Brigham Young's Great-Grandson Passes Away

The oldest person in our LDS Ward passed away a few days ago.  His name was Thomas Young Emmett and he happened to be a great-grandson of both the prophet Brigham Young (1801-1877), and one of the steadfast, faithful missionaries of the Restoration, Erastus Fairbanks Snow (1818-1888).

Tom was born in Utah in 1912, and his family moved to the Portland area when he was 12.  He has been here ever since--for 89 years Portland has been his home.  Tom knew everything about the growth of the LDS Church in this area, and he served in leadership capacities many times, including as Bishop, Stake President, Temple President, and Regional Representative.  One of Tom's prized possessions is displayed on his fireplace hearth: his great-grandfather Brigham Young's spittoon.  Yeah, you heard that right--Brigham Young owned a spittoon.

Tom was married twice. His first marriage last 50 years until his wife's death, and the second, 25.

In 2012 I attended Tom's 100th birthday party.  What a festive occasion it was.  He remained seated at the head table and welcomed all who wanted to give him personal best wishes.  Tom's health was very good until a year or two ago.  Last spring he started using a walker.  I remember this because I was using a scooter to get around after foot surgery, so I told him I was joining his club.  There are half a dozen older folks in our ward who get around with walkers.

Besides Tom's steadfastness in the faith, what I will remember most about him is his physical stamina.  He was not a large man, yet he looked tall in a way, because he stood ramrod straight.  He could stand in the store or in church and converse with people without fishing around for something to sit or lean on.  A few years ago he climbed up on a chair to reach something and fell, cracking some bones in his spine.  He missed church meetings that week while he was in the hospital, but the following week he was back, wearing a back and neck brace.  And standing ramrod straight.  Nothing could faze this man.

I was looking at Tom's family on FamilyTree (reached through www.familysearch.org).  He never knew his namesake grandfather, Thomas Emmett because, for crying out loud--his grandfather was born in 1827!   He probably didn't remember his mother's parents for they lived only a few years after his birth.

Tom's wife RM is in her 90s, and has the same never-wavering faith, the same physical stamina as Tom.  She fell and broke her hip last summer, yet three weeks later she climbed the steps to the podium microphone at church to share her testimony of faith in the restored gospel.

Tom will be missed.

This is his obituary:

Thomas Young Emmett, a resident of Portland since the age of 12, passed away peacefully at his home on Saturday, Dec. 21, 2013.

TYE (a term of endearment used by his closest friends and family) was born March 16, 1912, in Ogden, Utah, to Nell Young Emmett and Irving Clarence Emmett.  At age 12, Tom and his family rode the train to Portland, OR, never thinking it would become his home for the next 89 years!  He graduated from Portland's Franklin High School in 1930 at the beginning of the Great Depression, and continued what he'd done since a little boy – work hard to help support the family.

In 1935 Tom married Zalia Huntsman (who preceded him in death in 1985).  They labored together, started a family and endured the challenging economic times.  Tom was eventually offered a partnership in a manufacturer's rep company, and it was renamed Bruce-Emmett Co.  After the untimely death of his partner, Tom acquired full ownership, resulting in it becoming a very large and prosperous business, the largest electrical manufacturer's rep west of the Mississippi.  He remained as owner and president until retirement.

Tom was always involved with his church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), serving in many leadership and demanding roles.  Those included a bishop for 13 years, seven years as a stake president, five years as a regional representative of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and in 1992 was given the assignment as president of the Portland Oregon Temple (Lake Oswego).  Serving at his side faithfully for three years as the temple matron was his wife Rose Marie Emmett.

Even in his late 90's Tom continued to fulfill volunteer assignments within the Church.  Countless are the people who have been influenced by his example and integrity and there are many untold stories of the generosity shown throughout his life to those in need of a "hand-up."  Until the very end he set an example of faith, perseverance, and uncomplaining adjustment to the changes life brought to him.

Tom is survived by his wife Rose Marie Emmett of Portland, daughters Kathleen Mitton of Farmington, UT, and Susan Emmett of Milwaukie, OR, and his son John H. Emmett of Portland, OR.  A second son, David T. Emmett, preceded him in death.  In addition, there are 25 surviving grandchildren, 75 great-grandchild and 21 great-great-grandchildren.

A memorial service to celebrate Tom's life will be held at 1p.m. Saturday, Dec. 28, 2013 at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 955 NW 173rd Ave., Beaverton, OR 97006.

The Small World of Indexing

Earlier this year I wrote about a volunteer program called Indexing.  Today I was working on knocking out my goal for 2013 (only 1 month left!), and ran across a person I knew in the documents that I was randomly assigned.  That has happened only a few times in the tens of thousands of records that have passed my way.

The records I tend to index are Hungarian language births-marriages-deaths.   The program allows volunteers to pick their project from about a hundred choices, and the above is challenging yet within my capabilities.  Yesterday I saw that Cascade County Montana obituaries were being indexed, and since a large part of my Grandfather's family settled there, I downloaded a few batches of those for a change.  

Immediately, familiar names showed up--not necessarily relatives, but people who had settled near my people in the coal mining settlement of Stockett Montana.  And then I saw the name Barney Bubnash in the obituary of  one of his  step-siblings.  Barney's parents had both been married multiple times, so he had plenty of steps.  He was my Dad's second cousin.  I never met him but we talked on the phone before his death.  

In 2012 when the big push was to index the 1940 Census, I was randomly sent a batch of Montana census pages.  Entering data line by line down the page I was momentarily startled to see a family I had known well.   There was my friend Claire in 1940 with her first husband and her son Bruce.   In the mid-60s I babysat Bruce's children who lived 2 houses away from me.  Years later Bruce's mother Claire was my neighbor.

Amazing that I would see anyone I know or know of, given that over a billion records have been indexed to date.   This link will take you to the indexing home page.   Watch a couple of the short introductory videos and give indexing a try!

a typical Hungarian-language parish record

A Few of My Favorite Dorky Music Videos

Feeling lazy today.  If you want a smile check out these links to music videos that for one reason or another are excessively dorky.  I don't sit around all day surfing youtube.  When I was laid up for months after surgery one day I was tired of reading and watching movies on my computer.  Instead I watched youtube videos of some great old songs . . . and not so great music videos.  They made me laugh when I really needed it.

A very 60's music video . . : It's the Sign of the Times by Petula Clark; the gal in the orange hat is really into it

I have loved Petula Clark since grade school for her upbeat music, perky personality

Ride Captain Ride: see a guy rocking out in a zebra suit with Buffalo Bill fringe (only not as classy).  Give this group some credit for not lip-synching!



Shoulda Been a Cowboy: Toby Keith wearing the world's Best.  Mullet.  Ever.

Toby Keith is proud of his mullet, and he should be

As Tears Go By: Marianne Faithfull was only 15 in this video.  She rose straight up out of her grave to lip-sync her most famous song for us.  Me thinks she would rather be back 6 feet under . . .

God Bless

I was thinking about people who made a difference in my life and these folks popped into my mind, and I thought to myself, "God bless so-and-so, because of [fill in the blank] that they did to impact my life."  They are by no means the only people who have changed my life for the better.

Verdell McQueen, Melba Kelly, Mary Shelby--3 humble elderly ladies who lived in Meridian Idaho back in the 70s when it was still a country farm-town.  They sought me out, helped me with my children, or in the case of Verdell, told me flat out how I should be raising my children.  And Blanche Berg who did the same in Beaverton.  Wish I had taken the time to know them better.

Tim Davies--He was in Newhall Ward when I joined the Church.  I became involved in dance festival that year (1973), which was to be held in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.  My folks were very unhappy that I was now a Mormon and there was plenty of tension about it at home.  No way they were going to attend an activity put on by this crazy church I had joined.  Tim was selling tickets to the event and unknown to me, went to my house that very day of the event and got my folks to buy tickets.  They attended.  And they loved it and were impressed by every aspect of it.  And my life became better.

Janet Butterfield--Janet has heard me say this, and I'll say it again: Janet, you saved my life.  Or at least my mental / emotional life.  When I had 2 very small boys, the younger developmentally disabled, Janet suggested we trade children on a regular basis so we could each have a break.  My DD son was not easy to take care of and though people were kind, no one else stepped forward to give me that kind of relief.  When Janet's baby died I was able to give back a little.

Sherilyn Lemon--She was a whirl-wind of energy and accomplishment.  She had to be, with 4 children under the age of 6.  One Sunday she noticed I wasn't at church, and when she found out from Craig that I was home recovering from a miscarriage, she left the meeting and came to my house to see what she could do for me.  Who does that?  The next day Sherilyn was over vacuuming, doing laundry, helping w/ my little boy.  And doing the housework in about a fourth the time it usually took me.  I learned from her that my own time and energy were underused, and that acting immediately to assess a need--without second guessing ourselves--is the way to be.

Carolyn Cook--one of the people who I feel completely comfortable with.  We have many common interests and each of us is willing to adjust our schedules to do something together, whether it's hiking or family history or travel.  A few weeks we got this crazy idea to take advantage of a give-away of old folding tables where she attends church.  We put 8 of them in my van and toodled around delivering some to other people to store in their garage.  That way, when any of us have a gathering, we have access to 8 tables without having to squeeze all 8 into our garages.  We do kooky things like this.

Eleanor Price--She was my Mom's best friend from her childhood.  Eleanor was the "safest" adult in my childhood.   No matter what dumb thing I did, Eleanor always had a smile and a kind word for me.  Even her mellow voice was like a pleasant smile.  I believe that just maybe maybe maybe, she was seeing the real me, with some actual potential, hidden behind my foolish, dorky exterior.

Margie Scorup--I attended BYU as a brand new Mormon, and it was culture shock, believe me.  Margie taught me how to be a Mormon.  Typical was one evening at a residence hall meeting when the group decided to sing I Am a Child of God.  Not having had the benefit of Primary where I would have learned this song I never heard of, Margie sat next to me and whispered each phrase in my ear so that I could sing along.  It's symbolic of all her "tutoring," as she walked with me a step at a time.

There's Nothing Like [the View of] the Cheap Seats

No, I did not misquote Alabama in the title of this post.  Love their song though, especially the line, "there's nothing like the view from the cheap seats!"   Reminds me of some of the Dodger baseball games I attended a very long time ago.

This post concerns not the view FROM the cheap seats, but the view OF the cheap seats.  Cheap in this case means free.  And though they were singing about baseball, this is about football.   And we had to work for these free seats by doing card stunts.

Back in the day BYU passes for the card stunt section at football games were free, the original cheap seats.  And they were on the 50-yard-line.  Yeah we sat on hard wooden benches but the vantage point was as good as it gets.

To get the passes we had to show up to the Wilk Ballroom at 7 a.m. on a given Saturday to sign up.   The passes were good for for the entire football season.  We were given basic instruction on how the card-stunts work.   In a typical game we might do 5 or 6 stunts by following directions written on big poster paper and held up for us to see.  The poster had a picture of what we were creating with our cards.  Our stack of 5 or 6 colored cards stayed under our benches until needed.  Of course, we could never see the stunts ourselves.  I trust they were colorful and dynamic when viewed from the paying seats across the field.  Most of them were words or short phrases pertaining to football, but I remember one that was a marriage proposal orchestrated by a guy who sat with his girlfriend on the opposing side of the field.  We didn't know until after the game that we had just asked an unsuspecting gal if she would marry the guy sitting next to her.

I couldn't find a photo of a BYU stunt, but here's one from UCLA:

I'm pretty sure we never did anything close to this intricate American flag stunt:

Here's the link to that nostalgic song,
The Cheap Seats

The Best Cookies Ever!

While I was growing up our family regularly got together with a group of people who, along with my Mom, called Holyoke Massachusetts home.  These folks had transplanted to Southern California, or were frequent visitors from the East.   The regular attendees were:

• Mom's closest friend, Eleanor Prentiss, and her husband Bob Price and son Bobby
• Eleanor's aunt Peg Prentiss and her husband Al Frank
• Peg's widowed brother Jimmy Prentiss (visited from Holyoke) (Jimmy had been married to my Grandpa Ashe's cousin)
• Peg and Jimmy's widowed sister Mary Prentiss Murray and her daughter Margaret Murray
• Ray Flynn, a survivor of World War One's Lost Battalion (visited from Holyoke)
• our family of 6

The group usually got together at Eleanor's because it was closer for her elderly aunts and uncles than our place.  My siblings and I and Bobby drove the adults crazy with our loud boisterous horseplay in that cramped boxy house.  We knew all the nooks and crannies for games of hide and seek, the bounciest beds to jump on, the most fun TV shows to watch.  We laughed enough to make me wet my pants.  When the Prices put in a swimming pool where a small neglected orchard stood, we really had a blast on those southern California hot summer days.

All of us got together around major holidays: 4th of July, Christmas and Easter, and in between.  The menu never varied.  Summer gatherings were barbeques.  Christmastime meant lasagne, Easter-time was lamb with mint jelly.  And it was on the Price's color TV where I watched the annual broadcasts of Peter Pan and the Wizard of Oz--and the 1969 moon landing on my Dad's 48th birthday.  

Once the swimming pool was built we went to the Prices more often in summer, and all the attendees helped out by bringing parts of the barbecue.  Hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, salad, pop, dessert.  Our family brought fresh-picked corn on the cob from a farm along the way.  We often brought fresh home-baked cookies.  What strong and wonderful memories these are.  

OK, the fresh home-baked cookies.  One summer Saturday Mom and Dad were bustling around preparing for an afternoon to-do at the Prices.  We were assigned to bring a batch of cookies for dessert, and Mom asked me to take care of the baking while she was out doing early morning errands.  Out came the baking equipment, the canisters of flour and sugar, the eggs, butter, and chocolate chips.  I creamed the butter, sugar and vanilla.  Added the eggs.  Added the salt.  Time for the flour.  I opened the canister of white flour, and holy cow, it was awash with tiny beady black bugs, the dreaded weevil.   Yikes, what to do?   Mom wasn't home to ask.  Our only supply of flour was infested with bugs, we were leaving in an hour, and those cookies had to be mixed and baked.  So that's what I did.  

Well, when it was time for dessert after the barbecue, you would have thought those chocolate chip cookies were made by some fancy schmancy downtown bakery.  Everyone raved about them!  The old folks couldn't get enough, and gushed that these were hands down, the best cookies they had ever tasted.  What could I do but mumble a brief thanks, flash a weak smile and get the heck out of there and into the deep end of the pool . . . 

I kept my secret ingredient quiet for over four decades.  Now you know how to make the very best chocolate chip cookies ever!

Our Version of Poverty

We were our own brand of poor in the early years of our marriage (1974).  Never "no food on the table" poor. I don't mean to insult people who are seriously suffering from want.   But neither were we the obnoxious hand-wringing "oh dear, we can afford to dine out only twice this week" brand of "poor."   Maybe twice a year for us then.  At McDonalds.  With a shared small fries and ice water.

our car was the same model and color, but way less posh than this one

We drove a metallic blue 1966 Chevy Impala station wagon that Craig's folks gave us.  As in "free."  Otherwise we would not have had a car.   But we had a car.  Yet  . . .

We rarely drove it because gas was a whopping 40 to 50 cents a gallon.  So, we walked or cycled to school and other places.  Weekly grocery shopping exercised our car.   We shopped at Storehouse Market on Second West.  It was the original warehouse-style grocery store, extremely basic.  Concrete floors, dark gloomy clammy atmosphere, canned and packaged goods still in their cases, and produce that had mostly lived out its useful life.  Oranges were 5 cents a pound, a third of what they were elsewhere, but I had to pick through a mountain of them to get 20 good ones.  Bananas were 9 cents a pound, always, as advertised on a permanent sign outside the store.   Decades after graduation we happened to pass by Storehouse Market on a visit to Provo.  Bananas were still 9 cents a pound.  It was the same old sun-faded sign, too.
                           

the remodeled Storehouse Market--photo probably taken in the 90s

We found other unique ways to save pennies here and there.  Our telephone was a party-line, but at least we had a phone.  A party-line was shared between several other people and was half the cost of a private phone line.  Occasionally when we picked up the phone to make a call, a stranger who shared our line would be using it.  We could listen into their conversation if we wanted to (but we didn't want to).  And how quaint is this?  To save a ten-cent stamp when bill-paying, Craig rode his bike 3 miles downtown to the utility company to pay in person.

In those college days we usually had a nickel left at the end of the month.  Seriously folks, we came in barely under our $195 per month budget.  Rent was @ $90-something, food @ $60-70 per month, we had some small insurance costs, utilities, rare fill-ups for the car, super rare clothing and shoe purchases, and college textbooks and supplies.  And what did we do with that nickel at the end of the month?   We bought one soft ice cream cone at the Wilk.  To share between us.

In 1976 we were heading home to Southern Californa for a visit, and there was the problem of paying for gas.  We advertised on the ride-board and 6 students responded to share in gas costs.  One of those was leaving college for good with her mountain of stuff to take home.  We drove the 650 miles with 3 people in the front seat, 3 in back, and 2 stretched out in the way-back, recumbent on top of that gal's stuff.   Seatbelts?  The driver, yes.  AC?  "4-and-80", which means: open all 4 windows and drive 80 miles per hour.  Without those 6 students to pay for the gas we would have had to take out a loan to get home.

My most pathetic memory of our "poverty" involved my senior thesis.  I splurged on a package of quality paper (50 sheets), borrowed a typewriter, and went to work transforming my rough draft.  Near the end it became apparent I was going to run out of paper, maybe by 2 or 3 sheets.  To spend a couple of dollars to buy another pack just for a few sheets was out of the question.  I dug around in my old notebooks and found 3 sheets of cheap yellowed typing paper and used those.  It didn't make a difference in my grade of course, but my pride was dinged, and I wondered if the prof thought I was a dope for marring the beauty of my thesis.

For decades I saved $$ on groceries with coupons.  Couponing has experienced a resurgence, and it seems that the younger generation thinks they invented the technique, but no, it's what got us through the lean years back in the day.  Everything that we could buy on clearance, or at least on sale, we did.  I sewed my kids' clothes using remnants that were marked to half off.

My friends and I became experts at gleaning produce from local farms.  If we went for cherries or apples or pears and they were 5 cents a pound cheaper if we picked our own, that's what we did.  One day Janet and I went to a commercial orchard looking for a deal on peaches.  They had culls not good enough to send to the cannery, but for $3 per bushel (half price), we picked through them and came home with more than enough for both our families.

We still live cheap, even though it's no longer a necessity.  It's always a satisfaction to me to buy something marked down to half of the clearance price, or to buy the slightly bruised bargain bananas.  Some things never change.