Oral History Program Jeri Harry Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 10 July-21 August 2022 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Jeri Harry Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 10 July-21 August 2022 Copyright © 2023 by Weber State University, Stewart Library 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 Community Oral History Collection includes interviews conducted by Weber State University faculty, staff and students, and other members of the community. The interviews cover various topics including city government, diversity, 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: Harry, Jeri, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 10 July-21 August 2022, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections & University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Jeri Harry which was recorded over three session which began on July 10, 2022 and finished August 21, 2022, with Lorrie Rands. Jeri talks about growing up in Northern Utah, the impact her religious upbringing had on her life and learning to live with a learning disability. She shares her experiences being a wife and mother, the impact of a long-term illness, and the importance of family. Also present was Tanner Flinders and Jeri’s daughter, Shannon Wood. LR: Today is July 10, 2022. We are in the home of Jeri Harry—that kind of rolls off the tongue—in South Ogden, or is this Ogden? JH: It is an Ogden address, but it's unincorporated, and the development is Uintah Highlands. LR: Okay, that's good to know. I'm interviewing Jeri for a life sketch for bridging solidarity and Weber State University. My name is Lorrie Rands conducting the interview. Tanner Flinders is with me, as well as Shannon Wood. Okay, all that said, thank you for your willingness to share your story. JH: Sounds fun. LR: Yeah, it is. So let's just start with when and where you were born? JH: I was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on May 6, 1954. LR: Did you grow up in Salt Lake? JH: My first eight years of life was in Salt Lake. Then we moved to Brigham City for another eight years of life. Eight, eight. LR: Is that a theme? JH: It's a little bit. LR: Okay, cool, we'll get there. Your first eight years, where were you living in Salt Lake? JH: The first home I remember? I know there was an apartment when my mom and my 1 dad got married and had me. I don't remember that apartment. Then they moved in with my mom's mom for a short period of time. Then my folks bought a house on Sixth East and Seven South. 710 South Sixth East, that's the address. Just down the street from Liberty Park a little bit. So that's what I remember. LR: I know that area very well. JH: You do? LR: Yeah. So you were there until you were eight. JH: Till I was eight, yeah. LR: You did go to elementary school a little bit. What elementary school did you go to there? JH: It was Hamilton Elementary School. LR: So where was that located? JH: That would have been down the street. You cross the street and you go down two more streets, and there it was. LR: Okay. So Fourth East or Ninth East? No, south. JH: So it was south, we went south. If we were on Seventh South, Eighth or Ninth. I'm thinking it was eight. I don't remember crossing a street going south. Then there was two streets we crossed, so it would have been Seventh and then Eighth. So like Eighth and Eighth. Right around there, the school has now been torn down. LR: All right. What are some of your memories of that elementary school? JH: Well, kind of have bad memories. LR: Okay, that's fine. JH: So for my birthday one year, it must have been when I was in first grade, I had this big box full of cupcakes, cakes. I think it was a cake. I remember I had a paper, that kind of paper you could eat, of a Mickey Mouse sort of thing. Coming home, some older boys took it. Since I was just a little kid and the older boys, I don't know how 2 much older, it was sad. LR: Were you walking alone? JH: Yeah, we would walk. Everybody walked to and from school, and I was the oldest, so I didn't have any other siblings. LR: That leads me to my question. How many siblings do you have? JH: There's four brothers and one sister. LR: And you're the oldest. JH: The oldest. LR: So where do they fall in? Will you give a rundown of your siblings? JH: There's myself, then Steve, about 18 months, and then Dave, two years after Steve, Ben was two years later, and then Todd was two years after Ben, with Staci at the end. I hope this works out math-wise. It's about every two years. But Steve and I had 18 months. I got to Steve, Dave, Ben, Todd, Staci. There's ten years between Staci and I. LR: And what were your parents' names? JH: Kent and Renee Knutson. My dad was Oral Kent Knutson. My mom was Melba Renee Pathakis. SW: We make fun of those names constantly. LR: Pathakis, was she Greek? JH: Her dad was. LR: I know this isn't about your parents, but where did they meet? JH: My parents met in Salt Lake. So my mom grew up in Brigham City, and that's where she went to high school. Her dad died when she was nine years old. Grandma never remarried. Her senior year of high school, my grandmother moved to Salt Lake, and my mom stayed in Brigham City with an aunt to finish up her senior year. I don't know if she stayed longer than just her senior year, but when she moved 3 back to Salt Lake, they happened to be in the same ward as my dad. Dad was in the Navy, came home on leave one time and nudged a friend in church, "Who is that?" And that's how they met. LR: Okay, great. Thank you. So at Hamilton, who were some of your best friends? JH: Well, I remember there were twins, Julie and Judy Erskine. There was a family down the street, the Rogers, that are… I don't remember. They had a boy just a little older than me named Roger, but they had kids around my age, but do I remember who they were? Not really. There was a little boy across the street, named Cookie, who lived in the apartments. That's about the only kids I remember. LR: Is there any other memory or story of that time in elementary that stands out? JH: Nothing to do with school. But during the summer my dad was in the bishopric and he always threw a neighborhood watermelon bust. Always like, I think two years is what I remember. LR: Okay. So when you say that your father was in the bishopric, will you just explain? JH: What the bishop was? LR: Explain what was the context around that? Just so if someone is reading this, they understand that you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. JH: Okay. So, yes, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So the church is divided up into stakes and smaller wards. The ward we lived in, and I cannot remember the name of the ward, there was a bishop, and then he has two councilors. My dad was one of the councilors, and I think he worked with the youth because I think he just wanted the kids to get together, so we would always have a watermelon bust. He would buy a bunch of watermelons. Us kids would go around the neighborhood and invite everybody, just all the kids we knew and didn't know, if we knew there was kids living at the house, we had to go invite them. That 4 was always fun, just having a lot of people over. Then in the winter, I remember going, I don't know why we didn't use snow, but my dad always made homemade ice cream. Summer, winter didn't matter. But in the winter, we went to all the neighbors and knocked down their icicles and brought the icicles home and put them in the ice cream maker, and churned. So I remember doing that as a kid. LR: And this was all in Salt Lake? JH: In Salt Lake, yeah. LR: What prompted the move to Brigham City? JH: My dad was a plumber, and he was working for a plumbing company called Johnson Service. Johnson's Service Company was, I think, branching out of Salt Lake, so more north. So they put my dad over Northern Utah. Not that Salt Lake isn't Northern Utah, but more Brigham City, Logan area. So he decided, instead of traveling from Salt Lake up to Logan or Brigham, you know, wherever he had service calls, he would just move so his commute would be shorter. My mom grew up in Brigham City, hated it. My dad thought it was a great place to raise kids. He kind of liked it better than Salt Lake. We lived kind of downtown Salt Lake, so we were very central. He just felt like it'd be better if the kids grew up in a smaller town. LR: Yeah. So you moved to Brigham City in about 1962? JH: Sure. Yeah. LR: That sound about right? JH: I'd have to do the math. So 54, 55, 56, 61. Yeah it'd be 1962. LR: So what elementary school did you go to in Brigham City? JH: Lincoln Elementary. LR: So out of curiosity. JH: And that school has been torn down, too. Yeah, I go to a school, they tear it down. LR: I don't know if you remember this, but moving from Salt Lake to Brigham City, do 5 you remember how different that was? How was that for you? JH: It was kind of scary. I did not want to move. But as an eight-year-old, how much choice do you have in the matter? So we moved. But I remember not wanting to and in denial that we were going to stay there. I don't know why, but I remember through junior high thinking, “We're going to move back to Salt Lake, we're going to move back to Salt Lake.” Why that, I don't have a clue because we didn't. Well, my folks eventually did after I graduated high school. I don't know why I was in denial about living in Brigham because I loved it in Brigham. I made friends, but just the initial move was, “I'm in denial. We're not staying here, we're just here temporarily.” LR: So what are some of your again, favorite memories of Lincoln Elementary? JH: This is really odd, but I remember, so from the end, stairs up, stairs down depending on what grade. First and second grade were in the kind of basement, third and fourth grade, and then fifth and sixth grade. I moved there in third grade, so I didn't ever experience the basement. But being up on the second floor, everything was upstairs. The girls’ and boys’ bathroom were upstairs and there was also the exit outside to the playground from the girls’ and boys’ bathroom. It was just kind of fun to go up through the bathroom. When we had fire drills, we always went through the bathrooms to get out. So if you were in the third grade, you go to the boys’ bathroom to go outside. If you were in the fourth grade, everybody went through the girls’ bathroom to get outside for the fire drills. I don't know why that was fascinating to me, but it just kind of was. Then to be in fifth and sixth grade, you get to go up to the top. It is weird. I hated—well, I didn't hate my third-grade teacher. My third-grade teacher, I don't think liked me at the time. I didn't think she liked me. After I got older, I found out I was one of her favorite students. Very interesting. She just lived across the street from the school, two houses down from my cousins. I babysit my cousins 6 periodically. After she died, somebody said, "You're Jeri Knutson. Miss Jones really liked you." I remember being floored, thinking, “No she didn't.” But I remember the next year, when I was in fourth grade, my brother had her and when she was upset, punishment was you were locked in the closet. After school, he would get locked in the closet. So I'd have to go, “Miss Jones, Steve needs to come home now.” LR: Okay. That was like every time you did that? JH: I never got locked in the closet, but Steve was a lot. LR: Was it something major had happened to be locked in the closet, or was it just the punishment? JH: I don't think so. It was just the punishment. Yeah, just her way of punishment. LR: And that was okay at the time? JH: Yeah, at the time. LR: That's super interesting. TF: Yeah, that wouldn't fly now. LR: No, no, no. So what were some of your best friends? Who were your friends during that time? JH: Elementary school, there was a girl, same last name as me. They said Knutson. So Julie Knutson and Effie King. That's really about all I remember. LR: That's okay. I don't know why this question came to mind, but it did, so I'm going to ask it. Were you baptized a member of the church before you left Salt Lake or after? JH: Yes, in Salt Lake. LR: And where were you baptized? JH: I was baptized in the tabernacle. There's a baptismal font at the bottom of the tabernacle, and that's where I was baptized. LR: Do you have any memories of that day? 7 JH: Just feeling weird sitting there with all these people in these white jumpsuits thinking, “What are we doing?” I didn't know anybody sitting on the row with me. My baptism date was not a good memory. My dad came home; he was working, I don't know where, far, far away. He came home just for the day to baptize me, and then he left, so my uncle had to confirm me. So it's like, “Hmm. What else?” LR: Oh, that makes sense. JH: Yeah, a little rough, but not terrible. LR: Switching gears completely. You would have only been nine, but do you have any memory of the Kennedy assassination? JH: Yes. LR: Will you talk about that? JH: Sure. But it's quite boring because I was only nine. LR: I know but please, if you're willing, would you talk about it? JH: So I was in fourth grade and I remember somebody from the office went around and told all the classes that President Kennedy had been shot. Living in Brigham City, very Mormon community, not a lot of non-Mormons. There was a girl in our class named Mary who was Catholic, and totally because President Kennedy was Catholic, I always assumed her feelings was because he was Catholic, she was Catholic. She just was crying, just she went over to the window and it hit her really hard. To me, it was like, “Oh, that's too bad.” Then I went home after school. I don't know if school got out early, but I remember going home and it was on all the news stations and my mom had the news on and was watching it. We watched the procession. He got shot, then they were carrying him out of the car and all of this, and then they announced that he had died. I was home at the time he had died. That's it. We just got word that he had been shot. That's why I'm thinking we might have got out of school early, but I don't remember that for sure. 8 LR: Going back to elementary school then. [To Shannon] Well, do you have a question? SW: I just want you to tell about how your summer reading was? LR: Summer reading. JH: You want to hear this? Okay, so 200 years after the fact, they have a name for ‘I am dyslexic.’ But at the time, never heard of that word. Not a clue, but I couldn't read. This is where, “Miss Jones, I thought you didn't like me,” ‘cause she would always write some history thing on the board, and we had to transpose. See, write, and I couldn't. They thought I needed glasses, so they got me glasses. I still didn't do it. I would have this piece of paper. Sometimes I put my name on it, usually maybe a line or two, and that's about all I could get on it and I'd turn it in. So I didn't pick up on reading very well. Third grade you're supposed to be reading and I wasn't. So either that summer or fourth grade, I'm thinking more like fourth grade, I just had to go to summer school. In summer school, this is another kind of a split-level school, so we went upstairs. It was a classroom or downstairs. It was kind of like a closet, but it was a—no, it was probably a closet, the more I'm thinking about. It wasn't a very big room where he had a table and a chair and a tape recorder, one of those reel-toreels, it would [hand motion going in a circle] and a little microphone and a book. We were supposed to sit down and read this book into the microphone. If you came across a word you didn't know, you would just say, “I don't know,” and move on. I would look at the pictures and make up a story. When I got to a point where I ran out, I would say, “I don't know the words,” and then I would continue on with my story. You know, as I'm thinking, I never got called out on it. The teacher, as far as I know, never said anything to my mom and dad because my mom and dad never said anything, never. To me, that should have been a big deal. Should have been, 9 “What were you thinking? Why would you do that? Why didn't you read the book?” Then I could say "’Cause I couldn't read the book," but I don't know if this teacher, that was just his way. He never listened to the tape. He never did anything with it. I don't have a clue what was going on in his mind or why I was never called out on it, but I never was. LR: Did you ever learn to read? Were you ever able to do that? JH: Yes, but even now, I still struggle with it. In fact, when Gavin was born, my third child, I decided I needed to learn to read. So there was an ad in the paper and I called this person. I wish I could remember her name now. She was my age. She was getting her master's at Utah State and teaching reading to adults who couldn't read. I had been going to her for a few months and she was baffled, I couldn't pick this up. So she talked to her professor who was over her because this was something through the school. [To Lorrie] Sounds like what you were doing with this stuff, only she was doing it with reading. It didn't cost much. Every time I went, it was maybe ten bucks, pretty nominal amount. One day her professor came and observed what was going on and what I was doing. He asked if I had ever heard of dyslexia? I was like, “No.” He says, “I think that's what you have.” At that point, it's like, “Oh, there's a name for my stupidness. Dyslexia.” I always felt stupid. LR: Okay, so I'm curious how you compensated, how you managed to get through school, because you obviously did. JH: I'm so sweet and all of the teachers would, “Oh, she's such a sweet girl,” and move me along. In eighth grade, I did have a history teacher. Looking back, even at the time, she tried to get me where I was to get me through her class. It was U.S. History and we were learning about the different battles of the Civil War, so she had 10 me make a poster for her. This was her first-year teaching, so she made a comment. “I don't have many visual aids, so if you would make me a poster showing where all these battles were,” so I drew the map of that part of the United States—the other part didn’t exist yet—and just label the different battles. She gave me extra credit, which compensated for what I couldn't do on the test. It got me through her class with a D instead of not having a D. Math, I always did well. I never had a problem. Well, I shouldn't say never. I didn't do super with geometry, but I loved algebra. In fact, I always had A's in math, maybe B when I got to geometry, so that wasn't an issue. But in English, I was in a remedial English class. SW: What does remedial mean? JH: Remedial means that's what the kids are sent for. It's not your regular English, it's a dummies’ English. Supposedly they're there to help you catch up, but it was more of a place just to go to hang out. So you got an A just for hanging’ out. Some of the guys that were in the class were more motorcycle guys. They felt it positive if you were there. Butt in chair, that's about what they asked. If you can accomplish that, you've got a C. That's how I got through junior high and high school, really. They just kind of, “You're too nice to hold back. We can't.” LR: Okay. Do you have any more questions about elementary school at this point? Where did you go to junior high, ‘cause you started junior high in Brigham City? JH: Junior High in Brigham City, yeah. It was Box Elder Junior High. LR: Box Elder, okay, and the same place it is now? JH: Yes. Okay, no, that's true. That one they didn't tear down—kind of they did. LR: So it's a newer school. JH: It is a newer school, yeah, same place, but they have torn it down and rebuilt in sections, from what I understand. It looks pretty nice now. LR: So, same question. What are some of your favorite memories of your junior high? 11 How long did you go through all the junior high at Box Elder? JH: Well, junior high was only two years, so just seventh and eighth grade. They had started rebuilding the school, so the new section was on one side of the street. You had to go across the street for the P.E and the gym part outside on the fields, it was all across the street from the newer section that they had just built. The school was done in a circle, so get there early, you'd walk the halls, and you'd pretty much get to see everybody as you're walking the halls. Unless they were walking, they were in front of you. You just walk and visit and walk and visit. You do that at lunch too, just walk and visit, walk and visit. That's really my favorite thing about the school was just you could walk and see people hanging out with your friends. You'd usually walk a couple of you. LR: Who were some of your friends that you would... JH: So the two friends I had, I'm sure I had more than two friends in elementary school, but the two girls that I hung around with, Julie got too good for me. She was just hanging around with the rich popular kids. I think I probably did something similar to that with Effie. I just stopped hanging around with her. But at that point I started hanging around with the girls in my ward and I don't really know what happened with Effie, but we just didn't. I have a feeling that probably had to do with me doing similar that Julie was doing with me. So Julie did it and I passed it down. I don't know, I just wasn't the nicest girl sometimes. At that point because you have young women’s, I just started hanging around with one of the girls in our ward, Robin Yates. We palled around a lot with some of the other girls from the ward. LR: What were some of your favorite activities to do in Junior High? Like clubs or... JH: I never had any clubs. I got into 4H a little bit. Not 4H with animals, this is 4H for the homemaking end. We did crafting, sewing stuff. I did go to 4H camp a couple of times, a couple of years before. Most of them, I was 10 and 11. Then by the time I 12 hit 12, this was girls’ camp with church. Clubs, no, I don't remember there even being clubs in junior high. I remember a few in high school, but not junior high. LR: [To Tanner] Do you have a question? TF: I'm just curious, going back to when you first moved to Brigham, coming from Salt Lake. I realize you're only eight years old, but was there any sort of culture shock going from such a large city to Brigham City? Did you even notice? JH: I didn't even notice anything because all I was familiar with was my neighborhood and my ward. I moved to a new town, you still have your neighborhood and your ward. Just new faces. I didn't notice anything at all. SW: You should tell them about Memorial Day. JH: Memorial Day was a fun time. So after moving to Brigham, because my mom’s side, all of her aunts still lived in Brigham City, and my grandmother would come up from Brigham City. Different times, but especially on Memorial Day. My cousins that lived in Salt Lake also came up, so Memorial Day was a time that the cousins all got together. I had a job the month or so leading up to it. I had to collect, because my folks didn't drink coffee, I'd go to my neighbors who did, and get their empty coffee cans and empty tin cans. I knew how many I had to get in my head. I'm thinking it was 19, but maybe it was nine, it was a long time ago that I had that assignment. I would pick flowers, and then when my cousin, who's just a year younger than me, got there, she would help me pick flowers. We had to arrange them in the coffee cans. SW: Was that Shanna? JH: Andrea, my cousin Andrea. We'd go to the cemetery. There was a stream, still is, running right close to where my grandfather was buried. My brothers would go get water out of the stream and fill up the cans and we'd put the cans on the different headstones. 13 LR: So would you fill these cans up, not just for your relatives, but just for the cemetery in general? JH: No, it's for the relatives. LR: You had a lot of relatives, then, in the cemetery. JH: A lot of relatives, yeah. My grandfather was married before he married my grandmother and his wife died, and he had a little boy that died. We would also put flowers on Grandma and Grandpa Jensen's, his wife was a Jensen; so we put it on hers and her parents’ and their little boy, Jimmy, put it on his grave. LR: This was every Memorial Day that you were... JH: Every Memorial Day that we lived in Brigham. LR: Even after you left Brigham, or just only when you were there? JH: Only while we were there. It never happened before, and it never happened when we moved to Logan. SW: So your mom was the one that made it happen. JH: Probably. LR: Did you start high school in Brigham City? JH: Yeah I did. I went there two years, ninth, tenth grade, Box Elder High School. LR: Box Elder High School. Okay, so I know I'm repeating the questions, but it's super interesting. JH: Who were my friends and... LR: Yup, basically favorite memories and your friends. JH: Okay. Favorite memories of high school. I think starting dating. Shannon's laughing at me. SW: She'll tell you, and if she won't, I will make her tell you. JH: I don't even know what your goal is. LR: So let me just kind of go a little deeper with the dating. 14 JH: Okay. LR: Do you remember your first date? JH: Yes, yes. LR: Do you remember who it was? JH: It was Neil Christiansen. He was one of my dad's scouts. My dad was a scoutmaster forever in Boy Scouts. Neil asked me out before I turned 16, so I was still just 15. He just asked me out to one of the football games. We walked to the football game and we walked home. Yeah, it was nice. He never asked me out again. Then the next date was also with another boy in the ward, one of my dad's scouts. So he'd let me go out with his scouts before I turned 16. Once I turned 16, I quit asking, I could go out with whoever I wanted to. LR: Okay, so who was your first date, not a boy scout? JH: Not a Boy Scout. I'm just trying to think where you're going with your question. So there was this one guy. I think the first job I had was working at Wilson’s Fruit Stand. I worked in the back packaging; as the peaches would come down, we'd put them in boxes so they could fold up, sell them. That was my job. One of the supervisors was a guy. So here I am, 16. I think he was like 19 or 20. He asked me out on a date and I said, “Sure.” So I told my mom I had this date, and she goes, “Who?” This is one thing that bugged me about living in Brigham City. She knew everybody's parents. She said, “Is that so-and-so's son?” I go, “I don't know.” She says, “Well, if he is, I hope he's better than his dad was.” It turned out he wasn't. We went out. This guy was a jerk. You know, you have your group of friends you hang out with, and so he knew this group of friends I was hanging out with. Well, he asked one night to come over to see me, and my folks were leaving. I don't 15 remember why, so I told him, “Sure,” he could. That's when I found out everybody was leaving. But I knew he was not the best guy, so I called Robin, who just lived through the block, and says, “Robin, you need to get over here now.” I told her he was coming over, and so she stayed with me the whole time. We just sat outside, the three of us talking. He never asked me out again. Robin Yates. We talked about her being one of my friends. LR: I didn't write her name down. JH: That's okay. No big deal. But then a few months later, one of the other girls in our group, Debbie, is pregnant with his baby. It's like, “Yeah, he's a good guy.” So I never had hard feelings when he didn't ask me out or come over anymore. I didn't at all. When I found out Debbie was pregnant, like, I was like, “Oh Debbie, I'm so sorry.” TF: Was that kind of a big deal since you're in such a small town? JH: I don't remember it being a big deal. I know she was not a member of the church, so I don't know how her family felt about it. I don't remember what really happened with her, but she was really nice. I moved to Logan, so I didn't stay for the last two years of high school. LR: Did you go to any dances while you were at Box Elder High School? JH: Yes, mostly church dances. We had church dances every Friday night. Saturday night, must have been Saturday night, because the school dances were on Friday night. LR: What was the difference between the two? The church dance and the school dance. JH: Actually, I think the church dances had a lot more kids going than the school dances did. I don't know, one was at a school, one was in the gym at the church. Same group of kids, sometimes would jump from school to church, but it was 16 always, I don't know. Do you know the Intermountain Indian School? LR: Yes. JH: In Brigham City, there's an I on the mountain. Intermountain Indian School, some of the Indians from Arizona, and I don't know how far, where else they came from. They used to have a program where they would take the kids off the reservation and put them in families. They also just send them to a boarding school in Brigham City. So there was a church just across from the street campus, that's usually where all, and it was a multi-stake. It wasn't just our stake, but a multi-stake. That's why they did it every week. Each stake would be in charge of sponsoring it, having chaperones, having refreshments, but all the kids would come and it was always the same place. You could go from school to church to church to school. It seemed like there was a lot more kids that showed up in church dances than the school. LR: Were there any of the students from the Indian school that would come to any of the dances? JH: I don't recall them, but I don't know. LR: Did you interact with them at all, those students? JH: Just on football, there was not really a rival because there was nothing to rival. Their football team was really bad. If you lost to their school, no matter who you were in the area, it was not good. So no, nobody really interacted. I don't know if they were allowed off the campus. LR: So when did your family move to Logan, unless there are any other stories you want to share? JH: Before we get to Logan, can we take a break? LR: Yeah, let’s pause. [Recording stops for a break.] [Recording begins again.] LR: Shannon said something interesting that I'm kind of curious about now. 17 JH: Okay, let's go for it. LR: In all the time, all the individuals you dated, how many of them did you end up kissing? JH: Just about all of them. LR: Was there a reason for that? JH: No, it was just kind of the thing you did, I don't know. There was maybe a couple I didn't. But if I liked them, it didn't bother me to kiss them. I was always a flirt. LR: While you were in Box Elder, did you do any activities that were outside of the normal school stuff? JH: Okay, the first year, so my ninth-grade year, because I had been in 4H, I went into FHA. FFA was Future Farmers; FHA Future Homemakers of America. I went to some of their, you know, met with other schools and did stuff. That was just my ninth-grade year. I never really did it after ninth grade. LR: Did you do any other activities your ninth-grade year? JH: I don't really recall doing a lot of stuff. LR: That's okay. What prompted the move to Logan? JH: Johnson's Service Company was struggling. My dad was laid off, and my dad was kind of ticked. “Why are you laying me off?” He had been there a long time. There was the Plumbers and Pipefitters union, so it was unionized. Quite a few times, he had been the president of the Plumbers and Pipefitters Union and well-known. He thought he was well-liked at the company. He thought, “The company and the union don't have my back like they say they did,” so he just kind of got disenfranchised with the company. I remember that summer, they said, “We'll have something for you. We just don't right now,” so he went and he worked on the Alaska Pipeline for a while. He was gone that whole summer. I think it was my ninth-grade year, but it could have been eighth, could have been tenth. I'm thinking it was my ninth-grade 18 year. Then when he came back, they did have something, so he kept working for ‘em and it was just not a good feeling. He just was fed up with them. He got offered a job at Utah State working on their air conditioning and heating and service. I don't know what that what it all entailed for sure. Was he a manager? Was he an employee? I don't know. He went up to Utah State and at the time, I knew he was frustrated with Johnson Service and the union. He said at the time, and it could have been part of the reason, but my brother and I were coming up, going to be going to college, and he could get a discount because he was an employee. Wouldn't be as expensive. I didn't know that at the time, so when I did go to college, I didn't because I thought it was going to be all on me. I didn't realize Mom and Dad would help pay for it. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't, I don't know. It was never even mentioned at home. Besides, I was too stupid to go. I never took the ACTs and SAT stuff because I was too stupid. I knew better. Why would I take that as I'm just going to fail anyway? What's the point? I did take a few classes up at Utah State, and I just audited them because I never registered. I never took a test, so I couldn't register. But I took a couple of classes, just audit, some P.E. classes and stuff that didn't need a grade for. I gave them money. You give them money, they'll let anybody go to school. LR: That makes sense. JH: Anyway, Dad said later that it was to get us kids cheaper tuition. LR: So moving from Brigham City to Logan, I mean they are a little bit different in size. JH: Yes. LR: First of all, how did you feel about the move? Because you're in the middle of high school. JH: Hated it. Robin, my friend, talked to her mom and they said I could live with them. 19 My mom says no. She had done that her senior year, and she felt like that was not a good option, so I never had that option. Being close, but not close enough to the school, two different schools. Oh, the year before, going to football, because I would go to a lot of football games. Outside activities, we'd all hang out at the football games. Football games were a big thing to go to, basketball games. So my tenth grade year, there was a fight that pursued after one of the games, they were night games. It wasn't towards Box Elder, it was another school. Logan and some other school, and from what I could gather, Logan instigated, provoked something. This fight created no more night games, everything would be afternoon. I’m like, “I'm moving to Logan.” LR: So no more night games. JH: No more night games. I was mad and Logan was the culprit. The night games were the fun games to go to. Day games weren’t as much fun. A lot of times after night games, they always had a sock hop. Everybody would go hang out at the dance after the night games. Day games, no more sock hop, because nobody wants to dance at five in the afternoon. LR: Oh yeah, that makes sense. JH: So yeah, they just ruined everything for everybody. “I have to go to Logan? Yeah, no, that’s not happening.” LR: That makes sense. Was there any culture shock moving from Brigham City to Logan at all? JH: I don't know that I recognized it as a cultural shock. I was just a stubborn, ornery brat, and I went to school because I had to. My first day of school at Logan, I had this deer in the headlights look, like “I don't know this school.” It makes no sense ‘cause there was different buildings. It wasn't all one building and trying to find out where I was going. There was another girl. We both had that same look and so we 20 both looked at each other. “Are you new?” “Yeah. Are you new?” “Yeah.” She was living with her sister. I don't even remember her name, but her sister was going to school at Utah State, so they were in the apartments up on campus. It wasn't one of the dorms, it was apartments. I don't know the story behind that, why she wasn't with family, with parents, I don't know. I just started hanging out with her. As soon as school was over, we catch a bus, go up to Utah State. I was hanging around, meeting kids from Utah State, and that was fun, I enjoyed that. My senior year, I was not smart enough to go to school. I worked around getting my parents’ permission to let me go to beauty school, which I only needed four more credits to graduate from high school. I didn't need a full day, so I just went in the morning and got those four credits I needed. I didn't need any more math. I loved math, so I had all my math credits; by my junior year, my math was done. I had taken French two years in junior high, one year at Box Elder. Because I'd had three years of French, if I took a fourth year of a foreign language, there was no way I could have done French 4. So I talked them into letting me do French 1 again instead of taking English. I had choir; I loved to sing, so I was in choir. So I guess, activities in high school, yeah, I did choir. My four classes in my senior year was I started out with a data processing class, so basic learning what a computer was and the data processing. We had the punch cards. We learned to fill out punch cards and how to send them through the machine, that kind of stuff. Data processing, and then seminary, and then French, and then choir. So that was my four classes. Then I would go just a couple of blocks down the street to beauty school. I started going to beauty school my senior year, 21 and just a few months after graduating from high school, I graduated from beauty school. I was going somewhere with that story, where was I going? LR: I don't know. I can't help you with that. JH: You're supposed to. LR: I can't read your mind, I'm so sorry. JH: What was the question leading into? What I was talking about? LR: I don't know, I was asking you about culture shock. JH: The culture shock thing. So I never really hung out with any Logan kids. My junior year was spent up at Utah State. My senior year, I started meeting kids from Skyview, and my husband had gone to Skyview, so I met friends of his. Girls were going to beauty school that were from Skyview, and so I just started hanging out with Skyview kids. So if it wasn't college kids, it was Skyview kids. I never did anything with Logan kids. Like I said, stubborn, just ornery. “You can't make me. All right, fine. I have to go to school, but you don't have to make me like it.” LR: I gotcha. JH: So culture shock, I never let it because I wouldn't associate with them. Makes sense? LR: Yeah, that makes sense. So you mentioned meeting your husband. Did you meet your husband while you were in high school? JH: I did. Yeah. LR: Well, why don’t you talk about your meeting? JH: Okay. I got a job working at Pete's Spudnut. Back then, dragging main was a big thing. LR: Main street in Logan? JH: Main street in Logan. You get all the college and the high school, and so it was a big thing to drag main. At Main Street there were Pete's Spudnut and Blake's 22 Spudnut. They were brothers that broke off and created their own. I think Blake came first, and then Pete broke off and made one at the other end. So when you drag main, it was a drive thru. I mean, they had a carhop, so you had the overhang, you park and you'd leave your lights on if you needed help; if you'd been served, you turn your lights off. So I was one of the carhops. We were not on roller skates. LR: Got that visual out of my head. TF: I was actually going to ask you that. JH: No, we did not do roller skates. LR: Okay. JH: So one of the girls I was hanging out with happened to be dating, my husband's Rick, his best friend. So she says, “Oh, you need to meet him. He just broke up with his girlfriend.” I was like, “Okay, whatever.” He was in band. “Oh, yeah. I mean, I'll give him a shot.” So she introduced us. The guys came in their car full of guys. Her boyfriend was driving and introduced me around. So I met all the guys and I knew Rick was the one I was supposed to meet. He would come in a few times and we'd talk, kind of flirt back and forth, but that's as far as it went. We were supposed to double date with my friend and his friend and it never happened. His friend leaves on a mission. She starts dating somebody else who's married before they even get back from their missions. But after his friend leaves, he starts coming. He's still hanging around. One night he was hanging around, he would leave, he'd come back. He'd leave, he'd come back. I was like, “Whatever.” I just kind of thought, “We're really slow tonight.” So I asked my boss if I could get off early, and he said sure. So I go out to the car. I says, "I'm getting off early. I need a ride home. Might you give me a ride home?" That's how it started. I was a carhop pickup. 23 LR: You picked him up at the car hop that you were working at? JH: Yes. Yes. LR: Okay, that's really fun. So what grade were you? You were a senior or a junior? JH: It was the end of my junior year, and he left on his mission just at the beginning of my senior year. LR: Did you correspond? JH: Yeah, we wrote. We wrote back and forth on this mission. But there were things, I liked him, but I didn't like him. You know, there were just some things I didn't like. For one thing, he was mad that my friend dumped her boyfriend. It's like, what was the big deal? Well, he wrote her a letter. She was engaged to be married, right after we graduated, and he wrote her. I was supposed to be one of her bridesmaids. We already talked about it, and then I didn't hear anything. You know, like, “What kind of dresses? What's anything?” I didn't even hear anything from her. So I hit her up one day and she goes, "Oh, you're not one of my bridesmaids. Rick wrote me a letter, and I'm not supposed to have anything to do with you." I was like, “You jerk.” [To Shannon] I don't think I ever told you that. SW: Yeah, I knew. JH: Oh, you knew that one? Okay. So that was one of the things I didn't like. Then towards the end of his mission, he just got really cold on his letters, not knowing what he was thinking. He thought I was wedding dress ready. As soon as he gets home, we're going to get married. I was like, “Oh no.” I was having too much fun dating. I really could care less if he came home or not, but I would write him to be nice. But I noticed his letters were getting kind of weird, so that was another little, “Yeah, whatever.” In fact, he told me not to come to his homecoming. I was like, "Fine, I won't come to your homecoming." Then he got home and we dated a little bit, but he was... [To Tanner] You never went on a mission, did 24 you? TF: No. JH: Good, ‘cause what I'm going to say is rude. He was a typical return missionary. I couldn't stand it. TF: [Laughing] In what way? LR: He's laughing because I'm a return missionary. JH: You're a return missionary? TF: Yes, yes. SW: Yes, but you're not a guy, you didn't come home weird. JH: Yeah, I never noticed girls coming home that way. Shannon was a return missionary, too. LR: That's why I was looking at you, ‘cause you're a returned missionary too. SW: Yeah, I say that about every return. I told my kids, “Do not dare date a return missionary.” LR: Okay, gotcha. JH: I had already decided. One of my friends in beauty school, her brother came home from the mission and asked me out on a date. After dating him, it's like, “I am never dating a returned missionary again. They've got to go through a couple of dumps before I will date them.” So Rick comes home from his mission, and he is a typical return missionary. I was now working in a beauty salon. [Recording pauses due to interruption; the session ends.] Part 2- August 14, 2022 LR: All right, it is the 14th of August, 2022. We're back in the home of Jeri Harry continuing the oral history interview. The exact same people are here. TF: So we left off at Logan. LR: Okay. 25 TF: I don't remember what specifically was happening. LR: Right. But before we go, we talked about Logan. Going back to Brigham City, to the Indian school. I was informed that you guys actually had a boy from the Navajo Nation living with you for a while. JH: We did not, my husband's family did. LR: Oh, okay. SW: Yes, I told you. LR: [To Jeri] You said your dad. SW: My dad. LR: [To Jeri] Oh, see? I read your dad. JH: Her dad was a sibling. LR: Oh, this matters. I didn't read it correctly, okay. JH: Okay. LR: All right. So I guess. SW: She didn't meet him. JH: No, I have met. SW: Yeah, that's what I mean, but that was... JH: In Logan. SW: During the dating stage. JH: That was the dating stage and I was living in Logan at the time. TF: That's perfect, because we are in Logan. LR: We are in Logan so that does fit. So we're talking about you dating your husband. Was this boy living with him? JH: My husband's family. LR: When you were dating? JH: Yes. 26 LR: Did you ever have a chance to interact with him at all? JH: I met him. Interact as far as no, not really. His bedroom was downstairs. My husband had twin brothers, she twin brothers and Eugene, his name was Eugene, lived down there. Their bedrooms were in the basement, so he'd pretty much hang out in the basement and didn't see much of him or the twin brothers. SW: I'd say he was the twins' age, wasn't he? JH: I think he was a little older than the twins. LR: Did anyone know his given name, Eugene? JH: That's all I ever knew him by was Eugene. Get ahold of your dad and find out [laughs] LR: I'm like, wait a minute, what? JH: Yeah. Every now and then, things will come up and you'll say, “I need to ask... Oh, wait. He's gone.” LR: That's why I was… okay. JH: And his mom and dad are gone. Oh, I wonder if Don? SW: I'm texting Kathy. LR: It's all good. I was just curious what that was like. JH: Kathy would know. LR: As I misread the text, I realize there's not much to go on. JH: No, there's not. It'd be more my husband's life history. LR: Okay, so going back to the dating aspect. I wish I had my notes. You're still going to high school when you're dating your husband, correct? JH: Yes. LR: Okay. Was that the last year of high school, or I'm assuming it was your last year of high school? JH: So I met him at the end of my junior year; February of my junior year. 27 LR: And he went on a mission? JH: During my senior year, he was on his mission. LR: I remember. Now we're getting there. You were all done with high school by the time he came back. JH: Oh, yeah. LR: So let's talk about your graduation from high school, some of your memories surrounding that. JH: You know, did I talk about Julie in the last one? LR: I'm not sure. So why don't you go ahead and talk about Julie. JH: Okay. So Julie was, I think I did mention, a friend from Brigham City during elementary school. I wasn't good enough for her in junior high and high school. She met one of the football players on the Logan High team who just lived around the corner from me and ended up pregnant at the end of our senior year. We talked about the Gray House because the girls, if you were pregnant, you couldn't be in the main school. So the girls went to the Gray House and finished high school there, and they could bring their babies if their babies were born. LR: We didn't talk about it at all. JH: We didn't talk about the Grey House. TF: Where was the Grey House? LR: Yeah, where was the Grey House? JH: That was in Logan. LR: She lived in Brigham City? JH: She lived in Brigham City until she got pregnant, and then they got married. She moved just through the block from his family, which was… so my house, around the corner was his folks’ house, around the corner this way. Down the street, a little farther and around the corner is where they moved. It was a little duplex that they 28 moved into. LR: So this Grey House, it was not connected to the high school. JH: It was across the street, diagonal, kitty-corner from the high school from Logan High School. It was interesting. Then, it was very acceptable. Don’t put pregnant girls with the other girls who would have never sought to have sex. SW: Don't know why that pregnant girl decided to have sex. JH: I don't know where she got that. LR: Right, yeah, that's mind blowing. Was it only married teenagers that were allowed there? JH: No, only pregnant girls. It was just the girls, so he could still go to Logan High School, still be on the football team, still have all the rights that any other students had. But she was pregnant, so the pregnant girls go there. TF: Did you ever visit the Grey House? JH: Never did, no. TF: Do you know how many girls were pregnant and were living there? JH: I don't. I have no idea. LR: Were they living there or that's just where they went to school? JH: No, that's just where they went to school. They were taught classes in taking care of babies, the mothering classes, along with your English and history and math. LR: Were they allowed into the high school at all? JH: No, no. But she did graduate from Logan High because that was kind of their little annex part. When we had graduation, her initials were J. K., mine were J. K. We had the same last name. She was Julie Knudson and I was Jeri Knudson. So when we were supposed to order our caps and gowns, which I did, I went to pick mine up under J. Knutson. “Oh, you already picked yours up.” 29 I was like, “No I didn't, I wouldn't need two gowns.” Well, Julie got there and picked up my gown instead of ordering; she didn't order hers. Luckily, they had an extra gown that drowned me. It was huge. Would have fit her better because she was bigger than me. LR: Right, right. Without being leading, I'm not trying to lead the question... JH: No, lead. LR: But these girls that went to this Grey House... JH: Yes. LR: Were you allowed to socialize with them at all? JH: During school, there was no interaction. There was a whole intersection between us. But on your own time, you can do whatever you want. LR: I don't know if you even were paying attention, but I'm wondering if you noticed any difference in socialization between pregnant teenagers and the non-pregnant? That sounds terrible, but knowing what the mindset was then about being pregnant and a teenager and unwed… JH: Coming from my perspective, I thought it was stupid, that he could do whatever he wanted in high school, still on the football team, but she couldn't be part of any high school. It was kind of weird, but I don't think we tried to change anything. It was just the way it is. But I had another friend in Brigham City who ended up getting pregnant and her folks sent her away. I don't know where she went, but I know she wasn't there for the next year of high school. LR: So, graduation. JH: Oh, I had graduation. Yeah, I did wear cap and gown. SW: Did you get the right one? JH: No, no. I got that huge one and I felt so ridiculous. I was like, really? LR: But you did graduate. What were your plans after graduation? Did you have plans? 30 JH: No, I really didn't. I wasn't smart enough to have plans. No, no. I take that back. I did, didn't I? My senior year, I only went to four classes. One was a data entry class, just learning. Computers were just kind of coming on the scenes, and we learned how to program the key cards and machines. LR: Right, you mentioned that last time. JH: Anyway, I just had four classes, and then I went to beauty school. Half of the day was in beauty school; half the day was at the high school. I was going to school to be a beautician. LR: So you graduated from high school. Were you still doing the beauty school stuff or did you graduate at the same time? JH: No, I graduated at the end of May, and it was the first part of November that I finished beauty school. LR: Okay. So that's what you were doing after graduation, beauty school? JH: Yes. LR: So how long after you graduated did your future husband come home from his mission? JH: Oh, probably a year after. LR: So there was lots of time. JH: Yeah. JK: All right, so you finished beauty school. Did you have plans after that? JH: Got a job as a beautician and just worked. LR: Where did you work? JH: I worked at a place called Exquisite. It's on 4th North in Logan. I have no idea if it's still there. LR: You said 4th North? JH: 4th North and probably about 4th East, close to there. Maybe it was 3rd East. 31 LR: And how long did you work there? JH: I worked there until Shannon was born. LR: Okay. Is she the oldest? JH: She's the oldest. LR: I knew that, I ask it every time. Okay. TF: I'm just… [to Lorrie] go for it. JH: You're still blown away with the Grey House. TF: Honestly, I kind of keep thinking about the Grey House. LR: Okay. Any questions about the Grey House that you want to add? You're thinking about it. JH: Yeah, because I don't know that much about it. TF: I'm just curious about it. LR: It's something to research. JH: Yeah. LR: Okay. So you are working at Exquisite when your husband's coming. Are you dating or are you waiting for him to come home? JH: I did write him, but I was dating. In fact, I had two guys propose to me while he was out on his mission. I just love dating, going places and doing things. LR: Yeah. So the two guys that proposed, just no? JH: No. LR: You didn't like them? I mean, why didn't you accept their proposals? That's kind of a personal question, I realize. JH: No, I don't think it's that personal. Why didn't I? Okay, so the first one, his name was Kim. He was from California and going to Utah State. All the guys I met were going to Utah State, pretty much. I had a couple of classes at Utah State while I was working at Exquisite. Just more fun classes. Not everything I took at Utah State was 32 pass/fail. It was never done for credit. I was never formally enrolled, but they would take your money. They would have probably taken anybody's money. They let you sit through the classes, and that's what I did. LR: Yeah, the first one, Kim, he lived in California? JH: I didn't really want to move to California. He was fun to date, but I first was dating his roommate, and then he started flirting with me, and I thought, “That’s kind of weird. I'm dating your roommate.” Then his roommate kind of backed off, so I said, “Okay, I'll start dating Kim then.” He just wasn't really my type, and I was like, “Why are you getting serious?” LR: Okay, so you let him down. And then the second one? JH: Second one, he was just a friend. I thought we were just friends. His brother and I were the same age, so I knew his brother from high school. Scott was the second one. Scott came home from his mission, and somehow, I don't know how we met. I was more fun-loving and I didn't want to be held to standards and rules, but I had my own standards and rules in my head. I don't wear shoes, I didn't then, and his family was very proper. He just came to my house one day and says, “You have to come over to my house, come on now.” I said, “Okay.” So I just jumped in his car, might have jumped in the back of the truck. I don't remember. Went over to his house, no shoes on, which didn't bother me. But I walked in his house, and his mom said, “When I was a girl, I wasn't allowed downstairs without shoes on.” I was like, “Whoa. Good thing I didn't grow up in your house. I don't think she'd like that.” Those kind of comments didn't bother me, but I knew I couldn't live with those. I don't know. We were just dating, I thought, as friends. One night he was kind of being weird, we were driving around and he made some comment. I don't know what he 33 said, but I remember saying, “What did you say?” He says, “Oh, I'll have to say later.” It was like, “Seriously, what did you say?” Somehow, we ended up at the temple and I found out he was going into the army. He was leaving and he wanted me to go with him. I said, “Okay, you want me to move in with you?” He goes, “No.” I go, “What are you trying to get at?” All this time it's like, “How do I let him down, how do I let him down?” I had to play stupid so I could come up with it. It was just like, “You want me to live with you? You want to be roommates?” He's like, “I give up,” and so he never even asked. But it was technically… As we drove away, I said, “I could tell you were not ready to get married. He's like, “No, not at all.” SW: Was he the one that said, “The Spirit has told me we should get married,” or was that Kim? JH: I don't remember who said that. LR: So one of them said that. JH: They might have both said that, actually. SW: She's like, “I didn't get anything.” JH: “I was having fun. I don't know what you guys were thinking, but.” LR: Okay. When you were growing up, was religion a big part of your life? JH: Yes. At the time, they just had the student wards, so if you weren't a student and living on campus, you didn't go to the student wards. But yet some did. I just remember telling my mom after high school, “There's no way I could be relief society. Not at all.” She talked to the bishop, and the bishop gave me the okay to go to the school wards, so I moved my records up to the student wards. I was still a partier, but I didn't drink. But I would go to the parties. 34 LR: Oh, yeah. TF: Was that a lot of drinking? JH: Not really, no. I mean, there might have been, I didn't go to those, but some of the ones I went to, there was. But it was always very acceptable if you didn't drink. It wasn't like you were forced into drinking or made fun of if you didn't. LR: So it sounds like you felt comfortable on... JH: Either side. LR: Either side of things and it didn't matter. SW: She did have a theory that every boy that took her out, she had to kiss. LR: I know we talked about that last time. JH: Yeah. But it was more inside my head. Back then, it was just like, “Well, I guess he's not into me that much if he doesn't want to kiss me. He's not into me. Okay.” I didn't get my feelings hurt when guys stopped dating me. LR: So how long after you graduated… JH: Beauty school or high school? LR: Beauty school, did you actually start dating your husband? JH: It would have been November of ‘1972 when I finished beauty school, so ‘1972 is when I graduated high school too. He would have come home from his mission like August, September of ‘1973. LR: Okay, so you had a whole year of dating and... JH: Having fun. LR: Having fun. How did it come about that you guys started dating once he got home? JH: I'm not sure what started it. I know when he was writing me, he did not want me to go to his homecoming. He had said afterwards he was worried that I was waiting at home with my wedding dress, ready to get married since he got home. Not even close. In fact, I really didn't want to date him. Then he started asking me out. I go, 35 “Okay, maybe there's something there.” Then he got to where he didn't want to date me. I was like, “Okay.” He lived in one stake and then I lived in another stake, but I was going to church on campus. There was some multi-stake dance thing that he showed up to that I was at too. “Why is he here? He's totally going to ruin my day. I'm not going to have fun with him here,” was kind of the attitude. And he did. He started clinging to me, and so I would kind of go off and purposely flirt with other guys. Very obvious. I wanted it to be obvious so he would leave me alone. I'd get a good date out of that one, too. LR: Well, apparently he didn't leave you alone, ‘cause you started dating. JH: Yeah. LR: Did you start dating shortly after that? JH: Probably, yeah. I remember there was one time he asked me out to some concert and he was just not mentally there. I say, “What's up?” I don't know if it was that night or the next, but a few days later, he made a comment that he had already asked another girl out and she already had a date, so I was his backup. I was like, “Okay.” That was my attitude. I didn't mind being the backup. I would have two dates on a Saturday; Saturday afternoon and Saturday night. I was playing the field, and I expected the guys to be playing the field until we decided it would be exclusive. LR: How long after you started dating did it become exclusive? JH: What year did we get married, ‘1974? It would have been August of ‘1974, right around. We were engaged for six weeks. We got married at the end of November, so… October. But then we were going through this, “I like you. You don't like me. Wait. I like you, but you don't like me.” It took us a year to get through all that, and then, “Okay, maybe we should get married.” 36 LR: Okay. So you've actually been dating for about a year? JH: Yeah. SW: Well you dated before his mission. JH: Well, I have a year before the mission. LR: Right, but, after the mission, you dated for about a year and then got married. How did he propose to you? JH: My folks had moved back to Salt Lake. He had said that if my folks and I hadn't moved back to Salt Lake, that we probably would not have got engaged as quick as we did. I was working in Salt Lake at the beauty salon at CCMI’s at the Cottonwood Mall, which doesn't exist anymore. LR: Yeah, it does not. So you moved back in with your parents? JH: I moved back, yeah, because I was living at home in Logan with my folks and it's like, “There's nothing to keep me here. I could do hair anywhere.” It was cheaper to live at home than try to find an apartment, so I just figured I'd move with ‘em. It was right around just before school started because I still had siblings that were going to school. They moved to Salt Lake in the Sugar House area, and I moved down with them and I think I was living there roughly three months. Got engaged, planned in six weeks would get married. We did. LR: What was the actual date of the wedding? JH: November 30, 1974. So next year, it would be 50 years. LR: Oh, that's right. Okay. So where did you get…? SW: She hasn't told you the proposal. TF: Oh, that's true. JH: I didn't. Okay, so tell her the part about the mass murderer or just leave that out? SW: Yeah, they don't know that part. I like that part, let's hear it. LR: Are we joking here? 37 JH: No, no, I'm serious. LR: Okay, let's hear this. I'm like, “Is this sarcasm? I'm not sure.” JH: Okay. So when we decided to get married, he ordered a ring, and when the ring came, he came to Salt Lake to propose to me. He picked me up from work, and it was dark, so I guess I got off work late that night. We were driving up Little Cottonwood Canyon, and that week, there had been some mass murders in the area. He drives up the canyon. I'm like, “Okay.” There was a little turnoff called Church Street or Church… I don't know what it was called, I just remember ‘church’. Anyway, he pulls off and gets out of the car and says, “Let's go for a little walk.” I said, "Are you kidding? There is a mass murderer here in this area. No way." So he just kneels right down there by the car. We were outside the car. I'm like, “What are you doing? What if somebody is here? You don't do this.” So you didn't know that part? LR: Oh, interesting. JH: Yeah, I was more paranoid of what could be. You don't watch horror movies at night. That's a perfect segue way into a horror movie couple to get engaged. The mass murderer comes out, kills them all. LR: So nothing happened though, obviously, and you said yes. JH: Nothing happened, and I said yes, and we talked about a date. TF: Did they ever catch the murderer? JH: I think they did, yeah. I think there had been like three murders that week or within a couple of weeks in that area. LR: Okay, that's interesting. SW: So what about the carrot? JH: Oh, the carrot ring. The funny part. So he opens up the ring box and there is a carrot on a pop top. You know, the soda bottles, you'd have the pop top, and so 38 you'd have this little ring with a little curvy end. He slid a carrot on that curvy bit and was like, “Right now, you pop it off.” So I had a carrot ring. I forgot about that. LR: I thought he had ordered the ring. JH: He did, but that's what he gave me when he proposed. LR: Oh, okay. JH: “Okay, that's interesting. Sure. Why not?” Then get in the car and he opens the glove box and the other ring is in the car. LR: Okay. So was he more of a prankster? JH: No, not at all. SW: That's why we all remember the story. LR: Okay. So that was very... JH: Very out of character. LR: Okay. That's interesting. So you're engaged for six weeks. You get married. Where do you guys live first? JH: In Logan. LR: Was he going to school? JH: He was going to school. LR: All right. So in Logan. JH: So we got an apartment on Fourth North, just down the street, and I got a job back at the Exquisite. I got my old job back, but I was only gone a couple of months. Fourth North, then about Six East, just right just down below the university campus. We were in the basement of a fourplex. Two up, two down. LR: What was he majoring in, do you know? JH: Engineering. LR: Okay. What type? JH: I think it was electrical at that point, and then it changed and changed again. 39 LR: So what was adjusting to married life like for you? The reason I ask is, you were so social before you got married all of sudden. What was that like? JH: I got to know girls. My social group became the others, the four of us. Well, there was three of us, I guess, that were married young couples in the apartment, and then there was an older lady that was upstairs. She wasn't a part of our group. I had to learn how to do laundry at a laundromat, so I went to the laundromat and I'm looking and I'm like, “Oh, what am I doing here? Which is the washer and which is the dryer?” There were some little old ladies, such cute little old ladies. They just, “Come here dear. We'll show you how to do laundry. We'll show you how to separate your clothes. Let's show you.” LR: Had you done laundry before? JH: Not really. LR: All right. JH: Somebody else had taught me how to fold socks because I was just rolling them up. “You have to do it this way.” I'm like, “Really? That's not how my mom did it.” But know these are all old grandma. Your grandmas lived in apartments also, and we went to this local laundromat. They were just helping me; I was their granddaughter and they were showing me how to do laundry and all that stuff. So that became my social group instead of boys. LR: Did your mother not…? JH: Yes. Why didn't I learn to do laundry? LR: I mean, I'm thinking about what the norms were at the time and the expectations of women and running a household. Things were changing a little bit, but not that much. JH: Not that much. I think it was more me and not my mother. I grew up as a young girl, 40 right around eight years old and younger, and my mother would take the laundry to my grandmother's house to do laundry in the old wringer washing machines. They would take it out of the washing machine with this big long fork thing and send it through this wringer. My grandma would get mad because I was standing too close and I had long hair and she didn't want my hair to go through the wringer. So that's how my mom would do laundry. They tried to kick me out of the way. I was like, “I'm okay with that.” Then they'd go hang it out on the line. I'm sure people had their own wash machines and that, but that's what my grandmother had, and that was better than my mom. She did do diapers in the bathtub with the washboard, so I remember the washboard, which not everybody had, and a lot of people had already gone to washing machines. We couldn't afford that and this was what Grandma could afford. By the time I was a teenager, my mom didn't have a washer and dryer—well, a washer. I don't know about the dryer. We still hung clothes out on the line. But I was not in the mood to learn that stuff. I would much rather be outside doing things with my dad. I would do the yard and help with the yard work. I had to learn how to do the push mower. I don't know if Mom didn't want me around or if I didn't want to be around and she wasn't going to fight me. We had to do the dishes. One would wash, one would rinse, one would dry, so we had that. That was something nobody could get out of it. Rotated through. But as far as laundry and basic cleaning, we didn't have to clean the bathrooms. Once in a while, I'd have to vacuum, but no, Mom didn't expect to do a lot of cleaning, or it was just that I was outside. Summers, we finished breakfast, Mom kicked us out and locked the doors, and you did not come back home until lunchtime. She's like, “Whatever you do, I don't care. I just don't want to see you back until lunchtime.” That way, Mom could 41 get the house clean. During the school year, she could do it because we were in school. So that's probably why I never did; it was just easier for Mom to do it herself and kick us out, and we'd rather be out anyway. LR: So you had a crash course in how to be a domestic housewife? JH: I did. Yeah. LR: Did you feel that role came naturally to you, or did you feel more out of place? JH: I don't. My husband was going to school and working, so he had a night job, so he could be at school during the day. I had a job during the day, so I'd come home and pretty much have it all to myself, and it's just the two of us. What is there to really do? I'd get mad at him for leaving his clothes. He'd come home from work and he would have his downtime. He worked at Thiokol, and so he came home dirty. He was a machine press operator, come home dirty, so he would just strip in the living room and sit and listen to music and sometimes study. This was at midnight. He was off work at midnight, and then he'd come to bed, but he'd leave his dirty clothes. So I was like, “No. This is not going to fly.” Other than laundry, I don't know what other domestic things I had to learn. Then babies came along and had to learn how to be a mom. That was something very foreign. LR: One other quick question before we move on. This is going to sound weird, but the only way I can think of is to just ask a question. Was there a division of labor between your husband, or was there just, you did all the housework and he brought home the money? JH: Pretty much, that was it. SW: She did all the other work too. He brought home the money, she did everything else. LR: And you mentioned that he worked for Thiokol. Was this before he graduated? 42 JH: Yes. LR: Okay. And did he continue to work for Thiokol after you graduated? JH: No. Well, he worked with Thiokol, and then Thiokol had a big layoff. He went to Heston's, then they had a big layoff and he went back to Thiokol. So he was at Thiokol at the time he graduated. LR: Okay. Do you know what he did there? JH: He was a machine press operator. LR: What area he was in? JH: It was the snowmobile, the snow truck; they had slope grooming equipment, so he worked with the slope grooming equipment. LR: So a year after you get married you have Shannon. JH: Yes, Shannon. SW: She had a miscarriage first. JH: I did. LR: Are you okay talking about that? JH: Sure. I was pregnant, then I wasn't. What is there to say? TF: You're very open. LR: Yes. JH: No, it doesn't bother me to talk about any of this stuff. So I get pregnant, probably on our honeymoon, and I know it runs in the family, let me tell ya. SW: That’s where Jess came from. JH: Yeah. Between Christmas and New Year's Eve, Rick's folks plan a snowmobile party up in Yellowstone, so we go. Here I am, maybe a month pregnant and bouncing around. I was having a good time. Came home from that. I was doing okay, but somewhere middle of January, endish of January, I don't even remember when, I had a miscarriage. I called Rick's mom and says, “Oh, no, I think I lost the 43 baby.” I had this urge to go to the bathroom, and in the bathroom, there's this big blob and a lot of blood. She was so sweet. She came down, scooped up the big blob, put it in a thing, and took me to the hospital and they examined it. Yes, that was the placenta. I lost a good pan and a cover. I never did get that back. That’s what we put it in. We didn't know what else to put it in. So then the doctor says, “You can't get pregnant for at least a month, and give your body a month to recover.” So I couldn't get pregnant until March-ish, which is when I got pregnant with Shannon. She came in November, so she was about five weeks early. SW: But first, Dad was a jerk. JH: Oh, Dad was a jerk. SW: I think it's an important story. JH: Coming out of the hospital, he's at work and his mom comes to help me, and he, after work, comes to meet us at the hospital. This was late at night, so he was getting off work anyway and he met us at the hospital. I don't know how he knew unless we left a note at the house. He met us at the hospital where they did a D&C to make sure everything was cleaned out. We're coming out of the hospital and I was okay with it. I'm not one of those, “I'll never get pregnant.” Yeah, that's not me. I knew I was going to still have kids. It was not a big deal. As we're going out, he makes a comment about, “Everything's okay. You are meant to have babies,” and smacks me on the rear. I'm going, “You stupid…” LR: Oww, okay. JH: I remember thinking at the time, “You're an idiot.” LR: Shannon says that: “You're an idiot,” so often. 44 JH: She gets it from me. LR: Wow, I'm talking to Shannon. JH: Now you know where it came from. LR: Yeah. This is really cool. So Shannon's born, you did have a baby to look after; adjusting to being a mom. JH: So the first night, they keep the babies in the hospital. The babies are in the nursery. They bring them to you to feed them. They take them away. They bring ‘em to you to feed them. They take them away. So I get home, I feed this baby. I did milk. I wasn't going to do the nursing thing. I tried the nursing thing, like, for five seconds. That's not happening. So I'm doing the bottle. She was a preemie too, so I fed her. “Okay, where's the nurse to come and take her away. I've done my mommy thing,” and that's exactly how I felt. “Oh, that was cute. Playing with my little doll. Now the nurse can take her away.” There's no nurse. I would feed her. She would sleep. I would change her, feed her. She would sleep. Then I was told that, “No, you're supposed to keep them awake and play with them.” “Why? She can't play. I can't do anything with this thing.” I don't know. I mean, we made it, she's still alive. TF: Was your husband still going to school? JH: He was still going to school and working. I'm trying to think. I know by the time you were a year old, we were playing, so somewhere I learned how to play with little kids. I remember teaching Shannon how to have her first temper tantrum. She was trying to have a little temper tantrum and it's like, “Oh, this is pathetic. This is how you do it.” So I laid on the floor and was kicking and screaming and saying, “There. That's what you need to do.” She didn't need to have a temper tantrum anymore. I don't think she ever really had a temper tantrum after that. LR: That's an approach. Did you ever wish that someone had talked to you a bit more 45 about how… JH: How to be a mom? LR: What was required of you? JH: No, I don't ever remember thinking, because then I could do it my own way. I mean, I did babysit when I was a kid. I was the oldest of six of us, and so I had them, and then some of the neighbor kids I babysat, so I knew the basics. But I think not knowing I could just do whatever I wanted… Sorry, Shannon, that's why you turned out the way you did. SW: I blame the Grannies that taught how to take care of everything in your life. JH: The Grannies? SW: Used to tell me about the grannies. I'm assuming the ladies at the laundromat. JH: Yeah. That was just taking care of laundry. I don't ever remember talking to her about taking care of kids. SW: I remember you talking about how they taught you to do something with us. JH: I don't remember them teaching me anything else. LR: So you basically found your own style of being a mom. How long after Shannon did you have your second child? JH: About two and a half years. LR: Okay. So you give yourself some time. JH: Oh, yeah. I was still trying to get used to one. LR: During this time, did he graduate from college? JH: Not yet, so he's still going to school. We were married nine years before he graduated from college, but he had changed his majors a couple of times. LR: Right. What was his final degree? JH: It was in welding with some minor in aerospace. LR: So you stop working after Shannon was born? 46 JH: Yeah, and I did go back to work again after Amber was born. Amber’s the second. Amber was like two and a half years later, and when she was two years old, I found a daycare that—if she was potty trained—they would take both of them because I have two little ones. I don't know what to do now. I was kind of getting bored and I was being frustrated and I didn't really feel like I had great friends in the neighborhood. Some of the ladies in the neighborhood thought they were… we were in a new area, but not a well-to-do area at all, but they were acting like they were well-to-do because they had a house. SW: I was gonna say, she moved twice. LR: Okay. I was going to ask, are you still living in the fourplex? JH: No. So from the fourplex, when Shannon was a year old, we moved to a trailer on campus. It was married student housing, a trailer park. So we lived there. LR: And how long were you there? JH: About a year. LR: Okay, so Amber was born there? JH: No, Amber was not born there. LR: Okay. Of course not, you said two and a half years. And from that, you moved. JH: We moved to Wellsville. We bought a house. It was on a low-income loan. Our house payment was only $225 a month. That was stretching it a little bit, but it was subsidized interest. It was a new housing development, but they weren't expensive houses that were there. Some of the neighbors, I just didn't feel like I fit in. There were a couple ladies I did, but then I don't feel like I fit in anywhere, so. LR: Sounds so. Are you still religious? JH: I was still going to church, yes. In fact, I was a primary teacher. LR: Okay. How long were you in the house in Wellsville? JH: Five years. 47 LR: Okay. So for the remainder of his time at Utah State? JH: Soon as he graduated from Utah State, he had an offer to work in California, and we moved to California. LR: So in those five years at Wellsville, how many more children did you have? JH: Two more. I had Amber and then Gavin. LR: How many kids total? JH: Five. LR: So you had two more in California? JH: Yes. LR: Okay. When you left, because you've been moving a lot your entire life— JH: Not a lot. LR: Well, compared to some, you moved a lot. JH: Oh, okay. LR: So, was it strange, moving to California? JH: Oh, I was so excited to move to California. I was getting out of Utah. TF: Where in California? JH: Went to the L.A. area. Simi Valley. LR: Why did you want to get out of Utah? JH: I really was excited to get away from family, and it's not that I don't like family, but I just felt like I could be my own person, getting out, getting away, doing things the way I thought was right instead of what I was told was right. Not that what I was told was right was wrong, but everybody has their own interpretation of right. And I love being in California where you were accepted for whatever you want. Not that I did anything wrong or anything to be judged about here, but I just was ready to leave. TF: Was there any apprehension before you left? JH: None whatsoever. No, I was totally on board and ready to go. 48 LR: How were things different? Culturally, religiously. JH: Well, religiously, there's not really a difference. See, I can't say that there was anything bad about being here, but it was a little more relaxed in being in California. You went to church, and you were there because you wanted to be, not because it was expected of you, I think was the difference. Here, it was more expected and people were at church, even though they didn't want to be, where in California, if you didn't want to be, you didn't go, and it was okay. People still like people, even when they didn't go to church. A lot of people from different churches or no churches at all, and they are all just fine. LR: Did you like the diversity? JH: Yeah, I did, a lot. LR: Were you able to find more of a friend base because of that diversity? JH: Did I? SW: I don't know if it was the diversity, but it took you a while to get good friends. JH: I know you're going to say this is weird; I'm not a real open person. If you ask me questions, I am not going to hold back. I'll tell you what it is, but I'm not going to open up to you and bring out all this stuff without being asked. I had Brett and Maria, but that took a couple of years to develop though. SW: They were the first people you went on a date with after you moved to California. JH: Yeah, it took a couple of years to get there. I got to know Lynn, and she had no idea. She was the first one to stick up for me about church, not stick up for me, stick up for the Mormon Church because of knowing us. She was Jewish. But somebody at the elementary school was saying something about, do you know the Mormon church does? And I don't even know what it was. SW: A sexual thing in the temple. JH: Yeah, and Lynn said, “No, they don't. I know Jeri, and she goes to the temple, and 49 she would never have anything to do with that.” So not even knowing, she stuck up for me because she accepted me. So I did have diverse friends, but I didn't look at people to be friends because they were members or not members. It was just whoever I clicked with. LR: So when did you have your next child? JH: That would have been Gavin. Gavin was born in Wellsville. He was one year old. We moved on his birthday. We had a birthday party at grandma's house, Grandma Harry, Rick's mom. We had our whole house loaded up in the trailer and the truck and ready to leave. Have a birthday party and hit the road. LR: Can we take a break for a minute? I'm freezing. [Recording pauses for a break] [Recording begins again] TF: I was just wondering how your husband felt about the move to California. Was he as excited as you? JH: I think he was. He was excited about the prospects of starting a career, something he was looking forward to working in the aerospace company. I think he was excited. TF: Did he enjoy the diversity and being out of Utah? JH: I don't know. We never talked about it. I don't think he enjoyed it as much as we did because it was his idea to move back, but then all of our kids had moved here. SW: He wanted to go back to see me after Texas. LR: Where did he work? JH: He worked for Rocketdyne, a division of Rockwell International. It was in L.A., San Fernando Valley. LR: Do you work outside the home in California? JH: Off and on. LR: Still hair? 50 JH: No, no, no. After we left Utah, I did get my license to be a beautician, so I was licensed in Utah and California until the time just before we moved to Texas. I kept that license up and was like, “I'm never going to go back to work doing hair. Why am I spending money?” So I let both of them lapse. [To Shannon] I coached you at synchronized swimming. SW: And sell cakes. JH: No, cakes was just a hobby. I never worked at doing cakes. Then I worked at the high school and worked with special ed. LR: So were your kids older, like with synchronized swimming? JH: I did the synchronized swimming when Shannon and Amber were about 10 to 12 years old. We did it for a couple of years. They were interested in synchronized swimming, and the lady that was doing it the year Shannon got into it, she only did it the one year. I was helping her, showing her some stuff, ‘cause I did synchronized swimming when we lived in Utah. When I was in junior high, actually. LR: Did we talk about that? JH: I don't think we did. In Brigham, the Parks and Rec had swimming lessons, and part of the swimming lessons, there was a diving team and a synchronized swimming team. This is all through Parks and Rec, and what Shannon did was also through Parks and Rec. So I did synchronized swimming with them. We put on a show at the end of every summer. So I was helping the lady that was coaching it at the time because she had never done it, and so I went over to her pool and would show her some stuff that she could implement into routines. She says, “Why don't you just do this?” I was like, “Okay, yeah.” LR: What about synchronized swimming spoke to you? JH: I love swimming. I just enjoy being in the water. I tried diving a little bit, but to really 51 do some of the stuff, I was a chicken. I just kind of enjoyed synchronized swimming, just getting out and dancing in the water. It was fun. LR: Did you enjoy teaching your kids to do that? JH: A little bit. I don't know if I was any good at it, but I remembered some of the stuff, and some of the stuff I could remember, I tried to show them. Good enough. We did some competitions, that was kind of fun. LR: You only did that for a couple of years? JH: Yeah. LR: So did they grow out of it? JH: Kind of. It got to be only two kids in the group, and Parks and Rec said, “We can't sustain this program for just two.” SW: And we were both going into high school. JH: Yeah, so soon, other interests would take over. That’s about where it died. LR: How long did you live in California? JH: About 28 years. LR: Oh, okay. So for a long time. JH: Yeah, quite a while. LR: You raised your kids. Any questions come into mind? As your kids start to get older, and I hate to say ‘need you less and less,’ because they seem to need you more when they’re teenagers. It's really interesting. SW: But they think they need you less. LR: Yes they do, they think they need you less. Where am I going with this question? TF: As you became more free from your children, what did you do to fill your time as your kids are getting older? LR: That’s what I was going for. JH: That's a good one. I don't know, because I had a 19-year gap from oldest to 52 youngest, so as these guys are moving out of high school, I have another group moving into high school, and then we moved to Texas. SW: But you did a lot with the Young Women. JH: I was in Young Women. I was camp director almost every year in one form or another. SW: Before you got married. JH: Oh, yeah. I always loved camping and stuff like that, so I worked with Young Women. Church callings kept me busy. What else kept me busy, Shannon? Come on. SW: Woodworking. JH: Oh, I had hobbies. I had a friend who was teaching tole painting, and so I cut the wood out for her tole painting class. I also sat in on some of her projects, and they were fun. I’d sit in and we'd have a paint. LR: Did you have a job at all that you were able to do? I mean, besides your hobbies, just something you'd go to every day. JH: No, other than the swimming thing, until the baby got into second grade. The year he was in second grade, I started working at his school as a yard supervisor. The kids would come out for recess and lunchtime, and me and a few others were there to make sure no fighting, no inappropriate behavior, stay on campus, can't leave the elementary school. I did that until he was in fourth grade, so for two years. Then I started working with the special ed program in the high school. TF: I don't think we've covered; what year was the youngest born? JH: The youngest was born in ‘1994. SW: And the one before that was born in ‘1984. JH: Yeah, so I had two youngest. It's funny, I still think of Kira as my youngest and then my other youngest. 53 LR: Okay. That's a long gap between. JH: It was. Yeah. LR: ‘Cause I was thinking, Nute was born in ‘1998. JH: But I did have a miscarriage before Trenton, and I had another miscarriage after Trenton. LR: Trenton is the baby? JH: Trenton is the baby. LR: Okay. You weren't done after Kira? JH: Yeah, I was. I honestly have no clue what happened. LR: Immaculate conception? JH: Maybe we'll go there. SW: As far as I was aware, there needed to be immaculate conception. JH: She was a senior in high school. LR: Okay, that makes more sense. Wow. JH: If we want to embarrass Shannon, I have a really good story. LR: No, please share. We're on a roll. JH: So when I finally ended up telling everybody I was pregnant, which was like three months before the baby was born… SW: No, you told me in December. JH: I did tell you earlier? Okay. SW: You were in the laundry room when I came in. JH: Oh, okay. So anyway, this was the part I was going to tell you, she asked, “How could you allow Dad to do that?” SW: “Don't let him do that to you!” JH: Oh, that was kind of a cute comment, really. I got a chuckle out of that one. LR: Oh, okay. But that's the question for you on another one. 54 JH: I've got to be there the day you ask that question. SW: Oh, pretty obvious. JH: I know. SW: My dad was also sick by then, too. LR: Go ahead. TF: I know that you enjoyed the diversity of California, but coming from the Brigham City/Logan area, very close, Mormon community, were you worried for your children growing up? JH: Not at all. TF: Were you afraid they were going to go…? JH: No, not at all. TF: You're more excited for them? JH: Yeah. I wanted them to experience other things, not just have that close-knit community. LR: So is there any story in California that stands out that you want to talk about before we move on to the question about moving? JH: Oh, okay. [To Shannon] Is there anything that comes to mind? SW: Dad being diagnosed with MS. JH: Oh, that happened in Utah. SW: Yeah, but he didn't agree to it. JH: [Laughs] He didn't agree to it. That's something you need to ask him. You need to get his perspective. LR: Well, since we can't get his perspective... JH: [Laughing] I know. LR: We're going to ask your perspective. He was diagnosed with MS here before you moved to California? 55 JH: Yeah, we were living in Wellsville. I had just had Amber, so it was in the summer of ‘1978 when he was diagnosed. He started with numbing in his left foot, and it moved its way up. Over the course of about a month, went from his feet into his left hand. Everything was just on the left side. Then it hit his left ear and he had numbing, and that's when he went to the doctor and says, “What's going on?” He thought he had pinched a nerve. He had helped his brother move a trailer home, and they were underneath the home trying to level it. He was a couple of hours underneath, in a little crawl space under their trailer home. He pinched a nerve because it wasn't long after that that he started to have the numbing. He says, “I've got this pinched nerve,” and the doctor says, “I think there's something else.” So he sent him to Salt Lake, I don't remember which hospital, and neurologists were there and there was a team that did a lot of tests. He was there for three or four days with testing, and they just determined that he probably has MS and that's how the diagnosis went. “We think you probably have MS, but MS is multiple, and so until we get another episode, that's what will confirm that you do have MS.” He says, “No, no, it's a pinched nerve. If it's a pinched nerve, what would you do for it?” They said, “Well, we can put you in traction.” “Oh, okay.” They said, “Would you have a home traction unit?” It was a bag filled with water, sits at the foot of the bed, and they had you lay backwards, so you're over the foot of the bed. This weight of water is pulling on a neck brace and just kind of pulls everything. He said, “That's what I want to do,” so they gave him this home traction unit and he came home for a couple of weeks. He used it. The symptoms went away. 56 Well, symptoms of MS do that. You'll have periods where you'll have an episode with MS, but then after a few weeks, it kind of staples out. Not quite, but sometimes it's not detectable until you get further on. So he would have these episodes periodically over the next 11 years, but it was his pinched nerve. He'd say, “Jeri, get the traction unit out. That pinched nerve is acting up again.” So we'd do it, and it would go away after a few weeks and come back again a few months later. Finally, one time, it wasn't going away, so we went to the doctor and he said, “I don't know what's going on.” Now MRI's are available, so the doctor says, “Let's schedule you for an MRI.” Tests showed lesions on the base of his neck, on the spinal column, and they says, “You have MS.” He goes, “I have what?” He asked the doctor, “How did you know to look for MS?” Doctor said, “It's in your chart.” Totally blew him away. He goes, “What?” LR: In his mind, it wasn't happening. JH: No. In fact, he had even blocked it out so far that it was foreign to him. “Why would you even look for that?” “Well, it's right here in your chart.” LR: So eleven years into California? JH: Not quite. Eleven years into the MS. LR: ‘Cause you were in Wellsville for five years. JH: Yeah, so that was from ‘78 to ‘89. SW: So that was after his big accident. JH: Yeah, that was after the accident. Fact, he was in a bad car accident, and I was wondering if that could have triggered the MS. Been that year, I think. It was in 57 California. LR: So was he still working at Rock... JH: Rocketdyne. LR: Was he still working there with... JH: Uh-huh, yeah. LR: Oh cool, you understood. How did that affect his work, or did it? JH: They were really good to work with him. The Americans with Disabilities Act was, you just don't go against them. Not that we ever challenged it, but I think because HR people were so on top of it. “We will go out of our way to create something. We don't know who's suing who, but we will go out of our way to make anything if you have a disability.” So, no, they were very good to work with. LR: I know MS is a progressive disease. So did you notice things start to… JH: Yeah. This was over a lot of years, it wasn't something that you would notice from year-to-year, but there was a time where he would walk with a walking stick because he wasn't gonna give in and do a cane. He had a couple walking sticks. Once in a while, when things were really bad, he'd go to a walker. He tried not to use the walker, but he did occasionally, and then he went to a scooter. With three wheels, you have a little handlebar, like they have at Walmart. He had one of those until he got to where he couldn't maneuver his legs to get up and over around that bar, and that's when he went to a full-blown chair with the hand control. So it is a gradual decline. LR: Did he retire from Rocketdyne? JH: That division of Rockwell got sold to Boeing because it was in aerospace. Boeing eventually bought the Rocketdyne division and he stayed on with them. After the space shuttle blew up, he was working on the space shuttle main engines. Thiokol here had the side boosters; the side boosters was what failed, so he went onto a 58 committee that did failure analysis. Because he had a welding background, he could examine different welds; what on this engine could fail, welding-wise, what happens if that goes? What's the worst thing? He was trying to explain and he used this example. He says, “It's like if you did a failure analysis on the car, you break it down to, ‘What happens if the windshield wipers stop working? What if the horn stops working?’ Even the little details.” That's the committee he was on and went through. It took him a couple of years to go through everything on that engine. From there, he really enjoyed that instead of just the engineering he was doing. I guess when he graduated welding, it was welding engineering, so it was a part of engineering. Then he went on to be a quality engineer instead of doing welding engineering. From welding, he went to failure analysis, and then he was a quality engineer, which most people don't like. They're the ones to tell you, “You can't do that,” but he did well at that. LR: I know he really had MS this whole time. How was the diagnosis from your perspective? JH: From my perspective, knowing that he was in denial, he did not want to know about it, I felt like I needed to know everything about it. I had some friends I talked to. There was a lady in our ward who was a nurse and also had a brother-in-law that has MS, and I says, “Tell me everything you know about MS.” She goes, “You don't want to know.” I go, “Yeah, I need to know.” So she told me different progressions it would go through. This was right after he was diagnosed the second time, so still early. He didn't have a lot of the symptoms, but she went through the depression he would go through, the anger, the different steps. The physical is going to be obvious, but the different emotions 59 that we would have to deal with. I just kind of decided then that, “Okay, he doesn't have to do this.” So when he would start with some of his episodes, it’s like, “Knock it off. We're going through it, too. It's not just you.” He did pretty good. I tried to have him talk to me, which he wasn't into talking, but just let him know that, “No, no. You don't have to be mad at the family. You don't have to be mad at this, that, or the other. I can. You can't.” LR: So it sounds like the shuttle disaster changed what your husband was doing. JH: Well, he went into a lot more top-secret work, to where we couldn't know anything about what he was doing. LR: Okay. Interesting. What was that like for you? Did you notice a difference between before, what he would share with you, and…wrong question. JH: You mean his work? What would he share about his work? LR: No, I lost the question. It's a good question too. SW: I want to know how Dad's car accident affected you, ‘cause that was bad. JH: Oh, yeah. He did have a bad car accident. He was hit head on, going downhill. The other car was coming up the hill and crossed over into his lane. The comment was made from the other driver that there was a car parked at the side that moved out into his lane of traffic, which made him have to move over, which really sort of says that guy wasn't paying attention, because it was a two-lane road. He didn't have to move over four lanes out of the way of that one car. I don't know. I wasn't there. Rick was in the outside lane, coming down the hill. The other guy was going up the hill, crossed over. From Rick's perspective, if that guy wouldn't have hit him, he would have gone over the guardrail onto those railroad tracks. There was no overpass, and so he thinks that it was probably in the guy's best interest that he hit Rick instead of going over the edge, ‘cause he was coming at a pretty good rate of speed and hitting him pretty much head-on. They had used the jaws of life to open 60 up the car to get Rick out. He fractured his left femur, and they went in and tried to put a rod down. The bone was so shattered because it was a compound from the dashboard coming in on him, so they ended up putting a plate with screws to hold all the fragments in place. As soon as he started weight-bearing, close to about a year after, he broke it again, so they had to go in and redo the screws and bolts and plate. [To Lorrie] Do you want to get going? TF: Are you going to be okay to drive? LR: Yeah. I just figured we'd go to one. JH: Okay, so just 15 more minutes. LR: Thank you, I would have not known what time it was. How did you hear about the accident? JH: That happened on a Saturday as we were getting ready to go to soccer. It was our day to have fruit. We were supposed to bring the snack. So I found out he was in a car accident, I heard and cut the oranges up, and got everything ready to send with you to the neighbor next door. SW: The creepy neighbors. JH: [Laughs] The creepy neighbors. They weren't that creepy, they're just odd. SW: They were creepy. JH: But she was nice and said she would take you to soccer. I notified the soccer coach what had happened, and somehow, they managed to get you home too. I know she took you; maybe she brought you home, too. The other kids, I think, just stayed at their house, Mr. Neighbor, next door. I went to the hospital. Coming from a Utah background, we hadn't lived in California that long, just a couple of years. He went to the closest hospital that had a trauma unit. They gave me directions. I went there, didn't even know what hospital I was really going to. I was at this hospital, go to the emergency room, and I was standing there and somebody behind me says, “Mrs. 61 Harry, I'm Sister So-and-so,” I'm like, “Who in the church knows I'm here?” I turn around and there’s a nun. I was like, “Oh, that kind of sister.” They were very, very nice. LR: So how long was he in the hospital? JH: A couple of weeks. They did transfer into the hospital in Simi Valley. I tried not to let it affect us too much. [To Shannon] Were you? SW: Nothing affected anyone as much as it did me. JH: Yeah, you're the oldest. I was a little frustrated with the church. They wanted to do everything for us. I wanted to spend time with him in the hospital, but they wanted to bring us meals, and they planned who was taking what kid when. It's like, Okay, so I got to coordinate when I drop off, who I drop off, when I pick up. I'll be home for dinner because they're bringing dinner. Really guys, I can do this. Even if we have cold cereal every night, it'd be so much easier. But they were being sweet. SW: I was 10. I was so irritated. I'm like, “I can babysit.” JH: Were you 10 or 11? Oh, yeah 10, because Kira was a year old. I was thinking you were 11, no. LR: It was in 1985, so. Obviously, it didn't affect his job too much. JH: It didn't affect his job at all. They were really good about it. He took short-term disability for a few months, six months maybe, and then went back to work. He had the best job anyways, so, no, it didn't affect his job at all. LR: Did you notice that the crash affected his MS? JH: See, that's what I'm saying. I'm not sure if that's what triggered the next episode where they found the MS, because it was so close after all the trauma. He had already had his second surgery on his leg, and then shortly after that is when he started having symptoms again. So it could have, but it could have just been coincidence too, just timing. I don't know. 62 LR: Well, I think that's a good place to stop. Part 3- August 21, 2022 LR: It is August 21, 2022. We are again with Jeri at her home in Ogden. We're going to stay in Simi for a little bit to talk about some of the more pleasant and enjoyable memories that you have of raising your family in Simi. JH: Okay. I was reminded that we used to, as a family, go camping every summer on the beach. We went with another family, the Hansen family, and we would spend the week just camping and hanging out at the beach and playing in the ocean. How many years do you remember doing that? SW: When I left on my mission, you were still doing it. JH: When did we start, though? SW: I thought it was the year that we moved there. JH: No, no. SW: It was before I turned 12. JH: So at least 10 to 15 years we were doing that. LR: And what beach would you go to? JH: We went to either Camarillo or McGrath. We did Sycamore for girls camp. We went to one up farther along the beach past Camarillo. Can't remember what the name of that was—not Leo; we did do Leo Carrillo though. LR: When you're talking about camping on the beach, what does that entail? JH: The campsites were a little off the beach, then you'd walk to the beach, so it was within walking distance. Not terribly far. Some of the beaches where we were camping, you could see the ocean. Some of them, there was a little dune. You had to climb over the dune and then you were on the beach. It was just a lot of fun. We did all of our cooking. A lot of times, the parents would leave the kids at night and go out to dinner. Shannon was saying that was rude. Left the older boys in charge, 63 which was probably the rude part. LR: So you would go with another family? JH: We did. We went with the Hansen family, so the mom and dad and their kids. A lot of times, we’d go to this place called The Palms. This is when we were in Camarillo. It was just across the street from where we were camping, so we would walk there to the restaurant. So it's not like we left them very far. It was fun. LR: So would you guys do this every summer while you were in California? JH: Yes, we'd do it every summer. LR: It became like a tradition. JH: It was, yeah. Shannon wanted me to mention girls’ camp. From the time I was 12, I went to girls’ camp, and then I turned 19, and I was asked to be their stake camp director. I know, kind of weird they couldn't find anybody. My dad was on the high council at the time and said, "Would you mind doing it? Because we can't find anybody to do it." "Sure why not?" So I did that, seemed like every year until after we moved to California, and then still a lot of time in California. SW: Every year in California, I don't really remember a year you did not. JH: Yeah. I would go to girls’ camp. One year, I went to girls’ camp pregnant, and came home from girls’ camp on a Friday. Saturday, Gavin was born, so I was very pregnant. In fact, I was a stake girls’ camp director then, too, so lots of camping. LR: When you would do the girls camp, you would just, again, on the beach? JH: No, girls’ camp was usually just up in the mountains somewhere. We lived in Utah for a lot of that. Gavin was born in Utah, so all of that was here. So some things were at—I don't remember the name of camping places. Been up the Logan area, and when I was in Brigham City, it was in the Mantua area. And then California, we didn't have stake camps like they do here, so we would just go… We did have the 64 one? SW: That was a Boy Scout camp. JH: That was a Boy Scout camp, okay. We would just go camping at campgrounds in California for girls’ camp. Sometimes we went to Yosemite—just wherever we could get a spot that we'd fit all the girls we needed. LR: I know Shannon had mentioned that having your last child was really hard on you. JH: It was hard because I thought I was done, and to think of having a baby again and starting raising when I had my kids leaving high school just didn't make sense. Heaven forbid they know how that happened. SW: I know. JH: I know. I think it kind of threw Shannon for a loop. I don't remember telling you, but I told you before I told everybody else, you said. I remember Trenton was born at the end of May. I remember telling everyone on Valentine's Day that I was pregnant. Shannon said that the neighbor across the street asked her if I was pregnant, and Shannon says, "No, she's just getting fat." SW: Amber. JH: Amber, she asked Amber. “No, Mom's just getting fat." Which I technically was, I was just wearing bigger clothes. I refused to get maternity clothes. I just wore loose, baggy, wore the same jeans, and I just put on an elastic. It's still buttoned together, but it was a big gap, and you just wore a big oversize shirt, and you're good. LR: Okay, so how old was your youngest? JH: Kira was the youngest. She was ten years old when I had Trenton. LR: Wow. This is where it gets a little more personal, so you want to answer what you're comfortable with, what you want your kids to know. JH: Okay. SW: Everything. 65 JH: You want to know everything? Okay, here we go. LR: So, I know how I would feel if that... JH: Surprise. Yes. LR: So how did you wrap your brain around this reality? “I'm going to have another one?” JH: Actually, it took a little. It was December, so I guess I got pregnant at the end of August. Because I was 40, the doctor said I was a high-risk pregnancy. It's like, “Okay, whatever. I don't care ‘cause I didn't want this.” So he wanted me to go in and have amniocentesis. The ultrasounds at that point were not as clear as they are now, but the ultrasound that they used through amnio was a lot better than what the doctor's office had, which I didn't realize. So I went in, agreed to have amnio, knowing that there was a chance I could miscarry. “Okay, so be it.” Laying on the table, they had the ultrasound on the tummy, and you could see it was a real baby. They wanted to see so close, so when the needle went in, they could determine where they needed to adjust the needle if the baby started moving, because they wanted to know every little movement so they didn't nick the baby as they drew out the amniotic fluid. So I think seeing the baby helped me come to grips with it. At that point, I'm still, “Whatever,” but I start getting some cramping after I left the hospital. I thought, “I just wanna hang out at the mall.” I just needed to go shopping, and that's when I started cramping. I just got this very, very strong feeling. “You need to protect this one.” It's like, “Whoa.” I never had this feeling with any of the kids before, and at that point, I didn't care if I miscarried or not until I had that very distinct, “I need to protect this one.” That's what wrapped my head around it right then, and that's how it was. I don't know how else to explain it. 66 LR: Okay. I know you can't speak for anyone else other than yourself. But when he was born, how do you think your family responded, and how did you do? JH: I went into labor. Shannon stayed home and watched all the kids. She didn't want to have anything to do with it. Amber, who had just turned 16, was very much interested, and she's a lot more the mothering-type anyway. She wanted to be there, so I told her, “Sure, you could come to the hospital.” So she hung out in the room. She was a lot more of a support than their dad was. She would just sit there and talk to me. I was ready to strangle my nurse. Sometimes you get that way. If the nurse's neck was much closer, I would have had my fingers around it. LR: I think that's why they stay away. SW: Explain more about them. JH: More about that one. So I knew the nurse. She wasn't a friend, but she was… you know. LR: An acquaintance? JH: Well, she was more than acquaintance. LR: Oh, so she was in between a friend and an acquaintance? JH: She thought she was a friend more than I thought she was a friend. LR: Okay, gotcha. One-sided friendship. JH: Yeah, kind of one-sided. I never had any drugs with any of my other kids. Well, drugs from the time Shannon was born to the time Trenton was born had changed a lot, and I had heard that the… can't even think of what it's called now, epidural. You guys all had epidurals. [To Shannon] Didn't you have an epidural? SW: Yeah, you talked me into it. JH: Yeah, I did. SW: I had babies after Trenton. 67 JH: Oh, that's true. I had heard that epidurals weren't so bad, and I told the nurse I wanted one. She goes, "No you don't." I go, "Yeah, I do, and I've done this before. I don't want to do it again." She would come in and I says, “I'm ready.” “Oh, no, it's not time.” I says, “I'm ready.” I could feel they were getting intense—the contractions, in case anybody doesn't know what I'm talking about. She kept putting me off, and then she conveniently went on break until I went through transition. At transition, it's too late to give it. When I got the substitute nurse, she says, "Well, I can't do anything because I'm just here while your nurse is on break." I'm going, "This is not working for me, guys." That's why I was ready to strangle this nurse. I did do it, and I knew I could because I had done it four other times, but I didn't want to, and I knew that there would not be any adverse side effects to the baby, so why not? But this girl was very much… she's a nurse, but she had all her babies at home. I don't know what her deal was. LR: Did you ever get the epidural? JH: Nope, that's why I was ready to strangle. I had also taught Lamaze birthing, so I knew what the different stages were, and so I knew I knew when I started in transition. I was like, “Oh crap, this person is going to blow me off because she didn't want me to have it.” I don't know what her deal was. LR: So you end up having to experience all of this again, and Trenton’s born. JH: Again. Trenton's born. I think he dislocated his shoulder. At the time, they had a team on standby, and as I'm delivering, I could see that they had called the team in. They were standing behind the curtain, and I saw feet as they're delivering the baby, so I knew, “Oh, they're anticipating something.” So he was born and the doctor dismissed them. They were fine, but he was a big baby. Coming out of the 68 birth canal, he cried for two hours straight, so I think he had dislocated his shoulder or something. I'm not positive, but I just can't imagine why he cried so much. Something happened to him. Birth is just traumatic anyway. LR: Yeah, it really is. SW: How did it change you? JH: How did it change me? Did it change me? SW: Yeah. JH: Okay, so we're going to have to turn the camera to Shannon now to see how it changed me. SW: Well, once Trenton was born, you went from having teenage kids to... JH: Now having a baby. But I still had teenage kids, too. LR: So there is a juxtaposition between being the mother of teenagers or being a mother of a newborn, and how to make those two work? JH: Oh, you let the two teenage daughters that are older be the mother. SW: You lied, that's what I wanted you to get to. JH: Oh, that's what you wanted! Okay. LR: You've allowed your two oldest daughters to help in the care and raising of your youngest. JH: Did I? No. TR: We're very unconvinced. LR: Is that what you're saying? JH: Well, they didn't want to. I didn't want them to. Amber liked mothering Trenton. Shannon, not so much, and I didn't care because that wasn't their job. So that was totally fine if they didn't. But when we would go out, for school shopping or whatever shopping, people would approach us and say to my daughters, “What a cute baby. Does he sleep through the night? Is he eating?” All of these questions that you ask 69 a mother, they ask my daughters. It was like, “I am not the grandma. I am the mom. Ask me the question.” LR: Okay. Was that disconcerting? JH: That was weird. In fact, that's when I started coloring my hair. At that point, I had a little gray streak just starting right in here, and my hair was dark brown, so I started coloring my hair because I didn't want to be looked at as the grandma. Until COVID hit, which was in 2020, I colored my hair, and then gave up on it because you didn't see anybody. Who cares. Nobody sees you, let it grow out. LR: Makes sense. This is going to be a weird question, but you're 40, you have a brandnew baby. It's going to be another 18 years. You're going to be close to 60 before he's even out of the house. JH: Well, he's not out of the house, and I'm 68. LR: Okay, well, typically. JH: Want to rephrase that one? LR: Typically, you anticipate 18 and then they're on their own. That's what I mean, but I understand that they don't always just leave. I have two children still with me. JH: Okay. So thinking back to when I was having the new baby, anticipating another 20 years with kids, it didn't seem strange because I still had a ten-year-old. It wasn't really a thought. I got pregnant after Trenton and had a miscarriage, but at the time when I was going through the miscarriage part, their dad made a comment that he was going to be too old to have any more kids. I was like, “Why? I don't understand.” I didn't get it. It didn't affect me in that way. “You're going to be 60.” “Okay. With a kid or without a kid, I'll still be 60.” But I figured it wasn't going to be a big deal. I didn't even think of it to make it a big deal, I guess. LR: How is that with your husband? How did that affect him? 70 JH: I think he struggled with having another one emotionally. [To Shannon] Do you think he did? SW: Yeah. JH: Okay. I didn't know if it's just my interpretation. SW: He felt old from the moment you had me. JH: He did, that's true. He felt like he was too old to be a new dad. LR: So at the time, was there anything you could do to ensure you didn't get pregnant again? JH: Well, duh. How much detail do you want me to go into? [Laughs] Some of these leading questions… [Everyone in the room is laughing.] LR: I'm thinking about birth control, I'm not thinking about… [Laughs] Wow, okay. JH: Okay, so you want me to go into birth control. I had birth control. LR: Dear God, thank you for that moment. I appreciate it. JH: Just to make it clear in the video for the rest of the world to hear and see, birth control is not always 100% effective. There's only one thing that is 100% effective. SW: Which is why I was offended that she got pregnant. LR: Yes. Okay. I was trying not to be leading in the question. I'm just trying to understand what options you have for birth control at the time, if it even was even an option before its legalization, if that was something that was mainstream like it is today. JH: You're speaking of aborting the pregnancy? LR: No, like having your tubes tied. JH: Oh, having the tubes tied. It was an option; they did have that. I never considered it. Don't know why I never considered it. TR: Not to dwell on this, but what about your husband? He could have also. 71 JH: He could have had a vasectomy. I think we did talk about vasectomy, and I'm not sure why, but it just didn't happen. LR: The reason why I'm thinking about this question is because of what's in the news right now, and it's a topic that's important right now. It's just something that was on my mind. So I apologize, I wasn't trying to create this wonderful, lovely moment. JH: We had a nice moment. LR: Yes. You all had a nice moment at my expense. Thank you. Oh, that was fantastic. Is there any other family story or instance you would like to share in Simi? JH: Maybe. LR: So how many miscarriages after Trenton did you have? JH: Just one more. I had one before Trenton. The type of birth control I was using was an implant, and I still got pregnant with that, but that was a miscarriage. The type of implant that I had, which I felt was very safe because it's all plastic, it wasn't metal. The other ones had metal, which I had heard punctured through things like brains, and I wasn't willing to have that implant put back in because the one I wanted didn't exist anymore. I don't know why. I didn't have the implant put back in, and we were trying other methods that obviously didn't work, and then Trenton came along. It was a big deal. LR: Well, I could only imagine. JH: I kind of thought it would be nice to have not Trenton grow up as an only child, but at the same time, their dad didn't think it was a good idea to have another one. LR: How old were you then? JH: 46. LR: That's just really hard on the body. JH: Oh, see, now that there's the thing. I'm not old. Even then, I wasn't old. LR: You're going to have to explain. Not old mentally, but your body is? 72 JH: No, my body's not old either. I'm still only 35 today. As we speak, I am 35. Unless you take me camping and hiking, then I turn into 212. It's a quick turnaround. So even then, I never thought of age as being that I was old. I wasn't too old to have a baby. Do I want to? I mean, I have things I want to do with my life, but at the same time, I've got a baby. Why not have one more? LR: And what year was Trenton born? JH: 1994. Kira was born in 1984. LR: Okay, wow. Any other story? JH: [To Shannon] Can you think of any other stories? SW: There's something fun that we did that I can't remember. JH: Well, coming to Utah every year, that was not fun, it was hard. We would come in the summer and then again at Christmas time. TR: Would you fly or drive? JH: Drive. LR: Oh, lovely. JH: Yeah, but we didn't do it every year because once you and Amber were both in high school; you had stuff going on during the Christmas break sometimes. So about that time, we stopped going every year. LR: Okay, so what type of vehicle would you drive? JH: We had a van. LR: Seatbelts, no seatbelts? JH: Seatbelts, they all had seatbelts. At that point, there was a law about seatbelts. SW: The law hadn't happened when Dad had his accident. JH: No, it hadn't. LR: In 1985? JH: 1985, yeah. That's true. There was not a law about seatbelts then, but we still had 73 them in seatbelts. LR: All right, so you raised your family. What year do you move to Texas? JH: 2010. LR: Really? All right, let's stay in Simi for just a little bit longer, because there's a lot that's happened. JH: Well, Shannon gets married. SW: Historically, yes. LR: Okay, so your oldest gets married. JH: Yes. Well, Shannon goes on a mission and comes home, and a couple of years later gets married. LR: Did you encourage your children to go on a mission? JH: No, not really. LR: It was just something that you completely just said, “It's up to you all?” JH: We never even talked about it, did we? SW: Yeah we did, kind of. Just from the fact that, “You can go and we'll help you pay for it.” JH: Well, we would support them if they chose, but it wasn't highly encouraged and it wasn't discouraged either. LR: So what year did Shannon get married? JH: [To Shannon] I don't know, what year did you get married? ‘98? SW: ‘99. LR: So let's see. In 1998, Trenton was five when you got married. I'm thinking about what's going to happen nationally that might affect you, still having a few children in school age, if that makes sense. JH: About what happened nationally? LR: Well, in 1999 was the Columbine mass shooting. 74 JH: Oh, okay. LR: Do you have any memories of how that affected you? JH: It didn't really affect me. I felt bad for the people involved. But prior to that, there was a bombing in Wyoming in Cokeville, so while we were even living here, that was over the mountain, over that direction. There was a bombing. A man came into the school, totally took all of the kids and put them in one classroom, and had gasoline bombs that he had made that he threatened the school with. I don't even remember why, but he was going to blow up the school. He had stuff he was asking for, didn't happen. The bombs did end up going off accidentally, and except for the man who made the bombs, nobody died, if I remember correctly. LR: Do you remember what year this was? JH: Nope. LR: So this impacted you more than Columbine? JH: No, no. LR: You just remembered it. JH: I just remember that there was the Columbine and I didn't know anybody. It was just things that happened, and bad things would happen, so it didn't affect me as far as I didn't become afraid of life. Bad things happened. SW: Well, we got bomb threats every year, couple times a year. JH: When I was in high school, we got bomb threats, so bomb threats were going on. It's nothing new. In fact, when I was at Box Elder High School, we would get bomb threats. We had sit-ins. Don't ask me why. I have no clue why we had the sit-ins, but there was something that somebody was upset about, and we're going to have a sit-in and just sit in front of the office and not let people in or out. So I just learned people have different ideas than me, and that was okay. They did their thing. I did my thing. Some people get shot. Some people don't. I can't say that it really 75 affected me. Even so, speed ahead. When we had 9/11, the Twin Towers, usually we don't have TV on when the kids get ready for school. I happened to be out of milk or something, so I ran to the grocery store real fast, so the kids had something for breakfast. I heard, and it took me a while to figure out, what am I hearing? Something bad is happening. I was just running to the store, picking up what I needed, coming home. We weren't that far away from the store, so you get five minutes here, five minutes there. So I came home to turn on the TV to try to connect the stuff I was hearing, and the Twin Towers… One plane had entered the Twin Towers, and then a little bit later, the second one. I think we were watching TV when the second one hit. I was working as a yard supervisor at the elementary school where Trenton was going to school. We're in California. This is going on in New York. This is telling you my attitude about bad things happening. They shut down the playground. “Why can't we let the kids go outside and play?” In my head, the kids need to be outside. “No, it's not safe.” “It's going on in New York. Do you know how many miles we are from New York, folks? It's not like it's around the corner.” That’s how I felt about the shootings, the bombings, other things that had happened. Keep your kids safe if there's an intimate threat, but if it's a million miles away, how are you going to protect somebody a million miles away? You're not. LR: Was there ever a moment when even when you felt like you guys needed to talk about 9/11, have that conversation? JH: I don't think we ever did. I didn't think it was a big deal. I mean, it was a big deal for New York. Granted, things were happening. The Vietnam War was a big deal, but I didn't feel like it. I didn't feel like there was enough fear in the home that the kids felt 76 like they needed to talk. I didn't sense that. [To Shannon] Do you guys feel like you needed to talk about it? SW: No, we talked to each other. We ignored you. JH: Okay. So you guys did talk about it. Well, you were married at the time. Tony would have been born. I forget where everybody was. So, yeah, if you're not living at home, then we wouldn't have. SW: No, I was living there. JH: Were you living there at that time? What do I remember? SW: Me and my siblings talked about it with Gavin and Amber. JH: Okay. So you guys talked, good. So I'm just left out of the loop. I didn't feel like they needed to talk. LR: That made me think of a question, but it's kind of going back a bit. JH: Okay. LR: I know it's towards the end of the Vietnam War, but was there ever a worry that your husband would be drafted? JH: No. LR: And you say that, why? JH: Well, his draft number was very low. I had friends that their draft numbers were in the teens, but never got drafted. He had a hearing loss, but he wanted to be in the Air Force. This was before he even found out that he had M.S. He wasn't allowed in the Air Force because of hearing loss, which wasn't that big of a hearing loss, but enough to keep him out of the Air Force. But no, never even thought about it, I guess because of friends. His numbers were lower. But I've always had this kind of attitude: what happens, happens, and if it does, why worry about it now? It’s something that might happen or might not happen. I've never been a worrier, probably much to my family’s… “Mom, why don't we do something about it?” 77 “Because I don't see it being a problem.” [To Shannon] Did it bug you that I was that way? [Shannon nods] Did it really? Good to know that. LR: All right. So what prompted the move to Texas? JH: My husband was working for Boeing. Boeing bought Rocketdyne; he started with Rocketdyne. He still stayed at the same company doing the same stuff, but now Boeing owns it instead of Rocketdyne. He was working on lasers and electro optics for missile defense and aero defense. They had some projects going on with lasers and the government, because they were mostly government-funded. They decided “We're done researching this. It's not worth our time anymore,” so they closed down that division and the other divisions in the California area. I’m not the slur of them, but they had an opening in Texas, and so he wanted to go to Texas. “You can stay with aero defense.” So he chose to take it and that's why we went. He had a choice in that. Your choice is “You can take early retirement, or…” He could have found another company in the California area, but he did look and he didn't see any other companies, and he knew he wasn't ready to retire, so why not go to Texas until he retired? So that was the choice. LR: How was his MS affecting him at that point? JH: Well, he was in a wheelchair full-time, but you're still capable. LR: I was listening to a podcast about the Americans with Disabilities Act, and you kind of mentioned it last time. The full act wasn't passed until 1990, but in 1985, when your husband had his accident, they had just passed the final form. Was that what he was able to utilize? JH: No, we didn't utilize any of that. It wasn't until probably after 1990. But he didn't have to access anything. I think the company he worked for was such a big company, they didn't want to get involved, so they were willing to make any accommodations they needed to without even asking for the accommodations. I 78 think because of the act, Boeing was a good company to stay on top of. LR: So they were already being proactive. JH: Yeah, very proactive. LR: I just found that interesting. JH: So there was only one time I ever used the words because of this act. In Texas, we bought a home in a… What do they call it, where they can control what your house color is and what your lawn is like? TR: HOA. JH: HOA, thank you. We bought a home in an HOA area, and we needed to change and put ramps going into the house, so we needed some more cement. We needed to take out the stairs going up to the front door and we had to get approval from HOA. Well, HOA was kind of dragging their heels on their approval, almost denying it. So I sent them what we proposed and who was doing it, and they came back and said, “No.” I send it again, and I said, “Because of the Americans with Disabilities Act, we need to have this.” They came back and they dragged their feet, and I kept sending them letters. “We will have to take action if you don't allow us entry into our home.” They finally said, “Okay, fine, you can tear out the stairs and put a ramp.” But that was the only time I've ever threatened anything. LR: So where in Texas did you move? JH: We lived in Allen, Texas, just outside of Dallas. LR: And your husband worked for? JH: He worked for Boeing still, but Boeing had contracted to Raytheon, so technically, he was being paid by Boeing under Raytheon's direction. LR: Okay, and was he doing the same type of work? 79 JH: Not sure. I have no idea. LR: Still a top-secret sort of thing? JH: Yeah, it was just top secret stuff, so I don't know what they were working on. I think it was still in the aero defense. LR: So you're in Texas in 2010; that means Trenton would have been 14. JH: Yeah, he was a sophomore in high school. LR: Was he the only kid that moved with you? JH: Yeah, everybody else was married. LR: Okay. So now you literally are almost an empty-nester. You have one child left. JH: Yes. LR: What are you doing in Texas? Did you get a job? JH: What did I do? I did not get a job. I did become relief society president while I was there. I know I kept myself busy, but I don't know what I was doing, looking back. SW: Serving everyone. JH: Maybe, I don't remember. LR: How is it different in Texas from California? JH: Hotter was hotter in Texas and colder was colder. Winters, we had ice storms, which I had never experienced even living here. Here you had the snow, but the ice storms were different. Fact, one year we had a full-blown rose bush. Ice storm hit, and the rose was just perfectly preserved in ice. It was beautiful. That's how fast the ice storm would hit. It would be raining and then freezing immediately. Like, “This is weird.” LR: What about culturally? JH: Culturally? LR: Did you notice anything different? JH: I noticed people, even more so than in Utah, they would talk about religion. You'd 80 go to the grocery store, you'd just meet somebody in the street. They would always tell you, “Have a blessed day,” or “God bless you.” There was one time when Rick was coming home from work, stopped at the gas station and was going to get out and get gas. A guy came up behind him and he says, “Sir, get back in your car. I will do this.” Rick said, “I can do it.” He yells, “No, I just came from church and they told me I need to serve. I am serving you.” They were just very spiritually oriented, more so. They didn't care what church you went to. I remember I did start going to a Bible study that was at the Methodist Church with a Baptist minister. It was a women's Bible study, so the minister was a female that conducted the service. They didn't care what church you went to. If you were seeking God, you were seeking God. That's all we care about. It was nice. They were a lot more open on the streets, talking religion than even here. It's funny. Wednesday nights were youth nights, so all churches had their youth night on Wednesday nights, where you didn't have any little league. The schools did not have any after-school practice sports. Wednesday nights were youth night for the churches, so that was kind of weird. LR: Was it just the community you were living in that did that? JH: Yeah, amongst the town of Allen. I'm guessing, I didn't know any different outside. I know Allen had youth nights, so that was kind of fun. TR: Did you notice, within the LDS community, any sort of cultural difference from California LDS to Texas LDS? JH: A little. I think Texas LDS was a lot more, “The ward is your family.” California, a little bit. Utah. not at all. I noticed that a lot more, we were accepted. We were very accepted in California. Everybody went to everybody's baptism. You have a little 81 eight-year-old being baptized, the whole ward was there. You have a convert being baptized, the whole ward was there. Half the time, the whole stake was there for that one. There was a lot more unity, I think, in Texas. It could be because of the culture of religion in general too. A lot of people that grew up with that kind of environment. LR: Were the wards smaller or geographically larger in Texas? JH: In Texas, a little geographically larger than in California, but both of them are larger than in Utah. You got two blocks in Utah. LR: Right. I like that. That's funny. JH: Accurate. LR: How long were you in Texas? JH: We were there for six, almost seven years. We moved in January of 2010 and then we left October of 2016. LR: So a little over six years. Did he retire then, your husband? JH: He did. LR: In 2016? JH: In 2016 he retired. LR: What was the plan? To go back to California? JH: To California, yeah. LR: And what happened? JH: Nobody lived in California anymore. Shannon and Amber were already here when we left to go to Texas, so that left Gavin and Kira in California. Kira—Anthony decided to go to law school at BYU, and then just stayed after finishing law school. Then Gavin decided to come here so he could continue working from home, because he couldn't work from home anymore from California. So that meant everybody was now in Utah. Kind of pointless to go back to California. Plus, Rick 82 says, “You're going to need help with me.” I go, “No. I don't understand.” LR: Why? JH: His health was going down. While we were in Texas, he got cancer, and then he had some eye issues where he had surgery on his eyes. That last year of work, I think, was what made him decide to quit work. I was driving him to-and-from work every day because he couldn't seem to go to work. So he thought, “Okay, I might as well retire. I can't keep this up.” LR: What type of cancer did he get? JH: He had stomach cancer, large B-cell lymphoma in his stomach. LR: At the time, what was the prognosis, remission rate, type of thing? JH: The doctor who found the cancer was really kind of a funny guy looking back on it. He found the cancer and he said, “Mr. Harry, you have stomach cancer and it does not look good.” I was like, “That doesn't sound good.” We’re in the hospital. Rick gets on the phone to look up stomach cancer. Stomach cancer has almost a zero percent survival rate. Like, “Oh, this is interesting.” So we go away thinking this is his death sentence, how he's going to die. We get in touch with the oncologist, meet with the oncologist. They did some biopsies to know what type of cancer. So there's stomach cancer, which is one type of cancer, or there's large B-cell lymphoma in the stomach, which is not the stomach cancer. It’s different, it's lymphoma. LR: I didn't realize there were lymph nodes in the stomach. JH: Yeah, I didn't either. LR: Oh, interesting. JH: Yeah. Anyway, that's the cancer he had, also the oncologist said, “This is treatable, this one is not. So if you're going to get cancer, this is the one to get.” He went 83 through a year of chemo and then a few months of radiation. LR: And was this all in Texas? JH: This is all in Texas, and they determined they got it. He did have a rough year. He was in and out of the hospital a lot. He was in the hospital almost 50% of the time that year. LR: So was it just you then taking care of him? JH: And Trenton. LR: And Trenton. Were just the two of you doing all the work? Did anyone come and help? JH: No. There was nothing to really do. LR: Okay. That was my thought, that you probably were, "I'm fine, stay home." JH: “I'm fine.” Yeah, well, we were. There really wasn't anything. LR: Okay. So your husband hadn't retired when he had cancer. He's still working. How was that with his job? JH: He kept saying, “I gotta go to work. I gotta go to work.” The doctor said, "Don't you have disability?" He goes, "Yeah, I hadn't thought of that." So he did take some long-term disability, which, I think about ten months is what he took off. Then he went back to work after. LR: How much longer did he work? JH: Okay. So he found the cancer in 2013, so two more years. LR: So once he retired, where do you want to move to? JH: We still had our home in California. I was ready to go back to California. That's what I thought our plans were. LR: Why didn't you? JH: Because all the kids were here in Utah, so that was our reasoning. 84 SW: Our reasoning, or Dad’s? JH: Dad's, but he was right. LR: Okay. [To Jeri, regarding Shannon] I love how leading she can be. SW: I'm allowed to be leading. LR: So she's sending these texts, and I'm doing my best to not be leading, and to just allow you to tell the story. JH: Good luck. My memory… if it happened more than five minutes ago, I forgot, so you need to remind me what happened more than five minutes ago. LR: Well, she's doing a great job. JH: Good, good. LR: All right. So I didn't realize you kept your home in California. Did you just rent it out? JH: In fact, I still have it. LR: Oh, you still own it? JH: Yes. TR: Planning on going back anytime soon? JH: No, just waiting until the time is right to sell it. LR: Gotcha. Have you always been in this home since you moved back? JH: Since we moved back, yes. LR: What prompted you to this area specifically? JH: Because this home was available. I didn't even know this area existed until Gavin happened to see it online and said, “Mom, I think you'd like this house.” The pictures that they had, I think I went to, “Let's go look at it.” It was empty; the people had already moved out. That night, Gavin found it, and the whole family came up to look at it. It was just, “Yup, this is the one.” TR: Are all your kids in this general area? JH: Yeah. Shannon and Amber are roughly 20 minutes to a half hour away. Gavin, too, 85 so the three of them are within a half hour and then Kira's in Salt Lake, so about 50 minutes. LR: And Trenton still lives here? JH: Trenton still lives here. LR: Okay. Can we take a quick break? JH: Yes, I could use a break. [Recording pauses for a break] [Recording begins again] LR: All right, I'm starting back up after taking a break. We were reminding ourselves about some big events that happened in California when you were there. We're going to rewind a little bit. I'm thinking the most important earthquake was the 1989 one, but you're going to talk about both. You're in L.A.; the 1989 earthquake happened more up…? JH: San Francisco area. LR: Okay. How much did that one affect you? JH: Not much. We felt it, but it wasn't… “Oh, an earthquake.” LR: Oh, so like, “Another one’s happening.” JH: Yeah. It wasn't a biggie. Nothing was destroyed, nothing was damaged. We didn't even have things fall off the wall. It was just the shake. Kind of like the earthquake we had here in 2020. Not terrible, but enough to know we had one. We did watch the water in the swimming pool kind of slosh back and forth. But then a few years later, jump to 1994, and L.A. had a big earthquake where roads collapsed. A lot of houses collapsed. Our house was fine. We felt it, big time. We lost power. But the biggest damage: we had a cup fall from shelf one as the cupboard door fell, knocking it back into shelf two, and it broke the handle. One cup. That was the extent of our damage. LR: In the 1994 earthquake? 86 JH: In the 1994 earthquake. But there were houses around us that were destroyed, others were condemned, so we fared really fairly well. Rick was out of town in New York on a business trip at that time, so it was just the kids and I home. I was so thankful it was just the kids and I home. We could do our own thing our way. SW: Dad would have been on the freeway that collapsed too. He would have been headed to work. JH: He would have been, it's true. He would have been heading toward work at that time. In fact, he called us, and at the time he called there were no roads open going into Simi. I says, “It won't do you any good to come home. You can't get here.” So Simi was pretty much closed off. They did within 24 hours, a couple of days, and then they opened up everything. So by the time your dad came home, we could get home. LR: So when we're talking about the roads collapsing, is that where they have the stacked freeway? JH: Yeah, I believe it was the 5 collapsed down. There was a police officer who was on it at the time of the earthquake that was thrown off. He was on a motorcycle. He was thrown off and killed when the freeway collapsed. It wasn't just him, but I remember specifically there was a motorcycle policeman that was killed. Apartment buildings collapsed. Just a lot of damage. [To Shannon] In fact, I remember you and Amber, after it happened, went out to find donuts because it was early in the morning, I think they were sold out pretty much, weren't they? SW: No, I didn't go, I didn't have any gas. JH: Did you? The donuts weren't that far away. I remember you guys leaving. You guys drove away somewhere. SW: Must have used your car, because I was out of gas for two weeks ‘cause they didn't have any gas. 87 JH: Yeah, there was no electricity; you couldn't pump the gas. LR: Okay, was this before or after Trenton was born? JH: This is before Trent was born. LR: So you were pregnant? JH: I was pregnant. That was January. It was a month before I told everybody I was pregnant. Luckily, school was out that day because it was President's Day. There was no school that day. Simi High School was not reopened for the rest of the year, and so there was two high schools in town. Simi High School came over to Royal, where you guys were going to school, and Royal High School was cut to a half day so Simi could have a second half of the day. LR: So they had to condemn Simi High School? JH: Yeah. LR: Well, now, wait a minute. You had a ten-year-old. JH: I did, Kira. LR: Did you have kids in high school? JH: Shannon and Amber were in high school, and Gavin would have been in junior high. So two high school, junior high, and elementary. LR: Did they go to school the next day? JH: No, you guys didn't go to school for like a week. SW: No, it was two weeks. JH: Two weeks, a couple of weeks, yeah. SW: The aftershocks were pretty bad. JH: Yeah, and that lasted for a couple of weeks. LR: So that really affected you guys. JH: It was a big one. SW: It was the same magnitude as the San Francisco one. When it first happened, they 88 labeled it this much higher. JH: Yeah, they cut it down, but I know because we were so far away from San Francisco. It didn't affect us like it did in your backyard. LR: Right, that makes sense. SW: It's only a 6.7 now. JH: It was a 7.1 or 7.5 and then went down to a 6. LR: This is going to sound like a really weird question, but after that and the earthquakes, I thought it was a little… I mean, you had earthquakes all the time in California, right? JH: Yeah. LR: Was there always that fear of, “Oh, my God, this is the next one?” JH: No. LR: No, you just went back to “All is okay,” normal. JH: One thing I did notice, though, was the aftershocks. I don't know. [To Shannon] Do you remember we all slept in the living room for a couple of days, except for you? Your bedroom was downstairs. Everybody who's bedroom was upstairs, we slept in the living room. We had a couch pulled out into a bed, so we slept in the living room. Shannon was just not far in her bedroom. SW: Being the 18-year-old. LR: Okay, gotcha. JH: But I remember laying there, and you heard a little bit of a boom just before the shaking, so I could warn the other kids. I heard a little, I said, “Okay, we're going to have another one.” I don't know if the kids caught on what I was hearing, but I heard it before I felt it. It was very interesting. SW: For her, it was interesting. But I had friends who, that scared them. JH: The boom, the sound. They knew it was coming. 89 SW: They were all sleeping outside. They were so afraid. It was interesting for her. My friends were terrified. JH: People react different, and I don't know why. I don't know why I look at things matter-of-factly, but I do, and it served me well, but apparently it hasn't served you guys well. I'm sorry that Shannon had problems, but I think that's from when I was little. Things were because they were. I didn't try to change things, which a lot of people try to change. I just accept it and moved on. TF: I'm just curious, when you'd hear the boom, would you run for cover or you'd just sit there? JH: No, I just lay there and I just say, “Okay, guys, we're going to get another one,” as we're just laying kids on the bed. I was in the recliner chair, and it was just to let you know, not panic. “Here comes another one.” No, there is no no reason to run for cover. What are you going to cover from? LR: They’re just aftershocks, no big deal. JH: Yeah. I remember after your dad got home, we had a really good aftershock. He was walking down the street. He had MS at this time, but he was still walking. The road was going, and he was trying to hold his balance. He just stopped walking so we could ride it out. LR: Ride it out, yeah. How long after the earthquake was he able to make it home? JH: We were just saying a couple of days. SW: It was just the end of his business trip. LR: Okay, so he was able to. The roads were okay? JH: Yeah. I told him, “Don't come now,” so by the time he did come home—I'm thinking two or three days—the roads had a path. They had some of the roads open, not all the roads. The 5 didn't open for a long time, but there's ways to get around. LR: And how did that affect his commute for work? 90 JH: He didn't go to work for about a week after. Nobody did anything. LR: Was it just that they weren't able to get to work, or that there was just too much to do? JH: There was just too much to do, cleaning things up. But up on the hill—this is all hearsay. There was still pencils on the desk. That mountain didn't really move. He was working at the top of the hill. We just called it Santa Suzanna Pass. He was working up on Santa Susana Pass, and because of the rock that was, things really didn't move. Desks still have pencils on them. We don't know about that one. LR: Okay. Thank you for sharing that. That's really cool. I would not have even thought about that. JH: That was the interesting part of life. LR: So fast-forwarding back to 2016. JH: When we moved here. LR: You moved here, settled in. JH: Well, I think a big part of moving back here: in February or March of 2016, Rick's mom dies, and then in May, my mom dies. There's like two months. Hers was like the end of February, maybe the first part of March. [To Shannon] Do you remember when Grandma Moody died? SW: No. I should. It was before June. JH: Well, yes, it was before May, because that's when my mom died. My mom died in the first part of May. SW: June was when we finished the book. That's all. JH: Oh, okay. She died before her book was finished. So within two months, my mom and Rick's mom died. I think coming out here for one funeral and then for my mom, I spent about a month out here helping my mom before she died, and then sticking around to help my sister get the house and stuff ready to sell. I would be looking for 91 houses, knowing Rick has already retired at this point. I think that was a factor when we moved, because I was out here all the time for that couple of months. SW: And the year before, you were out here while your dad was passing. JH: He passed two years before. But that had nothing to do with finding a house. SW: No, but she was here constantly. JH: Yeah, I was here. LR: So when did you actually move into this house in 2016? JH: November 4th, our furniture arrived, but we closed on September 30th. Trenton stayed here with the brothers-in-law, and they got the bathroom fixed up for Rick and a ramp built. [To Shannon] You're shaking your head. What am I missing? SW: No, I'm shaking my head at the bathroom. JH: Okay, we won't go into… the bathroom did get built. We not going to go into how Gavin and Trenton fell through the floor trying to rebuild a bathroom. LR: Okay. So there's a lot of construction mishaps when you're trying to remodel the house, prepare it to move in. JH: Yes, there was. Rick and I were in Texas selling the house and waiting for that one to close, so we weren't even here. We just left it up to all of the sons and sons-inlaw to do their thing. “This is what we want,” and it was like, “We need a shower that we can roll in a wheelchair, and make it big enough so the wheelchair can maneuver. And we need a ramp built.” I guess Tony and Trenton built the ramp. “You guys do it. We'll be here when we get the house sold in about a month.” LR: So all this time when your mom and Rick's mom had died, you guys were still in Texas? JH: We were still in Texas. LR: Were you the only one coming out, or did Rick come out for his mom's funeral? JH: Rick came out for his mom's funeral. Fact, we were in the car. We knew she was 92 sick, not doing well, so we decided to leave to come out. We drove. It was a lot easier to drive with Rick than it was to try to fly. We had things loaded up, pulling out of the driveway, when we got word that she had just died. We thought we had a couple of days still, but we didn't. LR: So November 2016, you move in. What was it like coming back to Utah? JH: I love the area. The area is a beautiful area. It was nice to be back with the kids. LR: We're leaving it at that. Okay, so you enjoy being around your children and in the area? JH: Yeah. LR: Was it hard coming back to the Utah culture? JH: It was, but the longer I'm in it, I'm understanding it. I didn't understand it before. LR: Before what? JH: Before, when we lived here. I mean, if you remember way back on the first day we started doing this, I said I was glad to get away from Utah, not understanding exactly why. Some of it was to get away from family, but some of it was to get away from culture. But now coming back, I'm seeing a little different perspective on the culture in that. There's people my age and older that still hang out with their high school friends, so to try to break into that group doesn't happen. They have their high school friends, they have their family, and they really don't have time for new people. In California, somebody new moves in, everybody welcomes them, neighbors. You don't even have to be a member of the church. We were very welcomed into our neighborhood, and it wasn't our church. The neighborhood was very welcoming. Where here, I don't think people have time to welcome strangers, because they have their friends from 100 years ago and their family, and family is a big part. I see myself kind of falling into that same mentality, because I have family 93 here, whereas if you're living away from family, your neighborhood and church become your family. LR: A question I am now just remembering to ask, and I apologize if this went back: what was it like for you to become a grandma? JH: I wasn't old enough to be a grandma, but it was fun. Having Fern was fun. It was fun seeing Shannon as a mom. But as far as being a grandma, I wasn't a grandma. We had a hard time. “What do we call you?” “Well, don't call me Grandma. I'm not a grandma.” It was a different mindset, but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed looking at it from a distance, like Shannon and Jes… Fern. SW: It was Jessica then. I've even been given permission to call her Jessica as a baby. JH: Oh, have you? Okay, so that was fun. I still have the t-shirt you gave me that has a heart and Jessica's picture in the middle. Don't remember what it says, but I still have that t-shirt. LR: Okay, so Trenton was three then? JH: He would have been five when Jessica came. LR: When was Jessica born? SW: ‘99. LR: Oh yeah, he was five. So you have a five-year-old and then a grandbaby. JH: Yes. LR: Was that…? I'm trying to wrap my brain around that. JH: I just flowed with it. LR: Well, that seems to be your way. JH: Yeah. Shannon went back to work, and I watched Jessica. Jessica and I would go for a walk to pick up Trenton from school, so I put her in a stroller and we'd go for a walk. Trenton had fun pushing her home. He was the uncle, and he knew he was 94 the uncle. He took it as, “I'm the uncle.” LR: That really is adorable. JH: It was really cute. LR: So out of curiosity, are Jessica—well, Fern now—and Trenton, are they more uncle/niece or siblings? JH: More siblings wouldn't you say? [To Shannon] Or nothing at all? SW: That would be more like it. JH: Okay. I wouldn't say they considered themselves niece and uncle. SW: No, Tony doesn't either. LR: Well, Tony's only a year younger. LR: In 2001 right? Okay. Now that you have a little bit more perspective and time, what do you think about being a grandma now? JH: Oh, I enjoy it. I like having the kids come around, getting to know what they're doing, but not really being a part of their life. You're a part of their life more from an outsider perspective. When we went to that play, it was fun having them all there— well, not all of them were there, but all those that were there, it was me watching their reaction to the play and having things they enjoy. I can enjoy it through their eyes. SW: We went to a play on Saturday. That's the play you're talking about. JH: Yes, so very recently. To be able to interact with them is fun. One of the flaws I feel like I have is I'm standoffish. I stand off and observe instead of get in and get involved; I feel more comfortable doing that, but I want to get in. I want to be a part of their life. I want to do things with them, but I feel like that's not my place, so I stand off and watch from a distance. That's just my personality. I don't force myself onto anybody. I don't want to. SW: You got to tell them my kids’ name. 95 JH: So instead of being called Grandma, I was Grandma-Mom. When I was watching Jessica, Shannon went back to work after having a baby. Kids start calling you Mom; "Mom" starts coming out, and it just kind of morphed into "Grandma-Mom." This is mom, this is Grandma-Mom. So my email is Grandma-Mom. LR: That's really cute. Are Jessica and Tony the only ones to call you Grandma-Mom? JH: No, other ones do off-and on. I don't even know that anybody calls me much of anything anymore. It's just, "Hey, guess what?" SW: I know when Amber’s kids are talking about you, it's Grandma-Mom. JH: Yeah, but to me, it's not, “Hey, Grandma,” it's just, “Hey, guess what?” TF: How many grandchildren? JH: 15/16, because Fern has gotten married, so we have counted Raymond as number 16. No great-grandkids even in the picture. No, no. SW: And only one in-law. LR: All right. So 15/16. JH: In fact, I do tell everybody 16. SW: I think that's right; I tell everyone I have three kids. JH: Okay, good. LR: Yeah, that works. So you're here in Utah for a total of four years before COVID. JH: Yeah. Not quite a full four years. LR: How was the transition for your husband, moving back here? JH: I think he transitioned just fine. Did you see any issues with his transition? That was not because of the transition; I think he was going downhill when we left Texas, and I think he saw that. He saw himself going downhill, and that's why he wanted to be here, where the kids could help me with him. SW: The funny thing was that I know he told us he decided he needed to move here because he wanted to be around the grandkids while he had time left. 96 JH: In fact, he never said that to me, but I could see that. I could see he definitely wanted to be around grandkids. He did like it when you guys were up, except for towards the end, he started hibernating farther. Even before COVID hit, he started just spending time out in the shed; it was getting too chaotic for him in the house. LR: Is there any story from 2016 ‘til COVID starting that stands out that you want to share? JH: [To Shannon] Did anything happen? [To Lorrie] She's my memory right there. SW: Let's see. 2019, Dad is diagnosed with a second cancer. Then he gets diagnosed with a third cancer. Then he dies. LR: Well, he died after COVID started. SW: But 2020 still; you said to 2020. LR: Okay. JH: From 2016 to 2020, he had a lot of time spent in the hospital again, just going through being diagnosed with cancer. LR: Did he do the treatments for that? JH: He did. This time it's bladder cancer, and then with radiation and chemo they says, “Well, we think we got it, but we know it will come back.” At that point, they knew it was going to come back. It was just a matter of time, so they were going to check him periodically. About six months after he was okay, they found cancer and said he had about six months to live because it was metastasized. They knew this cancer would metastasize. He managed to make it a year instead of six months. LR: So, just a little rundown cause we're still living in it, but with everything shutting down with COVID in March of 2020, this big push to—this is going to sound terrible—be mindful of our elders and don't go visit them. Keep your distance. JH: Speaking from one of the elders, I thought it was a bunch of bullcrap. From the time I first see on the news, people in Japan wearing masks, I thought, “They're idiots. 97 Luckily, we're here. It'll never happen here.” Then I'm hearing, “Mask up.” Fact, Shannon comes over and teaches me how to make masks, and I says, “This is full of bologna. I'm not wearing a mask. I'll make masks to help out.” SW: Actually, you came to my house to make them. JH: I did, but you showed me. “Okay, but I’m not. I'll make them, because some people are just weird enough to think they need them. I'll help them out.” Then all of a sudden, you're not allowed anywhere unless you have one on. Are you crazy? You're telling me I can't walk in the store unless I have a mask on? Fine. That's my attitude; has been my attitude all along. LR: Okay. JH: So, yes, speaking from the elders’ point of view, [sarcastically] yes, definitely protect us. No. LR: So did your grandkids keep a distance, or were you just like, “Get the heck over here! I want to see you.” JH: Nobody would come over. LR: Oh, okay. SW: Well, Dad was dealing with all of the cancer treatment. JH: And you guys were trying to protect him. When he finally went to the hospital for the last time and we knew that he was on his way out, we finally just brought him home so everybody could come over, because you can’t go see him in the hospital. I was given an option. We could put him in a rehab and have a feeding tube in the rehab, or come home with a feeding tube, which is what we kind of opted for, until he got home. Pretty sure he had a stroke on the way home. He had a droopy face and things just looked like he had a stroke. We just opted not to continue the feeding tube, just put him on hospice. LR: So if I'm remembering correctly, it was in November of 2020. 98 JH: It was November 6th. LR: I remember how hard that was on Shannon when her dad died, and feeling very helpless because I wanted to do more for her. JH: Yeah. There's nothing anyone can do. LR: I know it's a dumb question, but how did his death affect you? JH: A little bit of a relief. A lot of concern about being there for the kids. Going back to the, “Whatever happens, happens,” I feel like sometimes I come across cold. But I didn't know how else to react. It was his time to go. I'm glad he went. I know there are things that I wish I would have done different. Hindsight, going through it, I wouldn't have done anything different. I don't know how I could, knowing my personality; I don't know how I would have done anything different, but I think I should have done things differently. It makes no sense. There's no logic in here at all, but I do feel bad. It was harder on the kids than it was me. Harder on Gavin, a little bit on Trenton too. I think the boys felt it more. LR: I'm still kind of going through the history of it, so forgive me. This is the historian in me wanting to know. What were some of the restrictions placed upon you, having a funeral in the midst of this global pandemic? JH: They had sort of relaxed things just prior, but not big time. Just a little bit. As we're planning the funeral, they come out and say, “No more meetings.” I think they opened it up to 50 people, and then they shut it back down to, “No, we can't have it here,” the day of the funeral. Fact, I called the funeral home and says, “How is this affecting us?” He goes, “Don't worry about it.” SW: I thought he said, “Contact with the governor,” and the governor said, “We are not going to punish funerals.” JH: We just had an outside gravesite, and then we came here and had a little open 99 house, just out on the driveway. I felt like it was very nice. SW: Nobody got COVID. JH: No, nobody got COVID. TF: Was it just at the cemetery? JH: Yeah, just the local cemetery, close by. A five-minute drive. LR: Now again, this is the historian in me. Was there a wait time between the staff and the funeral home that came and picked him up and all of that? JH: Not at all. We called when he died because we were on hospice. All I had to do is call the hospice, tell them what funeral home, and the nurses were here within the hour. The funeral home was a little behind. It was still early morning. [To Shannon] Your dad died at seven. SW: Seven in the morning? JH: In the morning. Or six, something that was close to seven. SW: What did you guys do when none of the grandkids could come over? JH: Wait until we Zoomed. For me, life didn't change much. I'd go out and go for walks. I still went to the grocery store, so I had to put on a stupid mask. I still went shopping. I still did life pretty much as usual, with an exception of that dumb mask I had to carry around with me. Your dad, pretty much his life as usual, sat at home, read his books, sat on his tablet, tried to stay warm in the shed with the heater full-blast. Really, life didn't change much, except for kids. Nobody came over. SW: Okay. Every Sunday, we tried to do Zoom activities. JH: Yes, Sundays were Zoom meetings. Shannon was really good about planning different things. We all had something to do to keep connected. It was cool. It was great. I really look forward to Zooms. SW: That was the only time you saw anyone. JH: That's true. 100 LR: Now that we're kind of on the other side, not completely, but kind of. JH: Yeah, we don't have masks anymore. LR: This is true. TF: For now. JH: Hey, no, don't go there [laughs]. LR: How is life different for you now, or how is it the same? JH: Now, life is very different. I don't have doctor appointments to go to. SW: That was ‘cause of COVID? JH: No. With your dad, not COVID. I don't know that COVID has changed a whole lot for me, but life without Rick… Every now and then, there's things you would like to ask, and it's like he's not there to ask. “Oh, wait, I can't say that either. He’s not here.” It's just little things. I do the same thing with my mom, too. “Oh, I wish I knew about… Oh, can't ask her. She's gone.” It is a little more lonely, but I still have Trenton here. I still have the kids close by, but there you feel there is a sense of, something is still missing. Not quite there. SW: Well, we don't have Dad at the family gatherings. JH: That's true. We used to get together every Sunday before COVID. Everybody was over every Sunday. I liked it, but I think it was to see Dad because he couldn't go in anybody's houses, really. The only way he could see them is if they came here. I do miss… Actually, I don't miss the big family gatherings. I don't miss them every week. We still do them once a month or once every couple of months, which is good. I think with COVID, that did change to where I got used to the quiet, which was weird to even say that. LR: I have two questions left, believe it or not. JH: Okay. We're almost at the end. LR: Is there any other story or memory you want to share before I ask the questions? 101 JH: I'll remember it as soon as you leave. Not right now. LR: So first question. If you were to talk with the young generation today or your younger self, what advice would you give them? JH: Oh, you should have warned me so I could dwell on this one. I don't know how I would change it, but I know I would like to have more personal connections with everyone. I don't know how they go about doing that, but I would love to do it. Something I've always done is don't take life too personal or too serious. Just roll with it, which is what I've always kind of done, which has bugged some people. LR: As you look at Shannon. JH: As I look at Shannon. I think it bugged your dad, too, that I didn't take life seriously, but that's how I got through life. You talk about all these things that happened in the world and I couldn't take ‘em serious. I think if I did take them seriously, I might be a lot more afraid of the world, which I don't want. I don't want to be afraid of the world. I want to experience what the world has to offer without being afraid of it. LR: Last question. We ready for the last question? JH: Go. LR: What do you hope your legacy is? JH: Ha! I've never thought of leaving a legacy, but I know we all do. I think service is a big legacy. I want everybody to love people enough to want to make their life easier. Just to help out everybody. Don't know how else to say it. LR: I don't think you need to say anything else, that's pretty good. JH: Okay. I just hope I haven't made life more difficult, and I have been able to make life easier for others. SW: She passed on the service things to all of her kids. JH: Good, good. LR: I've witnessed that first-hand. 102 JH: Good. My work here is done. LR: That's awesome. Well, Jeri, thank you so much for your willingness to share your story. JH: Thank you. 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