According to one Xmas present Suzanne gave me, my behavior last year got me onto Santa’s “naughty” list. I tried so hard to be good, but I won’t argue about the results. I trust Suzanne’s judgment. I didn’t just get a regular lump o’ coal for Christmas, I received a “Big Ass” lump o’ coal—in the form of an oversized bar o’ soap. I know the lump o’ coal soap is a sign I was bad, but the soap smells so heavenly I might want to earn a spot on the naughty list again this year, so I can be gifted another mellifluous “big ass” bar o’ charcoal soap for the sole purpose of washing all of my bad away.
It might surprise y’all to know that Mom has surpassed me in being naughty every year, for decades. She’s better than me, even at being bad. Every Christmas, she got an entire mountain of coal as a present from Dad. Visions of toasty fires, 24/7, in our living room fireplace danced in her head. I kid you not: Mom started a fire in the fireplace upon the occasion of late September’s first chill, and that fire kept going until at least April. She took great pleasure in feeding the fireplace one lump o’ her naughty coal after another, through winter and far into spring if the temperatures were still wintry. Yup, around the holiday season, Dutson’s would deliver at least a half-ton of coal chunks behind our house. The taller the coal pile, the happier Mom was with it. Mom thought it was the best gift every year. She tended to the fire in the fireplace as if it were one of her grandkids learning to swim. She kept her eye on the fire’s progress, and fulfilled its every need. Mom’s fire always gave off perfect warmth and was maximum gorgeous. She loved her lumps of coal, and she loved telling people that a pile o’ coal was the Christmas gift Dad thought she deserved. 🔥
Although my dad died 15 years ago on Dec. 4th, yesterday is also a happily significant date in our family because my grandnephew, Bosten, was born on this date a few years before Dad’s passing—so the two of them got to pal around with each other often. So Merry Birthday, Bos! I will not state Bosten’s age here, because it makes his mom, Kathi, feel too, too old. I will say that Bosten is still in high school, so that gives those of you outside the family a clue about how many trips he’s made around the sun. When Bosten’s sister, Ronni, was born a few months after Dad passed, her parents named her after Dad. When Ronni learned to talk, and the topic of Dad came up, she was adamant that she had spent time with him and knew exactly who he was. I don’t doubt it one bit.
Also, yesterday, I “decorated” the pantry for Christmas. It was easy. I simply put the green Folgers (decaffed) coffee right next to the red Folgers (caffed) coffee. Bite Me Tie o’ the Day was a bigly help to me in that never-did-it-before decorating job. 👔
I have so much more to say about the banning of books. I could write forever more addressing the topic. However, I think this will be final post about the subject—for the time being, at least. I’m sure you get the gist of how rabidly I’m against banning books. Y’all are probably ready for me to move on to lighter subjects. With that in mind, I’m wearing my rafter o’ turkeys Tie o’ the Day, in honor of Thanksgiving being just two days away.
I am writing this post about my own experience, as just one example. It’s about books and being gay. I have no so-called “gay agenda,” nor have I ever come across one, so I doubt such a thing exists—except in the mouths of pundits on TV. I am merely telling my story to make a point or two, and my story happens to be about books in a school library, and growing up as a gay teenager in a rural Utah high school, during the late 70’s and early 80’s. I’m sorry if my life offends you. I’m not sorry for my life, mind you.
Back in the olden days, when I was young, Delta High School was not just the high school. It was also the junior high. Students moved from 6th grade directly to the high school back then. 7th and 8th graders were not technically high schoolers, but we were in the high school with them. Grades 7-12 used the high school library. There were no computers there at the time. There was no internet. There were wooden card catalogs full of index cards for each book. There were books, and records, and newspapers, and prints of masterpieces of art in the DHS library. I spent my lunch time there almost every day.
Miss Hansen was in charge when I got there in 7th grade. She was an outstanding librarian, therefore, we were blessed to have a fine library—much better than libraries in schools of similar size, i.e., libraries in other small rural high schools in Utah. I know our library was exceptional because when we traveled to the other schools to compete with them in sports, I somehow managed to sneak into the opposing schools’ libraries to see what they had to offer. The DHS library out-classed them all. The DHS library was where, when I was in 7th grade, I found a novel about the post-Civil War era, which name I don’t now recall, and I first learned about Juneteenth, for example. It’s not a new “woke” thing. It’s a celebration that has been in existence since 1866. Because of that library, I have known of it since I was 12. I had no way of knowing back then that, in the 90’s, I would teach in a middle school whose student population was 100% black. I learned about black history and culture from books in the DHS library. Little did I know, those books had prepared me to be a better teacher for my middle school students. Little tidbits of what I learned in the DHS library about a culture so mysterious and far removed from my own rural, white, Mormon culture I grew up in helped me to connect with my students in ways other white teachers in my school could not. In the DHS library, I devoured every library book I had time for—about a multitude of subjects.
But the splendid DHS library lacked a key thing. It did not have any book that connected to me in one key way. I knew I was gay and I was struggling to understand it, but I found no book that reflected what I was going through. Not one. There was no character in a book that I could identify with. According to the books on the shelves, I did not even exist—or maybe I wasn’t supposed to exist. I was a good student. I was a good Mormon. But I did not exist on the shelves of my own school’s library. Nobody talked about being “gay” seriously at that time. I myself tried mightily to ignore that part of me. There were plenty of comments and jokes, though. Some were aimed directly at me. Some were just teenagers cracking gay jokes where I could hear them. Listen, I’m not whining about all of that. It made me tough. It made me savvy. All in all, I had a wonderful childhood in Delta. I was smart enough to understand that people—especially teenagers—have a tendency to either get angry or poke fun at what they don’t understand. Adults should know better, although they often don’t. These people were my friends, and I doubted their goal was to hurt me. But it caused harm to me and other gay students, nonetheless. It wasn’t okay. With every sarcastic comment, every joke, the messages piled up: because I was gay, I was a joke and had no value or morals. I was less than. I had no right to be treated with dignity. And there was no room in the community for me to be me. I never felt friendless—just sad and alien. I knew the jokes came from ignorance, not meanness. Still, they took a toll on me anyway.
I don’t recall a day at DHS when there was not at least one snide comment or joke aimed in my direction, even though I had never publicly told anyone that I was gay. Gradually, I felt smaller and smaller as my years in DHS continued. I was often suicidal. I made a few genuine but halfhearted suicide attempts. I clearly did not want to die, but it began to feel as if my community wanted me to. I felt that I was supposed to rid the community of me. I had a near-constant feeling that eradicating my “evil” self was what almost everyone seemed to want me to do—because their routine anti-gay comments told me I had no right to honorably exist as who I was. I didn’t talk to my parents about being gay when I was at DHS, because I assumed they would have no idea how to help me. And I thought that if they knew the truth about me, they might not love me as ferociously as I knew they did. (Of course, they would have, and always have loved me, but I was a dumb teenager and I wasn’t so sure back then.) I went to an ecclesiastical leader for help to change who I was, and I was surprised to find that it did me much more harm than good. I pretended to be and live as a straight person every day. Obviously, I was not very good at it. I routinely attempted to negate myself. Even as I tried to disappear, I have no doubt I developed my wide sense of humor into a kind of shield to protect the real me, by distracting others—by making them laugh. I did put up a good front.
I was fortunate to have a couple of DHS teachers who could see what was going on with me probably even better than I could. They accepted me just by having conversations with me about books and art and ballet and classical music and politics. We never referenced my sexuality. They gave me slivers of hope that I could be okay just by being me. They valued me. I had a couple of Mutual teachers who did the same. Those four incredible women are still in my prayers of gratitude every day. One day, at the end of a class, I was having a conversation with Nancy Conant (legendary DHS math teacher) about the country’s politics at the time. Without once mentioning my sexuality, she said the following to me as I was leaving her room: “Listen to me. The longer you put off being who you really are, the more people you will hurt when you finally discover you can’t pretend anymore to be someone you’re not.” I sort of understood what she meant at the time. As I found my place in the world, I understood it more deeply with each passing year. My talk with Mrs. Conant happened near the beginning of my Junior year. And that’s when I knew I had to get out of Delta. I couldn’t take not being seen as a valued human being for one more year. I knew I would literally not live through my Senior year. I was getting more serious about wanting to die. I had enough credits to graduate after my Junior year, and so I did. A week after I graduated, I moved to Ogden and started college at Weber State. Immediately, I was treated with dignity by almost everyone I met. Nobody knew me or anything about me. I could breathe as myself. And in Weber State’s Stewart Library, I found books that reflected my experience (I also found Suzanne in the Stewart library a couple of years later). I found stories that were representative of my struggles with my identity, inside bookstores everywhere I went.
I am asking you to imagine how much difference it would have made to me and other gay DHS students (Yes, I was not the only one) if there had been even one book on the DHS library shelves that reflected what we were going through. Just one book that validated our right to exist. One book that said we had value. Just one book that showed us we could have meaningful and successful futures in the larger world. A book that acknowledged we were not jokes, but human beings who could contribute much to our communities. One book that said it was possible for us to love and be loved for a lifetime. Just to stand in front of such a book on a shelf in the DHS library would have said to us and every other DHS student that we gay students were human beings and every bit as important and treasured as every other student. After providing books directly related to enhancing the public education students are offered, the very least a public high school library has a duty to do is to provide books that represent every student’s experience and worth. Not just white kids. Not just Mormon kids. Not just straight kids. Every kid in a school’s student body is owed that respect and acknowledgment by their community.
Statistically, in every culture throughout recorded history, around 1 in 10 persons born is gay. That means approximately 1 in 10 students is gay. I can attest that this statistic was pretty accurate at DHS when I was a student there, and I have no reason to think it’s any different now. A public school has no right to create a library void of books that reflect the experiences of 10% of its student population. Please keep in mind that a public school is a gift, an American right. It is not a church. And no American has the right to try to make it one. 📖 📚 📗📕📘
BTW: A final thought from me, for you to ponder: The most dangerous books are the one’s you don’t read.
The grocery bag Mom is checking out is the stash o’ candy we gave her.Mom and her purple housecoat, earrings, and snowman pin. Again.Suzanne and Mom talked about something serious which they wouldn’t tell me about, so I know they must have been talking about me. I don’t yet know if I’m in trouble with either and/or both of them.
With all due respect to the recently departed Queen Elizabeth, Queen Helen is NOT dead. We made a jaunt down the road to visit with Mom, and she is as alive as can be. In fact, she’s unstoppable. At some point in our lively conversation Mom mentioned she’s “quite content” to spend time in her room. She says she doesn’t “jingle” like she used to. She quickly corrected her mistake, saying she meant to say “mingle.” Then she went off on a rift about how she’s had a good, long life and she has—in her words—”jingled, jangled, and mingled all over the place.” She kept repeating that she had jingled, jangled, and mingled. I said, “Gee, Mother, you make it sound like you were a stripper!” To which she replied, “And your dad loved it!” Talk about wearing your feelings on the sleeve of your purple housecoat! That’s how Queen Helen rolls.
Mom assured us she’s not ready to die just yet, because she knows exactly where she’s going to go when she does: to Hell, of course, according to no one but her. We told her not to worry because we and Skitter will be there, too, so that works out okay. That got us all talking about sitting around and making s’mores over the fires of Hell, and Mom was all for that. Suzanne reminded us that Hell can be hot, but it can also be “as cold as Hell.” Suzanne said this is a good thing, because we can make those s’mores when we’re in the hot part, and we can eat ice cream when we’re in the cold part. Either way, I’m positive it’ll be nothing less than tasty as Hell. 🔥 🍫 ❄️ 🍦
When I was a wee sprite, Mom rarely commandeered the living room television. Before cable, satellite, streaming, and even VCR’s, we had a grand total of 5 channels in Utah from which to chose what to watch: ABC, NBC, CBS, KBYU, and KUER. That was it. Televisions were pricey back then, so most families I knew only owned one, and we were no different. Eventually, Mom and Dad got a color TV (with remote!) in their bedroom, and I got a clunky and tiny black-and-white TV set (remote-less) in my bedroom.
In the evenings of my single-TV childhood, Dad was kind of the unofficial boss of what the family watched, although he generally let whoever had a strong preference for a certain show watch whatever they wanted. I guess you could say Dad let anybody who was at home figure out what we were going to watch between ourselves, and he went along with it. He did exercise ultimate veto power whenever he felt it necessary to our benefit or for his own viewing sanity. When it was down to just me, Mom, and Dad left in the house, I fully admit I pretty much chose our nightly living room TV schedule. Dad and Mom both seemed fine with my choices, mostly. However, I give Dad props for enduring hours of TV shows he would rather have missed. When faced with a program like The Smothers’ Brothers Comedy Hour, Laugh-in, Chico And The Man, or The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, Dad sat in his chair, silently gritting his dentures, and reading The Salt Lake Tribune, his hunting magazines, the encyclopedia, and volumes of Popular Science. He read harder when I chose to watch shows like Mod Squad, One Day At A Time, All In the Family, Charlie’s Angels, Hill Street Blues, Police Woman, Facts of Life, and Columbo. He read extra hard when I wanted to watch artistic PBS offerings on KBYU or KUER—like Masterpiece Theater, classical music concerts from Carnegie Hall, and ballet and plays from Lincoln Center. Eventually, I took pity on Dad and decided arts programming was too problematic for him to watch, so I regularly retreated to the tiny, remote-less, black-and-white TV in my bedroom for the majority of my bigly art-viewing choices.
It was universally understood in our house—like the Law of Gravity—that the unalterable living room television default for Sunday day viewing was NFL football or NBA basketball, depending on the season. LDS General Conference weekends were the exception to the NFL/NBA rule. Likewise, the living room TV was always tuned to the national news (usually Walter Cronkite) at 5 PM, and the local news at 6 and 10 PM, every day. No exceptions. Other than that, what we watched was a mostly civil whoever-calls-it-first matter.
Mom liked to watch Hawaii Five-O, Barnaby Jones, and a show called Petrocelli, which was a remarkable TV show on NBC that didn’t make it past its first season. Mom rarely had a programming preference—except when it came to a handful of occasionally shown movies. When any one of these movies was going to be broadcast (usually on KUER), Mom was adamant about watching it on the bigly living room TV, no matter what else anybody might have wanted to watch. The list is small, but clearly I remember it well: A Summer Place, An Affair to Remember, any Doris Day/Rock Hudson film, The Days of Wine and Roses, I Want to Live, The Student Prince, and Picnic. I loved watching Mom sit down to completely immerse herself in watching these movies. I loved seeing how much she loved letting the cooking go, letting the dishes go, letting preparing her Sunday School lesson for the Sunbeams go. For these films, Mom stopped flitting around the house from one duty needing to be done to another duty needing to be done, if only for a brief while. For my part, I would secretly take the phone off the hook, so there could be no outside interruption to Mom’s state of movie grace. Throughout my life, I rarely saw Mom light somewhere and let it all go for a couple of hours. But for the duration of these only-occasionally-shown movies, Mom was enthralled and perfectly still.
It’s Picnic that prompted me to write this post. The events in Picnic take place on a Labor Day weekend. I have long had the Picnic DVD, and I have watched the movie on almost every Labor Day since I managed to find it. Suzanne is not impressed with the film, so she’s watched it with me only once. So I am usually an audience of one when I throw it into the DVD player—unless you count whatever dog(s) we have at the time. I like the movie, separate from how I associate the movie with indelible memories of watching it with Mom. Yes, William Holden is too old to be the character he’s playing, And the scene with the-train-racing-through-the-tunnel symbolism is a bad cliche. But the writing is otherwise generally strong. William Holden and Kim Novak give fine performances. I would dance to the song “Moonglow” at a Labor Day picnic with either one of them. The air sizzles when they dance to it. Above all else with this film, what will stand the test of time is Rosalind Russell’s performance as an aging-and-looking-for-love school teacher. Her acting is beyond fantastic. I mean—Russell’s acting in this flick approaches Meryl Streep realms at times. She makes her character a dynamic blend of spot-on smarts, biting humor, and devastatingly desperate and perpetual disappointment. The movie is hilarious and sad and and hopeful. With a small side order of cheesy.
Oh, I know none of y’all are ever going to sit down and stream Picnic, and most of you have likely never even heard of it before. But I watched my mom watch it a couple of times when I was in my kidhood, and that alone has sealed it as one of my all-time fave films. If you had ever watched Picnic with Mom, I have no doubt you’d feel exactly the same way I do about putting it on a movie pedestal. Every Labor Day when I watch it again, I feel like Mom is sitting right here beside me—content and still and entirely unconcerned with any world beyond the movie. She is purposely—but temporarily—not doing something for somebody else. She is relaxed in her soul, and the wrinkles fall away from her face. The wrinkles fall from both our faces, really. Mom and I are exactly how I always see us.
Folks, I forgot to wake up this morning. Technically, I got out of bed and went downstairs to the recliner, but I immediately fell asleep and slept for 3 more hours. I never do this sort of thing. And even when I finally did wake up, I can’t say that I felt like I was fully awake. A few minutes before 3 this afternoon, I suddenly felt like my eyes finally opened wide enough to qualify me as actually being awake. That was my good luck, because Judge Judy begins at 3 and I do not miss it. Perfect timing.
Check out this repeat from August 2018.
BEES GOTTA BE WHO THEY BE
Before Bow Tie o’ the Day and I can wreak havoc on Davis County today, we’re jumping in the car to go visit my regular doctor. You see—I am in dire need of re-upping my EpiPen supply. In all the hub-bub of selling the Delta house last year, I didn’t take time to get my yearly EpiPen prescription. My current injectors expired months ago.
The irony of my needing to carry EpiPens is that I am allergic to bee stings, which is not the best allergy to have when your father is a beekeeper and the bee warehouse is in your backyard. Bees around your house can make for some tense times. Oddly, my allergy didn’t kick in until I was 16. Getting stung was a somewhat regular occurrence in my childhood. I considered the bees my siblings, and sometimes we fought. It was really no big deal. I even worked in the warehouse sometimes and hung around with Dad in bee yards.
But the summer I was 16, I was wrangling some hollyhocks growing up against our house, and I got stung by a bee who was enjoying the ‘hocks. A couple of minutes later, I couldn’t stop sneezing. I decided to settle my sneezing by lying down on the couch with a cold rag on my forehead. I had a hard time catching my breath, and when Mom saw me she asked why I was turning blue. That’s when I connected how I was feeling to the bee sting. I hadn’t even considered a sting being the cause of how I felt because I’d been stung a thousand times before without any problems.
So off we went to the old Delta Hospital. I was not breathing well at all. My appendages were swelling up. My eyelids swelled up to the point I couldn’t open them. But I did get four shoes—sort of—out of my bee sting hospital visit. Apparently, when I got into the ER, the nurses needed to take off my shoes. When they couldn’t get my Nike’s off my swollen feet, they cut them off me. Thus, two shoes became four partial shoes. I’ve been armed with EpiPens, all of the time from that point onward.
I was officially excused from helping Dad in the warehouse or in bee yards ever again. And that was kinda sad.
Trophy buck Tie o’ the Day is draped over the antlers of the 1 deer I kinda killed. I didn’t have the whatever-it-takes to shoot this young Bambi, so I aimed high in order to miss. I believe Dad took a shot at the same time I did—to make sure I brought it down. He never admitted he took a shot, but I’m no fool. And I know where I aimed. Dad never missed a deer—including a deer he killed as he sat back on a ridge to take a shot and unknowingly sat on a cactus. Yup, he nailed it anyway.🌵 Dad personally ‘dermied “my” “California 2-point.” 🦌 I think he knew I wasn’t going to hunt ever again, although we didn’t really talk about it directly. But I also think he wanted to give me something so I would remember that last hunt together, as well as the hunting understanding we came to on that day. Plus, those are basically jackalope antlers! And that’s just funny.🤡
Dad’s photo was taken in the early 70’s, on his bigly hunt in Alaska. His caribou’s antlers fit him perfectly. (Yes, Dad is still on my mind. As always.)
[Here’s a much-requested Valentine repeat post. Enjoy.]
Tie o’ the Day is content to hang in the background, while Mom stars in this morning’s pix. These are evidence of Mom’s alluring ways. Dad was born into a beekeeping family, and bees were his thing. He was crazy for bees from the minute he could toddle. Based on that fact, I have no doubt Dad thought the photo of Mom dressed up in beekeeper attire was the sexiest of these two pictures. Mom does have nice legs though.
Dad’s family lived in Delta. Mom was from Oak City, a small town about 15 miles away. In Oak City, at that time, the kids went to school there until high school, then the Oak City-ites rode the bus to Delta High School every day. Mom and Dad didn’t know each other until that came to pass.
But they had sort of met once before high school. One summer day, Dad and his pals happened to be at the Oak City swimming pool when Mom was there with her friends. Mom was standing by the edge of the pool when Dad walked by and rudely pushed her in.
Mom was ticked off, turned to her gal pals, and said, “Ignernt Delta boys!”
Dad smiled, turned to his friends, and said, “I’m gonna marry that girl.”
Bow Tie o’ the Day and I spent some time at Farmington Health Center this morning. My dermatologist wrote me prescription to get a set of lung x-rays. In trying to diagnose my mysterious skin rash, my doc’s thinking it could be related to a weird thing in one of my lungs that showed up in all the CT scans I had leading up to my pancreas surgery. Based on what I understand from reading the radiologist’s findings about my x-rays today, my lungs appear to be healthy and probably not involved with the rash on my torso. Of course, the dermatologist will have the last word about the whole thing at my next appointment.
In my whole life, I have never had any trouble breathing, that’s for sure. I’ve never had pneumonia, or bronchitis, or asthma, or a collapsed lung. I can huff and puff with the meanest of bigly bad wolves. But based on my half dozen CT scans over the last year, one of my lungs has what looks to be a little patch of scar tissue where the lung is stuck to itself. I’m pretty sure I know where it came from, and I blame Bob Lyman—my kidhood neighbor from across the street. I don’t remember how it all came to pass, but when I was almost 8—and about to be baptized—Bob (who was 10) and I were playing in his backyard. Somehow I had lifted a pack of smokes from a carton in a family member’s fridge, and Bob was determined to assist me in smoking my first cigarette. I wanted to have the experience of smoking at least one cigarette in my life, so I could know what it was like. Moreover, it was very important to me that I smoke it before I was baptized, so the sin of smoking (and stealing) could be cleansed from my soul immediately upon completion of my baptism. I had thought out the whole thing, and I had decided it was a perfectly efficient and reasonable way to proceed with committing this sin.
Anyhoo… Bob found some matches in his garage, and he lit up first—carefully explaining and demonstrating exactly what I should do in order to smoke correctly. I practiced various ways to hold the cigarette in my fingers, and how to pose to look cool while sinning in this manner. Finally, I lit the match, then lit my cigarette—sucking in as hard as I could. I did it, step by step, exactly how Bob instructed me. Except. Except he didn’t tell me to not swallow all the smoke I sucked in. I think I figured you took the smoke in and it effortlessly just kind of made its way out of your mouth and nose while you talked. That’s how it had always looked to me when I observed smokers. Clearly, my powers of observation were not very developed when I was 7.
Well, I started coughing and choking and writhing around on the grass in Bob Lyman’s back yard, while Bob rushed around the corner of the house to get the hose. He turned the water on full-blast. He heroically stuck the hose in my mouth—hellbent on saving my life. I don’t know which felt worse: the smoke or the water. I am convinced this is how I likely scarred up a wee spot on my lung. Heck, it might have been the tip of the hose itself that did the damage to my lung, because I swear Bob stuck that green hose down my throat all the way into my stomach. I remember rolling on the ground for what felt like forever. The coughing and choking gradually lessened as I slowly made my way to the edge of Bob’s front lawn. I told him he didn’t need to follow me home because I had no idea what punishment awaited me, and I didn’t want him pulled into the brouhaha I was certain was going to be coming in my direction. I wanted to be baptized right then and there, but that was not to be. When I felt like I had pulled myself out of the state of discombobulation I had gotten myself into, I slinked across the road to the sidewalk in front of my house. I was trying not to throw up, and I was hoping I didn’t smell as stinky as I knew I did. I was also sopping wet from the hose, which I hoped no one would notice.
I tried to act casual when I opened the front door and nonchalantly strolled in. Dad was in his chair reading The Salt Lake Tribune, and Mom was cooking in the kitchen. I said my howdies to them, then I sprawled out on the living room carpet in front of the television. My head was throbbing and I soon fell asleep, coughing intermittently as I slept, I’m sure. When I woke up a few hours later, I was still oh-so miserable and I told Mom and Dad I was going to bed early. I remember it was still light outside.
Mom and Dad just let me go to my room. No questions, no punishment. Between my ashtray odor, and my coughing, and the grim expression on my face from the moment I came in the house, I have no doubt they pieced together the gist of what I had put myself through. I imagine they figured my transgression had rightly turned against me, and it was punishment enough to make a lasting point. They never said a word to me about that day. My parents knew that in my case, most of the time “less is more” was the best method to effectively parent me. I was a fast learner. My baptism couldn’t come soon enough for me and the soggy cigarette smoke polluting my spritely spirit. 🚬
[This is Dad’s obituary, as printed in his much-beloved SALT LAKE TRIBUNE. Note that Dad is wearing a Tie o’ the Day in this photo, and he was rarely a tie guy.]
Ronald Wright 6/13/1930 ~ 12/4/ 2007
DELTA- Ronald Edmond Wright, 77, died on Dec. 4, 2007 at home surrounded by his family after a valiant struggle against multiple health issues. Born June 13, 1930 in Nephi, UT to Walter Edmond and Zola Walker Wright. Married Helen Anderson, his high school sweetheart from Oak City, UT on July 26, 1948 in Manti LDS Temple. Ron graduated in 1948 from Delta High School.
After graduation, bought father’s bee operation and was known as knowledgeable, reputable beekeeper. Shared expertise, labor and equipment with local beekeepers and others he met while traveling throughout the west. To stay home more while the children were young, Ron took a second profession as brick mason. Dad enjoyed outdoor activities and was an avid hunter in his favorite Millard County mountains. Also took forays to other areas, notably Alaska where he hunted moose, caribou and Kodiak bear. The trophies hung in the old First Security Bank and in the former Wolfe’s Sportsman store. Dad was never happier than when being stung by a bee, or holding a baby.
Survived by wife: Helen, of 59 years; children: Betty and Kent, Anne and Gary, Ron and Marie, Rob and Mary, Helen E. and Suzanne; 18 grandchildren, 30 great-grand-children- and three more in a few months; sister: Shirley (Pete) Petersen; a brother: Derral (Shirley) Wright; and a sister-in-law: Joanne P. Wright. Preceded in death by brother: Wally Ray; dogs: Dumb Dumb, Becky, and two Berts.
