Oral History Program Lois Harmon Interviewed by Sarah Kamppi 7 June 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Lois Harmon Interviewed by Sarah Kamppi 7 June 2017 Copyright © 2018 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 Utah Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum honors men and women whose lives exemplify the independence and resilience of the people who settled Utah, and includes artists, champions, entertainers, musicians, ranchers, writers, and those persons, past and present, who have promoted the Western way of life. Each year, the inductees are interviewed about their lives and experiences living the Western way of life. ____________________________________ 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: Harmon, Lois, an oral history by Sarah Kamppi, 7 June 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Floyd “Flip” Harmon during WWII Lois Harmon 7 June 2017 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Lois Harmon, conducted on June 7, 2017 in her home in Magna, Utah, by Sarah Kamppi. In this interview, Lois discusses her husband, Floyd “Flip” Harmon, and his experiences with being a prominent leader in the rodeo community. Alyssa Chaffee, the video technician, and Lorrie Rands are also present during this interview. SC: My name is Sarah Kamppi and I am here today in the home with Miss Lois Harmon with Alyssa Chaffee and Lorrie Rands. Today is Wednesday June 7, 2017. Miss Lois when and where was Mr. Harmon born? LH: He was born in Magna Utah, May 10, 1925. SC: You mentioned he grew up next door to this house, what was that like for him? LH: A big family. His father died when he was about nine so he was raised without a father but a lot of older brothers that helped out with the family, and older sisters. SC: That’s good. Was he heavily involved with school? LH: No. SC: Okay. Well it says here that in 1947 he began and organized the Magna Mount Riders. What can you tell us about that? LH: It was a riding club. He got discharged from the Navy in 1946 but he always loved horses. He had a horse from the time he was little to as long as he could find one that was free and he could’ve earned the money to feed it. He decided to organize a riding club and so he got with the other cowboys that was in the area and they built an arena. They went into Salt Lake and the county gave them some property and they built an arena. 2 SC: So what was his racing track arena like? LH: The arena was just an arena for calf roping and things like bucking horses and that. There was not a race track, this arena was right next to the golf club. The golf greens was right there and every so often the calves and the horses would get out on the greens and it caused a lot of problems with the golfers. The state said, “We’re going to give you some property in another area.” Then they built a race track. SC: Okay, did he do any other type of work before getting involved with horse races in the race trade? LH: Oh yes, he always had another job. He worked at Kennecott. It was Utah Copper in those days. He worked out there and then after we was married he went to the sign school. He and his brother, Bob, started this company after he got out of school. It’s called the Twentieth Century Lite Company and it’s still in business. His brother is still alive, he just turned ninety and he still goes to the shop every day and works. Because they were taught to work and just worked as long you could. LR: You mentioned your husband wasn’t heavily involved in school, did he go to elementary school? LH: He went to elementary and then he went to junior high and when he was probably in eleventh grade, or maybe even a freshman in high school, the war started. His greatest desire was to go to war and fight for our freedom. As soon as he was old enough for his mother to sign for him, he went to that war because his brothers were fighting in the war, one in the army, one in the marines, and he 3 wanted to go and be at service. So he joined the navy. When I say he wasn’t involved in school, of course elementary, junior high, and a little of high school, maybe two years. LR: What high school did he go to? LH: Cyprus High. LR: He never graduated? LH: He didn’t graduate but when those boys came home from the service, they allowed them to graduate because of the experience they had. Most of them was gone from two to five years in the service and they felt that that was enough, so he did graduate, not a formal walking across the stage though. LR: That’s really interesting. I didn’t know that. That’s kind of cool. SC: So he started the horse parade in 1965. What was that like? LH: It was amazing. We always had at least a thousand horses in that horse parade. It was the biggest horse parade in the United States. He would get interesting horse clubs and a few times he had the twenty mule team Borricks stagecoach. That was twenty mules pulling a stage coach and they was really quite famous, and the Budweiser horses was always involved in that. They would come and they’d always put their application in early so they could be here. We had a lot of riding clubs in those days, there was no television or things like that and the kids needed something to do. So we always had riding clubs. Almost every little community in Utah had a riding club. SC: So did the horse parade and these riding clubs reflect his love for horses? 4 LH: I think he was probably born with a love of horses. He just wanted to bring it along so everybody could enjoy what he enjoyed. It was a good way to raise children. Our children always had a horse of their own because he thought that was important. SC: I see. It also says he was the president of the Days of ’47. Can you describe what the Days of ’47 is? LH: The Days of ’47 is the largest celebration in the state of Utah. It was formed in 1943 and it was organized to honor and remember pioneers that came into this valley. He was just chairman of the rodeo and then he became president of Days of ’47 and the rodeo. So it was a lot of work for him. He was quite the organizer and this organization tried to bring the history of the people that came to Utah in 1847 until 1869. They had seventeen different events through the month of July. In the former days, it would start on the fourth of July and we’d have what we called the bell ringing—usually happened on the steps of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum Building. They would ring the old bell that they brought along the plains out on the steps and they’d ring it for the freedom of the nation. That would start our events and then we had several events. LR: The horse parade that he did, is that the parade that happens a couple of days before The Days of ’47 parade? LH: When we started it we had it the first day of the rodeo. We was at the state fairgrounds and so it would start up in the city and it would come to the fairgrounds. But it was always the first day of the rodeo. As we moved the rodeo around, the streets were busier. We started with Days of ’47 in 1961 and to see 5 the time change, you used to have all of these riding clubs and it wasn’t hard to get a thousand horses in the parade, just from around here. But, as time went by the land started getting taken and people didn’t have their own horses and now we are having a horse parade but it will probably be before the rodeo this year. We haven’t had one for about three or four years. LR: I was just curious. I remember having grown up in Salt Lake, they talk about the horse parade, but we never went to it. I’ve always heard about it but I’ve never seen it or anything. LH: It was amazing. We tried it through Gateway a couple of years, which was a little frightening because the people are so close. Horses are not dependable, especially when a child would throw out a fire cracker or something. But it was a wonderful event. SC: He served as Bishop in his LDS ward, what was that like for you? LH: So busy. Flip was one of these people that if he got into an organization he would give his all to it. With his business of his own, the sign company, that took a lot of time. Each of these other things he just took a little more time. We lived a scheduled life with a lot of fun thrown in. Our welfare assignment was a cattle ranch, the beef project. They called him one day and asked if he had time to bring his horse and come down and help them check some of the cows and to brand some. He said, “Okay, I’ll do that.” He went down and started doing that and he had been active in the church when he was young but when he went into the navy he just wasn’t as active. When he got active with that beef project he 6 thought it was part his and so there he was and it wasn’t very long until he was in church and then pretty soon he was the bishop of the ward. That’s how he was. When he went to the Days of ’47 they just asked him if he would come and help build their arena in the fairgrounds because it was falling down. He started doing that and pretty soon he was chairman of the rodeo and started a horse parade. When they said the cowboy hall of fame was to honor the cowboy and the western way of life I thought there couldn’t have been a better cowboy, because he started the calf scramble project with the Salt Lake county fair and did that for sixteen years. All of our children raised the beef and sold it at the county fair on that beef project because it involved animals, horses, and cows. He knew that if you could keep the children involved with animals they would have to take care of them; they’d have to groom them, feed them, and ride them. It just kept them so busy and it kept them pretty active, so they didn’t have time to do other things. SC: How was he associated with the American Quarter Horse Association? LH: He was always a member because he loved the quarter horses and every horse he bought was a quarter horse. LR: What is a Quarter Horse? LH: A Quarter Horse is a breed. It’s fast, but it’s not quite as tall as a thorough breed. I think they named it a Quarter Horse because it could run a quarter of a mile faster than any other horse. I’d have to research that, but he always loved his Quarter Horses. In fact, this picture up on the wall here is one our photographer from the rodeo program that we always had. He came out to the farm one day 7 when they was doing that, and this little calf got behind and the heard had moved and so Flip rode back and picked up that little calf up and threw it over his saddle. Joe Venus said, “Flip stop, I got to get a picture of that.” So he took a picture and then he put a different background and he painted that picture and gave it to Flip and his Quarter Horse that he had. He was always involved with Horses. When he died they wrote quite a nice article about Mr. Utah Cowboy because when you heard the name Flip you know it was connected in some way with horses and the western way of life. SC: What was the name of that horse in that picture there? LH: That’s Bluelight. SC: Is there any other associations he was associated with? Any other clubs? LH: The riding clubs was so popular and there were several throughout the state of Utah, Idaho, and Nevada. They had the Utah Riding Association, The Western Riding Club of Utah, and the International. He became involved with the Magna Mount Riders and started that. They had a region and there would be the riding clubs around here from Tooele, South Jordan, West Jordan, Salt Lake, and all of them. Then they would have a region. They’d put on shows and then that would branch out into the state. The state would have shows and then they’d have the intermountain and that was Utah and Idaho and them. Flip, and this isn’t hard to imagine, he was president of the Magna Mount Riders. He became president and director of the region. He became president of the state of Utah, the Western Riding Club. I think it was 1963 he became president of the International Riding Association. He wanted to be involved and help it, so he was involved with that. 8 He was the head judge of the state of Utah for several years and that was to judge all of the competition in the arenas such as pleasure, class, match pairs, and things like that in the riding clubs. He was the head judge for years. SC: So it also says that he was a gold card member of the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association? What does it mean to be a gold card member? LH: That was one of the very first cards that they gave you after you was in and did a lot to promote rodeos. He took the Days of ’47 rodeo from just a little town rodeo to one of the top ten in the world. They would give him plaques and things for his committee for how much he did. SC: So when did the two of you meet? LH: We met after he came home from the Navy and I was working at the Drug store down in Magna. He had just come in and one of my girlfriends was going with one of his boyfriends, so they had come into the drug store and just talked with us. They called us soda jerks in those days because you would mix all of the drinks by hand from the fountain and it was a good job for somebody in school because you could work after school. He kept coming in and he’d say, “I’ll flip you for my drink.” Drinks were a dime and I’d say, “No, just pay for your drink.” He’d say, “No, I’ll flip you. Heads I win, Tails you lose.” I was always paying for his drink until I got enough sense to realize that I’d always lose. I just started calling him Flip because he’d always tell me to flip that coin, and everybody called him Flip from then on. It was so funny because we worked so close with the church to do the Days of ’47 and all of the prophets and people would call him Flip. It was just Flip forever. It just stayed with him and it was so funny because a lot of times 9 we would be riding down the parade route and somebody would say, “There’s Flip Wilson,” because Flip Wilson was that great comedian on television and it was the only time that I’d heard the name Flip was Flip Wilson. It was kind of funny we had a lot of laughs with that. AC: What was his given name? LH: Floyd. His mother always called him Floyd. SC: So what was it like for you growing up during the war? LH: I came to Magna in 1941 in June. I was living with an Aunt in Salt Lake and she had a lot of children and she said I could live with her if I went and tended the children for all of her married kids because there was a lot of them. I was only eleven and so I came to Magna in 1941 when my cousin got married because she had to have help moving into the house and all of that. That was the first time I had ever been to Magna in all of my life. The second year she had a baby and that was 1942. The war had started and there was just a lot of sadness because you’d be reading in the little Magna times and this young man died in the war and that young man died. It was a sad time. I came back in 1942 when she had this baby and helped her through the summer and went back to Salt Lake and there was a lot of sadness. I was going to a school and I had a little friend and her name was Tikoto a little Japanese girl I loved. We was friends at Jackson Junior High in seventh grade and pretty soon she was gone. I thought, “Where did they go? Where did she go?” She was gone and her family had just moved away and later I found out that she was one of those Japanese people. She had lived here all of her life but 10 they took them and moved them. I don’t know where she went they went to a camp someplace. Anyway it was sad and yet there was a patriotism. Everybody wanted to help. I could see why Flip would have said the minute that war started, “I want to go.” His brother got drafted first thing. His second brother that was just a couple of years older than him went and joined the Marine and he wanted to go fight for our freedom. That generation wanted to give their all. They never worried about getting killed but just worried that they wasn’t there to serve when they were needed. For me, I remember the end of the war a lot more than I did the beginning because I was young. SC: So he served in the navy for three years. What type of job did he have? LH: He was a gunner on a destroyer and they was in all of the battles from the time he got there in 1943 until the war ended. He signed up for the duration of the war and it just happened to be that he was there for three years. He was in all of the battles over in the Pacific; Midway, and I think the last one was the run on Tokyo. They did a hit and run. All of those battles were in the Pacific and I went over to Hawaii on vacation and went there to see the Arizona and on the wall in their gift shop they have a big map of the war in the Pacific. This lady came over and asked me if I had someone that served and I told her, “Yes, my husband.” She asked what ship he was on and I told her. She said, “I’ll show ya where he went.” They had arrows pointing to the battles where these destroyers went and how they followed. It was really interesting and I bought a book over there and then I was able to read about the battles. 11 He was a seventeen year old boy going over there, and his mom said, “We took a bus into the recruiter in Salt Lake and he got signed up we came home and then I took him back to the train depot and here’s this little skinny little boy with a comic book in one hand and an ice cream cone in the other and went and got on that train. In three months, here came back a man. He had developed muscles. A man came back and then he left. I didn’t see him for two and a half years until he got discharged.” But he was in a lot of battles and he never talked about war, most of those men didn’t. My little granddaughter had to have a report by a World War II veteran and she came and asked her grandpa if he would help her. Finally, I got a really nice history of his battles that he went through. When they came home, and this is just how that group was. Now we think it was foolish and senseless, but these men stood on the deck of their destroyer and took all of the metals they had been given and threw them in the ocean and came home, because they had done their duty and they were proud and they didn’t need medals. Well my little granddaughter decided she wanted some medals of her grandpa. So she wrote a letter back to the war department and asked if they could get them. We had a list because in his history of that ship they had a list of all of the medals that they got. We sent for them but they said there was too many requesting them and they wouldn’t be able to send any. So we just got a list of his medals but he didn’t get anything else. LR: Do you still have that list of medals? Because I can get those. In fact, my husband is in the service and it’s not hard to get those medals. So if you are still interested, let me know and I can make it happen. 12 LH: Oh wonderful. I am. LR: That would be very simple and it would be an honor for me to do that for you. LH: I don’t know if you can see that little ship over there. You see his picture and that ship, a little model. One of the men who was on the high council, made that model and brought it over. I’ve never in my life seen Flip speechless ever. This fellow went and got that model and made it. This fellow that had made it he said, “Flip, is this gun torrent you sat on?” Flip said, “Yes.” He says, “I remember you telling us how blessed you was,” because they hold onto it like this and a piece of scrap metal came through here and hit the guy that was feeding the bullets into his gun and killed him—one of his good buddies. Flip never got a scratch. He always felt that he was very blessed that he left and served all of those years and came back uninjured. SC: Do you remember the name of the destroyer that he served on? LH: I knew you was going to ask that and I’ve never forgotten it ever. It was 556, my mind has just gone blank. I will think of it, I will remember it. It isn’t on the ship it’s just got the number on there. The USS Hailey. SC: Okay. Back to his rodeo days. It says in 1964 he won the cow roping championship, what was that like for him? LH: It was wonderful—more for me than him I think. I was so happy because he did love to rope. I have stacks of boxes of trophies, because he had gotten everything, all the different the races, but he loved calf roping and he finally won. He had always been trying to win this state calf roping championship and he 13 finally did it. We was all so happy and proud and just joyful because it was something. LR: Okay, I’m going to go back again to what you were talking about. You said you remember the end of the war really well. What are some of those memories? LH: Relief. I had grown up from when the war started I was eleven and it ended when I was about fifteen going on sixteen. I kept thinking, “All of the boys are going to be killed,” because that’s all that we would hear about, casualty after casualty. I never had a fear that we would be bombed like the people was over in Europe and in the islands, and when the war ended there was such joy of, “Yes at last.” They came and destroyed all that we had over in Pearl Harbor, that whole Navy. We had hardly anything left. We had determined that we would fight back and that we would win. The determination of Americans is something amazing. Faith, yes—we had a lot of faith. But the determination, just like the Rosie the Riveters, they had determination. Those women had never gone out to work. That’s one reason why I came and stayed in Magna is because the women had to go to work. The men were gone, they had to go to work. My three sister-in-law’s worked in the arms plant, and some of them went to Kennecott. They had to work and it just wasn’t those men that went to fight it was the women here that fought and it was the young people that fought doing things. We were proud to go about and go on rationing. I had an uncle through marriage that had a construction company and we’d sell war bonds. Well I didn’t know anybody rich enough to buy a war bond but I had this one uncle that was a brother-in-law to the fellow. I was living with my cousin and she had married this man and he said, “I’ll bet that 14 if you went and asked uncle Bid Coon he’d buy a war bond,” because they told us all to try to sell one war bond, any amount. I went and asked him. I was working for thirty-five cents an hour and I went to uncle Bid and I said, “Would you buy a twenty-five dollar war bond?” He said, “I will buy a war bond,” and he went and bought a five hundred dollar war bond. They gave me a little flag that I still got to this day for that war bond. The nation loved one another. They all wanted so desperately to win this war and get back to peace. I’ve always said, “The greatest years I think we ever had was during this time. I know we had a war going on, but the joy and the peace that came from 1945-1955 was just amazing. It was hard, I didn’t know how to drive a car until years and years and things like that, but it didn’t matter. You was at peace. You never locked the door everybody would come to everybody’s house and just wander in and out. Ball games going on in the empty field you had and it was peace. It was peaceful people. I feel so bad now that people don’t have that peace. I got married in 1949 and I’ll tell you those next few years was just bliss, even though we had no money. We had a horse and I had a little girl and we just shared everything. It was nice and it was peaceful. I feel bad that we don’t have that peace now. I’m glad I lived through that. It was joy. LR: So you said you were working in Magna because of the war, filling the shoes for the women who had gone to work. Where are you from originally? LH: I was born in Murray. I came from a broken home. When it got completely broke, I was six and so my aunt said—I lived with my dad for a couple of years and then he got married and we were put into foster care. My aunt, she had ten children 15 and she says, “If you will come and be the babysitter for those ten children when they need a babysitter you can live with me.” I always said the best thing that ever happened to me in my entire life is when my cousin married a man from Magna. I had never been to Magna, but when I got to Magna I thought I had died and went to heaven. I had never been to the same school for more than a few months at a time. You don’t really get a lot of friends that way, you just sort of come and go. I got some friends here and that was in 1943 when I started at Cyprus in the eighth grade and I stayed in Cyprus until I graduated. It was wonderful. Then I met Flip, that just added to the joy and then I met his mother. He said to me once, “You know Lois, I would never had been here for our wedding if my mother hadn’t made me get off that horse I was breaking. She told me to get in here and get ready for this wedding that was coming on.” I just looked at him and I says, “Flip, I had to marry you because I had to marry you to get your mother.” An angel lady, there was never a more saintly person on this earth than my mother-in-law. She was the mother I never had and I loved her. So I said to Flip, “I married you only to get your mother, if that’s how you’re going to think.” I know my girlfriends used to say, “You’re going to move next door to your mother-in- law,” and I says, “Oh yes. It’ll be the happiest day of my life.” It took us ten years to get our home—we just saved and saved until we got our house here. She just lived right next door and it was just happiness. Talk about history, she never drove a car, she never got in a plane, but she raised ten kids and never had any government help because they didn’t. Great lady. Sorry, we get off track. 16 LR: I find it humorous that even on his wedding day he was on a horse. LH: A horse he was breaking over in this field, there was no houses around here, our house wasn’t here then. LR: I just think that’s almost ironic. He really loved horses. LH: Oh he loved his horses. AC: Would you tell us a little more about his growing up years. It sounds like he had a lot of brothers. Is that correct? LH: He did. There was ten of them. He wasn’t born in this house but he moved in this house when he was about five. Down where Cyprus High School is they had what they called the Pollywog pond. It was just a little mud pond. Grandma would say, “The kids will just go down to Pollywog Pond and every few minutes I would go out and see these little blonde heads popping up here and there. I knew they was all okay.” I remember once I said to Flip when we got married, “The one thing I’ve got to have is some food storage because I don’t ever want to be hungry again, and I don’t want my kids to be hungry.” He says, “Hungry? What are you talking about?” I said, “Flip, didn’t you ever go hungry?” He says, “I’m never hungry in my life.” I thought, “Here’s Grandma Harmon with ten kids and no husband, no social security, no welfare, and nothing from Kennecott or from Utah Copper, and her ten kids never went hungry and here I was standing in food lines trying to get a can of something. He said, “No, we never went hungry.” So I asked Grandma, I said, “How did you do that? How did you feed ten kids with no husband?” She said, she had chickens and she had a cow and she had the kids gather the eggs 17 and when they’d get a dozen they’d take it to the store and they’d trade it for sugar or flour or something that she needed. She said she’d wake up and go outside in the mornings in the summer and there’d be a bushel of tomatoes or a bushel of apples or a bushel of peaches, and she canned everything. She said to me, “Go down to the basement and get me the jars. Get one of each size.” There was a big two quart jar and she says, “When all my kids was here that’s the only thing I canned in. Then once some of them went to the war I got into the quarts and now there’s just me.” She had a little handicapped daughter. She said, “Now we’re to pints. That’s the story of my life.” Isn’t that precious? Isn’t that just precious? AC: So, if you don’t mind me asking where was his father at? LH: He worked at Kennecott—Utah Copper. He was a welder and he was welding in a big pipe thing they had up there with an acetylene torch. He got through one day, and he was only in his thirties or forties, and he got sick. The next day he was really sick and couldn’t go to work which was unusual for him. He tried and they took him to the hospital and he died the next day. He had lead poisoning. They said that he just got sick and died and there was never any insurance or anything in those days. That was 1937 I think. AC: How old was Flip when his father died? LH: Nine or ten. The youngest, the baby was only three. AC: He had ten siblings, how many brothers and how many sisters? LH: Five boys and five girls. LR: Wow. 18 AC: Did they have horses growing up too? LH: They always seemed to have a horse. If somebody couldn’t feed their horse or something, they bartered a lot in those days. If there was a horse that someone couldn’t take care of, “Oh just give it to the Harmon’s. They always need a horse.” Then they would just work and try to get enough money to buy the hay. When we bought this, we planted all of this alfalfa up here for a while until we got rodeo equipment so then we just cut that for them. AC: Okay, so after his father died, did his mother go to work? LH: No. She just tended those kids because her oldest boy was about nineteen I think. Her youngest one was three. Women didn’t work in those days, they just didn’t work. That was the culture. They thought that she could get some welfare if she went in, so she got on the bus. We had a train that went partway to Salt Lake and then on a bus that went up there. She asked them if she could get some help. She had these ten kids and so the lady took the paper work and she said, “Okay, yes you can get help, but you’ll have to have your three oldest children move out of the house because they’re old enough they can get jobs and they don’t have to be in your house.” She stood up and I can just hear her. She says, “Listen, you keep your money and I’ll keep my children.” She marched out of there and she got a few more chickens. They had their eggs, they had the cow, and she had a garden. She quit school in fourth grade because her mother died in child birth and she had to raise these kids. You can imagine the education of fourth grade. 19 She loved flowers. Her yard was nothing but a big flower bed. She was reading a little magazine or a handout or something and it said you could go through the mail and take a course of flower arrangements for funerals and weddings and for corsages. So she wrote to them and started taking this course and she opened a flower shop and she called it Harmon Floral. She ran that for years off of her front porch. But most of her kids was grown and gone by that time. But every child that was old enough to work would work and bring their checks home and give to the mother. The money was put in a jar, whoever needed it took it. If she needed groceries it’d be in the jar. All the kids would do that until they got old enough to date, but they never had a car until the oldest boy finally got an old car and it was the family car. I’ll never forget, one day I was working at the drug store and here comes Flip. He was always in his cowboy boots and his jeans and he came in and he was in a suit. I said, “Oh my heavens. Who died?” He says, “My grandpa.” I said, “Oh dear, I’m sorry.” He says, “Ya, I had to go to the viewing tonight and Bob will wear the suit to the funeral tomorrow.” So they had one suit that they shared because, if I could just let you know times was hard, and there was no credit. You could not charge anything except a couple of our little stores in Magna would let you charge food to feed your families. But you couldn’t charge a suit. Who could afford a suit? They did afforded one that fit three boys. So they just shared. They shared the car, they shared their wages, they shared the food, and they shared their love. I asked Flip something about Christmas and he said, “Oh, we always had the greatest Christmas’. Every one of us ten got a game according 20 to our age and so we had ten games we got to play all year long.” I thought, “Can you imagine?” Our kids, oh we gave so much. You can tell why I fell in love with his mother. She was a real mother. She was old fashioned and she was just what I needed. Thank the Lord she had ten kids that I loved as much as her. One year I thought so much of her I wrote up an article and they was having a big contest for mother of the year for Magna. I wrote an article and gave it to the paper and she won. She won a wristwatch, it was the first wrist watch she had ever had in her life. Such a neat lady. AC: So what kinds of jobs did the kids do during the depression help them get through? LH: During the depression? Nothing, because there wasn’t even work for the men, let alone the kids. But the kids always had to haul the coal. Remember, we didn’t have gas furnaces then. They would haul the coal keep the coal bin filled and chop the wood. They would go find logs and chop the logs and they’d feed the chickens, they’d feed the cows, and they’d milk the cows. They was never idle. They would find time to go play games like I say, the ball games and things in empty fields. But, when my kids came that’s why Flip liked to have the horses because he thought that they should be doing chores like he did when he was little. AC: How many kids did you and Flip have together? LH: Four. AC: Okay. Boys? Girls? LH: One boy, and three girls. 21 AC: Okay, very neat. LR: Let me ask you this. This idea of sharing that you talked about with Flip growing up and learning to share with his siblings. Do you think that influenced the rest of his life? Considering how much he shared his time? LH: Yes. When he took over the rodeo we had a little meeting with our family. When he first started in 1961, my youngest was only a couple of months old when they called and asked him. When he went back the next year and helped them, they asked him to be on the committee. We had a little meeting and we said, “Now, if we’re going to take this responsibility with Days of ’47 it’s a family responsibility. I will always have to take my vacation to do the rodeo, because it will take a couple of weeks to get it ready, to just do the rodeo. We are going to have to decide if we want to do this, and it will have to be a family affair.” I had an older daughter and an older son and there was me and Flip. That’s what we did because when he got involved with Days of ’47 our lives was totally given to Days of ’47. Not that we didn’t do other things. I worked in the church he worked in the church, but summer’s was Days of ’47. We just decided we’d give our lives to Days, and he made everything so fun though. I think hard times breeds good times, because all of his brothers and sisters were happy people. They were happy and they were all over achievers; every one of them ended up with their businesses and all the girls worked. Most of them married veterans because that was their age, and they had a good outlook on life. Flip put together a committee of twenty-five men when he started Days. Everything we did in the summer involved this committee of twenty-five 22 men. Finally, it got so big we got it to about thirty-five. Their families was involved and their children. We built a big patio on the back of this house and we had all our meetings there. We would have our steak fries after the rodeo and we’d have breakfast when we was painting all of the equipment. We would take that whole week of the rodeo and we’d take our trailer and take the kids and we’d go to Salt Lake. While Flip was busy in the day, I’d just take them for walks around the city and show them different museums and the Brigham Young cemetery and go to lunch at the fast foods and things like that. That was our vacation but it was fun. We made it just happy times. LR: I don’t really have a question, I’m just in awe of what he accomplished. LH: Well you know, when I was writing his life history I think the same thing. “This man, he always had several things going and he always had a crowd going around him because it was fun.” I can never remember a night, an afternoon, or an evening that the table was filled with people. There was always some of the guys here, and of course they’d bring their wives and their children. We built a nice big back yard and this was the gathering place. He was infectious with his personality. Joe Venus that painted this picture, he’s painted half of them in this room. He lost his wife and he said that was hard, but he says, “When we lost Flip, it was just losing something.” I remember that Ned Winder I was in the temple and when he heard Flip died he went and found President Monson, he was there that day. Ned said, “I threw my arms around President Monson and told him Flip died, and President Monson just cried and said, ‘Some people just should never die.’” When 23 president Monson called me to give his condolences and asked him if I wanted him to do something, I asked him if he’d like to speak and he said, “Yes.” When Flip ever talked to President Monson he’d say, “Okay, Tom. Okay, Tom.” I would say, “Flip, you shouldn’t say that to President Monson. That’s President Monson.” He says, “He calls me Flip, he’d think I was funny if I didn’t call him Tom.” He had such a sense of humor and I think it must have came from his upbringing. I’ll never forget the year he died, 1997, it will be twenty years this year. They was having a lot of discussion about who could be in our Sesquicentennial Parade that year, because they had all of these thousands of people that had walked part of that trek. They were recreating that migration of those Pioneers into this valley and they was going to come in here on the 24th of July and they was going to be in this parade. Flip didn’t feel good, but he had to go to Martin’s Cove and meet with the wagon train because there was all these people saying, “Well, they better let us walk in that parade.” Even if they walked two miles they thought they should be in the parade. Our parade could only be two hours, television time. He didn’t feel good but he went up to Martin’s Cove and he came back and he still didn’t feel good. He said, “I gotta call the church because we’ve came to a decision but I want the church to make the announcement not Days of ’47.” So he called Elder Ballard and he says, “All is well, we’ve got it all straightened out, but we want you to make the statement. Then it was only a couple of days later that he had a heart attack and died. They asked me if I would carry on and help out with what he had planned with the Days of ’47 committee. He was buried the second of July and the rodeo 24 started the 16th or 17th. It was a lot to do, and I was trying to get that rodeo going and I went up to the Sugarhouse awning and I told this lady what I needed and she says, “Tell me what it’s for.” I said, “It’s for the announcers booth at the arena. We’ve got to get this up.” She looked at me and said, “Did you know Flip Harmon?” I said, “Ya.” She just cried and said, “How did you know him?” I said, “I’m his wife.” She put her arms around me and just sobbed. I went over to the Modern Display and I had to get stuff for decorating. The same thing happened. This man came and I told him what I needed and he said, “I’ll tell you they lost one of the greatest leaders that this city has ever had.” He started to get teary and I thought, “I can’t keep going to these stores because I’ll never get anything done. All I’m doing is crying every place I go.” His funeral was massive because he was friendly and he would do anything for anybody. Days of ’47 had to be the best, and when he got the award from the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association as the best rodeo committee in the whole United States, that was what gave him so much joy. This committee of his, they all just wanted to make that rodeo the best. Flip was trying to make three parades the best and he had wonderful people and they’re still a wonderful organization. Every so often you would hear stories of people that are just driven and make arrangements to fit their times into. One time I was telling a lady, “Boy, you just got such a great husband.” She says, “Yes. I try to make him great.” I thought, “That’s what I try to do.” That’s why I’d always wash and iron ten white shirts, because he only liked to wear white shirts every week; why I would make 25 sure he had time and yet to make sure he had a day or two of the week that he could be here for family. He’d bring his friends here so we was all family. It was just how it was. SC: Well it says he won the Pioneer Legacy Award in 2009. What did that mean? LH: In the beginning it was called quiet pioneers, but it was just for someone that has furthered the Pioneer heritage just like the museum with the Cowboy heritage and the Western Heritage. It’s just an award like that. He was given so many awards that I used to display a lot of them. He just was a fun person to be acquainted with. SC: Well, I did have one last question. So, he was recognized for his accomplishments in the Cyprus High Hall of Fames. How do you feel like his legacy impacted the community? LH: It did because he had try to get as many in the community to help him. We never hired anybody to sell our program books because when the scouts or the young women in the stake would be raising funds to go to scout camp or to camp he’d just say, “Okay, come sell programs and we’ll give you ten or fifteen cents for each one you sold.” We had beautiful program books. We could sell thousands. He’d just make sure the community was involved. He was born and raised here, he loved Magna with all of his heart and I did too. I never met such wonderful people. I don’t know if it’s because I’d never been in the same place; even though I was born in Murray I left there by the time I was six. But Magna, I worked at bakery when I was fifteen and then I worked at the drug store and then the fellow from the bank came over when I was going to graduate and asked if I’d 26 come and work at the bank. I worked at the bank for thirty-two years. I knew everybody in Magna and they was all wonderful in my eyes because they was friends. Then Uncle Bid, his kindness, I became good friends with him. When my cousin I was living with started having problems, I just met Flip and stayed in Magna and they got divorced and moved away. I just knew that I had to be here. I feel that same way about Magna. It’s just such a friendly good place to live and raise children. LR: This was fantastic. Thank you.