Oral History Program Dean W. Hurst Personal History 13 April 2003 i ii Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dean W. Hurst Personal History 13 April 2003 Copyright © 2013 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber and Davis County Communities Oral History Collection includes interviews of citizens from several different walks of life. These interviews were conducted by Stewart Library personnel, Weber State University faculty and students, and other members of the community. The histories cover various topics and chronicle the personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Hurst, Dean, a personal history by Dean W. Hurst, 13 April 2003, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Dean W. Hurst ca. 1967 1 Abstract: Dean W. Hurst shares his recollections of growing up in Ogden, Utah and his involvement with Weber State College in a personal history interview held on April 13, 2003. Dean’s involvement with Weber began as a student before being drafted into the military in February of 1945 and sent to Ft. Douglas where he was trained as a paratrooper assigned to the 517th Airborne. Following his military service, Dean returned to Weber State and became actively involved in the alumni association. In 1967, Dean began his career at Weber State College as the Director of Alumni and Development Director and progressed to the position of Vice President of College Relations. He retired from Weber State University in 1991. Dean shares stories of his childhood as well as his family and friends and the memorable experiences throughout his life. DH: I have found that memories belong to those that have them. Two people who remember the same incident often remember it in different ways. What I’m going to talk about may be a little different than your memories, but allow me the privilege of having them as I remember. I don’t remember much about the circumstances of my birth, I have to rely on what Mother told me. I was born on December 4, 1926 in Ogden, Utah delivered by Dr. Merrill. My brother, Farr, was born at the hospital and suffered a somewhat traumatic experience. Mother decided to go the whole nine yards at home as she later did with both Jimmy and Bonnie Lee. At the time, Dad had been burned in a fire, so my birth was particularly difficult in the nature of the birth and the fact that Dad was not expected to live for the first 3 months from the time that he was burned. It happened the day after Thanksgiving and I was born 2 within a week of that time. It was 3 months later that Dad gave me a blessing. He was almost crippled to the point that he couldn’t walk, but was able to walk down the aisle at church and give me a church confirmation blessing. Another circumstance that made it difficult for Mom was that Farr had fallen down the basement steps and put his teeth through his lip. Also, Grandmother, who was assisting Mother, had come down with influenza or some terrible sickness and was out of her head telling Mother that we were going to have to amputate Dad’s legs and that he was going to die anyway. So, Mother had a screaming baby who was left in another room adjacent to her bedroom. I developed pneumonia and nearly died at that point. Mother told me that I didn’t eat and developed what could have turned into the beginning stages of rickets. The family story is that Aunt Annie, who delivered my cousin Jack six months later, ended up nursing me. So, my Aunt Annie was my nurse in the period of time when Mom was sick and didn’t have enough milk. We grew up in an area probably as ideal as any person could ever want. I know that there were homes that were bigger or more luxurious, but our home at 2940 Ogden Avenue was utopian for a boy to grow up. It was in the middle of the block between 29th and 30th Street and Washington and Adams. Grandfather Hurst bought a number of pieces of property within the area so there were areas large enough to play games like football and baseball. We had great ball games there. There were a number of trees that we could build tree houses in. There was room to dig undergrounds and we always seemed to have a supply of lumber. I don’t know where we got it all, but I do remember taking some out of an 3 old fence. There were old buildings and whatever the situation, there always seemed to be something we could build for any of the undergrounds or tree huts. We had an ideal family relationship with our grandparents. Grandparents Hurst lived just immediately next to our home for a number of years. Aunt Annie and Uncle Herb were across the street. Aunt Lydia and Uncle Earn were just up the street from us too. At one period of time, there was Uncle Leonard and Aunt Floss and Aunt Velma and Uncle Jim. It was like a communal order. I don’t remember having a key to the door or a lock. It was kind of an “open house.” I’ve mentioned Aunts and Uncles, but I haven’t talked about cousins. There was Jack, Gene, Fern, Lavar, Bob, Shirley, Keith, and Jerry. Later, Jim, Annette and Bonnie came along. I remember a Dutch family that lived in a home that Grandpa built, the Koolmans. We used to take our grass clippings from our lawn to feed their chickens. Harold White lived across the street and was probably my oldest and closest friend up until the time we were teenagers and had begun to differ a little bit in some standards. I had more of a religious inclination than Harold did, but he was a good friend. His younger sister, Carol, is one of Bonnie’s closest friends and remains so to this day. It was an ideal place not only for the home, but for our extended family. At Easter, we would go to Little Mountain and roll Easter eggs. (I haven’t got the symbolism of that yet because they’d generally break into pieces rolling them down the hill.) A favorite place was East of Ogden, right where the Mt. Ogden Golf Course is now, where we would picnic and barbeque. I had a great time as a child. I remember one Easter we drove out to the sand hills, which was 4 another fun place across the Ogden River next to a place called Salamander Pond. There was a beautiful little glen called Sylvan Hollow. It’s totally gone now; you can’t even see a remnant of it. They made a garbage dump out of it. A lot of the old scenes of childhood have since gone, but one time we went there on a rainy Easter and ate our Easter eggs in the car. We had great night games in the neighborhood. We’d play, “Run Sheep, Run,” “Ice Man,” and “Kick-the-Can,” with all the neighborhood kids and cousins. Another thing during those depression years that was so much fun was mulligan stew. We would get a gallon bucket and build a fire from whatever we could find from the neighbor’s fence or place. We’d get the BB gun and go over to a pigeon loft in an old chicken coop and “plink” off a pigeon or two that we could put in our mulligan stew. It consisted of whatever anybody could bring; an onion, potatoes, carrots, etc. Squab was pretty good, but you don’t see it on menus much anymore. Years later, I was talking with a girl that lived adjacent to us named Beverly Shipley and as we commented on the old neighborhood the first thing she said was, “I remember those mulligan stews.” I didn’t think she’d remember, but she remembered making a fire and putting potatoes in it so they would get blackened husks and you’d rip that open and eat the potato out of it. We had a lot of great times. We were having a little bonfire and roasting marshmallows out in the yard right next to our house. Our oldest cousin, Lavar, was there and his marshmallow caught on fire. Lavar flipped it and the marshmallow hit Gene Swaner in the eye. How he survived childhood I don’t understand. He seemed to be on the wrong 5 end of any accident and he had cuts, bruises, and abrasions all over his head, cheek and elbows. It was just accidental, but I can remember that flaming marshmallow hitting him in the eye and it stuck. It was like a ball of hot tar in there. I don’t remember how we ever had the capacity to build that tree house in the big box elder tree behind our garage, but it was well-built. It had to be at least 25 feet above ground. It had a deck, a bench, four sides, and a trap door in the middle where you could climb in from the bottom. We even carpeted it. Where in the world did we get the piece of asphalt roofing that we put over the roof? I don’t remember where we got all the material. One day, we came home and some wretch had knocked the hut down and pushed it out. We never did know who did it. It was remarkable when I think about how we got up that high, put the pieces in place and built it. Of course, we had carpenter families. We grew up in the radio days before the days of television. We grew up to the strains of, “Who’s that little curly locks, the one with all the auburn locks, who can it be? It’s Little Orphan Annie,” or “Ranfrue of the Mounties.” We’d listen to those and have our secret decoder rings. We thrived on the ones later at night, “Myrt & Marge,” “I Love a Mystery,” and “The Great Gildersleeve.” Those were great radio days as I recall. Neither Mother nor Dad had the means to give us special music lessons or anything. Farr had a little bit of a knack for singing and I remember Farr and Fern sang “Santa Lucia.” They did well and sang in harmony. I had absolutely no musical talent. Mother taught me readings that she learned from her mother. My 6 favorite readings are probably the ones from Edgar A. Guest such as, “Pa Shaved Off His Whiskers.” (“I haven’t had such jolly fun for 40,000 years I laughed and laughed until I thought my eyes were running out in tears. There never was a mother’s son that had such jolly roaring fun as children have begun since pa shaved off his whiskers.”) I remember that particularly well and many other verses because during that time Dad grew a beautiful beard. Bonnie had just been born when Dad shaved off his whiskers and she didn’t recognize him. She doesn’t remember that, but we sure did. She was used to Dad with a great set of full whiskers and his derby hat on. I went on to learn a whole host of Edgar A. Guest poems that I can’t even find copies of anymore. A favorite was, “Little Orphan Annie.” (“Little Orphan Annie came to our house to stay, to wash the cups and saucers up and brush the crumbs away and to shoo the chickens…etc.”) I had two great loves in my life. As a child, my preoccupation was cowboys. I can remember getting Mom and Dad to drive me down to Wall Avenue where I could see a picture of a cowboy with Levi’s on made by Scowcroft’s Never Rip Overalls. One of my earliest recollections was Grandmother Hurst made me a little holster to hold a cap gun and Grandmother Salt made me a pair of chaps. I wanted a rocking horse and I remember going to the old Emporium and there was the most beautiful rocking horse. It was a dapple gray with a beautiful black harness with red trim. I wanted that horse and I asked for it from Santa Claus, but I didn’t get it. Mother and Dad were so concerned. These were difficult years. We were not poor, but there were tough 7 times. Dad built a rocking horse and I have to say I have felt bad all of my life that I can’t remember it. Mother and Dad have described it to me. He made it out of an old log and it had a little saddle in the middle. The rocking horse I do remember was the old rocking chair in the front room. To me, it looked like a horse with the arm rest where I could sit. I made a pair of spurs with rubber elastic tubing and a nail in it. I spurred that horse for 40 miles over hill and dell. I can remember Mom and Dad scolding me about that. Anyway, that was my rocking horse. I also had a great love of drawing and I’d use up reams of paper that Farr had for school. I could be anything in the world that I wanted on paper. I could draw pictures of the army, cowboys, Indians, soldiers, airplanes, and my imagination could just run rampant. I had an imaginary friend whose name was Bim. He was my companion as a young kid. He was the sheriff of the town, I was his side kick and together we rode the range. School and church were very much a part of my childhood years and I can remember Primary and the days that we went and I still remember “SHSK,” Spiritual Health Service Knowledge. I can still sing, “Oh we are the boy trail builders…” I did that in church a while ago and had half the congregation singing along with me. I always enjoyed church. I was noisy and disruptive and I had a lot of teachers that would have been happy to kick me out of the class. Grelden Nelson used to bribe me with candy. I remember some really had a hard time with me. I don’t believe I was mean, I was just overly energetic. 8 There was one very spiritual thing about my baptism. I was baptized in the old 17th ward. It had a baptismal font. I used to think of this often because I was on the high council at the college stake when Alan Hall was a bishop. His office was built over the old baptismal font. I used to sit in that meeting and remember what, to me as an 8-year-old, was a very spiritual experience. A lot of people say they don’t remember their baptism or anything that happened. It was memorable for me. As I was waiting to be baptized, I looked up at the font and saw a dove that illuminated with a neon light. I thought that was really cool. I heard the story about Jesus going into the water and the Father speaking, “This is my beloved son,” then having the Holy Ghost descend as a dove. Many years later, I went into that old baptismal font and I wondered what happened to that dove. I asked someone and the person shook his head and said, “There never was, never is, and never has been anything like that.” I told that story to a person one time that came up to me after and said, “You had the sign of the dove given to you at that time of baptism.” I didn’t particularly think of it as a child, but as an adult I thought, “I can accept that.” Maybe a skeptic would say that it was just what I thought of in my childlike mind and imagination. To me, it has always been a very real and very personal experience. We enjoyed a host of things as young kids growing up. We could get free buttermilk at the old Cream of Weber Dairy on Adams Avenue. The old Alahambra Theatre was built on Kiesel Avenue. It became the Paramount Theater later, but it was the Alahambra originally. The Lyceum Theater on 25th Street is still there. The Popeye Club at the Paramount was a dime or 15 cents 9 and we could see half a dozen cartoons, two double features and a host of other things. Mother and Dad would send us off on Saturday morning and we wouldn’t come back until the evening. We’d get out of the Ogden Theater on 25th Street and stop to get a cold glass of buttermilk free out of the spigot at the old dairy. It was real buttermilk with chunks of butter floating around the ice cold whey. Those are great memories I have. I remember fishing with the families at Bull Run, Lost Creek, and Chalk Creek. We had to put the old Model-T Ford in Rucksel Gear and take it up in reverse because it didn’t have enough power to get up the steep hills. I loved the outdoors. I remember a lot of hiking with cousins and fishing with uncles and Dad, who was always the champion fisherman. One time, Uncle Herb and Dad came back and Uncle Herb had one more fish than Dad, so Dad took his fishing pole out to the river to catch one more fish just to catch up. There were always those kinds of fun competitions. We would hike up to Malan’s Peak or Waterfall Canyon which was one of our favorites. We hiked to Mt. Ogden Peak and I think that got us some training for later hikes to Ben Lomond when Mother and Dad were taking care of the girls’ camp in North Fork Canyon. I was exposed to work early. We would chop firewood for the stove and at one time we had to paint the house. I don’t know how good a job we did. Ours was a lovely home even though it was small. Aunt Lydia and Uncle Earn lived there at one time when they were finishing their home. Uncle Herb and Annie also lived there once. Including their family and ours, there would have been 12 people living there at one time with one bathroom upstairs and very limited water 10 sources. We laughed about the fact now that we were on a septic tank and many times had to use other means. In that time, people just didn’t bathe more than once a week. We just didn’t have the water. We didn’t have an indoor toilet until I was 9 or 10-years-old. I remember well the births of my younger sister and brother. I remember praying so hard for a sister. She was an answer to our prayer. Following each of their births, I was shocked to see my brother and sister for the first time when their eyes were totally blackened with silver nitrate. It used to be put in the eyes of all the children as prevention for venereal disease. It was mandated by law at that time. Their eyes were just an absolute black like they had put charcoal in them. I enjoyed school. I remember going to school the first time and Farr showed me the ropes. Mother started me a little early, which I don’t think was that good for me. She thought I was ready for school, but it put me almost a year behind in growth so I was smaller than most of the kids. If you look at my class pictures, particularly through junior high school, I was much smaller and it made it difficult for competing in school and athletic events. There was a stigma about being six to eight months younger than the girls in my class. I don’t think I was as sharp mentally either. She did it because she thought I was ready. I think she wanted to get me out of the house. I struggled in some classes in school though. I really suffered thinking I must have been dumb because I had a hard time with algebra. It was easier for me to just freehand geometry than to try to figure out all the angles and curves. I really struggled. I had a teacher in the 5th grade named 11 Mary Jensen. She recognized in me a certain talent for art. I began to feel I had something that made me as good as the rest of the kids. I was recognized along with Beverly Shipley as the best artist in the 5th grade. That kind of carried me through a number of classes. I also followed up with a lot of drama for which I had a natural inclination. When I was four or five years of age, Mom and Dad needed a child to be in a play they were in. It was a story about a kidnapped child and I was to be the kidnapped child. I didn’t have to say anything. After they brought me on, the dialogue went on for three acts and to show my total dramatic ability, I went to sleep. I slept through the entire performance. At the end, I was supposed to wake up and run to Momma when she came in. I didn’t wake up for my dramatic scene. I slept right through it. I gave readings of the poems that Mother taught me earlier in my childhood all over the city. I remember Mother taking me to MIA’s, competitions, road shows and any number of shows while I did my bit. I remember doing readings of: “Castor Oil of all the Nasty Stuff,” “Gee Whiz, That is the Very Worst There Is,” “Pa Shaved Off His Whiskers,” and “Ma Fixes Things.” Those poems carried me through until my junior high school days when I really got into more heavy poems. They had contests at the city schools. I did a reading of, “Penrod and Sam,” which was a classic. Penrod’s friend, Sam, was tongue-tied, so Mrs. Dobbs taught me how to be tongue-tied by rolling an elastic band on my tongue. I did the reading of “Penrod and Sam” and won a contest as well as, “Willis McPrang,” and “Cleaning His Garage.” The poem that took me from beginner to 12 stellar was Alfred Noyse’s, “The Highway Man.” I won a local contest with that and it was one of Mother’s favorites. My first date was with a pretty girl named Betty Dawn Agey. I think that was in the eighth grade. The Ageys lived right next to Grandma and Grandpa Salt on 30th Street. It was just one of those dates where we went to a school party. My first serious date was with a girl named Carol Moyes. I was student body president and I finally had the guts to ask a pretty girl to a dance. She remains a very special friend to this day. She’s lost her husband and occasionally we’ll meet. Carol Moyes was the first girl I ever kissed. When I was 15-years-old, a number of big things happened in life. I was going to rehearse for a school play and they announced that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. In that same spectrum of time, I went to work at Lowe’s Hardware because the men had all gone to war and they were hiring kids at just 15-years-old. I was doing a man’s work and worked there for a period of time before going to work for Tanner’s clothing store. During the war, I worked at the Naval Supply Depot. I met Laurence Burton at Ogden High School. He had a great impact on my life. He was a very popular guy in school and we were in the school play together. We wrote a little take off of Hamlet called, “Hamlet: Prince of Denmark.” We put it on in high school and had Mrs. Chambers help us with it. Laurence and I became very close friends in high school and into college. I went to college at Weber while I was waiting to be drafted. My birthday was December 4th and I graduated from Ogden High School in June of 1944. I worked at the supply depot in the summer while waiting to go in the military. I 13 took classes in aerodynamics, theory of flight, learned about pseudoadiobatic charts in preparation for the Army Air Force Cadet program. You could join when you were 17 and when you turned 18 you automatically went into flight school. The war was beginning to wind up at the beginning of that time and others who had gone in a little bit before me were put in gunnery school. I wanted to fly. Laurence and I got out of the program and tried to go into the Navy. I passed the first battery of tests and went on to the physical tests and found out that my eyes were not good enough. So, I was out of the Air Force, Army and the Navy. My cousin, Dick Salt, had the idea to go into the Merchant Marines, so I joined and prior to leaving I double checked with my draft board and they said, “Dean, your draft notice will be in the mail by December 5th, the day after your birthday and they’ll take you out of the Merchant Marines.” I got out of the Merchant Marines and my actual draft notice didn’t come until February. It ended up being a blessing in disguise because the guys that went into the Merchant Marines were drafted back into military service when they came home. I left in March and went to Ft. Douglas. I volunteered for the Marines, but the quota was full. I tried to get into the Navy and there was no opening there. The only option left was the infantry and I thought, “Anything but the plain infantry.” I remembered seeing a fellow walking down the street with jump boots and the Airborne patch on his shoulder and thought, “That’s cool.” So, I volunteered for the paratroops. I went through basic training at Camp Maxey in Texas. I was an acting sergeant all through infantry basic and an expert infantryman which was the highest honor you could get at that time. I was very 14 serious. I wanted to be a good soldier and I wanted to save my life. I figured the harder I worked, the better prepared I would be for the jump school. I knew it was going to be hard and wanted to succeed. My original group of trainees went overseas and ended up in the last campaigns in Okinawa. In later years, I talked to a couple of the guys in my outfit that had seen action. Two of the fellows that I knew had been killed in Okinawa. I met a paratrooper walking up the street and I went up to him and said, “Hey, I joined the paratroopers too.” He said, “You dumb son of a...,” I found out that he was an old shot up veteran who had been in combat. He must have been with the 11th Airborne. He was probably hurt in one of the jumps there. When I learned the quota for jump school was full, I thought that I wouldn’t be going. One of my sergeants pulled strings and got me in and only three of us in that whole group ended up going to the paratroops. It turned out great. The period of time I spent in training gave me a chance to develop some real challenges physically. The most frightening thing in jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia was jumping from the 275 foot towers. They pulled us up, hit a release and the parachute dropped. I’ll never forget the older troopers singing, “There was blood upon the risers, there was brains upon the chute.” I thought, “I’ll go through training to prove I can do it. I just won’t jump.” I went through all of the stages, packed the chutes and learned everything. When the first jump came I thought, “If I don’t feel like it, I won’t go.” I looked up and there was a fellow still standing there and the jump master said, “What’s the matter soldier?” He said, “Well, I don’t think I’ll jump.” The jump master said, “I think you better jump and then if 15 you don’t want to anymore you don’t have to.” He said, “I’ve never been up 1,500 feet in the air and that doesn’t stop me from being scared.” The jump master said, “You’re going to jump.” He grabbed him, turned him around and threw him out the door. I looked out the window as he went out and he was like a cat just flailing around. I thought, “Well, I guess I’ll jump.” So I did. I was assigned to the 517th Airborne. The war ended while we were making a practice jump. We were training for an invasion of Japan and we were making a night simulated combat jump when they announced the atomic bomb was dropped. We knew that the official surrender hadn’t been signed, but the war was over. That night, Johnny Barnes, who slept above me, was killed on a night jump. It was just one of those accidents that happen in the Airborne. I had a lot of fun in the service and had some good friends. I was a member of the honor guard. We paraded in Philadelphia, Boston and probably one of the highlights of my Army career was being in the New York World War II victory parade. The 82nd was chosen to be the honor guard for that. We paraded all the way up to 5th Avenue under a confetti parade. It was a great thrill. The whole town came out for us and it was a marvelous experience. I met a fellow by the name of Bob Curran while I was in the service. Bob was a paratrooper who had made the Rhine jump in the 17th Airborne. We became good friends and he became interested in the L.D.S. church. He had a dog named Trooper and we felt we should make him a fully qualified parachutist, so I jumped with him. I dang near killed myself in that jump because I was coming in frontwards and I was afraid the bag with the dog had pulled out from the opening of the parachute and 16 was right over my knees. I was afraid that in my landing position I’d drive my knees and squash the dog, so I reversed myself with the risers facing backward which is the worst position. I came in and there was no way of flexing anything. I hit heels, butt and head as the bag smacked me in the face. I heard the dog make one little yelp. It knocked me out for a minute and when I came to I opened the bag and that dog looked dead as could be and I thought, “Oh boy, I killed the dog.” Then it shook its head and opened its eyes. There was a Catholic kid from Philadelphia named Bob Titus, and the last jump I made in the service he and I jumped together. He was a bit of a nut and totally opposite from me. He was a bit of a drinker, a smoker, a party guy, and a staunch Catholic. We just had some other things in common and we were good friends. I didn’t see him again for years and one day while I was working at Hill Air Force base, there was a phone call and they said, “Is this the Dean Hurst who was in the 82nd Airborne Division?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “This is Bob “Catholic” Titus, I just flew in and I wondered if I could come by.” Bob had stayed in the service, went to flight school and was flying P-51’s. He had been shot down over Korea. He had just landed at Hill Air Force Base. We had a fun get-together. We talked and laughed about the old days and I was really impressed. Thirty years later, I was at home and the phone rang and he said, “Is this the Dean Hurst that was in the 82nd Airborne Division?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “This is General Titus.” Bob Titus became one of the most highly decorated generals and was a Wing commander in Vietnam. I have yet to talk to an Air Force man that doesn’t know of Bob Titus. He was at the end of his career at the 17 academy in Colorado Springs and he was doing some consulting at Hill AFB and brought his wife. She was a sweet lady. Carol and I took them to dinner and we began to correspond and send Christmas cards. One year, I didn’t hear from him, so the next time I saw the General at Hill I asked, “What do you hear from Bob Titus?” He said, “You didn’t hear? He died suddenly one year ago.” He was a heavy smoker. Who would think that a relationship as divergent as that was would exist? That was just one of the great military experiences I had. I came back from the military and went to Weber College. I was very active as yearbook editor. Laurence and I developed a little routine called, “The Act,” in which we did a song and dance routine. We put that on all over the place and had a great time. I met a girl I fell “desperately in love” with named, LouJean Sneddon. Unfortunately, she didn’t fall as hard for me as I fell for her. That was another one of those blessings in disguise. I chose to go on an L.D.S. mission. I had been interviewed for a mission before with the bishop and I told him I felt I’d already served a mission. Later, I met a friend by the name of Don Belnap and he told me he had just accepted a mission call. I don’t know why we make our minds up at certain times, but I knew right then that’s what I should do. I was interviewed by elder Mark Peterson. I was very close with a group of Hawaiian kids in infantry basic, so when they asked where I wanted to go on the mission I said, “I’d like to go to Hawaii, but I’ll go wherever I’m called.” When my mission call came, it was to the Central Pacific Mission. I found out the headquarters was in Honolulu and of course that delighted me. When I’d left the Hawaiian kids after basic I said, “One day, I’ll come and see you.” The word spread and I bumped 18 into two or three of the guys. I still call a Hawaiian kid named Samuel Kaupuiki, who lives on Lanai and keeps me up with what happened after I left basic training. When I returned from my mission, I continued my schooling in art at the University of Utah and studied with some great teachers. My G.I. Bill ran out and I dropped out of school thinking it was going to be just for that summer. I went to Hill Air Force Base to be interviewed for a temporary summer job and found out there was an art job open which had some great opportunities. I took that job and ended up making it a career. I didn’t go back to school until later when I took some additional classes at night school. I was very active in the alumni association both at Ogden High and Weber College. I became very active in the association in 1952 and that has never ended as far as involvement with Weber State. I was working at Hill Air Force Base when a good friend, Rulon Garfield, introduced me to Carol Watkins on blind date. I had just bought a beautiful new car. My first car was a little 1930 Model A Ford that I bought for 35 dollars. It had been used as a chicken coup, so I had to take the entire interior out and fix it up. I sold that first car for 100 dollars and then bought a 1932 Ford Coupe with a rumble seat. I painted it, fixed it up and sold it for 200 dollars and bought a 1939 Ford. Later, I traded it for a 1951 Ford Victoria with a continental kit on it. Carol though it was a Cadillac and I thought any girl that thought a Ford was a Cadillac was my kind of girl. I never dated another girl. I can’t say the same about Carol not dating another fellow, but she was much younger and was attending school 19 at Utah State and I courted her while she was in college. We got married a year later and had our first child nine months later. Carol had gone from queen of the school and Miss Utah State to diapering babies nine months later. It was difficult to go through that transition. We lived in grandparent Watkins basement where Kevin was born and were there a short period of time while we were building a little home on Maple Drive. Dad and I built it and I did a lot of the work on that myself. I left Hill AFB at that time and began working for Pierson, Kearney and Hurst, an advertising and art agency. I’d been in an advertising agency that “Pony” Halverson and I started called Halverson Hurst Advertising and Art Agency. I was working five jobs. I was also working for Tanner’s for Men, at the Cal Pack with Wes and Jack Swarner and doing freelance artwork on the side, so life was pretty busy. I probably didn’t do any of them as well as I should have, but I worked really hard during that time. We built a little home on Maple Drive and lived there for nine years. We built it for $12,000 and sold it for $17,000. I worked for Pierson, Kearney and Hurst for 13 or 14 years and loved my time there, but after my 40th birthday I had an impression in the middle of the night that I should contact Weber College. I didn’t know why and I thought when I’d wake up in the morning that impression would be gone. I put it off for a period of time, but then I called the college and oddly enough, President Miller answered the phone. I said, “President Miller, I don’t really know why I’m calling you. Is there any kind of job up there that I could be doing?” He said, “Well, it’s interesting that you’d call. There is a job that we are in the process of finalizing 20 and your name came up, but we didn’t think we could hire you away.” I said, “Well, what is it?” He said, “It is the Director of Alumni and Development Director.” I didn’t know a lot about that, but I knew Weber and a lot of people in the city. I said, “What are you offering?” He gave me a figure and I said, “I will never take a job for less than what I’m making. If you could make that a little bit higher, I’d be interested.” He said, “I can’t offer you the job, but you would certainly be a candidate at that price.” I interviewed the following day, was offered the job and that started my career at Weber State. I took the job in January of 1967 and retired in 1991. I went from Executive Director of Alumni to the Director of College Relations and later Assistant to the President and then Vice President of College Relations. In that capacity, I had alumni, fundraising, public relations, development, the athletic program, the director of the Dee Events Center, the Director of the Browning Center and campus security. Elizabeth Dee Shaw knew my mother and lived in the old 10th Ward. The Dee’s and the Barker’s and their families lived there on the other end of town. They were entrepreneurs along the likes of David Eccles. Thomas “Grandpa” Dee had developed several businesses and a number of other enterprises. His granddaughter, Elizabeth, had inherited a considerable amount of money. She married a man named Donnell Stewart and they had no children. They kind of adopted us as a result of me serving as bishop. I interviewed them for a mission and we became very close. We traveled with them extensively through Asia and Europe. Donnell sponsored me in the Rotary Club of Ogden in which I’ve been very active. 21 Elizabeth and Donnell gave millions of dollars to Weber and I was instrumental in setting up a number of trusts that focused money from that source into the university and community and have served on those foundations since. We’ve since poured millions of dollars into the community and another 50 million to Weber. In addition to the opportunity of raising money, I met a lot of great people. I was on a first name basis with Val Browning. He was a marvelous guy who was a million dollar donor several times over. J. Willard Marriott Sr. was another great guy. I went to school with his son, Bill Marriott, at the University of Utah. I went to Mr. Marriott’s home in Maryland to pick up a check for a million dollars. I knocked on the door and he answered the door himself. It impressed me that there was no security. He answered the door in a sweater with a sleeve that was broken out in the elbow. He was very unpretentious. He and his wife were just salt of the Earth people. The Eccles’ family was also great. I met people like David Kennedy who was the secretary to the treasury. I had dinner with Charleston Heston, Edgar Bergan, Shirley Chisom, John Wooden, Elliott Richardson, and Gordon Liddy. The students would have them come as speakers and would wisely ask someone to go along with them to make sure the proper protocol was maintained. All of those were marvelous opportunities. The one who stood out as the celebrity that I enjoyed the most was Neil Armstrong. During the schools’ Centennial Celebration I had the opportunity to meet him at the airport and drove him to the Marriott Hotel in Ogden. Following his remarks at commencement, I drove him back to the airport and had a chance to visit with him one-on-one. 22 The period of time I served as Bishop from 1969 to 1972 was probably the most difficult period of time in our marriage. I think it was a result of a number of things. It was a transition period for me at work and as bishop. It was a tough time and I mention that because I think we outgrew it and boating helped. Carol had never had a great opportunity of camping like we had as kids, and we didn’t have a lot in common. The outdoor adventures that I loved weren’t of interest to her and it took a toll on us a little bit. She became very active in music, which I admit I resented. I wanted total time and effort and acceptance and everything that went along with it. The boating helped give us something in common. She turned into a heck of a boater. She could cook up meals and our boating experience really helped us heal. I loved Lake Powell and some of the fondest memories I’ll ever have are the times we shared with the family. All of you here know that same love we had for Lake Powell and I’ve had my boat on Jackson Lake, Flaming Gorge and Willard Bay. Those were great times. We traveled extensively. We went to Asia we went to China, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Bali, and the Philippines. Later, I went with the Rotary conventions to Holland, Germany, France, Luxemburg and all over England. We had a marvelous time with friends traveling to England. We traveled to Mexico where we all got the “Montezuma’s Revenge.” We had some tremendous experiences there. Tahiti had always been a dream because I remember as a kid, Rudean Allred had gone to Tahiti and the idea of going to Tahiti was always a dream. I ended up getting a couple of weeks there and Carol didn’t want to go. 23 She lacked the desire to go, so I went with my son, Kevin. We had a great time there. I’ve had a few strange illnesses, I had a burst appendix and one time, I fell out of a tree and dislocated my shoulder. I had a kidney stone on Memorial Day that I will never forget, bypass surgery with five coronary bypasses and in Hawaii on the anniversary date of my open heart surgery ended up with an upper GI obstruction and had to go to the hospital at 2:00 in the morning after a 911 call by my wife. That was a challenge to be in a strange city and to get me there. We finally got that straightened out. I had cataract surgery and wear hearing aids that don’t work. We’ve been pretty much through the gamut. I am also a cancer survivor, but that’s another story. I want to conclude by telling two or three of the miracles in my life and I’m sure that there are many more. I don’t think any of us are aware when angels protect us. I think of Mother saying, “Don’t climb the cliffs at the waterfall,” and we climbed the cliffs. I remember hitting a piece of dynamite with a hammer to see what would happen. I would jump off the chicken coops with a parachute made out of a bedspread and I can’t imagine why I didn’t break anything. I think when the roll is called up yonder; we can look back in time and see some of the things where it was only through divine intervention that we survived. I wanted to mention this and one other thing in closing. I always felt like I wasn’t the best dad. I think back and I remember spanking one of the kids and I don’t even remember what it was over, but I remember my hand print on the little bare bottom and it hurts me to even think about it now. It’s bothered me and I 24 don’t recall ever spanking the kids when I felt it wasn’t justified. I really appreciated Boyd Packer’s talk about grandparents. I think I am a better grandparent than a dad. I really love my grandkids, we only have six grandkids, but I love them with all my heart. Some of them have special needs and different challenges, but I made up my mind that I was going to be a good grandpa and other than times of discipline, I’ve really enjoyed them. I’ve been more of a companion and played with them when they were younger. They’re growing up to be teenagers now and I’m having a tough time because I can’t get down to that same level. I like to think that I was a good grandpa. I wanted to tell another story that was a foundation to my testimony. I was on my mission and I hadn’t been out too long. I was a little discouraged and hadn’t received a letter from home for a long while. I had been working hard with little success and we tracked down to a home one time and knocked on the door and a little Japanese woman came to the door and we introduced ourselves. She suddenly went hysterical and started to cry and weep inconsolably. The more we tried to find out what was wrong, the harder she wept. We had been invited into the home and sat down when she started to cry. It bothered us so much that we finally just had to get up and walk out. Later, I called Sister Okimoto, who was a member of the church and didn’t live too far from this woman. I said, “We don’t know what happened, we didn’t want to offend her.” Sister Okimoto went and visited her. She met us later and said, “This woman had been very concerned over which church to join and had just knelt down and prayed that she might know which church to join when there was a knock at the door and she opened it 25 up and there were two Mormon missionaries.” That was really impressive to me. I was transferred out of that area and I don’t know whether she ever did join the church or not. Another experience I had on my mission was a lesson that wasn’t so much the testimony of seeing a miracle as much as a testimony of faith and unity. On New Year’s Day, we were having a district president’s convention and President Weig asked an old Hawaiian fisherman if we could help him with his Hukilau. It was a tradition for him to take his nets out and the fish he caught on New Year’s Day was his tithing for the prior year. That was how he paid it. There were ten or twelve of us and it turned out to be a boisterous sea and the waves were very high. Some of the missionaries didn’t want to go out, so Brother Kalili said, “If you don’t have the unity and the faith that we could go out and succeed, I won’t do it.” We all went away and prayed about it and when we had the impression that we were all together we went back and told him that. He said, “If you are united, we will do it.” We took the nets out and I was assigned to go out and keep the nets off the coral. As we were pulling the nets in, I began to see what I thought were sharks. As we got to shore, the net began to catch on some big boulders and I’d go down to see what they were and all of a sudden a big head came out. It was a huge sea turtle. The word got out that we caught a mess of fish that was too heavy to pull in. There was over 100 yards of netting extending out in the ocean. All of a sudden, the native villagers all came out and helped the elders pull the nets to shore. We had caught four sea turtles, which in that time were in high demand. The Japanese and the Chinese would eat them, 26 but the Hawaiians would not. Those represented a major source of income in addition to a ton of fish that we caught in those nets. We couldn’t even pull them all in. It was a miracle in the understanding that unity and faith are inseparable and there was a lesson taught. That event has gone down in the history. If you go to any of the older people in Laie, they remember that event. All the missionaries were invited to the next Hukilau. I want to tell one other quick story. When we were living on Washington and 36th Street, Carol was teaching piano to a little girl named Mary Kimball who had a twin brother named Tommy. They lived across the street and they were an inactive L.D.S. family. Tommy came over to the house one day and said, “Mrs. Hurst, come quick. I just shot Mary.” Carol went over to find the scene, which was horrific. There was little Mary lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. Her brother had played with a rifle that the father had borrowed to go deer hunting. He chambered a round and accidently fired it. The bullet went through her wrist, struck her abdomen and disemboweled her. Pieces of her intestine and stomach were all over the kitchen wall. Mary was totally conscious laying there and said to Carol, “Mrs. Hurst, don’t let me die. Please don’t let me die.” Carol called the ambulance and at first they went by and she thought, “They’re not going to stop,” but they backed up. They came in, picked up her insides, put them back in the cavity of her stomach, covered her with gauze and took her to the hospital. No one expected her to live. She did barely survive and about a week later her mother called and asked, “Would you come and give a prayer for Mary?” I called Carol’s father and 27 we went up to the hospital where her mother went in first and came out crying. She said, “I don’t know whether we should do this. She is in so much pain. I don’t know whether I want to prolong it.” I said, “Bernice, do you want her to live or not?” She said, “I want her to live.” I said, “We will administer to her.” So we administered to her and Eddis anointed her and I sealed the anointing. I can see the scene in my mind’s eye as clear today as it was then with the blessing I delivered. Here was this little child in a semi-reclining position in the bed and there was no part of her body that didn’t have a tube or a wire or something in it. She just looked like a specimen stuck on a board and she was unconscious. I gave her a blessing and felt prompted to give her a blessing of health and strength, but the unusual thing that I said was that she would not only live, but that she would be a mother. I finished saying that, sealed the blessing and as I walked out the door, I turned to Brother Watkins and said, “I don’t know why I said that.” Well, she lived and went through many operations. She had a plastic tummy and I remember I was working at Tanner’s Store when the nurse came in and said, “Mary had her first BM.” That was a sign that Mary was functioning and her body was working. I waited for another 12 years as she went on to survive. She was homecoming queen at Weber College and a beautiful little blonde lady. Later, she was married. One day, I picked up the paper and read that Mary had just delivered a child. She had three children. They later said that the odd thing about that wound was that it tore her stomach up, but it didn’t touch her female organs. 28 In conclusion, all of those are factors in that I have been blessed all my life with the testimony that I know that God lives and Jesus is the Christ. I appreciate my membership in the church because I don’t know that I would have had the temperament to join had I not been born in the gospel. I have been eternally grateful that I was privileged to be born into a family that taught me those gospel principles. I have enjoyed, loved, appreciate and testify and do so in the name of Jesus Christ whose resurrection and atonement I value and appreciate so much, and do so in His name, Amen.