In Kenneth's own words, part 13

(1945) Marriage

So long about the first of August, we started talking about marriage. So we got engaged on the first of August and set the date for December, when I’d be out for Christmas vacation and we’d have a little time. Well, mother Smith decided that we better get married right away, because Dale and Harlan were home from the service at that time. She wanted them home when we got married. Before we knew it the date was set for the 8th of August and we got recommends for the Salt Lake Temple. So we came down to Salt Lake and President Smith and his wife and Harlan came with us and so we got down here and the temple was closed so we had to go back to Logan. You had to have a recommend for each temple then. We didn’t have it but fortunately her father had already been set apart as temple President in Idaho Falls, so he got us in. There were fifty couples married that night and we got to the temple at 7:30 pm and didn’t get out till 12:30 am and my cousin Don Ellis, whom I had never met was getting married that night and Iris Peterson from the mission (I had met her in the mission). She was marrying a returned missionary there that night. It was just like old home week! So we were married that night, August the 8th 1945.

We stayed in the New Ute hotel I think it was, that night and then we came back home and we had an apartment on Water Avenue in Idaho Falls. I was teaching at O. E. Bell and selling cemetery lots after school at night and so we got by fine. I had my car paid for; I bought a car when I first got home from my mission, it was a 1941 Ford Sedan. That was another thing, I sold my car that I had before I went on my mission, so I could go on a mission, but the guy didn’t pay me until I got back. So I used that money and put some with it and bought a car. So I had a nice car when we were married and we got by fine and lived there in that apartment, a nice little apartment. Then along about, oh, the middle of April I was out to Smiths and his hired man had quit with the crop only half in. So he was desperate and he said to me, “You’re a farmer, why don’t you go out and put the crop in for me”. So after school and on weekends I finished putting the crop in and then he had nobody to run it, so I had to run it and I was there three years. I finished up that year of school and then I didn’t sign up the next year because I had to be on the farm. So three years later he finally sold the farm and bought the land out at Hamer. He bought Joe Landins big section. Ab Landin wanted to sell his One hundred and twenty acres that was adjacent to it. Well, President Smith talked me into buying that hundred and twenty, so I went up to Dubois and saw Harry Horn and he was getting loans through Connecticut Mutual. So I got a $10,000.00 loan and paid for the place.

During this time our oldest daughter Lana was born on May 14th 1946, nine months and 8 days after we were married followed by Ron, fifteen months later in August 16th of 1947 and Valerie 19 months later on March 19th of 1949 and then John about twenty months later in July 8th of 1951. We moved out to Hamer in 1949, and the first night we went to church out there, they called me to be ward clerk. A short while later, in 1951, I was called to be the Bishop and I served until 1954. We were living in the teachers apartment behind the school there in Hamer, and Reese Sanders saw me one day and he says, “Schools getting ready to start right away and they need a teacher at Roberts, why don’t you apply”. So I did and I got the job. I was Principal of the junior high and taught the music in the high school. So I drove back and forth to school and we, in the meantime, were working on getting our house built on the farm. We had the basement dug and had the basement floor poured and the walls up on the basement. So we decided to just go ahead and finish the house. We built the house including the roof, but we didn’t finish the upstairs. We built a double car garage and everything but we lived in the basement and finished the basement. Valerie was born with a hearing loss and so we were taking her to various places. Mother was taking Valerie down to the University of Utah for some special training during the summers and she went down for two summers alone and the third summer she said she wanted me to come with her. So I asked for a release from being Bishop and we moved to Salt Lake in 1954 and I signed up for school at the University of Utah.

In Kenneth's own words, part 12

(1944) Back Home

I went to work for Ren Ward sorting potatoes on a potato sorter for a while. I worked for him all that summer. I was drafted the minute I got home, both Harvey and I were drafted, we went down and reported that fall, but they didn’t take me they took Harvey he had to go. But they sent me home and put me in limited service. Then they found out that I had been a school teacher and they figured that was war related and so they got me a job. That’s the only job teaching school, that I didn’t have to look for. So I started teaching then in Idaho Falls at O.E. Bell Junior High, and I taught there for two years. Three or four years before a lot of kids had quit school before they graduated from the eighth grade. Well the Superintendent passed the law that all the kids had to pass the eighth grade so they rounded up twenty-five of those mavericks and that is who I taught that year. Some of them were fairly old. Some of them were nearly as old as I. Some of them were eighteen, nineteen, but they all had to finish and I got them through the eighth grade. Some of them hadn’t learned how to read very well or do math. It was fun, really fun! I had one incident. One older boy, he must have been about twenty, because he had two younger brothers that were in the same group. I had to let them out, (a lot of them out) for five minutes in the morning and five minutes in the afternoon so they could go across the street and smoke because they couldn’t smoke on the school grounds. And he was one of them, Sam Waddell. And I’d like to digress just a moment, because later on when I was down here (Salt Lake, Utah), during my junior year at the University of Utah, during the summer, I was working at Continental Bakery in the evenings and going to school during the day time. And I came out and the rear wheels were leaking oil. So I had to take it down to Streeter Chevrolet and oh they needed a lot of work all the gaskets were gone, they had to fix it up. So when I went to pick it up, the bill was only $11.00 and I said, there is something wrong here, this isn’t right and they said, you’ll have to settle that with the head mechanic, he made out the bill. So I went back to see the mechanic and it was Sam Waddell and he said, I’ve been waiting all my life to get even with you. He said, “You changed my life. You made something out of my life”. He said, “I couldn’t read, I couldn’t write and then you took me in and taught me all those things. So, you didn’t charge me and I’m not going to charge you. That’s just the cost of the gaskets”. So, I got that done and it sure helped; besides we didn’t have a great deal of money. Now, getting back to where we were, I taught that year, that group and the next year, I taught regular school. I taught seventh and eighth grade math in O. E. Bell Junior High.

(1945) Courting

During the summer, I met my wife, Jeanne Adeline Smith. This Glenna Crowley that I told you about in Detroit had come home, to Idaho Falls, because her husband was in the army and had been sent overseas. So he got sent overseas and she went home. So she invited me over for dinner and invited Jeanne over also. I was engaged to a Jean Gerard right after I got home from my mission. I met her and we were engaged for about three or four months and then we got to discussing having children and she didn’t want children. I met with her one night and I said, “I wonder if we ought not break off our engagement for awhile until I can get better established and we can see if we still feel the same way”. So we did and I got my ring back. So then I started going with a girl by the name of Mauna Rich, her father was Stake President in Black Foot. But anyway, I was going with her when Glenna invited me over to dinner and Jeanne was there. I took her home from dinner and we talked awhile and were able to get better acquainted. I knew the Smith family, because Lamar Sayer and I had been very good friends and his father was in the temple presidency with President Smith. The temple wasn’t opened yet, but they were already set apart as a presidency. So I was there with Lamar several times, and David Smith and his wife would come over and visit with the Sayers. So I knew them and I taught Joanne and maybe even Laprele, I can’t remember which, in school. And I knew Kay, because our auditorium was better than the high schools, so the high school would hold their entertainment in our gym/stage. So I met Kay, that way. But I had double dated with Carole and Forrest, so I knew them. And I also double dated one night with Lowell Bishop and he was with Rayola. So I knew Rayola. But, anyway, I knew the family fairly well. And then I went about my business. I was painting for the school district that summer and so I was busy and had a good job and a good place to live and Jeanne called me two or three times and had me come out to dinner and various things and we got to going together.

In Kenneth's own words, part 11

(1944) The Trip Home

Harvey was released, and we drove down the coast and on over and down through Mississippi and through the rest of Tennessee and on into Alabama and Georgia and ended up in Florida, and spent the night at Pensacola. We nearly froze to death there. We couldn’t get a room; everything was full so we had to sleep in the car. We spent most of the night running around in the car to keep warm. Then we came across the South. We went through Mobile, Alabama and Gulf Port, Mississippi and Biloxi and on over into Louisiana. We went across the Seven Mile Bridge down in Mobile Alabama. Anyway, there’s a seven mile bridge there across the bayou. You can’t stop on it. If you get a flat tire you just have to drive right on through, because they wouldn’t let you stop on the bridge then, they do now, maybe.

We had a funny experience in New Orleans; I’ll have to relate it. We got on the wrong road, I was driving and Harvey was asleep. So we got up there quite a ways and decided we were on the wrong road. So I thought well, (I could see the coast highway) I’ll just cut over and go through there so I was heading across there, it was all level land, all of a sudden right there in front of us was a deep drainage ditch and I was just able to turn the car in time to miss going in it. So then we had to go clear back where we’d started and get on the right road and then go on into New Orleans. It’s a lot like repentance, you have to realize you’re wrong and then go back and start over. We had a wonderful time in New Orleans and also in Mobile Alabama. We spent a day or two in New Orleans and then went from there over through Texas. We entered Texas at Orange and we stopped off at Beaumont and Fort Worth and went down to Lubbock and over to San Antonio. We spent a whole week there. We didn’t intend to, but we stopped there on a Saturday night and they were having a dance at the church. We just happened to pass the church as we were driving through. So we went in and had a nice evening and then the Branch President, Brother Turley, invited us to stay at his house and so we stayed there for a week. Every time we started to leave they’d say, “Well can’t you stay a little longer”, and we were only to glad to, because she was a good cook and we were enjoying everything. It was a funny thing because a couple of the people that I had known at college, Velma Dalton and Dale Dunn, they had gotten married and he was there in the service so we had quite an interesting evening. We went out to the Alamo and went on the river. Oh, we had a big time. We went to church and I had a interesting experience because we attended the Spanish Branch and the bass for their quartet didn’t show up that night so they asked me if I would fill in. Well, I didn’t know Spanish but I knew the tune so I was able to makeshift and it worked out alright.

We left San Antonio and went up to El Paso and then I had friends in Deming New Mexico, the Crandall’s from Rexburg Idaho. He was there in the army and I knew his wife, so we stayed the night with them and had a wonderful time. We went on across to Lordsburg and there was a bad blizzard. We had a funny thing happen on the way there. They have dips in the highway, for the water to run over and we were driving along not thinking and it had filled up with snow and we drove into that and there was no bottom, we had a hard time getting out but we got through and went onto Lordsburg and Albuquerque. We went from Albuquerque to Phoenix Arizona where I had friends and we stopped and we spent a week there in Phoenix and went to the Mesa Temple and I’d been writing to a girl in Phoenix by the name of Jean Ward, so I, of course, had to go see her but she had a boy friend with her that night so I didn’t pursue that.

We got down to Mesa and wanted to go through the Mesa Temple. We wanted to go through every temple on the way home. We had planned on getting recommends (You had to have a recommend for each of the temples then). So we planned on going through every temple on the way home. Well, Harvey was able to get his because he had been by the Mission President, but I called my mission President and I had to come into Chicago to get mine and it was quite a ways from Detroit and it was during the Christmas season and he wasn’t able to be there (the President wasn’t) and I’d have to wait awhile for him to come back, and so I went and didn’t have my recommend. That was before we went to the Mesa temple. So we were walking down the street and ran into Joseph F. Merrill, he didn’t know me from Adam. I told him my plight and he said, “Oh my daughter lives right here, we’ll fix that”, so he went in and without even asking me, or questioning me or anything he wrote me out a recommend for the Mesa Temple, the St. George Temple and the Manti Temple and he said that I could get my own when I got to Salt Lake so that’s what we did and we went through the temples as we came north.

While I was in Mesa, we ran into Grant Moon, whom I’d gone to college with. He was just getting off his mission. So he fastened onto us and we brought him along with us. We went through St. George and on up to Manti. And my Uncle James and his wife officiated in the Manti Temple. So they invited us over to their place and we spent the night there and had a lot of fun. And we went from there up to Salt Lake and got our release and got our temple recommend and went to the Salt Lake Temple and then on up to Logan. Grant Moon was from Malad, so we dropped him off at Malad and came on home. We got home the last of March, just in time to start cutting potatoes.

In Kenneth's own words, part 10

(1943) Detroit, MI

Then along about the end of my term in Wisconsin a new District President came up and I was transferred to Detroit. I didn’t know why they transferred me there, that late in the game. I only had a month to go but I was transferred to Detroit and got Elder Freddy Francis Callas Herbert from Mesa Arizona. His family had been converted by brother Callas so he had his name Freddy Francis Callas Herbert. And he was a good missionary and we had a wonderful time in Detroit. Joseph Brant was a member of our branch there in Detroit and of course Joseph Brant was the Iroquois chief that sided with the British during the Revolutionary war and this Joseph Brant was a descendant of his, a great grandson, I believe. It was very interesting to talk with him. He had the history down. Indians have a wonderful memory for genealogy and he told us many things that had happened during his life. He loved to tell about experiences that his parents and grandparents had handed down to him.

I also had some wonderful experiences there. Glenna Crowley and Preston Wolfe whom I had known before I went on my mission had gotten married. He was in the service, stationed in Detroit, so I got to visit with them and Chet Christiansen from my home in Grant and his wife Bernice Taylor were living in Detroit so they took me in and showed me a wonderful time and fed me a good dinner. So it was a good experience there. We also had conference and during this conference I had an experience I’d like to relate. We were coming out of conference and I noticed an older lady with 3 young children and I was very interested. I said, “Oh these are your grandchildren” and she said, “No they are my children”. She said, “I have an experience to tell you”. She said, “We were married for nearly twenty years and couldn’t have children. We tried everything; we went every where so that we could. Finally we had a conference and I had a feeling that I should go to conference that time and ask for a blessing”. I can’t remember who she said gave her the blessing, but it was one of the Authorities at that time. She said he gave her a blessing and she was able to have 3 children before she was too old to have any more. So it was a wonderful experience.

(1943) End of mission, Blue Field, WV

And then, my mission was up on the 18^th of December 1943 but I didn’t get my release until just after Christmas. I knew that I wouldn’t be drafted because my eyes were so bad and I had gone to see about it, so I went down to Blue Field West Virginia to visit with my friend, Harvey Field, whom I’d grown up with in Grant. Harvey was serving a mission in the East Central States mission that contained the states of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina. He had two months to go and as they were short of missionaries, they called me to work with him. So I got to work in the East Central States mission for two months. We worked together for a month in Blue Field and a month in Maryville, Tennessee. In Blue Field, right after I arrived there, one of the women in the branch had a baby that passed away and her husband wasn’t a member, so they called on us to take care of the funeral arrangements and to take care of the funeral. The Branch President worked and he couldn’t get off from his job. So we conducted the funeral. Since it was Harvey’s area, he conducted, I gave the opening prayer, then a lady in the branch and I sang the opening hymn. Harvey spoke and then I spoke and then this lady and I sang the closing hymn and we went to the cemetery where I dedicated the grave. It was an interesting experience. Another noteworthy experience that happened in Blue Field was when we went out to see a lady who was a member of the church and she had a daughter that had been an invalid from birth. She was twenty years old and had never been able to stand up or sit up. She laid flat and they had to keep moving her around at that time. She was totally incapacitated, but she had the most wonderful spirit that I had ever known in an individual. She had a good mother that, through her efforts had educated her quite well. She had such a spirit and such a testimony of the gospel that you didn’t even realize she was lying there in bed when she would talk.

While I was in Blue Field, Harvey bought a car and we took a side trip to Washington DC and spent two days and two nights, seeing everything there was to see and enjoy and we even got to go through the House of Representatives and the Senate. We couldn’t go into the White House at that time, because the war was on. But we rode the electric car through the tunnel from one place to another. I happened to run across a girl that I had known in Shelley Idaho, by the name of Latham and she was a page there so she took us everywhere and showed us everything. We went out to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Annapolis and then we came home because we were being transferred to Maryville Tennessee, at that time.

(1944) Maryville TN

So we went to Maryville Tennessee. We drove Harvey’s car to Maryville and we worked there. Now Alcoa Aluminum is located just outside Maryville Tennessee and we had a few members there. It was a wonderful experience. About that time we knew that we were going to be released so Harvey said, “Well, I’ll go to Memphis, because we have a member on the ration board there, and I’ll get the gas coupons to go home on”. He went to Memphis and got enough coupons to get us home, but we didn’t intend to go right home, we thought we’d travel a bit while we were doing it.

In Kenneth's own words, part 9

(1943) Eau Claire, WI, continued..

I got another set of Elders, Stanley Bauden and Orange F. Peel. They were older men in their 70’s and they worked together. They did a wonderful job there because they appealed to older people in the community. Most of the people in Wisconsin were either Lutheran or Catholic and we did a lot of work out in Eleva Wisconsin and Montague while I was there. I got there the last of April and there was still snow on the ground, when I got up to Eau Claire. On the 28^th of October we were out to Eleva, Wisconsin to hold a cottage meeting and got snowed in for 3 days out there. So I helped milk cows and do whatever. It was a dairy farm. We weathered it through and came back home. I can’t remember if anything of interest happened out there or not but anyway I remember one time I got showed a thing or two. I thought I really knew how to milk cows so they were milking 35 head of big nice Holsteins and there was the man and his wife, 2 sons and 2 daughters that were milking the cows by hand. They had a beautiful barn, their house wasn’t much, but the barn was nice, it even had a bathroom in it. The house didn’t have a bathroom in it. But anyway, I said I’ll help you milk, I was going to show them about Idaho milkers. So I sat down and milked the first cow and strained the milk and sat down to the 2^nd cow and milked her and thought oh boy my wrists were starting to feel like they were going to fall off. So I thought, well I’m far enough ahead, I’ll just take it easy. I looked up and they were all standing there waiting for me to finish, they had finished theirs. So I had my come-up-ins. Anyway, I finished that cow and I didn’t challenge them anymore. That was too much! I found out I wasn’t such a good cow milker.

Another experience we had. We slept up in the attic on corn shuck mattresses, the only problem with them was, they hadn’t taken all the cobs out and you’d work the cob over with your hand to where you could sleep and then your companion would work it back. We had kind of a strange night because the wind was whistling through the eaves and it was a little difficult. I had one interesting thing happen with Elder Chabot, as I mentioned before, he had night mares and I came home from doing an audit one night late and I unlocked the door and came in and he jumped out of bed and came over and put a neck lock on me and nearly strangled me. I looked down and he didn’t have any shoes on so I stomped on his toes and that woke him up and he apologized and patted me on the back and went back to bed. A few nights later, I woke up and the bed was shaking so bad that I thought we were having an earth quake. So I looked and his head wasn’t visible. He’d gotten turned around in bed and was down at the foot of the bed and we had an iron bedstead and he had hold of 2 pieces of the bedstead, and he’d held on them so long that his arms were shaking and that was what was shaking the bed. So I woke him up and got him straightened up. Those are the only incidents I had with him, but other missionaries had had some with him. But he was a good missionary. He had 2 aunts living there in Eau Claire. He was from Canada originally, he’d been Catholic up until about 3 years before and the family had joined the church, and he came out on a mission. We were able to visit his 2 aunts occasionally, but we didn’t convert them but they didn’t convert us either. But we had some good times in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. We did country work in which we went to every town that had a branch (there were no wards, there wasn’t a ward or a stake in my whole mission) and there were 6 states in the mission. Anyway we had several branches and we’d go around and do country work even up in the upper Michigan peninsula. We’d go up there and that was part of our mission. And we got everywhere, we went to Milwaukee, Ann Arbor (I know Ann Arbor is in Michigan) anyway several of the places. Janesville Wisconsin, Wausau, Sturgeon Bay, Green Bay, Iron River, Iron Town and Madison, we went to all of them. And got over the whole state, it was interesting.

In Kenneth's own words, part 8

(1943) Peoria, IL

They disbanded the quartets, because it didn’t look good to have so many young men not in the service, and entertaining. So I was sent to Peoria Illinois and my companion there was Raymond Owen and we had a very successful time. We baptized a few, not that we had converted, but harvested somebody else’s. And we held church there in a rented hall and our apartment was right next to the Catholic Church and we got well acquainted with Father Han a local priest. He was a young man about our age and we used to play basketball with him, at a basketball court there at the church. We didn’t convert him, but he didn’t convert us either.

While I was at Peoria, I was being transferred to Des Moines, Iowa. Right at the last minute they changed my calling to Eau Claire, Wisconsin to be District President; this gave me responsibility for the whole State of Wisconsin. So my new companion had already come in and I didn’t have any place to stay. So I went down town and ran across Ronald Brown who I had gone to college with in Pocatello. He was back there as an engineer for Caterpillar. He wasn’t a member of the church, but he said “Well gosh I have an extra bed you can come and stay with me tonight”. So I went over and we went to a young people’s party that night. There were about 20 young people a lot of young ladies and a few young men. And we rode horses, which I didn’t exactly like, because I had gotten off of my horse when I was fifteen and decided that I would never get on again. But anyway I did what ever the others did. Then afterwards we built a fire and sat around and talked. And they wanted to know about the church so I did get to tell a bunch of them about the church, and it was funny because all the girls in the front row lit up cigarettes and they were really having a puff, when I got on to the “Word of Wisdom”. I said, “There is nothing that takes the beauty from a young woman’s face, like a cigarette”. And you should have seen the cigarettes disappear. Any way, we had a good time and I went back and spent the night with Ronald Brown and his other roommate.

(1943) Eau Claire, WI

The next morning I caught the bus and went to Eau Claire Wisconsin. I can’t remember my first companion’s name at this time. But then I got Daniel Balstead who was recently from Germany, but he did speak English very well. He was an older missionary. Then I got Ambrose Chabot. He had terrible nightmares and other elders were afraid to work with him, because he would get up in the night and cause a bit of trouble. So I said, “Send him up”. He was a Catholic convert from Seattle Washington. I worked with him and Brother Balstead and we did country work and I of course was busy. I had to go audit all the branches in Wisconsin, which took me away quite a bit. They were the only set of Elders I had, all the rest were lady missionaries. I think I had 6 sets of lady missionaries and some of those were local missionaries that had been recruited to work with the regular missionaries. But any way, they were doing a good job. We also had Homer Adams from Salt Lake. His father had the Spring Canyon Coal Company and he had a car. So we did our country work, as we called it, in his car. We traveled the whole state, including upper Michigan and visited with many members. We had a lot of funny experiences. We spent an evening in Green Bay in which they had a truck garden there. The family name was Hoffman and they now are very wealthy people. But they served us all kinds of green vegetables. Then we went on up to Sturgeon Bay where we were supposed to spend the evening. Brother Peterson at Sturgeon Bay made sub chasers for the government. The next morning early he woke us up and said, “My crew isn’t here and I need someone to help shake down this new sub chaser”. So we went down to the lake and went out across it. He had me steer, Elder Adams had to watch the rudder and Elder Chabot had to keep things intact on the deck while he took all the notes of everything. So we went out fine and it was just a wonderful experience. But on the way back, we went clear out till we couldn’t see land and then we headed back to port and Brother Peterson said, “Well why don’t you watch the rudder and we’ll let Elder Adams steer”. So we changed places, but there’s a difference when you are looking back, I got seasick, I lost all those green vegetable that I’d eaten the night before plus the breakfast we’d had before we went out. We came back and had a wonderful time with the Petersons. Brother Peterson had filled a mission in England and he and his wife were married in the temple but their children were not active.

Then we went on up to Ironwood Michigan, which is on the Michigan Peninsula above Wisconsin. Then over to Iron City then back down through. We stopped at Wausau Wisconsin with a family by the name of McNeal. We had a funny experience there. They said they attended the Methodist church, he was a High Priest and they were married in the temple and they had a wonderful family, active, but they were active in the Methodist church. I said, does it bother you, and he said,”Oh no, I teach the men and my wife teaches the women. I use the priesthood manual and she uses the Relief Society manual to teach”. So they were doing some missionary work without meaning to probably. We went on over to the other side of Wisconsin and then we came on down. We covered the whole state.

In Kenneth's own words, part 7

(1943) Portsmouth, OH

After Akron, we were transferred to Portsmouth. Now at that time they were having a big flood in south Ohio, and Portsmouth was right in the middle of all the flood area. So, Elder Dahl, who was our district president in Akron, drove us down, he was on his way home, he’d bought a car to drive back. He took us to Portsmouth on the way. Well we went through water, oh, about four to six inches of water on the Highway, for the last, oh, good ten to fifteen miles into Portsmouth. The Ohio River was full, in fact it was running over the bridges and you could see where it had run over the farm land. Corn shucks were stuck against the bridge for a mile or two up the river. They had to keep pulling them out or it would wash the bridge out. In Portsmouth it was very interesting. We didn’t have a chapel, so we met in a funeral home. In the funeral home they had marked on the wall in the foyer where the flood waters had risen to over the years and there were four marks there with different years to the mark. Fortunately the water never got that high and we weren’t flooded in Portsmouth. They had a very interesting group in Portsmouth. The Branch President was Brother Brown and he had the cleaning establishment. The city manager was a member of the church, he had been married in the temple, he had a wife and 5 children but they were separated and she was living in a little apartment and he had the home. His name was Ryan, Brother Gordon Ryan and we worked with him, he wasn’t active. He said I’ve got it made, I’ve been through the temple, I’ve got everything done that I need to do, I don’t need any more. As a sidelight to that, several years later, after my wife and I were married, her father was President of the Idaho Falls temple, I was sitting in the office with him and the door opened and here came Gordon Ryan and his wife and 5 children they were together, a wonderful experience.

We didn’t have too many members, but we had some wonderful experiences there. One in particular, we weren’t supposed to proselyte to blacks at that time and we advertised, of course that we were a traveling quartet and we would accept engagements. We got a call one Saturday night from the Calvary Baptist Church. They wanted us to come and put on the program. Well, being a black church, we hesitated, but we said we’d go. So we went Sunday morning and, oh, the chapel was full and they had their services and then they gave us the time for the program. Well, we only had three or four sectarian numbers. Most of our repertoire was church hymns and fun songs that weren’t exactly church type. But we went and accepted their invitation and we sang our full repertoire which consisted of “Old Rugged Cross” and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and “The Animals are Coming”, which was Noah calling the animals into the ark. Oh they stomped and clapped really enjoyed those and then they wanted another one and we didn’t have another. So we sang “Come, Come ye Saints” and the audience quieted down completely, you could have heard a pin drop, and we sang it clear through. When we got through, everybody came up and shook hands with us and thanked us for coming. They collected $200.00 for us and we explained that we didn’t accept money and they said, well, we’ll put it to good use in the church and we’ll remember you men for it. We had several other experiences while we were at Portsmouth. We had several clubs and organizations and had a very successful time; I have a record of it, because I was the book keeper that kept track of everything. Then we were transferred.

In Kenneth's own words, part 6

(1942) Indianapolis IN and Akron OH.

Also, while I was there, they got the idea of organizing all that could sing into quartets. So, I was assigned to sing bass along with Elder Clayburn from Midway Utah, Clive Harston from Cowley Wyoming and Spencer Rees from Loa Utah. And we sang a few engagements in Indianapolis transferred us to Akron Ohio. In Akron we sang at a lot of different places. We sang at the Odd Fellows Lodge and the Elks and the Moose Lodge and went out to two or three rest homes, they called them old folk’s homes in those days, but they were rest homes. I remember one in particular, we went out to Cayuga Falls to a retirement home and it was a large home we must have had a hundred people in our audience, and it was a wonderful opportunity. Anyway, on the way home, we had to pass Cayuga Lake and the fog was so bad that the bus driver asked for volunteers to get out and walk in front of the bus so that he didn’t run off the road and go down into the lake and nobody would volunteer so I did and I walked in front of the bus until we got, oh, about a mile I guess before the fog cleared to where he could see, so then I got back in the bus and went on into Akron, Ohio.

Another experience I had in Akron. We had a member that had just joined the church. His wife was a member and she had converted him and he had only been in the church about a month. So one night he came over and knocked on our door and asked Elder Clayburn and I if we would both go with him and administer to his sister and we both said, “Sure we’d be glad to”. He figured that if we gave her a blessing, she would be well and we enquired about it and found out she’d been in the home for the insane for sixteen years, and we were very apprehensive. We thought, “Well, now here’s a problem, if we don’t go, he will think something is wrong and if we do go and nothing happens, he may leave the church”. We had no faith that anything would work, but we had to do it. So we prayed about it, we didn’t feel too good about it, but we were between a rock and a hard place. So he came and picked us up and we went out to the asylum. She came in just like a robot and sat down in the chair. We administered to her (Elder Clayburn did the oil and I gave her the blessing) and I still don’t know what I said, but we were, like I said very apprehensive. Then he took us home and three days later he woke us up at midnight. He was so happy; he didn’t know what to do. He said, “You know what, my sister is perfectly well and they let her go home”. Now, we didn’t have the faith. Who had the faith in that case? Evidently he did, he had more faith than we did.

(1942) Akron OH

We had some wonderful experiences there in Akron. We sang at the real estate convention for the state of Ohio and afterwards, a lady in a beautiful fur coat sidled up to me and whispered, “Is it true that you boys wear secret underwear”. And I said, “Yes, aren’t yours”, and she laughed and invited us all out to Christmas dinner. That was right before Christmas, the second year that we were out. Oh, they had a big beautiful home and servants, and we had individual tables and they served us, it was just a wonderful day.

In Kenneth’s own words, Part 5

(1942) Battle Creek MI

We stayed at the Branch President’s home for two or three days, until we got a place to stay. My first experience in the mission field was the following Sunday when they called on me to speak. Up to that time, looking at an audience made me forget what church I belonged to. I told them everything I knew about the church in a minute and a half when I left on my mission. For some reason or other I was able to hold forth for a whole half hour, in fact the Branch President had to pull on my coat tail.

My first companion was Morris Toler from Robin, Idaho and he was just finishing his mission and he was sitting (we called it sitting on their trunk,) he didn’t want to do too much. So I had a poor beginning. I went tracting by myself a few times, which was against the rules, but I wanted to be doing something, and he eventually got so he’d go with me. And we did quite a bit of tracting. I was with him for four months and then he went home and I got an Elder Tanner from Phoenix Arizona as my junior companion and we worked together for another three months. We had to do country work while I was there in that state. Country work is when you go around and visit the members in the towns and cities or the area. Most of the cities just had one or two member families or perhaps even just one member. So we had to do the baptisms, blessings, marriages whatever needed to be done. So we had quite an experience at Chase Michigan. I’ll have to relate that because I can’t forget it. There we had, oh about 4 families of Chases, all the same family but they were sons of the patriarch. They had their houses there all together in this little group. Well they decided to put on a big dinner for the missionaries. They had the table spread clear through the front room and into the bedroom, so everybody could sit down. Before we sat down we had prayer, kneeling prayer at the side of our chairs. The old patriarch said the prayer and he prayed for a long while. A chicken came in the open door and pecked at everything as it went on down. As it got down to him he reached up grabbed the chicken, threw it out the open window and never missed a cadence in his prayer. It was quite interesting, we had a good time there and we had a lot of wonderful experiences. We went up to St. Marie and Mackinac Island and spent a day up there, enjoying ourselves. We also saw Beaver Island where the Strangites who left the church early in its history and established a cult there until Brother Strang was killed by one of his members and then that broke that up. But anyway after we came back to Battle Creek, then I was transferred to Indianapolis Indiana.

(1942) Indianapolis, IN

I had a wonderful opportunity while we were in Indianapolis. Elder Hadland Gunderson and I were together at that time and we went into the home where we were going to room and as we walked through the door, the blinds were all drawn and there was a big crowd there. They weren’t members of the church, none of them. We walked on through and they showed us the room that we were going to live in and I told Elder Gunderson, “There’s something wrong here, I’d like to go see what’s wrong. He said, “We shouldn’t interfere, it looks very serious” and I said, “Well, I’ll ask”, so I went out and I ask the lady. I said, “I noticed that it was very quiet and everybody is sad, is there something that I could do to help”? She said, “Well, there is nothing you could do, our daughter has Nephritis and she can’t see, hear or speak, and we are waiting. The doctor says it will just be a short time until she passes away. The family has gathered and she’s already comatose”. I said, “Well, we are ministers, would you mind if we gave her a blessing”? And she said, “Oh, I would love that”. So we had a prayer and went out and administered to this young lady, she was sixteen years old. Elder Gunderson anointed and I sealed the anointing, and I had the best spirit that I have ever had. I gave her a blessing. I don’t know what I said, but I gave her a blessing that she would get well. We excused ourselves and went tracting. We came back in a couple of hours and she was sitting up talking to her mother. It’s hard to relate the feelings we had. She was able to go back to high school and finish out her life. Well, the whole family came to church for a week or two and then it waned, and it goes to show you that, he that seeketh after a sign will waver. It didn’t last but it was still a wonderful experience.

In Kenneth’s own words, Part 4

(1941) Left on Mission

I had my farewell on the Sunday before I left on my mission and I entered the Mission Home December 7, 1941, the day war was declared, the day of Pearl Harbor. Reed Crystal, a friend of mine, got called at the same time so we went down, (we didn’t have a temple in Idaho Falls at the time, we had to go to Salt Lake) we caught the train and rode down to Salt Lake. On Sunday evening we arrived there and they met us and took us to the mission home. At that time, you went in on Sunday night, entered the Mission Home, on Monday you had classes, Tuesday you went through the Temple and received your Endowments also you were set apart to go on your mission. I was set apart by Joseph Fielding Smith. On Wednesday you went back through the temple again, had a few classes, Thursday morning you left for the mission field. Monday morning we had a testimony meeting, I remember and all the missionaries were supposed to bear their testimony. I had only borne my testimony once and I didn’t have a solid testimony. I knew I wanted to go on a mission but I didn’t really have a solid testimony of the gospel. So I waited my turn and bore my testimony. But I remember we had a missionary from Freedom Arizona. The poor kid came from a very poor family but he wanted to go on a mission so bad that he’d worked at anything he could. He’d rode bareback at the rodeos and earned enough money to put him through. He had an old straw suitcase, I remember, and he wore Levi’s and a work shirt when he came to the mission home and we all kind of looked at him like he was different. But at that testimony meeting he bore the most fervent, wonderful testimony that I had ever heard! He knew the gospel was true!

(1942) Chicago, IL

We rode in a train to Chicago and as I was assigned to the Northern States Mission, the headquarters was in Chicago at that time. There were six states in that mission, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. We got to Chicago Friday night and they met us and took us to the mission home which was out at 2253 North Sawyer Avenue, in Lincoln Park in Chicago. We spent two or three days there until they decided where we were going to be assigned on our mission. I was sent to labor in the town of Battle Creek Michigan. I had an interesting experience on the way to Battle Creek. It was about the 18^th of December and Moody bible institute had let out for the holidays. I got on the bus and it was just full of these Moody Bible Institute students. Some were Baptists, some were Lutherans, some were Methodists some were (I don’t think there were any Catholics) but there were Seventh Day Adventists, all different sectarian religions and I got by fine until a girl sat by me and wanted to know what I was doing out there and I told her that I was on a mission for my church. She says, “Oh, what church is that”. I said “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints”. She didn’t know what that was, so I said, “Commonly called Mormon”, and then the whole bus erupted, because they all knew about that. We had a really lively time clear to Battle Creek Michigan. I would bring up something and the Baptists would take my side and I’d bring up something else and the Methodists would agree with me and so on. We had quite a discussion. When I got off at the bus station in Battle Creek Michigan they were all arguing among themselves. I probably set the Moody Bible Institute back a whole year.

In Kenneth’s own words, Part 3

(1938) Pocatello ID (L-R Clayton DaBell, Kenneth, Grant Grover)

My folks couldn’t afford to send me to college, but I made up my mind I wanted to go. So they drove me to Pocatello and I entered the University of Idaho southern branch. I couldn’t afford the tuition which was $35.00 per semester, so I went on the line that, you paid by the month. (You had one line that you paid full tuition and the other where you paid it by the month) I got in that because I figured I could work. I got a job as stage manager, which I stayed at all the way through college. It paid me $17.00 a month. I was able to pay my rent. I batched, of course, with three other fellows in a basement and we bought our food and cooked it and brought a little from home, if we happened to go home. I couldn’t go home very often because I had to work every Saturday, because that is when the activities happened at the Frazier Hall which was like Kingsbury Hall here in Salt Lake. It was where they had all the shows. I remember Yost Ballet came from Russia. I was so intrigued with the ballet. We also had Fats Waller who was a musician at that time. He brought his band. And then we put on several productions. I was able to take a part in “Valley Forge” which we put on and another one, I can’t remember what is was now, but I had a part in it also.

(1940) Grant ID (L-R Kenneth, Gwen Chesley, Verl Andrew)

I graduated with an associate degree in Music Education, in May of 1940 and tried to get a job teaching school. I sent out several letters and resumes. It was just hard to get a job. There were too many teachers and not enough positions. But finally, I was accepted at Clark Elementary school just east of Rigby. I taught 5^th and 6^th grades and I was 19 at the time. I had students that were 14 and 15 because I taught the music in the 8^th grade. I taught my first year there. I wanted to go on a mission and I knew I’d be twenty one in November of 1941, so I didn’t take the teaching job that year, I thought I’d be leaving in the middle of the year, so I took a job at Sears and Roebuck. I got $40.00 a month, which I thought was pretty good money. And I waited and I waited all through September and the bishop never came to see if I was interested in going on a mission. All through October and nothing happened, so I bought a car and took it out (It was the first part of November) to show my folks and the bishop was there and he called me on a mission so I had to take the car back. I had an older car that I had bought earlier, much earlier and so I went back to it. It was a 1934 Ford V8 coupe with a rumble seat and wire wheels. Oh, it was a beautiful car but you always wanted something better. And I was glad that I could fall back on it, because it was paid for. I sold my car to get enough money to go on my mission. My folks couldn’t afford to help me much and I had money saved up from teaching school so, I had enough to put me through my first year of my mission. Anyway, I worked at Sears until my mission call came in the latter part of November.

In Kenneth’s own words, Part 2

(1931) Dad is 2nd from right on the back row. This picture is about the 6th grade.

When I was, oh about eleven I guess, dad bought another farm, a sixty acre farm, a short distance away and we farmed that for awhile but conditions were so bad all through the depression and up until 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President and he started a lot of recovery programs like the WPA and PWA and NYA and the CCC, anything to put people back to work. Things were done, a lot of highways were built, and the Hoover Dam was built down by Las Vegas Nevada. They were work projects but they did put money in people’s pockets and they helped to bring us out of the depression, just in time to have World War II come along which started in 1939 but the United States didn’t enter it until 1941, December 7^th 1941.

(1934)

I graduated from the eighth grade in 1934 as Salutatorian we had graduation exercises in those days. I attended Midway High School, which was half way between Lewisville and Menan. That’s why they called it Midway. It included the grade school students from Grant, Lewisville, Menan and Annas. We had a student body of 230. The strange thing about it was that we only had one student that wasn’t a member of the church, and he took seminary because there wasn’t anything else to do at that period. We had one person who smoked, he had to sneak out behind the barn to smoke, he was later caught but he never quit smoking. He also was the first one of our group to become Stake President. It’s strange how things work. I had a very interesting home life. We learned how to work, but we had fun. We didn’t do to many outings but I remember one in particular when we went to Yellowstone Park with my mothers sister and her husband and their son and we had a wonderful time for a whole week in which we traveled completely through the park and enjoyed all the sights. At that time you could see a lot of bears which you don’t see today. We saw all kinds of animals it was very interesting. We saw the geyser basins, we went over Washburton Pass, which caused the brakes to smoke on the cars, coming down because it was so steep. At that time they didn’t have the roads that they have now, but it was fun.

I stayed very active in the church my whole young life. My sister and I, used to walk down the railroad track to our church, which was just a mile straight through from our place, but if we had to go around, it was about two or three miles that we had to walk around by the road. I became a deacon at twelve and a teacher at fourteen and a priest a sixteen. And then my friend wanted to get married in the temple, so we had been in the priesthood together all the way through, so they ordained him an elder at seventeen so I was ordained an elder at seventeen also.

I had very little interest in romance in high school. Finally, my junior year the student body president’s girl friend invited me to the girl’s choice dance, which started me on a trend. I enjoyed associations with my friends and with my female associates. In 1938, I graduated from high school as Salutatorian and went on to attend the University of Idaho, Southern branch at Pocatello.

In Kenneth’s own words, Part 1

(1920) Grant, ID, The Beginning (dad is 3rd from right)

I, Kenneth Parley Ellis, shall try to tell my life history. I was born on a cold morning at 4:00 am, the 5^th day of November 1920, in our family home. I was delivered by a country doctor by the name of Joseph Tucker a very humble man. I was born of very righteous parents. My mother’s name was Ruth Emma Balmforth, a first generation American from England. She was born in Lehi, Utah. My mother’s mother was born in York, England and her father came from Salt Lake City, Utah. My father’s name was Parley Edmond Ellis also a first generation American from England. He was born in Plesant Veiw, Utah. My fathers father was born in Melksham, England, his mother was born in Bath, England. I remember very little of my childhood, except when I was a year and a half old, someone gave me, what they called a kiddy car in those days. It was like a tricycle without peddles. And I remember riding that; my mother says I couldn’t possibly remember that young, because it was broken before I was two years old. But I remember it very clearly. We lived on a farm and did all the work that farmers do. I received my training in how to work, even before I was old enough to go to school. I learned how to ride derrick horse. By the age of six I was, riding derrick horse for the farmers in the area. I got five cents a day and a year later at seven, they upped it to ten cents a day and I was still doing the same kind of work. Learning to work is a wonderful experience; it does you good the rest of your life. My Father was not a stern man but he believed in getting things done and he was very thorough. My mother also was very thorough. She was a very good house keeper a good cook and helped in the field with the rest of us. We didn’t have enough land, (we only had 40 acres) so we had dairy cows and we had to herd them in the railroad track and in the roads. So I would start out right after milking in the morning, when I wasn’t working in the hay, and herd cows all day long in a two or three mile stretch of road and bring them back for milking time at night.

I entered school in Grant. The elementary school at that time did not have a kindergarten, so I started right into the first grade. My mother had taught me to read and write before I went to school, so I only stayed in the first grade for a while and I was advanced to the second. I received all of my elementary education in Grant.

(1927) Youth

I remember we got our first car when I was seven. It was a 1920 Dodge soft top, but there were very few automobiles in our area. I remember one time when Velma was 8 years old and I was 5, we got that old Dodge started (It took about all we had to crank it) and Velma steered while I operated the foot peddles and we drove it up and around through the pasture and through the irrigation ditch and got it headed back toward the garage and I hit the brake just in time to keep us from hitting the garage. Dad never did question why the car was facing the opposite direction from how he left it. I also remember going to church, up until that time with the horse and buggy. My folks were quite active at that time. And when I was nine, my father got his feelings hurt and they quit going to church for a time, but I kept going. When I was eight years old, I was baptized by a man named Noel Johnson and when I was eight I was able to work other times than just in the hay. I thinned beets and weeded beets and potatoes and I ‘d make twenty five cents a day and I saved up a little bit, in fact when I had six dollars saved up, my mother decided that we should put it in the bank. So we put it in the bank and that was in 1929 and the bank went broke and I lost my six dollars. The folks lost all of their savings also. In those days during the depression, which started in 1929, a fat steer would bring $20.00 and a fat hog would bring $2.50 and our potatoes sold for twenty five cents a hundred if we furnished the sack. Times were tough but we got by fine because we lived on a farm and raised our own vegetables and some fruit and my mother was a great one to can vegetables and fruit so we did quite well.

If you had a $100.00 in the fall, you could afford to farm the next year, but a lot of people lost their farms. On three sides of us, the farmers lost their farms. The desert began about two miles from our place. And my father used to break horses for a living. He got $2.50 to break a horse to ride or to pull a wagon or whatever it was. But he’d take the horse and go out on the desert and hunt coyotes. And he couldn’t afford bullets, and we didn’t have a gun anyway, so he had a long leather strap with a big nut off some machinery on the end. And he’d ride the coyotes down and hit them with this weapon and kill them. He got $5.00 for the hide and $25.00 for the bounty from the sheep men in the area. So we’d get $30.00 maybe even $60.00 a month that way and we lived quite well. We actually put money away.