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.