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.