Dad's Growing Up Years

I think I'm going to change the way I present dad's life story from here on out.  Instead of just copying his history I'm going to retell it in my own words.  I hope dad doesn't mind.

Wilford White was in dad's first grade class.  He had a hard time talking because he stuttered and was put back in kindergarten.  Dad always thought that this humiliation forced Wilford to prove himself and was a big factor in his amazing success in sports, especially football.  It also didn't hurt that he was a year older than everyone else in his class.  He went on to become an outstanding high school, college, and pro football player.

In second grade dad learned a poem that stuck with him the rest of his life.  It was called,

Dont' Give Up

If you've tried and have not won,

Never stop for crying.

All that's great and good that's done

Is just by patient trying.

Though the sturdy oak has known

Many a blast that's bowed her,

She has risen again and grown

Loftier and prouder.

In third grade dad got his first case of puppy love.  He fell in love with Joe Pew's sister, and he didn't really get over her until he graduated from eight grade.  Of course, dad was pretty sure she never knew anything about it.

Dad was a little bit of a cut up in fourth grade.  Once  his teacher asked the class what would happen to a shovel that hadn't been used all summer and was rusty if it was taken out irrigating?  She wanted someone to say it got shiny again, but dad answered that it got muddy.

Dad was in eighth grade when, on December 7, 1941, he heard the news of the Japanese bombing on Pearl Harbor.  It was a Sunday, and he was over playing at a friends.  The next day Congress declared war on Germany and Japan and World War II began.  Dad turned 14 the next summer, as the war really got going.  After awhile his two older brothers joined the service, but dad was too young to do much to help.

Dad started that summer by getting a job carrying the Arizona Republic to Lehi, a small community on the north side of Mesa.  Dad used an old hand-me-down bike with hard narrow tires to deliver the paper.  The tires made the bike hard to peddle in sand, and in those days there was a lot of sand going down to Lehi.  Dad picked up his papers in downtown Mesa and rode over ten miles to deliver 30 papers.  He soon found that it wasn't worth the effort and quit.  Years later, though, dad still remembered two things vividly about that paper route.  Fist, the smell of the farms in Lehi, a combination of chickens, ducks, cows, and pigs; and second, passing the cemetery just before day light, when the moon was low or none at all, with the sounds and shadows moving with the wind.

Later that summer dad's friend's father and brothers got jobs building a Japanese relocation camp near Casa Grande.  They were making lots of money and they said they needed more help, so dad applied for the job.  Workers were supposed to be seventeen but dad didn't know that when he applied.  When the man told dad know he was supposed to be seventeen, and then asked him how old he was, dad said he was old enough.  But then the man asked dad when he was born, and dad was stuck.  He didn't have the slightest idea what year he should have been born in to be seventeen, and he was too scared to figure it out.  The man could see dad had a problem, but because he was big for his age, and they needed help so badly, the man gave him the job anyway.  Dad's job was to nail plaster board to the wall, but they soon found out he couldn't hit the nail and kept making holes in the wall, so they had him nail wood trim to the outside of the building  instead.  It was terribly hot in the middle of the desert, though, and after a week dad got sick and quit.

When dad got paid for his week's work he had more money than he had ever seen before in his life.  The most exciting thing he could think of to do was to go to Provo and visit his brother, Stewart.  Much to his surprise, his mom and dad said OK.  Dad took a bus to Utah and had a great time.  One day while he was there he hitch-hiked to Salt Lake City to see the sights.  He got a ride home with a professor at BYU who thought dad must be a student there because he was wearing his brother's letter sweater.  It turned into an awkward trip when dad couldn't name any of his teachers, but the professor saw he was having trouble and let dad alone for the rest of the trip.  Being large for a fourteen year-old had it's good points, but it sure seemed to get dad into a lot of trouble.