MY CHILDHOOD
I was born
At the time of my birth, my parents had been in
I remember sitting with Lora on the top of a black
trunk in our tent, watching the rain outside.
Since our canyon road wasn't paved, the water rushed down it like a
muddy brown river. Sometimes the tent
leaked, and Mother put pans all over to catch the drips. Mother often sang us to sleep, and how we
loved to hear her sing to us, often begging her to "sing just one
more". Singing was a big part of
our life, and I have always loved to sing.
Salaries were low in those days, prices were high, and
we were quite poor, although we always had enough to eat. I can remember many suppers (our evening
meal) that consisted of only a glass of milk with an apple or dates cut up in
it, and we thought that was a perfectly fine supper. We ate a lot of oranges, apples, and
vegetables, because they were cheap and because they were healthy for us. We rarely had meat because it was too
expensive. We always ate whole wheat
bread because Mother wanted us to be healthy.
Dad managed to pay for the lot the tent was on after a
few years, and borrowed $500 to get materials to build a house. We rented a house nearby and lived there for
three months while Dad put up the framework for our house practically alone,
working from early until late, digging out dirt, hauling lumber, setting
foundations, and so on as well as doing his regular job. The house seemed like a palace to us, with a
front room, kitchen, two bedrooms, bathroom, and a half‑screened room for
storage and washing, and eventually a two‑car garage, although we never
had a car.
We thought it was so fancy to have a built‑in
bathtub. Before, we had always bathed
in a portable, round, tin tub. Mother
planted fruit trees, bushes, flowers, vines, and other things to beautify our
little lot. Since we were in the hills,
we saw lots of quail, lizards, and spiders.
CHILDHOOD ADVENTURES
Sometimes Mother would take us "downtown",
into the center of
At Christmas time, Mother would take us downtown on
the streetcar, and we would look in all of the big department store windows
which were all decorated with beautiful Christmas scenes, with mechanical
people and animals that would move in all sorts of interesting ways. Then we would go in the stores to the toy
section and ooh and aah at all of the marvelous and exciting toys. We could never afford them, but just looking
at them was exciting enough.
There weren't many other children living nearby in the
canyon, so we usually played alone. We
liked to gather black walnuts from the trees growing on the hills around us and
crack them with stones and eat them. We
would also go exploring on the hills and save our "treasures" of
broken colored glass, pretty rocks, or wild flowers. Mother would often take us to a nearby park
to play while she did her mending. This
park was about three blocks past the streetcar tracks, along
MORE CHILDHOOD ADVENTURES
Another park we liked was
We spent two summers at
CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
Mother always dressed us very nicely out of remnants
and other inexpensive materials. She
would make our clothes and they were always very pretty. I remember one Sunday dress of yellow lace
over a satin slip, with ruffles and a satin belt with little flowers on
it. Another I remember was two shades
of light blue satin with a little pink satin flower on it. Another was a purple flowered print on a
white background, bound in purple bias tape with a matching jacket. I was always so happy with my pretty
clothes.
The school we went to,
I always liked school, and I always did well in my
classes since Mother always read to us every day and helped us at home. At school, there were two grades in the same
classroom, so it was easy to listen to what the older grade was learning and to
learn it also. Because of this, I
skipped the last half of the first, second, third, and fifth grades. And because of that, I finished the sixth
grade when I was ten years old; Junior High when I was thirteen; and High
School when I was sixteen years old.
CHILDHOOD ACTIVITIES
We took tap‑dancing and piano lessons when we
were young. Mother would sew for the
teacher to pay for our dancing lessons.
I liked the dancing, but hated to practice the piano, so of course
didn't learn much and had to quit.
Mother's lack of time to sew, or money to spend, soon ended the dancing
lessons.
I was baptized when I was eight years old, and always
wanted to be good, although I usually wasn't and teased my little brothers all
the time. I thank my dearest Mother for
taking us to Church when it was so far away and hard to get to without a car,
and with lots of little children to bring along in later years. The ward house we went to (Garvanza Ward,
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑day Saints) was a rented building about
five miles away. We could walk the mile
and a half to the park, take a bus, then walk another block or two to the
building, or we could walk the mile to the streetcar and walk farther when we
got off at the other end. We did it
both ways.
We liked to go swimming in the summer time. There was a city pool about five miles from
our house. It cost 5 cents to swim, and
a few cents for the streetcar, so usually we would go on the streetcar. Sometimes if we didn’t have enough money, we
would walk home. It seemed to be a long
ways! But we would pass interesting
sights: a doll hospital; a home like a large play house, for midgets; and once
we were given a ride by an old lady in an electric car that looked like an
old-fashioned carriage. We always loved
to swim and became quite proficient at it.
It was always my favorite sport.
A NEW BROTHER
When I was four years old, Mother, Lora, and I went to
On the way back to
ANOTHER
NEW BROTHER
Another little brother came into our home on
MORE
CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
Some neighbors, named the Seiferts, lived across the
street in a little shack. Mr. Seifert
always had some sort of a car, some of them long and elegant, and others more
commonplace. Since those were the days
of liquor prohibition, and they liked to drink, they had a “still” in their
yard, hidden away, although we never realized it when we were little. It was raided once by the revenuers. Mr. Seifert gave us rides in his cars, showed
us the intricate 3-D pictures he carved out of wood, and played the concertina
for us, singing plaintive songs like “If I had the wings of an angel, over
these prison walls I would fly.” Mrs.
Seifert sometimes brought us little presents, and they were nice to us.
Sometimes we would make miniature-golf courses on the
hillside, and play it with a tennis racket and tennis ball, since we didn’t
have any golf equipment. It was kind of
hard to keep the balls from always rolling down the hill, but it was fun. We got roller skates one Christmas, but it
was also hard to skate on the hill, since we would go too fast downwards and it
was hard to go uphill. We always went
barefoot in the summer, unless we were going somewhere, and loved to feel the
soft dirt on our feet as we played on the hills.
NATURAL DISASTERS
The weather in my younger years was truly beautiful:
bright blue skies, sunny warm days, dark nights which showed off myriads of
brilliant stars, including a very clear Milky Way, and smog was unheard
of. It rained, sometimes hailed, and
one winter it even snowed an inch or two.
After several days of hard rain, we had a bad flood in 1932 or so, and
the rains softened the dirt hill in back of the house. It seemed strange to wake up and see it still
dark because the windows were buried in mud.
Dad worked frantically night and day to dig it out before it crushed the
house. He then put up cement retaining
walls, cement stairways, and a cement patio with a built-in wading pool and
sand box. It was a terrific amount of
backbreaking work to do. Daddy was
always a very careful and thorough workman.
Everything he did or built will probably last a hundred years or more.
The next year, 1933, Los Angeles had a terrible
earthquake, centered in Long Beach. The
earth roared and shook and I was terrified.
Daddy was home from work, and ran to shut off the gas and
electricity. Our little frame house
suffered no damage, for which we were thankful, but many parts of the city had
severe damage and several lives were lost.
A NEW
LITTLE SISTER; NEW HOME
We went to Salt Lake again where a little sister was
born on February 19, 1934, named Saralyn.
Mother wanted to be there to be near her mother and sisters, and to have
someone to watch us while she was in the hospital. Saralyn had blond hair, and was sweet and
loving. But now our family was too
large for our little two-bedroom home in the canyon, so we moved up into
Highland Park, about four blocks from the place where we went to church. The folks bought a large, old two-story frame
house for $2500, at 229 So. Ave. 60. It
had a front room, large hall, dining room/family room, a kitchen, pantry,
half-bath, large front porch, and a side porch downstairs. Upstairs, it had three bedrooms and a
bathroom. It had a large yard, garage
(still no car), and a beautiful magnolia tree and palm tree in the front
yard. We loved that big old house.
OLD-FASHIONED APPLIANCES
There were many things that hadn’t been invented when
I was young, or that we didn’t own. We
had an icebox, not a refrigerator. The
ice had to be brought in by an “ice-man” every few days. He would chip a block of ice off of the huge
blocks in his truck, grab it with huge tongs, sling it onto his leather
shoulder pad, bring it into the kitchen, then chip off little pieces until it
fit into the ice-box. The ice would
melt and drip into a flat pan at the bottom of the icebox and would have to be
emptied periodically or water would run all over the room. We didn’t get a refrigerator until I was
about fourteen years old.
My first nine years, we didn’t have a washing machine,
and scrubbed our clothes by hand on a scrubbing board, which in our case was a
metal-covered board with ridges in it.
Later, the family bought a washing machine which had an electric wringer
on it, to wring the water out of the clothes.
We would wash the clothes in the washer, then wring them into the first
rinse water, then wring them into a second rinse water, then wring them into a
basket that we would take outside, and then hang the clothes on a
clothesline. Once I got my hand caught
in the wringer and smashed the tendons in it.
INVENTIONS
Zippers hadn’t been invented, or anything made of
plastic, or any synthetic fabrics such as nylon, acrilan, or polyester; no
frozen food or freezers, or packaged mixes, or plastic wraps, or aluminum
wraps. There were no microwave ovens,
televisions, VCRs, jet airplanes, rockets, or helicopters. The atom hadn’t been split, no one ever
dreamed of going to the moon or beyond; there were no stereos, videos, tape
recorders, CDs, lasers, no calculators or computers, e-mail, or internet. There were no dishwashers, or mixers, clothes
dryers or garbage disposals, no garage-door openers, or crock-pots or video
games; no electric can-openers or car phones.
But we had a happy childhood and didn’t seem to miss such things.
There were things that had been invented which our
family never had for lack of money: a car, telephone (the family got one after
I was married), a radio (although we got one when I was nine years old) or a
daily paper. We did have a nice wind-up
record player which wasn’t electric.
You would hand-crank a big spring, and the record would play until it
ran down, then you would have to crank it up again. The phone was black and hung on the wall,
and you had to share the line with other people you didn’t know. The earpiece hung on a cord and you could put
it up to your ear, but the mouthpiece was part of the phone on the wall, so you
had to stand next to it to talk into it.
No one ever dreamed of cell phones!
I first heard of television when I was a teenager and
took my little brothers and sisters to downtown Los Angeles to see the movie
“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” when it first came out. They had a TV in a room off the theater lobby
for people to see. It took up about
half the room, with only a little screen–black and white. They said that someday everyone would have
one in their homes. I thought, “Why
would anyone want that in their house?”
Little did I know!
TRIBUTE TO MY MOTHER
I was so blessed to have such a wonderful mother. She had to do things the hard way, without
modern conveniences. Yet she gave us
so many advantages–taking us so many places so we could have varied
experiences, reading to us and helping us learn to read, teaching us to love
music, feeding us healthy food,
teaching us to be self-sufficient and how to live frugally, and most
importantly, taking us to church and teaching us the gospel of Jesus Christ,
and giving us her great love unconditionally.
Thank you, my dear, dear Mother!
TEENAGE
YEARS
JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL
I started school at Luther Burbank Junior High School
in Highland Park–a beautiful school
with a nice principal.
I loved those school years! I
graduated from there in 1937 when I was 13 years old. We had some nice neighbors, a family with a girl
Lora’s age, and they became bosom buddies.
That summer the family went to Snowflake, Arizona for a vacation. We
stayed with Mother’s sister Pearl who was living there, and later stayed in a
little house in Lakeside, Arizona. We
had a cousin Dece who was Lora’s age, and they were so nice to us. We had a lovely summer riding horses, going
on hayrides, wiener and corn roasts, and other enjoyable country
activities. There was a group of young
people who all went together to these activities. We had a wonderful summer, and hated to come
home again.
HIGH SCHOOL YEARS
I went to Benjamin Franklin High School that
fall. It was about a mile and a half
from our house, and we usually walked to school. I enjoyed high school and the football games
and the fun. I was elected treasurer of
the Senior Class and enjoyed working with the other school officers. My best friends were smart girls and lots of
fun to be with. I took college preparatory classes.
I usually wore dresses or skirts and blouses to
school, with bobby-sox (socks with the top turned down into a cuff) and
shoes. I didn’t own a pair of silk
stockings (nylon wasn’t invented yet) until I was in college and earned enough
money to buy a pair. We would wear them
with garter-belts since there were no such things as pantihose. I had some slacks, but girls never wore them
to school. My clothes were usually
cast-offs from other people or were made from remnants of cloth Mother would
buy. I had a cotton-yarn lightweight
sweater which buttoned down the front, and I remember being cold a lot of the
time in the winter.
There wasn’t much peer pressure to do bad things. Most of the school kids didn’t drink or
smoke, and none of us had even heard of drugs.
The small group who smoked were looked down on, at least by all of the
people I knew and went around with.
There were no other church members in my class, so these were just the
average students who felt that way.
BOYS AND WORK
Since we didn’t have a phone, the only way a boy could
ask us out was to do it face to face, either at school or at our house. My folks didn’t get a phone until after I
was married. The boys we went with just
came and picked us up. If they didn’t
have a car, we went on the streetcar.
Since our family never had a car, going on the streetcar seemed
perfectly normal to us. I wasn’t
particularly popular in High School, but had some dates. We would go to the movies (they were decent
in those days), or to a roller-skating rink, and once a boy took me to an
ice-skating rink. We would go bike
riding, or play baseball in the park (a group of us from church). A girl in my class invited me to join a group
of them from her church at a get-together every Friday night at her folks’
house. That was lots of fun and I was
able to meet lots of other people. We
would play games, talk, and have refreshments.
I worked at whatever job I could get during those
years. I would baby sit (25 cents an
evening, including doing dishes, folding laundry, straightening the house, and
feeding and caring for the children and putting them to bed), and I was happy
to get the work. I worked at Kresses on
Saturdays and earned 25 cents an hour which was $2.00 a day, from which they
deducted 4 cents for social security.
The summer I was 15 years old, I got a job as a Mother’s Helper at $20 a
month with a Jewish family who lived near Beverly Hills. I would
help care for the children, clean the house, wash and hang the clothes,
and do the dishes. I bought myself some
clothes with the money I earned.
CHURCH ACTIVITIES
I loved to go to church, Primary, and Mutual (Mutual
Improvement Association) for those age 12 and on up. We had many Primary productions where we
would sing and dress like flowers or some such (Primary was held on Saturday in
those days). MIA met every Tuesday
night, and we had lessons, and almost every weekend, a dance. I liked speech and drama work. They often put on plays, and I loved to be in
them. Sometimes one of our teachers,
usually a Sunday School teacher, would take us on outings. They often took us to the Fun House on the
Venice Beach pier, and a time or two to the mountains nearby. During my Mutual years, the church built its
own meetinghouse off York Blvd., at about Ave. 53. We would have to walk about two miles or
take the streetcar to get there.
COLLEGE YEARS
I started to Los Angeles City College the fall of
1940. Lora and I would walk three blocks,
take the streetcar downtown, then transfer to another streetcar, then walk
another five blocks on the other end–it took about an hour or so. From time to time, we would pay to ride with
other students who would drive. I
wanted to be a kindergarten teacher so took those kinds of classes. It was fun going to college, learning new
things and meeting new people.
I worked as a typist for a teacher under the National
Youth Administration (NYA), a government program to help college students earn
money to go to school. I was allowed to
earn $14.00 a month (50 cents an hour), which I used to pay my expenses. Since tuition was only $6.00 a semester, I
was able to get by on what I earned, especially since we lived and ate at
home.
I was voted into the college’s social women’s club,
joined the “Future Teachers of America” club, and joined the “Lambda Delta
Sigma” (LDS) club. The latter was the
church sponsored fraternity/sorority, chapters of which were located at most of
the colleges and universities in southern California. We would have meetings once a week, with
religious lessons, and have lots of social activities, often with the other
schools. Most of my friends and family
met their mates through the Lambda Delta Sigma. It was sort of like BYU in that way. In those days, no one I knew went to BYU–we
were all too poor. We never could have
afforded the tuition there nor have afforded to live away from home.
I took swimming and archery while at college for my
Physical Education classes, and enjoyed both of those sports. In May, 1942, a group of school officials
chose five girls to reign over the Open House festivities at the school, and I
was amazed to be chosen Queen. It was
quite exciting.
I MEET JESSE
In the summer of 1941, July 3, 4, and 5th,
the Lambda Delta Sigmas of all the colleges in southern California held a joint
mountain party at Barton Flats in the San Bernardino Mountains. There was a lodge with kitchen facilities,
and a campground with cots on which we slept out under the stars. We had chaperones from among the parents of
those attending. Lora and I went, and
were awakened early the first morning by this fellow who came driving into camp
with some more kids, honking his horn and yelling “Hi!” to everybody. “Boy”, I thought, “I wonder who he is, waking
us all up so early in the morning!”
Little did I know he would soon become my husband.
His name was Jesse Eldred Stay, and he was there with
the group from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). We sort of started walking around together
at mealtimes and on hikes, and he asked if he could take me home on the last
day. But I had told another boy who wasn’t there that he could take me
home. Jesse asked if he could wait with
me while the other boy came, and we decided to hike up a nearby hill. It was steep and Jesse gave me his hand to
help me up. When we got to the top, he
didn’t let go of my hand. I thought,
“Hmmm! This is getting interesting!”
Jesse had an engaging smile and a wonderful
personality. When we came back down,
almost everyone had gone, so we decided to go too. On the way down the mountain, we met the
other boy coming up, so regretfully we parted, and I continued home with the
other boy. Without a phone and living so
far apart, I thought that probably Jesse and I would never meet again. But that night I went to a pay phone to call
Jesse to see if I had left my purse in his car, and he asked me for a date, to
go see the movie “Fantasia”. From then
on, we went together almost every week, and Jesse kept asking me out. We went to fun places, like beach parties,
concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, swimming, Lambda Delta Sigma parties, and an
occasional show.
THE WAR BEGINS
Jesse had joined the Air Force to learn to fly before
we had met, so he left for flight training in Texas and Oklahoma in November of
1941. On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor
in Hawaii was bombed by the Japanese, and the United States declared war on
Japan and Germany, and World War II began.
The California government thought we were also in danger of attack by
the Japanese along the coast so all of the important places in the city were
covered with barrage balloons. Those
were big balloons about half the size of blimps so that enemy airplanes
couldn’t fly too low if they wanted to bomb us. Searchlights were also placed at strategic
places, and every plane that flew over was targeted by the lights until they
passed out of the area.
Every night was a blackout. In other words, all of the street lights were
turned off and no light could show from your windows. It was pretty scary being out at night in all
of that darkness. Both of my parents
were “Air Raid Wardens” or “Block Wardens”.
They were responsible for seeing that no light shone from anyone’s
window, and to report any suspicious activity.
They would have to go around the block every evening checking on
that. They wore metal helmets and
identifying arm bands.
WARTIME LIFE
There were “air raid warnings” every so often when
unidentified planes or submarines would be detected off the coast. There were sirens placed everywhere that
would go off when a warning came. Once I
was on my way to college, and the warning went off. It must have been a serious warning because
all of the streetcars and busses quit running, and the people were supposed to
stay inside. There was apparently a
real threat of a Japanese intrusion of some sort. After the war we learned that several times
Japanese submarines had been detected off the coast.
Each family was issued a ration book, with coupons for
various items: gasoline, shoes, and foods like sugar, butter or margerine,
meat, and various other items. The food
rationing didn’t bother us, but there wasn’t enough gasoline to go anywhere. I had enough coupons for gasoline to either
make one trip to church each week, or drive to the market to buy groceries each
week. I usually chose the latter, to
have a car to carry the food home in.
Shoes were also a problem for my little brothers since they wore them
out so quickly and didn’t have enough coupons to replace them, so I gave them
my coupons since I had enough shoes.
There were no new cars, refrigerators, stoves,
washers, car tires, or anything like that.
They weren’t being made. All of
those kinds of materials were being sent to help the war effort. If you wanted any of those things, or if
something broke, you either had to buy a used item or do without. Everyone was also urged to plant a “Victory
Garden”. Mother planted a large garden
in the back yard, and we all helped care for it. People were asked to give blood, save scrap
metal and turn it in, and be frugal.
People were asked to buy war bonds and war stamps. We tried to do all of those things and to be
good citizens.
It was very rare to see a young man between the ages
of 18 and 30 or so. They had all been
drafted into the military. Families who
had sons or daughters in the military service would hang a silk fringed rectangle
in their windows, with a blue (?) star on it.
Jesse’s Mother had one in her window.
If the service person were killed, they hung a gold star in the
window. It was sad to see how many gold
stars began to show up.
OUR WEDDING
Jesse was in flight training for nine months, and
during that time I went with other boys and became quite fond of one of them, a
returned missionary going to USC, whom I considered marrying. I wondered which to choose: Jesse or Claude,
for they were both wonderful young men.
I fasted and prayed to be guided in which one to choose. So when Jesse came home July 5, 1942, with
his newly won wings and 2nd Lieutenant bars, I knew he was the one
for me, and we were married eight days later, on July 13, 1942.
We had wanted to be married in the Temple in Salt Lake
City (there were no temples in California at that time), but because of the
war, Jesse only had a week’s leave, so we were married in the lounge of the
Huntington Park Stake House by Jesse’s Bishop, with both of our families there. Since Jesse was to be stationed in Salt Lake
City for his first assignment, we had planned to be married in the Temple there
as soon as it opened after being closed for summer vacation. However, he was transferred before it
opened, so we didn’t get to have our marriage sealed in the Temple until Jesse
returned from overseas. We then had
that beautiful ceremony done on March 22, 1945, in the Salt Lake Temple.
Our wedding was lovely. Jesse’s brother Carroll had brought big
bouquets of flowers for the decorations, and also flowers for the others and my
wedding bouquet. It consisted of
several large gorgeous gardenias, satin bows, orange blossoms, and centered
with a large delicate orchid. It
smelled heavenly! I wore a beautiful
white satin wedding gown with a fitted bodice, sweetheart neckline, and lace
designs on the full skirt. My headpiece
was of orange blossoms on a full veil.
Lora was my Matron of Honor, wearing a blue lace dress and holding a
boquet of red roses. Jesse was dressed
in his uniform (during the war he was not allowed to wear civilian clothes),
and Howard Hopper (his best friend) was his Best Man.
After the wedding and reception, we went to the
Biltmore Hotel for a one-night honeymoon, then on to Salt Lake City by train. We stayed at the Hotel Utah, then with some
of Jesse’s aunts and cousins who were so hospitable to us. We palled around with one of Jesse’s friends
from cadets and his wife, another recently married couple, Bob and Pat Shaw.
ASSIGNMENTS
In about two weeks, we were sent to Walla Walla,
Washington, to an airbase there. We had
a little basement apartment, and continued to have fun with Bob and Pat. We would go on picnics and drives. We also went to the church branch
there. After a month, we were sent to
Ephrata, Washington for another month.
It was in a dry, deserty location.
Jesse had to stay at the base, and I slept on a rented couch in a home,
later renting a bedroom. Then we were
sent to Sioux City, Iowa for a month.
There we rented an apartment on the third floor, and I discovered I was
pregnant. The food odors drifting up
from the other apartments made me feel sick, but we got by.
JESSE GOES OVERSEAS
Then Jesse was sent overseas, and I went back home to
stay with my parents, who were so good to take me in and welcome me. He couldn’t tell me where he was going for
security reasons, so we worked out a code.
If he was going into the Pacific war area, he would mention San
Francisco in his post card. If he was
going to the European war area, he would mention New York. He mentioned San Francisco, so I knew he was
going to the Pacific area. When he
arrived, and was able to write to me, I learned that he was in Hawaii.
Jesse was overseas for two and one-half years, and it
was a long, lonesome time, even being with my dear family. But all of my friends were in the same
situation, which seemed to help. I
stayed active in the church with many callings, and that helped also. I was activity counselor in the MIA, dance
director, speech director, Junior Girls (15-year olds) teacher, and Stake
speech director. The whole family was so
good to me while I was home waiting for Jesse, and I will never forget how kind
they were to both Sharon and me. During
that time, Jesse’s Dad died of diabetes and heart trouble, but he wasn’t
allowed to come home from the war for the funeral.
I wrote to Jesse every day, and he did the same to me,
whenever he could. They would censor
the letters if they felt anything was said that would help the enemy in some
way. I hated to have anything Jesse said
cut out of his letters. It was also a
little embarrassing to know that someone was reading our romantic exchanges. My great regret is that I threw the letters
away once after the war when we were moving, and we were told we had too much
weight for the Air Force movers to move us, and had to get rid of some things. If I had it to do over, I would throw a chair
away and save the letters. They were so
precious to me.
SHARON IS BORN
On May 15, 1943, our dear little beautiful daughter,
Sharon Lee Stay was born. She was 22
months old before she saw her Daddy. We
sent him a telegram saying she was born, but he didn’t get it until three days
later. It was the most wonderful thing
in all the world to have a baby daughter, and I was so elated and happy. Sharon had black hair when she was born,
which soon lightened to white blond towhead when she was about nine months old,
and she had beautiful soft little blond curls all over her head. I had so much fun with her, and Mother was so
good to help me care for her. Sharon
learned to talk quite fluently while still quite young. She tended to get some words backwards
though, and would call a sidewalk “walkside”, and a grasshopper, “hop grasser”,
and spaghetti, “busgetti”. She also
loved to sing, and we would sing all sorts of songs together.
The last nine months before Jesse came home, I moved
into a big house we rented in Highland Park, with two other girls from our
ward, Peggy and Muerline. Muerline’s
husband had been killed in a training flight, and she had a little boy Sharon’s
age. Peggy’s husband was also overseas
as a pilot, and later, unfortunately, was also killed in a plane crash. They were wonderful girls and friends and
wonderful roommates. I felt lucky to
get to know them and be with them.
During this time, I bought a car, a used car. After we got the tires patched up and a few
repairs made, it was a very nice car. I
had to teach myself to drive, so I would go out at night when the traffic
wasn’t thick, and drive around the block, making right turns, until I had
mastered that. Then I would go around
making left turns until I had mastered that.
Then I would drive to Mutual.
Finally, I felt like I was good enough that I could pass the driver’s
test and get a driver’s license, so I drove over to Glendale where the tests
were given, and got my license. It was
good to have a car, but since gasoline was rationed, you couldn’t go very far
on what they gave you. There were no
automatic shifts in cars in those days, so part of learning to drive was
learning to shift gears and start out without jerking.
During these years, Jesse was participating in bombing
raids on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific, being based at Hawaii, Funafuti,
and later on, Guam. Many of his
companions were killed or lost at sea, but he wasn’t wounded and returned home
to us safely on March 11, 1945, now a Major.
He was sent to a 2-week processing center, then sent to an airbase at
Tonopah, Nevada. I remember that we left
California on the day President Franklin D. Roosevelt died.
Tonopah was a little mining town in the deserts of
Nevada, and housing was non-existent. We
rented a little converted coal-shack for $60 a month (a lot of money in those
days), which was just one room barely big enough for a double bed on which all
three of us slept. We had to pay to rent
a shower each time we wanted one at the local hotel, and we had to eat all of
our meals in restaurants, since we had no way to cook in our shack. But it was worth it to be with Jesse again
and resume our life together.
Shortly after this, Jesse was sent to War College at
Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, so we moved there.
We rented a bedroom in a family’s house and had kitchen and bath
privileges. We spent a happy month
there, then were sent back to Tonopah.
Jesse went there to try to get us a decent place to live, while I took
Sharon and went to Los Angeles to stay with the folks again while he was
arranging a place.
SHARON GETS POLIO
While we were in Los Angeles, Sharon contracted polio
(infantile paralysis), which paralyzes people.
We rushed her to the hospital, where she had to stay for two weeks,
which was awful for her and for us, since they would only let us visit once a
week for 10 minutes. Thanks to the
blessings of the Lord, she wasn’t paralyzed and was able to come home to
us. Because she still had to have
treatments every week, we had to stay in the Los Angeles area, and Jesse was
transferred to the Ontario Air Base, California. Sharon developed weakness in her right leg in
a few months, and had to go back into the hospital for more treatments. She then had to wear corrective shoes for a
couple of years, but eventually seemed to be fine.
We bought a house trailer and put it up in the folks’
back yard. Jesse was then transferred
to
Kingman, Arizona, but was able to get back to Los
Angeles every so often. After a few
months, he was transferred to Riverside Air Base in California, so we sold the
trailer and bought a two-bedroom house in Riverside for $10,000. However, our time there was short-lived as
Jesse had the opportunity to finish school at UCLA, where he had gone to school
for two years before the war. We sold
our house in Riverside, and bought a house in Westchester, California, for
$12,500, on Airlane Ave. It had a front
room, kitchen, laundry room, two bedrooms, and a huge yard. We were very happy there.
RANDY IS BORN
At this time, a new little son was born to us, Randall
William Stay, born June 17, 1946, in Los Angeles, California. He also had blond wavy hair, blue-green
eyes, and fat little cheeks. How
overjoyed and excited we were to now have a little son, as well as our darling
Sharon. Randy adored his father, and
tried to stand just like him, leaning against the wall and crossing his
leg. He loved metal pipes of all kinds,
and Jesse gave him some he could screw together and unscrew, which he even
liked to take to bed with him. Randy
loved to climb and we would find him precariously perching in some spot he had
climbed to and couldn’t get down from.
His hair turned white blonde, and he was a towhead until he grew
up.
During our time in Westchester, we lived in a
wonderful ward (Inglewood Ward) and made many fine friends. Jesse was made a counselor in the Elder’s
Quorum. After two years, Jesse received
his BS degree from UCLA in Industrial Management, and since he was still in the
Air Force, was transferred to Washington D.C. to the Pentagon.
LINDA IS BORN
But before we left, while Jesse was taking his finals
at UCLA, on February 2, 1948, our third child was born, our beautiful little
Linda Jean Stay. She was born in a
fancy hotel that had been converted into a military hospital in Pasadena,
California, near the Rose Bowl. Linda
had blondish-brown hair and blue-green eyes, and has been such a joy to
us. Linda was very self-sufficient and
liked to keep things neat. While very
little, she would fold her clothes to put them in her drawers. She liked to change clothes and would
sometimes change two or three times a day.
She was very sweet and agreeable.
How happy we were! How proud we
were of our three precious children!
VIRGINIA
We sold our house in California and rented a house in
Arlington, Virginia, about a ten-minute drive from the Pentagon. We had a wonderful ward there also, the
Arlington Ward, and many special friends.
The ward was constructing a building to meet in and was trying to raise
money to finish paying for it, and the Bishop asked everyone to give all they
could. So we gave all of the money we
had, which was $500, to help pay for it.
It was what we had left after selling the house, buying a new car, and
making the trip East. We felt good
being able to help pay for the new ward.
We always loved Arlington Ward. I
was the dance chairman in the ward, and we put on some wonderful dances. Jesse was the scoutmaster.
Our house in Arlington (1402 No. Adams) had a front
room, kitchen, side porch room with lots of windows, a bathroom, and a large
hall. Upstairs were 3 bedrooms and a
bathroom. The house had a fantastic
yard for birds, and we were always being visited by cardinals, bluebirds, blue
jays, catbirds, cowbirds, woodpeckers, flickers, thrushes, orioles, painted
buntings, cedar waxwings, thrashers, scarlet tannagers, goldfinches,
hummingbirds, warblers, robins, and other colorful, beautiful birds. We were always running into the house to find
the bird book to see what a new bird was called. We also had many lovely bushes and trees–a
huge 10-foot tall rose bush with white roses all over it; a maple tree that
would go gorgeous shades of red every fall, dogwood trees that would bloom with
white and pink blossoms every spring, and other beautiful bushes and trees
around us.
We had very nice, friendly neighbors, and had a happy
time there. I would often drive Jesse
to work at the Pentagon–a short ten-minute drive–and stop on the way back to
let Randy watch the drawbridges raise and lower as the boats went by on the
river. Sharon went to first and second
grades there.
The weather in Virginia was very hot and humid in the
summer, and often snowed in the winter.
Sometimes there would be ice storms, where everything would get coated
with ice, and the roads would be so slick no one could walk or drive on
them. Once, during one of these ice
storms, while Jesse was on a flying assignment out of the state for a few days,
I had a miscarriage. I stayed all day
on the couch and six-year old Sharon took care of Randy and Linda as best she
could, but I still lost the baby. It
made me feel very sad.
JUDI IS BORN
On December 15, 1950, our fourth child was born, our
beautiful little Judith Ann Stay, at Bolling Air Force Base hospital,
Washington, D.C. She was coming in such
a hurry that Jesse drove right up on the lawn of the hospital to get us closer. Judi had golden hair and blue-green
eyes. We were elated and overjoyed to
have another little girl. I always
hoped that maybe she was the little one whom I had miscarried, who was given
another chance to come to earth. Judi
loved to wander and explore, and once pushed her little doll buggy all the way
downtown while I searched frantically for her.
While I was in the hospital with Judi, Jesse was made a Lt. Colonel in
the Air Force.
While we had lived in California, we had enjoyed going
to the beach nearby, visiting our families, and going to church affairs. In Virginia, we enjoyed touring the
beautiful attractions in and near our nation’s capital, such as the Capitol
building, visiting the Senate and House of Representatives, the Lincoln and
Jefferson Memorials, the Washington Monument, the Arlington Military Cemetery
and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the White House, and Mt. Vernon, plus enjoying
the Ward activities and getting together with our friends. We also managed a trip back to California,
driving, at least once a year to visit our families.
WE MOVE TO PROVO
That spring, we were transferred to Provo, Utah, where
Jesse was to start the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program
at Brigham Young University (BYU). We
arrived in May, 1951, and rented a little house for a couple of months, then
moved into another rented house with a nice landlord, Stan Cox. We had the upstairs floor of a large house,
at 945 N. 50 E, with 4 bedrooms and 2 baths.
Students rented the apartments downstairs.
Sharon and Randy were baptized in Provo, in a
baptismal building near the center of town, which has since been torn
down. They went to school, first at
Joaquin Elementary, then at the BYU teacher-trainer elementary school on lower
campus, which has since been discontinued.
Linda attended kindergarten there also.
I worked in PTA most of the time we were in Provo, as
a room-mother, safety chairman, and vice-president. It was nice doing what I could to help the
schools. I was also president of the
Newcomer’s Club, part of the BYU Women’s Club, for one term. We made many fine friends in these
organizations. I taught Primary and led
the singing in our ward, and Jesse was in the Bishopric. We first attended the 4th ward,
but then our ward built a new chapel called University/Park Ward.
LARRY IS BORN
While we were in Provo, another beautiful little son
was born to us, named Laurence Richard Stay, born June 10, 1953, at Tooele,
Utah, in a military hospital there.
Larry had white-blond hair and beautiful sparkling blue eyes and was
always smiling and happy. All of the
children were delighted to have a little brother, especially Randy! Larry liked to pretend that he was Superman,
and had a little cape to wear. He would
scare me jumping off of tall places to try to fly. Larry was a joy to us!
My brother Roy lived with us for a year while he was
going to BYU, and it was so wonderful having him with us. He was so good natured and fun to be
with. I don’t know how he stood it
though, since he did all of the dishes every night! He played the violin and bought other musical
instruments to learn to play.
GREG IS
BORN
During our four years in Provo, another beautiful
little son was born to us, named Gregory Alan Stay, born on May 4, 1955, at
Utah Valley Hospital, in Provo, Utah.
Greg had curly blondish-brown hair and blue-green eyes and chubby
cheeks. He liked to follow Larry around
and tried to do whatever Larry was doing.
He was happy and peaceful. Can
you imagine our joy and excitement and fulfillment at now having these two more
wonderful sons come into our family?
With three girls and three boys, we felt exceedingly blessed.
We had many happy times while we lived in Provo. We had picnics in the canyon, climbed to
Timpanogos Cave, took drives in the mountains, went to Utah Lake, and had
get-togethers with friends. A group of
us got together every week or two at somebody’s house, and each couple
presented whatever program they wanted.
They were fun times.
ALABAMA
AND NEBRASKA
ALABAMA
Now our Air Force assignment in Provo was up, and we
were transferred to Montgomery, Alabama, while Jesse went to Command and Staff
School at the Air Base there. We rented
a little house, and had our first battles with cockroaches, a true pest if
there ever was one! We were just about
two blocks from the church branch’s little meeting-house, which made it nice
for us. They didn’t have an MIA, so we
started one with the Branch President’s permission. By driving around and picking up the girls,
we ended up having a large Bee-Hive class for Sharon, which I taught and
enjoyed. I also taught Randy’s class,
the Blazers, in Primary. Linda was
baptized while we were there, in our little chapel. We had to lift up the one-step-high stage to
fill the baptismal font which was below it.
NEBRASKA
After nine months in Alabama, we were transferred to
Lincoln, Nebraska. We bought a lovely
brick house there for $17,000, at 1801 East Manor Drive. It had a living room, kitchen, two bedrooms,
bathroom, and a den upstairs, with an unfinished, walkout basement. Jesse finished off some of the basement, and
put in a bedroom, bathroom, and a family room.
We also got our first “second car” there, a heavy old car which Jesse
drove to work, since the Air Base was across the city from where we lived. Oftentimes it wouldn’t start, and he would
have to let it roll down the hills to try to get it started.
There was a nice church branch in Lincoln, and we
enjoyed the activities. As well as
having local and Air Force members, there were many who taught at or were
students at the University of Nebraska.
I taught MIA, then taught Primary and was a counselor, then later, was a
counselor in the District Primary. Our
District meetings were held in Omaha, and we traveled even into other states to
visit our branches. Judi was baptized in
a nice font at the chapel, and Randy received the Aaronic Priesthood
there.
Sharon graduated from Junior High School in Lincoln,
and was Valedictorian of her class. We
were so proud of her! Sharon had a good
friend there whose father was also in the military. There were lots of young people the ages of
Randy and Linda in our neighborhood, and they had good times together. Judi had two little friends her age, Larry
had a good friend up the street a ways, and Greg was good friends with the
little girl next door.
LIFE IN LINCOLN
Jesse had to be
gone a lot while we lived in Nebraska.
He often had to be on “alert”–ready to take off instantly in armed
bombers in case we were attacked by Russia.
Their group had the motto “Peace is our profession”, meaning, that by
always being ready to defend our country with strength, it kept the peace,
because enemies were afraid to attack us.
The world situation was very tense in those years and the Air Force
wanted to be ready. Jesse went to
“survival school” in the wilds of Nevada a couple of times, to learn to survive
in case he ever crashed in enemy territory.
He also spent a couple of months in Kansas learning to fly B47's. They were jet bombers. So the rest of us were alone a lot of the
time. But the children were always good
and we were as happy as we could be without Jesse.
The weather in Nebraska was very violent. In the summer there would be terrible
all-night thunder and lightening storms, as well as tornado alerts. We saw several tornados passing in the
distance, and many were the nights I would carry the children sleeping upstairs
down into the basement to spend the night for safety’s sake. In the winter the temperature often dropped
below zero, and the snow was heavy. The
wind blew a lot and caused large drifts.
The school busses wouldn’t come when the snow was too deep or when it
was icy, but the children were still expected to be at school. I spent many scary moments trying to drive
them in snow storms, and spent many hours digging snow off of our driveway to
get the car out of the garage. Sharon
usually walked home from Junior High School, a long walk, and arrived home with
frosty face and frozen legs.
MY DAD DIES
Mother, Dad, and Roy came back to visit us while we
were in Lincoln, and Dad checked into the Veteran’s Hospital there to have some
tests done, since he had not been feeling well.
There they discovered he had a fast-growing cancer of the bladder. They operated, scraped out his bladder, and
removed a kidney. It was to no avail
though, and in a couple of months, he returned to Los Angeles to the Veteran’s
Hospital there, and died a month later, on April 29, 1958. I went home to Los Angeles on the bus for the
funeral, and Jesse took off work and cared for the children in Lincoln. It was a sad time to see Dad suffer so and
then die.
BACK TO ALABAMA
We were in Nebraska from the summer of 1956 to the
summer of 1959, and then we were transferred back to Montgomery, Alabama, so
Jesse could go to the War College there.
So we sold our beautiful little house, and started out again. This time we were able to rent a house on
the Air Base, which made it very convenient for Jesse to get to work. It was also very nice for the children, with
bowling lessons, free movies every Saturday morning, two swimming pools, warm,
lovely weather, and lots of nearby friends.
We lived in a large converted barracks with cheap rent, which we
liked. While we were there, Jesse was
promoted to a full Colonel in the Air Force.
We had a fun branch there and lots of good friends,
most of them also military. We would
have parties and get-togethers and go to the lake nearby. One Easter vacation, we all went down to
Florida, rented house-trailers there on the shores of a lake, and had a fun
vacation. In Montgomery, we went into
town to church, to the same little branch we had gone to before, though they
were raising money for another chapel.
Again I was called to teach in Primary.
In fact, from the time I started teaching Primary in Utah in 1951, I
never stopped teaching or holding some office in Primary for about 45
years.
SPAIN
WE GO TO SPAIN
After our ten months in Alabama were up, we were given
orders to go to Spain, to an airbase near Madrid, called Torrejon de
Ardoz. We had thought we were going to
be stationed in Turkey, and had seen slides of it, had bought a water heater to
use there, and had tried to learn Turkish from language records. But then our orders were changed, so we sold
the water heater (we should have kept it for use in Spain!), but we didn’t have
time to learn any Spanish.
Our plane was to take off from McGuire Airbase in New
Jersey, so we took a slow trip up the East coast seeing the sights along the
way. We went down into middle Florida,
saw Silver Springs and the Okefenokee Swamp, and then stopped in Washington
D.C. and saw the sights there again. We
then stopped in New York and saw the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, and drove
up the Hudson River to see the Palisades.
Then we took off for Spain on July 13, 1960, on our 18th
wedding anniversary!
Spain was beautiful.
The sky was so blue and clear, and Madrid was a beautiful city of
elegant buildings, parks, wide streets, and statues. We were met at the airport by Art and Emmy
Paul, a wonderful couple. Art would be
working for Jesse. They took us to an
apartment-hotel they had rented for us, while we looked for a place to
live. We were on the 7th
floor. Randy, Linda and Judi would
gather in the lobby there to play board games and such with other young people,
and Larry and Greg would play outside in the dirt with other children, making
little roads, hills, and so on. Sharon
just sort of watched out for all of them.
That part of the city was just being built up, with lots of new
apartment buildings under construction.
A PLACE TO LIVE
It took us a long time and a lot of searching to find
a place to live. Most of Madrid was
made up of apartment buildings or row houses.
I didn’t want to live in either of these type of places with a large
family. We looked at all sorts of large
houses in the outlying areas. One was a
large house and had a huge ballroom, with a small stage and an alcove for an
orchestra to play on. But it was too far
out of town, with no means of transportation, to be practical. Another house had many huge rooms and was on
a large estate. We were tempted to take
that one, but then learned that the water supply was practically non-existent,
and so that was out. The row houses were
about one room wide and five stories tall, with the kitchens in the basement
and the eating rooms on the main floors.
That didn’t seem to be very practical either. Some of the houses were too small for
us.
After about two months of searching, a friend took me
to see a house. It was large, old, with
a Spanish-tile roof, ceramic tile floors, and an enormous yard which stretched
from the street in front of the house to the street behind. It was exactly what I wanted and was only two
blocks from the large apartment building that the Americans had rented to hold
elementary school in, church in, and to house the Base Exchange and
Commissary. It was also close to the
Metro (subway) and the bus and trolley lines, so it would be easy for us to get
around when we didn’t have the car.
Also, the house was about six blocks from the American Theater, so the
children could walk to see the movies.
We rented it right away!
THE HOUSE AND YARD
The house had a foyer, dining room, front room, family
room, kitchen, and half-bath downstairs , and four bedrooms and a bathroom
upstairs. Our bedroom had a little
balcony, covered with beautifully-flowering vines that also screened the porch
below. Outside, and away from the
house, was a little maid’s house with a room and bath, with a wash house on one
end of it. There was also a garage,
although we didn’t keep our car in it.
The back yard had a grape arbor, a smokehouse, an old garage, plus lots of trees. But the most interesting thing for us was a large cemented pond in the back yard. We filled it with water every summer and used it for a swimming pool. It was really fun for the children. The whole yard was surrounded by a high, thick wall, with broken bottles embedded in the top of the back wall to keep out