Oral History Program Ardell Wilson Interviewed by Emily Wilson 30 September 2008 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ardell Wilson Interviewed by Emily Wilson 30 September 2008 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii 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. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ 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 Kelley Evans, 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 All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Wilson, Ardell, an oral history by Emily Wilson, 30 September 2008, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Ardell Wilson. It is being conducted on September 30, 2008 over the phone. This interview covers her childhood in Utah and what memories she has of her family life. The interviewer is Emily Wilson. EW: When and where were you born? AW: I was born in Ogden, Utah, on November 7, 1927, to mother and father Winifred Olson Furniss and Bryant James Furniss my mother and father. EW: Did you have any siblings at that point? AW: I was the fifth child of the family of eight; there were four boys and four girls. EW: Do you remember any of your school days? AW: Yes and a few things before that that I recall through the years and one of them was, I was two years old at the time of the Depression that hit and that era and things were tough. My dad did bookkeeping work for various venders; meat markets, grocery stores, farmers who grew vegetables. He treated all his bookkeeping knowledge and health with these people to handle his business. I remember it was 1932, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was running for President and made a trip out west and was in the Ogden Railroad Yard and was switching trains from the Union Pacific I guess to the Southern engines because he stayed on the car and he never got out of the train. This was a Sunday morning, my dad had taken myself and one of the older siblings and a couple of younger ones because we would go down by Nick's place, he was the butcher and we would fix snacks and gather up coal that had fallen off of the engines for us to take home to heat our house during those bad years with not having enough of anything hardly, so that made an impression on me. My dad was a very politically minded person 1 this candidate was in there and came out to see a lot of people were down there, and I think it was about 33rd or 36th street and Wall, wherever the train backed up to. The President came out of the back of his caboose; it had a railing around it and everything. I remember my dad had picked me up in his arms and was holding me up, I remember Mr. Roosevelt reaching out to take my hand and he says "Who's this pretty little blonde?" You know, of course I just melted, I guess I was about four. I remembered that and I remember being happy because that good man won that election that year and so anyway I was about 4; that was a preschool incident. I do remember starting Lorin Farr School in school which was on 22nd, just below Harrison. I started First grade there but unfortunately during that year I either had measles, whooping cough or chicken pox. We were quarantined several times through the year as the younger kids caught these diseases that spread around. I had to repeat the first grade, so I spent two years in the first grade at Lorin Farr School. I went to that school at Lorin Farr until I completed the third grade, and I remember my teacher Mrs. Sperry had an interesting project; the subject we studied was Salt Lake. We all had dish pans and we brought salt from home, some who could, some who had money to waste I guess in those days. Salt was cheap but we had to have it to make a salt solution and we cut out things and made the signs and dipped them in the salt water and let it dry and this was the home room teacher working this experiment and was very interesting. Also in the third grade I remember a student had an uncle who lived in Arkansas, and we were studying cotton and she had an uncle that we wrote to as a class and this fine man from Arkansas sent— I think there were about 25 students in that class— he sent a little package to each of us. We had a piece of cotton with two little balls growing on it, we had little vials filled with oil, 2 just different things they did with cotton. It was very interesting. Then there was also a little souvenir of the cotton, and there was a nice letter about the plantation that it came from and everything. I kept it for years but you know things like that get lost so, it was a very good school year at a very good school. That was just elementary, how far do you want me to go? EW: You can go as far as you want. AW: Okay then, I can say that we lived at 1128 Oak Street, I remember that well. My big brothers, they built treehouses and plant farms; the girls we forbidden to climb up that box elder tree, and get in their tree house. Also my dad had a cherry tree, royal stemmed cherries, they weren't very sweet. We weren't ever supposed to be caught in that tree, but I had a spot up there that I called my perch, and when I was sure Daddy wouldn't see me up there climbing that tree, it would hurt the bark. I don't know if he ever explained that to us, why we weren't supposed to climb the tree; I guess it occurred to him that we could fall out and break an arm or leg I guess. We just didn't climb the tree because we would damage the bark on it. There was just a lot of little things like that. It was a good neighborhood and it was just a half a block away from school. We had to walk through a vacant field; it had lots of boulders lying on top of each other and we used to play Calamity Chain, Indians and Cowboys on the way to school. I have a lot of good memories of school days at Lorin Farr School. I don't remember the year exactly— I think it might have been 1936 or 37— we had to leave that house. I don't know if it was repossessed, it might have been repossessed, we might have been renting I don't know I was a couple of years old I guess when we moved there because I was born on Kershaw Street and we lived on another street just below Washington and 3 that was a rent house. I even have a few memories of that, but I was very young and I remember things. I wouldn't have seen a picture of that and they would say “Oh, you don't remember that!” but I did, I remember incidental things. Anyway that house was the third house we lived in and that's where we lived when I started school. I remember another incident that had a big impression on me for many years. There was twin girls my age that lived in the back of us and one Sunday I rode with them and their father to take them to Sunday School and drop them off; I guess I might have been seven or eight, nine maybe at the most. But they dropped them off at church that wasn't an LDS Church and so, I don't know if it was a feeling that they were different or I was told not to play with them anymore because they weren't Mormon, I don't remember the reason, I just remember like there were instructions not to play with them anymore. Years later after I had moved away and converted to Christianity at 21 or 22 years old, after moving to Texas, one of the things I wanted to do going back to Utah was to go to that same church and see what church that was that I felt uncomfortable playing with those little girls anymore because they weren't LDS girls I guess. I found out later that they were Methodists; I never kept track of them or anything. Oh, another interesting thing, these big brothers and their buddies and what have you; there was always lots of kids hanging around our house. It was a two story house with one bathroom and a big garage. My dad had a few chickens and a little bit of a garden. We had the washing machine in the bathroom; on wash day we all had to pitch in to help. Another interesting thing that happened, I guess it’s okay to tell my dad made homemade beer and it was served during those days during the Depression and during Prohibition, and at times if those people hadn't come by and bought a bottle of beer or something, as a little girl my 4 brother and I would sit on the pantry floor and cap his bottles of beer. You know, my Daddy was a bootlegger at that time among other bookkeeping jobs and what have you. He was also notary republic and what have you I guess it wasn't very law abiding of him, but something very interesting. The Chief of Police at that time in Ogden his last name was Hilton— we played with those kids all the time too— but Chief Hilton lived across the street and every once in a while I heard family talk about this later on after Prohibition came about and that amendment was changed. It was ok, but I think it was still illegal to make their own beer and sell it. If they drank the beer but if they bought it and left then it made it illegal. Anyway, the Chief of Police was always good enough to, if things were getting hot around the police station and there was talk about arresting Mr. Furniss, in fact I think they did arrest him once. But if it hadn't been for that then I don't know how he would have feed his eight children and wife those hard years at that time because he also had some kind of an illness and couldn't afford a car anymore. He sold insurance and he would go around and collect premium payment from various clients and that's the way they did it. In fact, insurance men would come call at the house even after we moved to Texas and I guess they did this up until sometime in the late 50's, which is kind of surprising nowadays. I think Dad was booked one time because it was always a family joke and he always gave his name as Pete Olson because he did not want his name— Bryant James Furniss— mentioned in the paper about being a bootlegger that got busted. It was a family joke but the younger ones don't remember too much about that. In 1936, we moved down to 850 23th Street and that's where I lived until I was 18, 19 and I walked to Madison School. I always wanted a bicycle but my dad could never afford it and so walking we did, but it was quite popular 5 in those days. I could remember my teacher Mrs. Brown, she was a wonderful teacher and Mrs. Thomas my fifth grade teacher and Mrs. Parker who I learned later was a Christian Scientist teacher. I found out where their church was and everything, she never preached it or anything, I don't know how I ever found out that she was Christian Science. All of us kids, Mom never had any time to go to church with all of us kids. I was the oldest of the last four kids with five years difference; it was just the brothers that was older than I. It was two girls and two boys in the first four and two girls and two boys in the second four and I was the oldest of the last four. I remember when my brother graduated from Ogden High School. I went from Madison school; that was a very good experience. All my school friends and teachers, we went to Primary together; that was a church function in the ward that you were assigned to. We were the 6th Ward, where we lived before we attended school we were in the 20th Ward. On Tuesday we went to primary and when the girls got a little bit older, I don't know what the cutoff date was, but we went from primary after school to primary on Tuesday evenings which they call mutual. The boys had boy scouts and the girls, we were Beehive girls and we had classes and teacher and what have you. That was just a function that was our life actually, just about everybody in this class, usually your best friend was a Mormon at that time. We never thought about it at the time but later I would have many close girlfriends that were not of the Mormon faith. I don't know what they were, I never even questioned it. I did so more after I became a Christian myself and got to thinking about these girls and what they were. I knew one of them was Catholic because I went with her— I remember she had catechism— I don't think I knew that word at that time but it was a lesson that she went to at a big Catholic church. There was a whole block on 6 Quincy and 25th off of the bench. She had these church lessons to go to and they wouldn't let me in. I sat on a bench that they had provided outside of their chain link fence, for people who were waiting for the bus and I could sit there for an hour while she had these religious classes with the Catholic. She was from California and lived with her mother. At that time of our lives when we were questioning our friends and the girlfriends that we have, and their background and visiting. We would have sleepovers and stuff like that and that was in my early elementary grades in Utah. The grades were from first to the seventh grade in the elementary schools, so I only attended Lorin Farr School and Madison School, which is on Madison Avenue and across the street from Lester Park I think. Sometimes we would take a lunch but most of the time in seventh grade I would walk home and have lunch and come back to school. We had an hours for lunch, we were on our own; I never went to a school that had a cafeteria in it. From there I went to Central Junior High, which had recently been converted in 1937 to the new Ogden High School. I remember when that was being built and my brother Lloyd I think was in the last class to graduate from what we called the Ogden High School which was on Monroe and 25th. So I went to 8th and 9th grade there. However I dropped out in the 9th grade, I did not regret it then and it was coincidental that I really didn't intend to, but I wasn't paying really good attention to my studies, homework and what have you. I was running around with the girl friends; we would go home for lunch and forget to go back sometimes. We had to eat lunch, wash our hair and listen to Glen Miller, eight minutes of music on the radio. We just wouldn't make it back to school. Her mother was divorced and her step dad sent her home to Omaha to live with her father, who had a stock yard in Omaha, Nebraska, so when Julie left town I got serious about 7 school, because I had too. I had to go to the Board of Education Office and meet with the superintendent of the school, my mother did, to even get me back into school. They raised that and they were worried and I promised that, I think I made good grades when I was in school before, I just messed around and decided to quit school. I quit going and it was going to be trouble and they told me to either go to school or go to reform school, I think I had 9 weeks of school left. The principal and the English teacher, who later became the mayor of Ogden— Herald Welsh was his name— I remember he was my home room teacher and I was very diligent for two weeks. I was cramming and studying and they were helping me and I was doing fine and I got the ninth measles and the house was quarantined and I couldn't go to school and I kicked it all in. I thought, “That's it!” you know, not being able to go to that last four weeks, I thought “That's it!” Not being 16 years old yet so I had to enroll in the Ogden Business College which was downtown, I think it might have been in part of the Ogden Examiner building on Kiesel. Anyway it was called the Ogden Business College then and I signed up for different classes, plus I worked at the Gordon Drug Store for some hours during the week and then went to school for some hours. I took enough business courses of office machines, English, typing, short hand, spelling and I think I had a few lessons on some kind of a— I can't remember what they called the machine— it had three keys that were split in two and also a calculator. I learned how to operate the calculator and I took those classes. I continued those, even though after I turned sixteen that got me off the hook, but after six months of this class and I turned sixteen I took a civil service examination and went to work for the Civil Service at the Naval Supply Depot when I was just a little over sixteen years old. I was placed in the mail room and of course this 8 was 1943 I guess. I'm going to back track a little bit, because I remember Pearl Harbor Day. On Saturdays and Sundays when I was thirteen, I worked for a husband and wife; he was a reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune and she was the society reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune, or maybe the Ogden Standard, I don't know. She was the reporter that reported engagements and weddings and proms, various things like that. It was what they called the society page. Their name was Traubber or something like that. My sister worked for them doing housework on weekends; my sister Ilene worked for them for three years. Then another friend, someone they found to replace her, and then somebody else quit and then I took a turn working for the Traubbers'. You wouldn't believe the housework we did for $1.50 on Saturdays and Sundays. We took out garbage, we did washing in the basement. It was a duplex that was built on the corner in the fifth ward and there were houses. During the war years there were so many people— Gentiles we called them— moving into Utah that were needing places to live and stay. I don't know the largest house around the corner on 21st and Jefferson but the people rented out rooms to various people in these places. These duplexes, there were probably four or five of them and down in the basement of the old house there was a washing machine and the tubs and the clothes lines. On good days when it wasn't raining you could hang them outside; there were places outside to hang the clothing. The ironing and the cooking and these people entertained a lot of the city’s dignitaries I guess you would call them. I didn't know that then at fifteen, fourteen, thirteen— I can't remember exactly. I remember the editor of the newspaper, I remember lawyers and district attorneys and just a few people that were in the political field. Every Sunday night we listened to one man's family and on Saturday nights we had to listen to Walter 9 Winchell who was a famous news caster on the radio. By the time I worked for this old couple they didn't own a car, she walked to town all the time. They drank a lot, so there were lots of beer bottles, wine bottles, whisky bottles that were packed out and put in paper sacks in the trash on Saturday mornings while the refrigerator was defrosting. I was washing clothes in the basement because they did not get up until nine or ninethirty, ten o'clock, but by one o'clock they were through with brunch; that's when I learned what brunch was all about. Lou the cook, she assisted me, she would take off with her little sacks, but she would always bring back the Sunday paper, I guess it was the Ogden Standard that she bought because I think the other was probably mailed to the house or something. Sunday nights is when they did their entertaining, I wasn't allowed to eat with them; I ate in the kitchen. After I came south I realized that I was a servant like the southerners were used to having and they were from Missouri. On Pearl Harbor Day, whether I got the day off or whether I came back depended on if I got all the ironing done on Saturday, if I didn't I had to come early on Sunday morning and would finish it. I can't remember which way it went but it doesn't matter. I remember that I had a couple of hours off and I had a girlfriend that had broken her leg skiing and she was at home and I would just and her name was Gay O'Hare, I always thought that was such a beautiful name, she lived on Monroe down just a few blocks away from us. I had decided that I would spend that two and a half hours or whatever I had that Sunday and I had been to see Gay and I was on my way back to walking, these were long blocks, I walked everywhere and ah most people did, and ah I was walking back and almost home when my dad or I guess it was my dad was driving looking for me because they wanted to tell me. I guess it was late in the afternoon, because I think I had to be back 10 at work by five and he took me there and dropped me off. My brother Lloyd was in the National Guard and went to camp in early 41, before the war so it was a really special time and a tense time for us. My oldest brother was in the war and in California at Camp Sam Louie Episcopal in training when war broke out and they just had to gather us all together, so they came looking for me walking back home to tell me what had happened and we were sort of listening to the radio, but it got me off my tasks where I had to finish my evening. At five o'clock it was fix dinner then they would have guests or somebody there and when I got through with the dishes and clean up the kitchen good and everything I could leave and she would leave the dollar fifty on the counter for me and that was it and I remember that vividly. Some of his friends that would hang out at the house a lot, they kind of all joined the National Guard together and went off to war together and he was in the 222nd field artillery and for years, most of the time he was gone I wrote to him every week I wrote to my brother Lloyd. He was quite an artist and he would, send drawings back and it was always interesting because we had e-mail no it wasn't e-mail what did we call it, I think we called it e-mail I'm not sure but our letters were minimized somehow, photographed or you wrote them on special paper and then they were copied or condensed and then they were mailed. I swear they called it email, I don't know if it's wrong or not but it was v-mail that's what it was v- mail, v for victory that's what it was all about. Maybe you better give me the next question. EW: I don't have any questions; it is whatever you want to talk about. AW: Ok, I was kind of thinking of something else cause I have been kind of culling out by book shelves around here and I ran across the fifth grade of Ogden Utah and old post card of, that I bought of Rainbow Gardens, while I was there one year, I don't know 11 when it was I can't remember when it was published or anything, but looking through it, it triggered the memory, our Sunday outings, if we had time sometime was to go for a Sunday drive and going up to Pine View Lake, course it wasn't the lake then. I remember when the damn was being built, there's a picture of the artesian wells in this magazine and I don't really recall those but there was a park up there, underneath the damn and under that big damn that I'm sure you've seen, I'm sure you've been through the tunnel on the other side of Pine View Lake and Snow Basin on the other side and I can remember when this was being built, we could go up to a certain point there was this big beautiful rock house that was later, I can't remember what they called it but during the war it was, maybe it was the Canyon Club. I think they called it the Canyon Club, it was a dance hall and a night club and you could have dinner, you got served very, very good steak dinners and sometimes they would have an orchestra but it is probably still standing, I know it was the last time I was up that way, which was probably 1999. I can remember the big trucks and the dump truck and the cement things ya know for the damn. You could only go up so far, I remember too when there had been a land slide and we got just so far up the canyon and a little bit of recollection of when they built the rock fence, wall, rail between the highway the Ogden River, maybe that's caught your attention some time I don't know. There were lots of people, lots of gentiles moved in because we had the Army's, the Arsenal on 2nd Street, the Ogden Hill Field for the Air Force, the Naval Supply Depot where I went to work, I worked in that, to get back to that I guess, no I'll finish this. There was an Ogden Arsenal that was had a lot to deal with the railroad because my father finally decided he wasn't getting anywhere being a blue collard man and so he took his overalls. His father was in the railroad 12 business and worked there. The Ogden Arsenal, the Hill Field Air Force Base the 2nd Street Supply Depot, the Naval Supply Depot there was also a Naval Air Academy I think which was in some place on 24th just above Washington and Naval Cadets, I had schooling there. I don't know where they lived if they were in dorms or something I don't know, I believe it was the old city hall before it was down in the city hall park where the big Christmas display is. It was the jail house the city hall it was everything and the Library was close to it, but there was another thing I did going to Madison school. At least once an week, maybe more I walked to the library which for the children was down in the basement of the Library on Washington Boulevard and I also in the seventh grade took piano lessons and I walked form Madison down to 31st and Wall because my teacher, she lived in a duplex there at the end of, maybe it was 30th where ever the big flour mill or some kind of mill, big, big pillars a flour mill, I guess there still there I don't know but that was a long way, a long walk down there and coming back. Except on the way back I would stop my dad had an office and the Grocery Store which was called the California Free Market I could never figure out what was free about it. He had an office because he kept books for them his name was Mr. Stevens the owner of that market and ah he had a little office up above ya know somewhere up the back steps and I could go sit there and wait and ride home with him which was kind of a treat because I usually had homework to do that was seventh grade. Gee I jumped around a lot. I left Utah for a while I went to San Francisco with my two sister in 1945, we left there in January of 45 and my older sister and I work at the Best Foods Company and we rode the trolleys, the street cars ya know what have you. I remember when some of the service men were released from what they called the pretend death man march and 13 there were prisoners it was, ya know the whole city of San Francisco was out to greet the when these fellows, the survivors of that came home and they were, let’s see. I would come home to Utah, I would get very home sick on and off and ah I would get a grey hound bus and come home, then go back again. I was back in Utah and with a friend back in Ogden Canyon for the summer at her aunts summer house and we got our feet wet in the Ogden River and we played tennis and when the atomic bomb was dropped, I remember that I think it was sometime in August and I think in May of that year I guess the war was over in Japan, I think I am a little confused which one was first I think Japan surrendered first and then Germany and I was in San Francisco, I can't remember which one, but anyway. I came back and ah two or three days before Christmas I remember I had a pass from my daddy's railroad work to return home but service men had the priority on getting on trains on San Francisco at the Ferry Building and I was so home sick and I had my bag pack and I'd get down there early and a second time I made it I got on the train, if I wanted to stand up so I told him yes I would stand up on the train. I guess I was eighteen then I remember shooting craps with the soldiers coming home in the isles that was it; it was either watching them or throwing the dice with them or something so I had fun. I got right home December 23rd I remember because it was a couple of days before Christmas it was snowing and I was glad to be home because I would get very home sick and at almost eighty-one I still get home sick sometimes in the winters, the scenery, the mountains and what have you it’s not the same. I left in 49, well first I got married in 47 may of 47, I married a man that had lived there before and then went into the Army in the 740th Tank Battalion and in Germany and the Bulge he was the tank commander and he was discharged and he 14 returned to Salt Lake City he was discharged in Salt Lake City also. He was inducted in Fort Douglas there because he was in Utah with the construction people and the paint crew and everything he would run the job for the building for the naval Supply Depot. His wife and daughter came with him and his mother and step-dad came and his younger brother came to Utah and they all stayed there for a while and were lucky enough to get an apartment over on the other side of the viaduct and of course that's sort of his history not mine because I met his a year right after the month after he had got out of the Army and had come back to Utah and living there, he was divorced there and I met him a year later and we eloped in May of 1947 after meeting on a blind date and days later we got married and it lasted forty-eight years but he wanted to return to Texas after we had bought a home there on a G.I. bill my sister lived two doors down and everything was huncky-dory. I was working at the Pacific Food and Produce Company there on Grant Avenue I believe and I also worked at the Holland Reality Company. My sister and I ran the elevators in the Hotel Ben Lomond during the war years too. We used to meet some very famous movie stars that would come to town to go bird hunting out in the bird sanctuary or whatever they call it out there in Willard and I remember Wallace Beery he was there to hunt he was going up to Jackson Hole to hunt moose I thought that was interesting because he looked like an old moose. He and Clark Gable were in and out sometimes because Ogden switches of the stations of the trains there and there would be celebrities and it would usually be kind of quiet ya know the rest of the town didn't know it or something and these the elevator operator usually was a woman, sometimes we wore uniforms but we didn't we would wear blouses and skirts but it wasn't a uniform it was just the unwritten rule. The elevators were operated 15 by hand also ran the elevator of the Kiesel Building at the Ogden Standard Examiner. That was kind of interesting I did a little of hand modeling for a photographer that had an office there for a jewelry company. The ads were put in the Ogden Standard Examiner and I was told I had pretty hands. I didn't get paid for it, I didn't have sense enough to ask for it I guess I don't know it was an experience. We lived in Utah about eighteen months of our married life and my husband wanted to work for Sherwin Williams, for Nick's Glass and Paint. He did a little bit of contracting on his own and ah just didn't like the snow so he had called home at Christmas time and ah his younger brother was working for an old friend, a contractor out of Texarkana and he had moved down to Houston and ah he told his brother that if his brother Harold calls here to tell him to come on down to Houston I got a big job for him. We decided to leave we rented our house out and ah furnished and everything and moved to Texas and I said I would go for two years and that's it I got to come back to Utah. I got here in 69, I mean in 49 summer of 49 I meet a lady and got a little job where I could walk to and she used to ask me questions about the Mormon Church because she was married to a Mormon cause she was a Lutheran a Christian and ah she ah would ask me different dogmas I guess you'd call them the beliefs of the Mormon Church and I told her I quit going— Oh, what happened? EW: Nothing. AW: Have I run out of tape? EW: Close, not quite. AW: Not quite, ok. Give me a warning when you want me to wrap this up. EW: You can, it's getting to the tail end. 16 AW: My life isn't over yet and I converted to Christianity and I found a second family and a family with the Lutheran Church and have lived here ever sense. My husband passed away in 95, I have three sons, they’re gone and the youngest one still lives with me, still happily transplanted Utahans living in Texas. EW: Thank you for the interview. 17