Read family. 

The first cast broke and Carolyn went to a different doctor who knew what he was doing and took good care of her. After the month, Rick went back to Germany. Carolyn was still in her second cast when he left. After Carolyn and the boys had been with us for seven months, Rick found housing for them on the base in Germany and they left. It was a terrible trip for Carolyn. She was out of her cast, but having the sole care of three little boys all the way to Germany was hard. 

With her gone, our house settled back into it normal routine. Dale Morrow had graduated from school the previous spring and no longer lived with us. His girlfriend Debby was at our house a lot an spent a lot of time with us that summer while she attended summer school. She was a dear girl who has added much to my life. She and Dale married, lived in Pocatello and have two children. Dale is always helping me and doing nice things for me. Dale and Roger are as close as brothers. 

In 1975, Roger returned from his mission. He was glad to have Rick and Jeff with us. Jeff had finished high school and Rick was going to be a senior. Roger and Jeff have always been very close. 

That summer, I suddenly decided I wanted a different house. Our house was a good one, but would require a lot of work to make it the way I wanted it. So, I began looking. I found a house in the Indian Hills. I almost didn’t look at it because I knew it would be too expensive. I went on my own and asked the lady in it if I could look at it. It was new, had been lived in only seven months. The owners were getting a divorce and needed to sell. I loved the house, but still felt it was beyond my means. However, I contacted Richard Dixon, a realtor, and ended up buying the house. My old house would have been paid for in one more year, but I wanted a new one. My old house was sold for a good price and I applied most of it on the new house.

I did keep out $5,000 dollars which I invested in a special carburetor being promoted by the son of a friend of mine. Nothing ever came of it. My one attempt to invest and the only time I had money to invest came to nothing. I realized I took a chance, but I never felt too badly about it. I always felt if it went it went, if not it wouldn’t. 

Anyway, we moved in the new house in November of 1975. The three boys were with me. Roger and I each had a bedroom upstairs and Jeff and Rick each had one downstairs. There was only one bedroom, a family room and a bath downstairs. I had another room finished downstairs for Rick. It is the nicest room in the house. He slept in the laundry room until it was finished.

The Life Story of Melissa Audrey Wardle Chase: Chapter Nine: Her Mother's Passing, Stories of Children's Families

    Roger returned to college in the fall of 1975. He was still so interested in missionary work that he became a seventy. For a while he worked with the full-time missionaries. He attended the institute. He had a beautiful new car, a bright red Dodge with a vinyl top. He returned to his old job with the city. Jeff was attending I.S.U. and Rick was a senior at Poky. Roger began going with Julie Hanks. She was the daughter of a former bishop of ours. She and Roger had walked home from church together when they were in the ninth grade. I felt they had always liked each other, maybe Julie liked Roger better than he did her. Anyway, they did not go together during their high school years nor until Roger returned from his mission. I was especially fond of Julie and was delighted when they decided to get married. Roger was anxious to marry Julie and she really wanted to marry him. Their wedding date was set for Feb. 14, 1976. But something changed. Julie still wanted to get married, but Roger did not. I think he just moved into the relationship too fast. Maybe he was brain-washed on his mission, maybe he just didn’t want to be tied down. All Roger’s friends and I urged him not to go ahead with the marriage, but he wouldn’t listen to us. He felt he just couldn’t hurt and embarrass Julie when the wedding was so near and all plans were made. Roger and Julie were married in the Idaho Falls temple Feb. 14, 1976. Wright, Esther and I hosted a luncheon after the ceremony. One of Roger’s missionary companions came from Utah to be a witness for him. A beautiful reception was held at the sixth ward in Pocatello. There were so many people and presents. Some dear friends, the Woods, who had befriended Roger while he was on his mission in Las Vegas, attended. Roger was especially pleased to hame them there. Dale Chase was his brother’s best man. Julie had graduated from B.Y.U. and had a teaching certificate. She got a job at Franklin Jr. High teaching English and reading. Roger continued his school, but he still did not do well. He did not study. Julie taught for three years. Roger worked for the city a lot and had other part-time jobs. Finally, he stopped taking classes and took over a little grocery store, the Pic and Pay. What a terrible decision! It required someone there all the time. Julie helped a little and so did I. Roger did not know how to run a business. He was a soft touch for anyone who needed money. His employees stole him blind. Roger and Julie moved several times. Julie quit teaching. She felt she had given Roger enough time to finish school—and she had. There was a growing estrangement between them. They were not good for each other. One good thing came out of their marriage—their little daughter. Robin Gayle Chase was born July 24, 1979. They both adored her. Roger left the store and began to look for other work. He worked for a time at Robert’s Service Station. This was a bad time for Roger and Julie. The continued to grow farther apart. There was very little money ad they had to live very frugally. Julie really worked hard to economize and live on very little. They spent little time together. Julie taught dancing and tried to keep her life busy. Roger was away from home a lot. Sad, sad! They were both good parents to Robin and loved her deeply. Finally, they separated and then divorced on Oct. 6, 1981. Julie remained in their apartment and Roger moved back with me for a time. I’ve never been able to figure out what went wrong in their marriage. I think Roger, because of the women he had known, and Julie, because of the men she had known, came to marriage with quite different ideas about what to expect from marriage. They had so much in common, their love of the out-of-doors, their interest in politics and the world and other things that one would have expected a good marriage. But it never was. They were incompatible. They did not enjoy being together. I felt terrible about it, but there was nothing I could do. I did tend my dear Robin a lot. So did Esther and Wright Hanks. I am fond of Julie. I was glad when she met someone else and wanted to marry. Glad for her but sorry for Robin and me because I knew the sage of Roger and Julie was over and I would see less of Robin. Julie and her new husband were married in a civil ceremony in the Logan Temple. Her bishop advised this because she and Roger still had a temple marriage. The bishop said that after a time, because she was remarried, that she and Roger would be able to get a temple divorce with no blame or charges against either of them. This happened. Julie and Roger did not want to hurt each other, the just wanted a divorce. Julie and her husband moved to Boise. This was terrible for Roger, the Wrights and me. We had all been with Robin several times a week. It was especially hard for Roger because Robin mattered more to him than anyone else in the world. He spent much of his free time with her, took her camping, to ball games, and other things. He continues ro see Robin about once a month for a few days, but it isn’t enough for him. Julie has custody of Robin now—but who knows what the future will bring. Roger wants his daughter with him part of the time, like summers. He has always sent Julie child support, pays all of Robin’s medical bills, buys some clothes for her and gives Julie extra money for extra things—like trips with a dancing group, Christmas, etc. He loves his daughter and wants to support her. Julie has been a good mother to Robin who is a nice, delightful little girl. Julie has had two sons with her present husband and I believe is happy. Roger went to work for Simplots. He has been there about six years now. He makes good money, but will not stay forever. It is dangerous work, has almost no retirement benefits, is hard physical work and is boring. He has to do shift work which is something a body cannot adjust to. He has become very active in the union. He handles all the men’s grievances. He is the number two man in the union at the plant. He spends lots of time helping people. Roger stayed with me for a while, then moved into an apartment, and finally bought a little house where he lives alone. He has fixed up one room for Robin. She loves to come and stay with him. Depending on Roger’s work, Robin sometimes stays with me. She is the center of Roger’s life. During these years my parents, had been aging. After a year of increasing ill health, my father died Sept 23, 1972. He was 81 years old, having been born Nov. 2, 1891. He just seemed to get more and more weary. Finally, he closed his eyes and died. He had worked very hard all his life. He kept dwelling on this as he approached death. He was a very bright man. He could understand things easily. He always read a great deal. He could make or fix anything with his hands. He always loved to be around people and he loved to talk. I’ve always felt that I was closer to him than were any of his other children. He was also close to Danny, Verna’s son. Danny lived with him and Mama quite a bit. It was a shame that he didn’t establish a closer relationship with other members of his family. He and Mama could never agree on how to do anything. It seemed they each tried to do what the other one didn’t want. There was an exception though. Mama fell and broke her hip and never really recovered from it. He was patient and good with her for the last few years of their lives together. Mama had a sharp tongue with him. He seldom did anything that pleased her. She definitely often made him look worse to his children than he was. Yet she was proud of the many things that he could do so well. She just wasn’t sensible in the way she approached him to get him to do something. If she had used her head a little more, she could have steered him to do more what she wanted. Instead, she was usually trying to force him into something. He was stubborn, she was stubborn, and so the quarreled. His funeral was held in their Rigby Ward and he was buried in a lot they had waiting in Pocatello. Mama lived alone for a while after his death. Just a few days after his funeral whe went out to hang something on the clothesline. As she came back to the house, she was crying and unsteady on her feet. She fell on the step and broke her other hip making surgery again necessary. It was the first time she had been left alone and it was only a few minutes, but it was long enough. She stayed with Lula quite a bit and Phyliss a little bit when she came home from the hospital. She stayed with me some, but I could only have her in the summer since I had to teach school. She finally went back to her home and Lula and Phyliss looked after her, mostly Lula. Phyliss called her every day and I went up frequently, but most of the burden was on Lula. She went to her house every day, took her to the store and the doctor, paid her bills, took her to church, did her laundry and everything else she needed. I took her on frequent little trips. Verna was living in California. Mama went down two winters and stayed with her and Bill for a month or two. Jim visited her a few times in Rigby. During this time a tragedy occurred. Jim was living in Hyrum and working in the library there. He loved the work but was dissatisfied with some of the people around him. He stole some old, valuable books to add to his collection. Others in the library had done the same thing, but Jim was caught and blamed for all of it. He lost his job and barely escaped jail. Mama was in California with Verna at the time. I made the decision to not tell her. I was hopeful that things could be worked out so she’d never have to know. She sensed something was wrong and kept asking questions. Finally, Ileen’s sister Rose Marie told her. That poor old lady was devastated. She was old and not well. She could do nothing. Jim had always been the apple of her eye. She thought more of him than all her daughters put together. She sat at my kitchen table, laid her head on the table, and cried and cried. She felt such despair! She always felt I should have told her. Perhaps she was right. If it had been my child in trouble I would have wanted to know. She only saw Jim a couple times after that. When it was time for school to start, I had to put her in a rest home here in Pocatello. I could not stay home with her. I had to teach to support myself and some of my family. Phyliss’ house was not set up to care for her. Lula had reached the limits of her endurance and could no longer have her. She had gotten so she needed twenty-four hour a day care. I tried desperately to get someone to come and stay with her but I could find no one. She kept falling and I could not get her up alone. So she went to Eastgate where she lived for a year and a half. She hated every minute of it. She felt all her children had abandoned her. I was heartsick, but there was nothing I could do. I could not get a decent doctor for her and had to let her be under the care of the terrible doctor who was there. He gave her medication which caused her to hallucinate. She really suffered during those awful times. After a few weeks the doctor stopped the harmful medication, she was moved to another wing and she felt better. She always hated it though. I was very good to her. I went up three of four times a week to see her. I did her laundry, took her for rides and sometimes I brought her to my house. I took her out to dinner. I purchased whatever she needed. I feel good about the care I gave her. Verna called frequently from California and wrote often. Neither Lula nor Phyliss came to see her for about six months. Phyliss wrote occasionally. After a few months Lula began to write her. She had about reached the breaking point when she cared for Mama. Jim stopped once to see her when he was on his way back from Idaho Falls. He had three children with him. He never called her, never wrote to her nor even sent her a Christmas or birthday card. I guess he was so caught up in his own troubles he had no thoughts for anyone else. I’ve always thought if he thought a little about her his own problems might have been less. One time a man called her long distance. The nurses hurried and got her to the phone. She was sure it was him and was so excited. It was Danny who loved her and called her frequently to see how she was. She began having little strokes. She had to be taken to the hospital. Fortunately, the dreadful doctor was on vacation and had gotten old Dr. Howard to care for his patients. Dr. Howard was wonderful to her and to me. I called Phyllis and she came down. I had been at the hospital a lot and decided to go home for a few minutes while Phyllis stayed with her. As soon as I got home, the phone was ringing. She had died, but Phyllis was with her. The last few days of her life she was unconscious most of the time. She died Dec. 12, 1977—just five years after her husband. She was 84. Her funeral too was held in her ward in Rigby. All her descendants were there. The chapel was filled. It was a beautiful service. After Papa’s death she selected a tombstone for their graves in Pocatello. It took her several years of little economies before she had it paid for. But it was installed and waiting for her. She didn’t want to be a burden to anyone so for years she kept up monthly payments on an insurance policy to bury her. There was some problem about getting a payment mailed. She was on day late and the policy was cancelled. However, her house was sold. It brought enough money to pay her burial expenses and leave each child about $2000. That of course was from both Mama and Papa. In the years since her death, I seem to miss her more and more. I think of her a lot. I’m glad she was taken as she was—quietly in her sleep—and I’m glad she isn’t still her suffering. She was afraid of dying. I don’t know why because she was a good woman. She did look forward to seeing her mother, her husband and the three little babies she had lost in. infancy. I always knew she loved me and would do anything she could for me, as my father also would have done. Mama had a sharp tongue only for Papa. With everyone else she was kind and patient. Her life was one of hard work and sacrifice for her children. She helped and encouraged her children and helped them set and attain goals. She was always trying to make things better for us. She never in all her life every had enough money to do more than just scrape by. The economies she practiced were unbelievable. She made every penny count many times. She was very clean about her person and her home. This she had learned from her Pennsylvania-Dutch mother. Our home was always a warm, loving, comfortable, clean place. The cleanliness was hard-gained. Most of her life she washed on a washboard. I remember seeing her hands fiery-red, swollen and raw in places after her day of washing. She moved frequently as my dad say greener pastures. Most of the houses in which we lived were very poor with two to four rooms, no electricity and no water. Many of them had bedbugs in them. How she worked to get rid of them! With a cloth she would soak all the cracks in coal oil and after a day to two scrub them down. She’d just about get on house. Cleaned up when we’d move on to the next. She had many talents. She learned to make drapes and worked at Petersens to keep Phyliss on a mission. Her crocheting and quilting were works of art. She loved to embroider. Much of her crocheting and embroidery work were done on flour sacks she bleached and washed. She won many prizes at fairs for her work. She could make beautiful clothes, many of them out of old things which had been given to her. She could cut clothes out without a pattern. She made most of her children’s clothes. She worked hard and was never idle. She got a lot of pleasure from her garden, especially her flowers. She loved to read and read a lot. There were always lots of books in our home. She was very active in church and Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. She always taught a class of young children. They really loved her. The last months in her home her little paper girl really looked after her because she loved her. She had a special ability to make friends. She had several very close lady friends. I’m grateful to her and how I miss her! I look forward to seeing her again! Back to Rick and Jeff. Jeff bagan going with Katie Mecham. I loved her. They went together, often breaking up, for about three years. They finally married, but it ended in divorce. Jeff just wasn’t ready to settle down. I don’t think either of them will ever meet anyone who will mean as much to them. Katie remarried and is happy. She wanted children and to get on with her life. Jeff finally remarried too—Cindy Lewis. Jeff and Cindy were married at her parents’ home in 1985. Roger performed the ceremony. Both Jeff and Cindy work for the railroad. They live in Salt Lak. They have two sons, Colby and Bronson. Jeff is a good man. He is always thoughtful of me. I truly love him. Rick went to I.S.U. a little and then went to BYU. After a year he went on a mission to California. The mission was good for him. He gained a testimony of the gospel. When he returned from his mission he went back to the “Y”. He began going with Micci McInnes. She is a doll! I liked her much better than his high school girlfriend. They became engaged and were married Aug. 19, 1980. The continued school. Micci was working for and R.N. at the U of U. She took some classes from the “Y”. It was hectic for them. Rick graduated from the “Y” with a degree in zoology. He had planned on being a dentist. He was accepted at the University of Nebraska. He graduated from there with a DDS in 1985. He wanted to be an oral surgeon but could not get in a school then. He is presently working in the emergency room at Cook County General Hospital, hoping this will help him get in a school of oral surgery. Rick was finally accepted in a school of oral surgery in Chicago. His four-year school began the summer of 1987. Rick and Micci have three darling boys, Zeke, Taylor and Conner. Micci finished her nursing program and has worked to help Rick through school. They are happy together. They are very active in the church. I am so very proud of Rick. He had to work very hard in school; but he persevered. I don’t worry about him and Micci. They are set—on the threshold of a great life. DerraLee, the boys’ sister, has earned several degrees. She is in the field of recreational and hotel management. She is very good at it. She has moved around a lot. She is not happy. I sort of foresaw her future when I taught her in the seventh grade. She bitterly resented the way their father left them. She, in my opinion, doesn’t trust men enough to have yet established a good, permanent relationship with any man. I worry about her. Lynnette, the other sister, married Randy Rehrer. I, at one time thought Roger and Lynette might get together, but they didn’t. They have remained very close friends. Lynette and Randy have six children. He is the football coach at Highland High School. Lynette stays at home with their six children and about five other children she babysits. Randy came from a home in California with no religion and an aimless, goal less, unthinking background. He has made great improvement, but he and Lynette have an up and down life. He joined the church but there was no real conversion. Lynette tries so hard to raise her children well. They are always clean, well fed and loved. Randy loves the children too, but the burden of the family is Lynette’s. She takes the children to church, checks their school closely and supervises their many activities. She is about two incompletes short of a B.A. in home economics. She’ll probably go back and finish. However, for now she wants to spend her time with her children. She wanted to have them and wants to stay home and raise them herself. I love her. She lives in town. I see her a lot and can rely on her for anything I need, as I hope she feels she can rely on me. Her mother is in Blackfoot and helps Lynette a lot with her children. I don’t help her enough. By the time I help Carolyn with her fiver boys and have Robin a little, I run out of time and energy. But how wonderful to have so many people I love near me. Roger has always liked to be involved in lots of things. In 1985 he decided to run for a seat on the city council. It was an exciting, close campaign. However, he lost. He had med a young lady name Janis Rhoads. They were married Dec. 27, 1985. He sold his little house and moved in Janis’ house. They are very comfortable and get along well together. Janis is an especially lovely person. She has an important job as head of an agency that handles problems for the poor, the aged and the sick in Southeastern Idaho. She is a career lady. Robin comes to see them frequently. Roger arranges to be with Robin at least once a month.

Chapter Six: The Life Story of Audrey Melissa Wardle: Four Weddings

Chapter 1 A Chapter 1 B  Chapter 2. Chapter 3 Chapter 4A Chapter 4b  Chapter 5  Chapter 6  Chapter 7  Chapter 8.    Chapter 9. Chapter 10

After five years in the house on Wyeth I decided to move. The house was so terrible nothing could be done with is so I looked for a long time for another one. I finally found our house on East Sherman. It had two bedrooms and a bath upstairs and two bedrooms with a bath with a shower downstairs. What heaven that was! One bathroom had always been a problem with so many of us. I had to pay a man to take our old house off my hands. Kenneth had one bedroom downstairs and Dale the other. The rest of us were upstairs. Kenneth and Dale shared the downstairs bathroom. In this house was where we played musical bedrooms. As the children came and went, someone was always ready to move into a bedroom that became vacant, if only for a few months. The new house had a beautiful kitchen. I have such good memories of our family meals in the bright and cheerful dining area. The living room was large. Kenneth frequently brought groups home after a dance. A funny thing happened one night. Dale had taken our car and gone somewhere. It was in the winter and I was so worried about the ice and snow when anyone was driving. Kenneth brought a large group home for cake and ice cream after a dance. They were there for an hour or an hour and a half. I slept in the front bedroom with Roger also there in a single bed. I lay awake worrying and wondering why Dale had never come home. I had checked outside and there was no car. I called the police. I called the hospitals. There was no report of an accident so I just paced the floor and worried. Finally, about 4 a.m., I had sense enough to go down to Dale’s room. There he was, sound asleep. He had run out of gas about two blocks from home so he just left the car. He had come in at the same time as Kenneth and his friends came so I hadn’t heard him. But what a night! Kenneth and Dale took turns with the car each weekend while Dale was a junior and senior in high school and Kenneth was a junior and senior in college. One would use it on Friday night and the other on Saturday. The next weekend they would reverse the days. If one needed the car on a night it was not his, they worked it out. They both took friends with them when they had the car so when they didn’t, they rode with their friends. The rest of us really didn’t need the car those nights. It worked out fine. Roger had gone through the first three grades at Jefferson. With our move he went to Washington. In the fourth grade, he had the worst teacher any of my children ever had. She was a mean old woman and she didn’t like him. His fifth-grade teacher was great. Carolyn was a sophomore at Poky when we moved. It was not a good move for her. There were no girls her age in the ward, a fourth ward again. For two years she attended classes with the girls older than she and they liked her and became her friends. But after they finished mutual, the girls who were one year younger than she was were so nasty to her that she just quit going to mutual. The boys in the ward treated Dale terribly too. He quit mutual and went less to other meetings. Moving to that ward was a bad move. It had never occurred to me that anyone would treat them so badly, or I’d have never moved. I had never been in a ward before where the kids tried to drive other kids from the church. During the years we lived in Pocatello, we took quite a few trips, especially in the summer. Our trips were mostly to the hills, Yellowstone Park, Teton Basin, etc. Sometimes I skipped a house payment to take a trip, but it was always worth it. I wanted to take the children on trips as we had always done when their dad was alive. I figured it was something that had to be done when the children were around, not when I could afford it—which would probably have been never. My children came to love the hills as I do. Ann decided she would like to go to Utah State to school. So in the fall of 1961 she enrolled there in social work. She lived in the dorm with a girl I felt was all wrong for her, but Ann liked her so she stayed with her. Later, she realized that all I had sensed was wrong with the girl really was wrong. But she lived with her for three years first. I kept working at the Green Triangle to keep her in school. One summer she lived with her Aunt Zula and Uncle Nephi at Dayton and worked in a food processing plant at Franklin. She was always very fond of her cousins, Ida Ruth and Lucille, who worked with her. There was some fun, besides just work. In the spring of 1964 Ann graduated from Utah State with a degree in social work. She had loved her years there. The summer of 1963 Carolyn, Ann, Roger and I took an especially good trip. We went up through Glacier National Park and on into Canada to Lake Louise and Banff. We went on east a way through the grain fields. On our trips we always camped out. Roger told me he wasn’t going again if we didn’t get a tent. We camped at a lake at the foot of a glacier one night and nearly froze. We always had scanty equipment; sleeping bags and quilts and we’d cook over a fire. If we’d waited to get better equipment, we’d never have gone. We came home through Montana. It was a great trip. The spring of 1963 dale graduated from Pocatello High School. He had signed up to go in the Navy. The last year he was at home was a bad year for both of us. He just wanted to get away from me. I tried so hard to make things better between us, but they just seemed to get worse. So as soon as he graduated, he left for boot camp at San Diego. I just felt terrible. I truly thought I’d never hear from him or see hm again. But after a couple weeks I got a letter from him. All the time he was in the Navy he wrote frequently and sent money home for me to save for him. That school year of 1962-63 was one of the hardest I ever put in. Dale was a senior at Poky and Carolyn was a junior there. Ann was a junior at Utah State and Kenneth a senior at I.S.U. It was a tough year to make ends meet and I was so worried about Dale that I was just miserable most of the time. Kenneth and the girl with whom he had been dating, Sarah Lloyd, decided to get married. They were married in her ward chapel on July 19, 1963. Sarah had not wanted to be married at the temple because her father couldn’t be with her. They did have a beautiful wedding. They even had an orchestra and a dance at the reception which followed the ceremony. Dale came home from boot camp and was part of the wedding party. We had a family picture taken at this time. I have really treasured that picture. My parents were the only ones of my family who came to the wedding, though some of them lived quite near. The Chases attended in force, as they did everything when we needed them. Kenneth and Sarah had a honeymoon at Lake Tahoe. Kenneth had bought a new car, a Dodge. It was the first car he had ever owned and he was proud of it. He got a job teaching school in Alamo, Nevada and he and Sarah moved there. Kenneth was 25 years old and Sarah 22. Dale loved boot camp and was happy to be in the Navy. He spent three years there and by then he was glad to get out. He never liked the rest of it as well as he did boot camp and wouldn’t reenlist. Getting away from me had made him feel better towards me. When we moved to the house on East Sherman, I changed schools so I could still walk to school. I taught at Roosevelt for two years and Roger went to Washington Elementary. I had a good principal there too, Murray Layne. In fact, in all my years of teaching the principal at New Sweden was the only poor one I had. I made a wonderful young friend at Roosevelt, Annabel Leslie. It was her first year of teaching. She became Carolyn’s friend and they did lots of things together. She was Roger’s friend too. After two years I transferred to Irving Junior High to teach English. I taught, first under Sam Fairchild who was wonderful and then under Ray Holcomb who was at first a good principal, and then because of personal problems a poor one. Mr. Holcomb was always especially good to me. I was very fond of him. My friend, Aileen Johnston, transferred from Roosevelt to Irving with me. When I transferred to Irving, I arranged for Roger to go back to Jefferson for his sixth grade. I did this because he was going to be transferred anyway and I wanted him where he knew some people. Also, I liked having him near me, he could come to my room after school, and I didn’t want him to go to Bonneville where he should have gone. I had my car for my use now, so Roger and I went to school together all this year. After graduating from Utah State in social work, Ann came home and began to look for a job. While looking for a job in her field, she got a temporary job as a waitress in a café. While working there, she met Ferdinand Zdenek, “Zeke.” He was a geologist who was working in the area. He was the neatest fellow but he was not LDS. How Roger and I liked him! Roger was in the seventh grade and Zeke took him on a few trips. Ann went with Zeke for some time. They became engaged and he gave her a beautiful ring. She finally decided not to marry him and returned his ring. He kept in touch with me for a few years and then we lost track of each other. But how I liked him! Ann finally got a job working for the LDS Social Services in Salt Lake. She really liked her job. She worked for them for eight years. My parents were married April 8, 1914 so we had a reception for them on their golden wedding anniversary in Rigby on March 28, 1964. All their children and grandchildren were present. Many friends called to wish them well. It was quite an achievement to reach that fifty hear mark. Over the years that we lived in Pocatello; I saw quite a lot of my parents. I went up to Rigby about twice a month to see them. Roger went with me most of the time. When the girls were at home, they often went too. The children were especially fond of their grandmother. I enjoyed spending time with my parents. If they had been able, they would have liked to help me financially. My parents always quarreled a lot, but I feel they really cared for each other. After spending one year at Alamo, Kenneth and Sarah moved to Babbitt, Nevada where Kenneth taught social studies in the junior high. They had a son David, born April 16, 1965. Carolyn graduated from Pocatello High School in 1964. She enrolled in English Education at ISU that fall. She went there one year. Then she decided to go to the University of Utah. She had a great year there and would have liked to stay and finish her school, but I got sick and had to quit work at the Triangle so I couldn’t afford to keep her at the U of U. Carolyn worked at a rest home and spent part of one summer in Jackson working in a laundry to help with her school expenses. She discovered she didn’t like life in Jackson so she came back to the rest home. While working at the rest home one day, Carolyn fainted. A young girl who worked with her had a child who had epilepsy. She thought Carolyn was having a seizure and that she’d have to get her tongue so she wouldn’t swallow it. When she couldn’t get her mouth open, she picked up a hairbrush and hit her in the mouth breaking out two teeth. Carolyn suffered a lot of pain before her teeth were finally fixed. Carolyn always had good girl friends with whom she had a lot of fun. By 1967 I had not been feeling well for a couple of years. I had pains in y stomach. It just hurt all the time. Finally, one day at school at Irving, I got really sick. I had felt terrible when I got up that morning, but the pain usually lessened if I kept working. I felt nauseated, weak and light-headed in addition to the pain. After a couple of classes, I felt even worse. In fact, I couldn’t sit up any longer. I told my class to keep working while I went in my little store room and lay down because I was so sick. I put my coat on the floor and lay on it. I didn’t think I could feel worse but I did. Two girls kept looking in at me. Finally they went for Mr. Holcomb. He took me to the hospital. I had a perforated ulcer. They kept me in the hospital for two weeks while the tried to stop the bleeding. I had a lot of transfusions. They gave me so much chalky, milky stuff to drink that I have never been able to drink milk since then, nor eat many things made with milk. After two weeks they operated on me and took out a little over half of my stomach. I was still getting lots of transfusions. My doctor finally told me that it wasn’t possible for a person to live if their body wasn’t making blood, but that is what had happened to me. The doctor couldn’t explain it, nor could the internist that was called in. They sent samples of my blood all over the country, but no lab could come up with an explanation. Finally, the decided to discontinue the transfusions and see if my body wouldn’t take over. All this time, for nearly six weeks, I was so weak that to turn my head just a little required more effort than I could make. I remember lying in bed so weak and light-headed that I was scarcely conscious. My neck would be hurting so badly I could hardly stand it because I had been in one position for such a long time, but I didn’t have the strength to turn my head. Just opening my eyes required more strength than I seemed to have. After a few days, my body did begin to take over and make blood again and I began to feel better. After the surgery, I had no problem with my stomach, the pain was gone. It was the problem with my blood which kept me in the hospital for so long. Once again, I had come close to dying. I was in the hospital for six weeks. Roger had a rather bad time while I was in the hospital. He and I were living alone so he was left home alone. He stayed a night or two with friends. Then Dale moved back home so Roger wouldn’t be alone. Dale came back from the Navy in the summer of 1966. He was glad to be back home and back in Pocatello. All my fears that I would never see him again when he went into the Navy were groundless. Dale lived at home for a while then moved into a fraternity house. When I got sick and was away from home for so long, Dale moved back so Roger wouldn’t be alone. Roger was in the ninth grade this year. He had never been anything but a joy and a delight to me. His ninth-grade year he lettered in four sports, football, basketball, wrestling and track. He was becoming a jock. He attended Franklin Junior High all his junior high years. He really had some good teachers and did well academically. While I was in the hospital, both Carolyn and Ann came to Pocatello to see me. They were both living in Salt Lake. Dale enrolled in I.S.U. in the fall of 1967. He was majoring in special education. Dale had started to go with a lovely girl, Ann Montgomery. He made a point of letting me know she wasn’t a Mormon. Some of the things people in the church had done to him plus my emphasis on church had really turned him off on Mormonism. Anyway, I guess that’s what turned him off. I like Annie instantly. I called her Annie to differentiate from my daughter Ann. When I came home from the hospital, Annie had been to the house, cleaned it and put clean sheets on my bed. She was around a lot from then on. She and Dale seemed especially well suited to each other. I was out of school for six more weeks. By then, I was feeling great. The only after effects I ever had from the operation was that I’ve never since been able to drink milk or any other drink with milk in it. I also eat very few milk-based foods. One other thing, I’ve had to be very careful of the amount of any liquid which I drink. I just can’t drink much of anything. Once in a while, if I eat something sweet or if I overeat, I get sick. The sickness just lasts a few hours and always seems to be my fault. I never went back to the Green Triangle to work. I had worked there nine years. The two years I didn’t go to summer school, I worked there full time. I hated every minute I worked there. The work was so hard. Because I was very fast, I did the work of two people. The two summers I worked there, I worked the coffee shop all alone during the lunch hour, that was a long counter, about six booths and about six tables. When I think about it, I don’t know how I did it. The money I made there was a great help. It kept Kenneth on his mission, Ann at Utah State and Carolyn at the University of Utah for one year. My tips were about $5 a might and those tips kept us in gas, odds and ends of groceries, lunch money and Dale and Roger (Carolyn didn’t like school lunches) and spending money for the three children. Their spending money was usually $1 to go to a movie and buy a little treat. They were very careful about money and asked for very little. I especially disliked most of the customers at the Green Triangle. A few of them were ordinary people, but most of them were the lowest kind of people. I hated the drunks. I liked most of the people I worked with. I’m sure forcing myself to work there when I hated it so much was what put me into the hospital. Even now, I shudder to think of that awful place. Carolyn had written to Eric Read for about a year while he was in Vietnam. He was the brother of a girl she had worked with at the rest home. Then they stopped writing for about a year and then resumed. Rick was sent for a second tour of duty to Vietnam. While there he had an R&R in Hawaii and Carolyn went to meet him. She stayed with her cousin Linda. When Carolyn returned, she and Rick were engaged. Roger’s sophomore year at Pocatello High School was good and not so good. He was outstanding in athletics, but he didn’t study much for his classes. He also had some friends who influenced him to start partying a little. He had always been such a good boy that I just couldn’t realize what was happening. I was worried sick about him. I asked Jim, who was then at the University of Southern Illinois if he could get Roger a job back there for the summer. He got him a job working with Dale Millis on an experimental wheat farm. Roger lived with Jim and Ileen. It was a good summer for Roger. Jim had left the farm and went back to school at Utah State. The years that he lived in Hyrum near Logan we had lots of fun times together. While Roger was in the eighth and ninth grades, we took several trips with Jim, Ileen and their family. Roger and Connie always had a good time together. After Jim finished at Utah State, he went to Denver for one year and got an M.A. in Library Science. When he graduated, Roger, my mother and I drove to the graduation. Mother was so proud of Jim. While Ann was at Utah State, Roger and I made many trips to Logan. We continued our trips when Jim and Ileen and family were there. Jim and Ileen liked to have us with them. We felt almost part of their family. That’s why I could ask them to let Roger spend the summer with them and why he wanted to go. This was the summer of 1968. I had begun work on my M.A. in English. After receiving my B.A. in 1960 I continued to take classes, partly because I enjoyed the classes and partly because I wanted a B.A. plus 15 graduate hours to raise myself on the pay scale. After a few years, I began to consider working on an M.A. in English-no Education. I was really terrified to try my first graduate English class. I didn’t think I was smart enough because the English program was so very difficult. But I passed one class, then another and another. My first grade was an “A”. I decided I was already on my way to an M.A. so I applied for acceptance in the Graduate English program and was accepted. Dr. William Shanahan was my advisor. He was fantastic! I had selected a thesis topic, “A Critism of Eighteenth and Twentieth Century Satire: A Johnsonian Approach”, and had begun work on it. After the summer of 1968 was nearly over, we decided to go back to Illinois and pick Roger up to bring him back in time for school. Ann was working in Salt Lake and had a new little car which we drove. Carolyn went with us. We went through Kansas on our way to Carbondale. What a desolate route! When we got to Illinois, we stayed about a week with Jim and Ileen. We really had a good time. Jim and Ileen had some good friends who lived in the same apartment building. They went on vacation and said that I could use their apartment while they were gone. They left the key for me. I went up to their apartment for four to five hours a day for about five days and worked on my thesis. What a wonderful experience! The apartment was air conditioned and no one bothered me. I was there all alone. I got a great deal done. It is the only time in all my studying that I really had ideal conditions. Jim took us to many entertaining places. He was working in the library. We really had a great trip coming home. We were only 300 miles from Hannibal, Missouri. I liked the works of Mark Twain so much that I couldn’t be that close to where he had lived and where he had set some of his books and not go see it. So, we went to Hannibal. We saw Tom Sawyer’s home, Becky’s home, the cave and many other things mentioned in Twain’s books. Of course, it was a tourist town, but it was fun. It was close to Carthage and Nauvoo so we had to go there and see the jail where Joseph Smith was killed, the visitor’s center and other interesting things connected with the early days in the church. We came back by way of the Dakotas and went t the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore. It was great! We came home through Wyoming, through the north entrance of Yellowstone Park. It rained most of the time in the northern part of the park, but that only made it more beautiful. Such mountains! Such trees! We got back in time for Roger and me to start school; Roger as a junior at Poky and me at Irving. Ann went back to her job in Salt Lake. We had stopped in St. Louis where I bought a pretty blue dress to wear to Dale’s and Annie’s wedding. That summer of ’68 before we went to Illinois was really special. Dale and Annie had decided to be married. Annie had graduated from I.S.U. with a degree in social work. She did not want to go home to Caldwell for the summer, so she lived with us. Annie’s mother had died from cancer when Annie was fourteen. All through high school, she had kept house for her dad and two brothers. Her dad remarried while Annie was at college so her home was quite different. She didn’t want to go back there, and we were delighted to have her live with us. It was one of the nicest things that ever happened to me. We had fun together and I learned to love Annie. In many ways, we are much alike. The really wonderful thing was that Annie wanted to be part of our family. She didn’t want to marry Dale and then go away so that they’d seldom see us. She wanted to be around us. It was partly because her own mother was dead, but she learned to love us too. Before we went to Illinois, we sent out wedding invitations. Then Annie went to Caldwell to prepare for their wedding while we went to Illinois. They were married in Annie’s church, the Christian church in Caldwell Sept. 7, 1968. It was a beautiful wedding. Roger was Dale’s best man. Ann, Carolyn and I were there. Kenneth and his family were on their way to the wedding when they had a wreck on the Nevada desert. They were not hurt, but their car had been towed back home. They had a terrible time. Kenneth really felt badly when he couldn’t be at the wedding. Annie had some dear friends, Dessa and Mrs. Finck who helped her with the wedding. We had a lovey rehearsal dinner at the local café. I hosted it. It was very nice. Some of our old friends from Nampa came, also Muriel and Berniece Chase and Berniece’s daughter, Julia. Dale and Annie honeymooned in northern Idaho. They came back to Pocatello to live. Annie got a job working as a social worker at the state hospital in Blackfoot. Dale had a part time job and attended school full time. They had an apartment near us and were around for two more years. Annie was the greatest thing that ever happened to Dale. She really helped and encouraged him so that he was able to finish school. We saw them all the time. Annie liked to be with us. I love her as much as my daughters. In every way she has been a daughter to me. She has always been someone to whom I could talk when I was troubled or worried. How I love her! Rick had come home from Vietnam and he and Carolyn decided to be married. Rick was not LDS but he joined the church and was baptized in Saigon. They were married in the Fourth Ward chapel Feb. 28, 1969. Carolyn was a beautiful bride. Roger and Ann were part of the wedding party. The reception was held in the recreation hall. Bill Green, Verna’s husband, came to town a couple hours before the wedding. He was a help. For some reason, I was ready to fall apart. Carolyn graduated from I.S.U. with a degree in English Education the spring of 1969, after her marriage. Carolyn and Rick went to Tacoma, Wash. Where Rick was stationed at Fort Louis. A year later, May 22, 1970, the were sealed in the Idaho Falls temple. Rick was as wonderful for Carolyn as Annie was for Dale. Together they have grown. They had always reinforced each other. Rick has always been especially good to me. I love him too. Ann, too, decided to get married. She had met Bud Carter in Salt Lake. He was divorce, the father of five children and older than Ann. He was a fine man and was trying hard to care for his children. Ann and Bud were married in Salt Lake, Mar. 15, 1969. They were married at the home of Ann’s bishop. It was a beautiful setting and the wedding was beautiful. So was the bride. Many, many people attended. Once again, I about fell apart. Annie and Carolyn kept me calmed down. We had had three weddings in about seven months. I don’t know how we ever did it all. I really didn’t think I’d survive it all, but I did. I was happy for my newly married children, but it really left me and Roger alone.

Audrey Melissa Wardle Chase History Chapter 5: Widowhood

Chapter 1 A Chapter 1 B  Chapter 2. Chapter 3 Chapter 4A Chapter 4b  Chapter 5  Chapter 6  Chapter 7  Chapter 8.    Chapter 9. Chapter 10

 Everyone was so good to us. John Morf, the chairman of my school board, and the lady who was president of the P.T.A. came with about $170 that the Lone Tree community had raised. The bishop offered money which I didn’t need. So much food was brought. I didn’t want food from the church welfare, but they brought it anyway for a couple of months, until I insisted they stop. An insurance man I scarcely knew came a couple of days after the funeral and insisted I accompany him to the Social Security office where he helped my apply for benefits for the children. I didn’t get any because I was employed. Because of that kind man, we began to get benefits in about two months. By the time I’d have thought of applying I’d really have been short of money. That man knew I was dazed and didn’t know what to do and he came and helped me. Ellis had always made good money and because of that his children always received maximum Social Security benefits. One good-sized check came to me for them. I used it to help support my children. It, at first, was almost as much as my check for teaching. I wasn’t able to save any of it for the individual children because I could just barely make it as it was. None of the children have ever questioned my use of the money. When the children entered college, they each began to receive a separate check which they kept to help them pay their school expenses. We could never have made it without those social security checks. One day Ann and I took a clock that had stopped to a jeweler to have it repaired. The jeweler showed me a lovely watch. Ellis had put it on lay away to give to me for Christmas. The jeweler insisted I take the watch. He said it was nearly paid for and he didn’t know what to do with it. That day, I felt Ellis beside me. It was such a good feeling. I had felt him close at his funeral too, but never again. I prayed and prayed, over the years, to feel his presence again, but I never have. I guess the Lord knows best. I couldn’t live a life waiting to feel Ellis near me. Evertons took me some places with them. Everyone in the ward was especially good to me. My dear friends Mary Harper and Jean Van Engelen were with me a lot. I couldn’t sleep well and neither could Jean. Also Wayne was away a lot. I would call Jean at any time and sometimes she called me. Many of these call were at three or four in the morning and we’d talk for an hour or more. Sometimes I’d get up at two or three, when I couldn’t sleep, and clean cupboards or scrub floors or iron. I felt terrible physically all the time and part of it was because I was only getting four hours or less of sleep a night. It was a terrible time emotionally too. I felt as if a part of me was missing. It was a good thing that I had so many children dependent on me and so much work to do that I never really got everything done. My children and my work were my salvation. I had taught Primary all the time I was in Nampa and continued to do it as long as we lived there. Jean Van Engelen was the Primary President. Our meeting were especially wonderful. They gave me a spiritual boost. Kenneth was a junior in high school. He was on the staff of the paper and was involved in many other activities. Ann was in the ninth grade and the pianist for the junior high choir. Dale and Carolyn were busy and settled in their school. While we were in Nampa, Kenneth and Ann belonged to a dancing class. On of the ladies in our ward had a very large, nice room in her basement. She taught the class there. Besides dancing, she taught the correct manners for a dance and for many other situations. Frequently, the group had a regular dance to which the parent were invited. It was fun for everyone. I did not have a degree and knew I must get one if I wanted to continue teaching. When summer came, I went back to school at the College of Southern Idaho in Caldwell. I went to school from about 8 A.M. till 12:30 A.M. Then I went to the Canyon County Court House in Caldwell and worked at the assessor’s office till 5:00. They were reassessing all property in the county and a school board member from Lone Tree helped me get the part-time job. Kenneth had worked for Jim in Othello one summer. The summer after Ellis’ death he went there again and took Dale with him. It was mean to send that little boy away, but I had to be away and Ann couldn’t handle him. Jim and Ileen were good to Dale and the farm was a good place to be. Ann took care of Carolyn and Roger. I had decided to stay in Nampa another year so Kenneth could finish high school. I just couldn’t move him for his senior year when he was involved in so many activities. I knew it wouldn’t be good, but I thought it would be easier to move Ann when she had two years of high school left than Kenneth with one. So I stayed at Lone Tree for one more year. Ellis and I had only once talked about what I’d do if he didn’t survive his surgery. I told him I’d move back to Pocatello where there was a university for the children to attend and where we were closer to relatives. Ellis had two brothers in Pocatello and my parents lived in Rigby. Ellis had reached the same conclusion and so he was satisfied. I continued to take one class each semester and returned to summer school and the assessor’s office the second summer. The second summer I also took a night class at Boise Junior College so I could have three years of college finished. It meant a higher step on the pay scale in Pocatello where I had gotten a job. Violet Chase was president of the P.T.A. Central Council in Pocatello and was instrumental in getting my job. I knew I could have gotten a job in California for a lot more money, but I didn’t even try. I was afraid I’d never be able to keep my children close to the church and raise them as I wanted to in California. The people in the Primary arranged for Dale to have an early graduation so he’d be finished with the Primary program before we left. They presented him with a Bible. Kenneth had all the fun of his senior year and all its culminating activities. I’ve seen many boys who lost a father when they were about sixteen, change their patterns of behavior. This was never a problem with Kenneth. He had good friends and he stuck to them. I never had any problems with him. I was pleased because I was asked to help chaperone Kenneth’s graduation dance in the spring of 1956. Ellis’ brother Ferron and his wife Muriel lived in Marsing, near Nampa. Ellis was especially fond of Ferron and we went to their farm home frequently. They were good to me after Ellis’ death. When it came time to move to Pocatello, Ferron borrowed a big truck from a neighbor, came in and helped us load everything. Kenneth had a good friend who came with us. He and Kenneth drove the truck to Pocatello. Ann rode in the cab with them. It was a long trip! In Pocatello, Amos had found a house for me to buy. It was in a perfect location. Dale and Carolyn could walk to Jefferson Elementary School. Ann to Pocatello High School and I to Emerson Elementary where I had been assigned to teach sixth grade. Kenneth used the car because he enrolled at Idaho State University which was clear across town. As soon as his classes were finished he went to work at Terrells Shoe Store where his father had worked. Amos had spoken to them about Kenneth to help him. We could also welk to town and church because our house on West Wyth was so well located. The location was great, but the house was not. There were two little rooms with partially dirt walls in the basement which Carolyn and Ann used. They were terrible, but private. Kenneth used a room that had been built on the back porch which had no heat. Roger and I shared the one mall bedroom. What had been the dining room we used for a combined bedroom for Dale and a TV room. That way, the TV was turned off early at eight or nine. We had a large living room and a fair-sized kitchen. We lived in this house five years. The first thing I had to do was find someone to take care of Roger. I took him to one lady’s house, but he was only there one or two weeks. He hated it. He’d run away and go home. Then we found another lady, dear Marvena Lords. She lived three blocks from our house. I could walk over with Roger, drop him off and continue on to the school. Then I’d pick him up when I came home. Marvena had a daughter, Sheila, who was Roger’s age—four. They liked each other and played well together. This wonderful lady took care of Roger during the school months for two year until he was ready to start school. Kenneth started college and worked at Terrells. He was active at the institute and had a fun year. Ann started as a junior at Pocatello High School. They had a good seminary program and she was active in it. She was secretary of the seminary her senior year and always accompanied the singing in her classes. She made some good friends and had a good time. She made some good friends and had a good time. She was never a problem to me—just a joy and a great help. Ann had terrible headaches for years. I took her to all kinds of doctors to be checked but no one could ever find the cause and help her. Years later, when she left home and no longer had the responsibility for the three younger children, especially Dale, her headaches stopped. So I can only assume her headaches were caused by what she had to do. I didn’t really leave her with the children a lot, but I guess it was too much. Carolyn started the fifth grade at Jefferson Elementary. She found a good friend around the corner from our house, Kathy Chambers. They have been best friends ever since. Dale too, started school at Jefferson. He was in the sixth grade. He had a teacher he especially liked. One night, about two months after school started, I went to P.T.A. dale’s teacher asked me when my husband would be coming to town. She needed to know to complete some records. She had been hounding Dale every day, in front of all the class, to get this information. Dale just kept saying that his dad was still working in Nampa, but he’d be coming soon. I guess he just couldn’t admit that his father was dead. I always thought that Dale was hurt by his dad’s death than any of the other children. For some reason he just couldn’t accept it. I enrolled for my first class at Idaho State University. I had to get a degree! From the time I first started classes at Caldwell till I got my masters at I.S.U. I took one class a semester, every semester for 17 years. I also went to summer school every summer except two. However, about a year after I came to Pocatello I switched majors from Elementary Education to English. I just couldn’t stand another stupid education class. The education classes at the College of Idaho were quite good, but the ones at I.S.U., with only two exceptions, were boring and useless. The English classes, beginning with one in Caldwell, were always great. In all those years I never had an English teacher who wasn’t both scholarly and stimulating. The switch did delay my degree, but it couldn’t be helped. The English classes were really a sort of recreation for me, and about all the recreation I had. I never left home at night except for class, later to work a little and still later, when most of the children were gone, to teach a mutual class. If I went to a movie or a basketball game, I always took the children. Most of the time when the children were home I was there too. When we had moved to Pocatello I decided I just had to get more sleep so I began forcing myself to sleep at least six hours every night. Almost at once, I felt better physically. I still felt terrible emotionally. Two years after Ellis’ death, three years and four and five years, I just felt worse all the time. I think the thing I missed most was companionship. Next, was not one to help me with the children. Sometimes, when I taught at Emerson, after school, I’d just sit on the steps feeling that I couldn’t, after a hard day, go home, prepare dinner and meet all the demands of my children all alone. We had moved into the first ward. It’s really strange, but for most of my life I’ve been in either a first or fourth ward. The people there were wonderful to us. Unfortunately, there was never a scouting program for Dale. No man really ever helped Dale or looked after him. I had thought Ernest would take Dale places with his sons, but he never did. I didn’t expect any help from Amos. Even Kenneth was not a help with Dale. For some reason they could not get along. For peace in the family, I just had to keep them separated as much as I could. I taught a sixth grade at Emerson School. They had given me all the problem kids and stuck me in a tiny room that had been used for storage. But I like the kids and got along fine. It was a good school year. Mr. Stauber was the principal. He was a wonderful man and I enjoyed teaching under him. I stayed at Emerson for five years teaching sixth grade, fifth grade or a combination of the two. I made two wonderful friends there who are still my friends, Sara Jones and Julia Christiansen. When the fall of 1957 came, Kenneth went on a mission to the Great Lakes Mission. Kenneth received his mission call August 26, 1958. He was gone for two years. He had a wonderful testimonial. The church was so full that the foyer was filled with people standing. It cost about $125 a month to keep him on his mission. Except for some help from Ann one semester that she dropped out of school, I supported Kenneth on his mission with no help from anyone. An old gentleman in the High Priests’ group from the first ward visited me regularly during those two years to see the they couldn’t help me. It was kind and good of him, but I felt it was my responsibility. I found, however, that I couldn’t quite make it. So I went back to part-time waitress work. One night I called the Green Triangle and asked if they had any openings. They told me to come in next Saturday night. So while Kenneth was on his mission I worked there about every Saturday night. I’d go out about seven or eight and work until about 5 A.M. I was teaching the Sunday School class that Dale and Carolyn were in. They had been unable to have a permanent teacher because the class was so large (about 20 kids) and so hard to handle. I taught them the five years that I lived in the first ward. I was just moved along with the class. It was so hard to sleep two or three hours, then get Dale up and, usually, drive him to priesthood meeting, come home, get dinner started, the rest of us to Sunday School, teach that hard class and then come home and get dinner. By then I would just collapse. But at least I was able to keep Kenneth on his mission with that one night of work. I always cooked a good dinner at night. Sometimes they were fast, but they were hot and nourishing. We always had a fun time at dinner. Everyone had so much to say. We said our family prayer at this time. On Sundays I always cooked a special dinner with some good dessert. I also saw that each of the children had breakfast before school. They always had orange juice and eggs, toast or cereal on school days. On Saturdays I’d cook hot cakes or waffles or bacon and eggs. I saw so many kids come to school hungry or angry or both that I made a special effort to see that each of my children started the day off with a good breakfast and in a good mood. Sometimes I really had to hang on to my own temper. We had few colds and little sickness. I have always felt that the good nutrition was the reason why. Our house on West Wyeth was a fun place for Dale and Roger because of the hills right behind it. Summer and winter they had fun. The older boys I the neighborhood slept out a lot. Ann graduated from high school in 1958. Dale and Carolyn finished at Jefferson and moved on to Irving Junior High. The year Dale started at Pocatello High School was the last year we lived on Wyeth. That was one of the best years I ever had with Dale. He was difficult to raise. I always felt he demanded as much time and attention as the other four children combined. In the fall of 1958 Roger started school at Jefferson. We got a puppy so he wouldn’t have to be alone when he came home from school. The puppy was our good old Queenie. Mrs. Tolman, who lived next door, kept an eye on Roger until I got home from school. He was usually pretty good, but one time he was playing with matches and set a chair on fire. He put it out by himself. He was a sweet boy. We all loved and babies him. After Ann’s graduation from high school she went to ISU on a nursing scholarship she had won. But nursing was not for her. She went three semesters and then dropped out of school for one semester. This was when she helped me with Kenneth’s mission expenses. Ann had an especially good time at the Institute while she attended I.S.U. About three years after moving to Pocatello, I was getting ready to go somewhere with the three younger children one evening when I realized I was looking forward to the next few hours with pleasure. It had taken five years, but I began to enjoy life again. Kenneth was released from his mission September 23, 1960. He had a wonderful mission. He loved the time that he spent teaching the gospel. He gained a fervent testimony of the gospel which has helped and sustained him ever since. He went back to ISU and working at Terrells. He had a really great time at school, with his social life centered about the Institute. He was president of Lamba Delta Sigma, the L.D.S. fraternity, in his senior year. He met a lovely young lady named Sarah Lloyd and the decided to be married after his graduation. I graduated from I.S.U with a BA in English Education. My teaching certificate was a secondary one. I was glad to get my degree, but I did not go to the graduation exercises. It had taken so long to get, that a ceremony was anti-climatic.

History of Audrey Melissa Wardle Chase: 4b, Move to Nampa, Ellis' Operation and Death

Chapter 1 A Chapter 1 B  Chapter 2. Chapter 3 Chapter 4A Chapter 4b  Chapter 5  Chapter 6  Chapter 7  Chapter 8.    Chapter 9. Chapter 10

When school was out, we moved to Nampa. Van Engelens’ had a larger store there and they wanted Ellis to run the shoe department. In fact, Ellis went down before school was out. He found a rather large house which was part of an estate and had not been lived in for several years. He was given a substantial amount off the rent if he would clean and paint the place. He had it about ready for us when we came. It was a nice house and a nice neighborhood. Kenneth was in the ninth grade. Both here and in Burley he went to the store in the afternoon and worked with his father. Later, he worked in a variety store. I don’t know why we didn’t encourage him to go out for sports. His father had. But his father just liked to have Kenneth with him. I don’t think he even thought of sports. I know I didn’t. Ann was in the seventh grade, Dale in second and Carolyn ready to start first grade. Expenses were climbing and Ellis was not feeling much better so we decided I’d better teach. I got a job at Lone Tree, a school of grades one to eight about four miles north of Nampa. I was principal of the three-teacher school and taught grades 6,7 and 8. I was also hired as clerk of the school board. I taught there four years. I have always loved teaching, but those four years at Nampa were the best and most rewarding years of my teaching career. I had about 20-22 students in my class. Every fall when the migrant workers came, my enrollment would increase, sometimes by as many as ten. These students never stayed long: a week, a month, sometimes even two months. I did the best I could for them, but that wasn’t much. But my other students I truly loved and felt that I taught them well. I had two groups of students that I taught for three years. By the time I had had a student that long, I really knew him and he knew me. What they learned to take them on to high school and, in some cases college, was my sole responsibility. They were mostly kids who were bright and quick to learn. The one or two in a class who were a little slower were carried to better scholastic performance by the momentum of the group. What a joy is was to teach them! We went to all the schools around for baseball games, to the state legislature, to Caldwell, the county seat, to attend a whole week of a murder trial, to the mountains and many other places. Every place we went, parents went with us to provide transportation and just for fun. It was the greatest group of parents and kids I have ever known. In the top of the school was my classroom and another large room. We could open doors and have a huge room. The other teachers and I put on elaborate programs for every occasion. The whole community came. It was difficult to even find a place to stand. I’ve always thought one reason the kids were so neat was because they all lived on farms and had to work hard. They all had chores to do every morning and every night. Most of them worked for an hour or two before they came to school. As I remember there was only one L.D.S. family. But what church someone went to or didn’t go to, was not part of our school. My students were especially sensitive to my needs. Because of Ellis’ increasing ill health, I was under tremendous pressure. I had frequent, totally disabling migraine headaches. The only thing that seemed to help them was sleep. The kids could tell when one was starting because my pupils would dilate, my face get white and I would perspire. Someone always came up to me and said, “Mrs. Chase, go in the office (a little cubicle with a phone and a couch) and sleep. We’ll do our work and be quiet.” I would go because I couldn’t do anything else. Sometimes I’d sleep three or four hours. The kids would just quietly go along with their schedule. No one ever took advantage of my absence. When we went to Nampa, Ellis began to go to a heart specialist in Boise. After we had been in Nampa about a year this kind man told me, privately, that Ellis could only live another year at the most. He did not tell Ellis, but felt I should know. The doctor said nothing could be done for him. His heart had worked so hard that is was the size of a small watermelon. It took up so much room, that all the other organs in his body did not have enough room. He began to have trouble with his lungs, his kidneys, everything. We had to get a hospital bed for him and a tank of oxygen that he used all night or whenever he lay down. His medicine alone cost over $100 a month and that was a lot in those days. All this time, Ellis went to work every day and did his church jobs as well, but he looked terrible and felt worse. He wanted to spend every minute he could with his family. He adored his children. When he came home from work Roger, who was 1 ½ to 2 ½ at this time would run to his dad with books he wanted read to him. Ellis always sat down and read to him for a while. Then he’d have to lie down for half an hour and inhale oxygen before we could have supper. It was a bad time for the children. We had tried to spare them, but they could tell he was not well. I think the children were happy. Kenneth and Ann had lots of activities in the church. Kenneth had started high school. For a couple of years each of the four in school went to a different school. With my own P.T.A., that made five I had to attend. The best I could do was to go to each child’s three or four times a year. All the children did well in school. Dale never again had any trouble. I had always read to my children and I had them read to me almost nightly until they referred to read to themselves. Kenneth and Ann had piano lesson for years. Ann went on to be a good pianist. Kenneth got tired of it and quit. I had too any pressures so I didn’t insist he continue. Dale and Carolyn started piano lessons. Dale’s didn’t last long. He wouldn’t practice unless I sat beside him. I had to help him and Carolyn with reading, plus school, plus meals, plus washing, plus a million other things. I had to give up on Dale and the piano. Carolyn continued till about the time she graduated from high school, but never liked it. She was a beautiful artist and wanted to take art lessons. I was wrong to force her and I’ve been sorry ever since. Ellis’ Boise doctor had a regular schedule of work that included periods about twice a month when he was at the Mayo Clinic to work with patients they scheduled for him. The doctor was that good. Ellis and I wanted him to check and see if they could do anything for Ellis at the clinic. The doctor was sure they could not help, but he agreed to check. I could see Ellis could not live long the way he was going. He knew too, though he always believed something would make him better. The clinic agreed to check Ellis. His Boise doctor knew it would be a waste of time and money we could not afford, but for our peace of mind he made the arrangements. Ellis and I both felt he should go. Ellis was sure they could prescribe some new medication that would help him. I wanted to leave nothing undone that would help him. The appointment was made for the middle of September. I had been in school two weeks. I had to find a substitute and arrange everything at school. We planned on being gone one week. Jean and Wayne Van Engelen kept Roger who was 2 ½ and Dale. Kenneth, who was a junior in high school, Ann who was in the ninth grade and Carolyn who was a third grader were going to stay at home and take care of themselves. Kenneth was working at the variety store so most of the work fell on Ann. We didn’t leave Dale at home because he was too hard to handle. We caught a plane from Boise on Saturday evening. Ellis had worked all that day. Wayne and Jean took us to the plane and took all our children to see us off. We got to Rochester and found a hotel room. Ellis’ appointment was for early Monday morning. We found the LDS Branch and went there on Sunday. The branch president and his wife were so good to us. They were Brother and Sister Robert Wayne. They had been called on a mission to fill their positions. They were a source of strength and encouragement all the while we were at the clinic. The people at the branch were wonderful too. Ellis was examined all week. At the end of that time, the doctors told us that they might be able to perform surgery. They had just perfected a plastic valve to insert by the aorta which would do the work of the aorta. They had done four of these operations, the first one in July. They told us Ellis would have a 60/40 chance of surviving the operation. Without it, he would die soon. Ellis was shattered. I truly believe it was the first time he had really realized, or let himself realize, that he didn’t have long to live. I had known for a year. Ellis just kept saying, “My children. I have a little boy who’s only two,” over and over. We decided to have the surgery. We let the children and other people know we would not be back for a while. Fortwo more weeks they checked Ellis before they were ready to operate. He was in the hospital during that time. The first thing I did when he went into the hospital was to find a smaller, cheaper hotel room. The one I found didn’t have a bath. I had to go quite a way to reach one. But I could see that since our stay had been lengthened, I’d have to be very careful of money. During these two weeks of testing, Norval Wardle came to see us. He lived in Ames, Iowa and traveled a lot with his job. He found himself only 300 miles away and so had driven to see us. How glad we were to see him! He and Ellis had always liked each other and we had spent quite a bit of time with Norval and his wife Delsa. To get to the other hospital Ellis was taken through part of a vast network of subterranean halls that linked all of the medical complex together. I went with him and it seemed miles! Elders from the branch had administered to Ellis and we were as ready for the operation as we could be. It required a team of 27 people to perform the surgery which took 9 ½ hours. I had to wait downstairs in the general waiting area. I waited alone. One of the doctors on the team came to tell me that Ellis had survived the operation. His chances of ultimate survival were still slim, but he was alive. What a long, terrible day that was! I called home to let the children know. The first days after the surgery were almost unbearable for Ellis, even though he was partially sedated. They had made an incision down his chest, around to his back, and then pulled his ribs apart to reach his heart. That was what caused the agony. All those muscles and tendons, all that flesh! Every breath was agony. Ellis had to have a special nurse at all times. The one who worked the night shift was quite old. She looked something like my Aunt Rose who was a nurse and whom Ellis liked. In his delirium during that first awful week, Ellis thought Aunt Rose took care of him. It helped him. After seeing the agony he endured, there is no way I’d ever go through it myself. Almost any death would be preferable. After that first terrible week, Ellis began to improve and improved so rapidly that the were able to discharge him a little over two weeks after his surgery. Mr. Van Engelen had signed a note at the bank with us to borrow the money for plane fare and the expenses before we left Nampa. He had increased the loan for us when we had to stay longer. The hospitals all had to be paid in full before they’d finish their care. It took me six years to pay back the loan. Mr. Van Engelen was a good man. I’ll always be grateful to him for his concern and help. The doctor in Boise and the Mayo Clinic, after awhile of my small payments, cancelled their bills. I never ever knew the full amount of the clinic bill, but it was more than I could have ever repaid. All that wonderful team worked for no pay. I only met a few of the doctors. The rest I never saw, but I owe them all an incredible debt that I’ll never by able to repay. Everyone that I met in the town was kind to me. I found their public library where they wanted to check out books to people who had come to the clinic or people who were with them. What I saw of town, made me feel that it was a place of love and compassion. The branch president and his wife took us to the plane when we left for home. I loved them dearly. They had helped us so much. Ellis felt especially close to the branch president. When we got back to Boise, Wayne met us and took us home. We had been gone just a little over five weeks. Everything at home was fine. My mother had come to Nampa and stayed with the children who were at home for one or two weeks. Kenneth said he wished I’d taught Ann how to cook something besides eggs. I stayed home with Ellis for a few days and then went back to school, leaving him home alone. Ann or Kenneth came home to be with him for lunch. Carolyn and Dale ate at school and Roger was back with his regular baby sitter. The doctors had given Ellis no particular instructions. We had about four steps to our house which they said he could climb. They just told him to be careful. He was given no medicine to dissolve blood clots. What had been done to him and his treatment after he returned home were quite experimental. His surgery was only the fifth of its kind that the Mayo Clinic had done. Ellis had felt better after the first week following his surgery. In fact, that he felt better was about the first thing he realized after that one agonizing week. He caught a cold which lasted for about two weeks. When he recovered from it he felt good, better than he had felt for years. The doctors had predicted that his heart would gradually reduce in size so we looked forward to increasing good health for him. I took him to Boise frequently to see his doctor. One Saturday his doctor wanted him to go to a Boise hospital and be examined by some other doctors who were interest in his case. I had to wash before we went and were a little late leaving Nampa. I had to drive quite fast to keep the appointment. Ellis didn’t say a word about it. He could see how much I had to do. About the first thing his doctor did was take his blood pressure. It was sky high. A few hours later it was taken again and was about normal. Thought Ellis had said nothing, it was my hurrying and fast driving which had raised his blood pressure. Ellis kept feeling better and better. He could take care of all his needs. He didn’t ever have to stay in bed. Many friends would stop to see him during the day so that he wouldn’t be so lonesome. Wayne stopped in nearly every day and took him for a ride or just visited. A little valve that had been placed in his body was about two inches long, made of clear plastic and about ¾ of an inch at its widest part. It was shaped like two tiny milk bottles put bottom to bottom, but it was open all the way through. There was a little ball inside. As the blood flowed into the valve it moved the ball from one end to the other so the blood could not flow back as it had done before. Each time the ball filled and end of the valve there was a very faint click. You almost had to put your ear on his chest to hear it. But it was there and a real miracle. The last day of school before Thanksgiving, November 24, 1954 a Wednesday, I was a few minutes late getting home. Ellis was not there. Wayne came to tell me that he was in the hospital. Wayne had come to take him for a ride and Ellis had wanted to go in the store for a few minutes. They had started to the office which was up about two steps. Ellis suffered a stroke. A clot of blood around his aorta had come loose and gone to his brain. He never spoke again. His entire side, the right as I remember, was paralyzed. He could move his head and his left arm and leg. His doctor from Boise came at once. He told me that the stroke was so severe that if he lived he’d probably never move again, after years he might learn to speak and that his personality would be totally different. I never wanted him to live like that. He’d have hated it. Ellis had survived that terrible operation to have something else happen. I stayed at the hospital, running home once in a while to check on our children. I remember that I cooked a chicken for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a terrible day. Kenneth and Ann were at the hospital a lot. The nurses did little for Ellis, almost no medication, just one shot. No oxygen. I remember the window wide open all the time with a cool breeze coming in. I had called my folks and some of Ellis’ brothers. My brother Jim lived in Othello, Washington. He and his family had been in Idaho Falls for Thanksgiving. I didn’t know it and he didn’t know about Ellis. Jim and his family were on their way home on Friday night about two or three in the morning. They had decided to not stop and wake us at that hour. After they had gotten 20 or 30 miles past Nampa, Jim felt he had to turn around and come back. He went home first, then came to the hospital. Kenneth, Ann and I stayed at the hospital. Ann went home for a little while. The nurses said Ellis was dying so Jim went home to get Ann so she could be with her father. Kenneth and I stayed. Ellis died before Ann and Jim got back. He had been unconscious for hours. On second he was still alive and the next he was dead. When I got his death certificate is said he died of pneumonia. I remembered the open window and the absence of oxygen and medication. The doctor, know his future, had not tried to save him. I’ve always been grateful to him. I know Ellis preferred death too. He died about seven in the morning, Saturday morning, November 27, 1954. Ellis was 44 and I was 39. The children’s ages ranged from 2 to 16. His funeral was special. Kenneth and Ann sang in a youth choir of about 50 young people. The choir provided the music for his funeral. There was no problem about them getting out of school. Ellis’ brothers were his pall bearers. All our relatives came. Ellis was buried in Kohlerlawn Cemetery in Nampa on Tuesday, November 30, 1954.