Dad's Young Adulthood

After graduating from high school dad decided to go to college at BYU in Utah.  He got an early ride up in the middle of the summer, and with nothing much to do he went out for football.  They soon found out he wasn't star material and he was cut from the training table where they got free food, so he quit.   It was still early and he didn't have anything to do so he took a job working in a peach canning factory.  Dad didn't have a lot of money and he was trying to be careful, so he ate so many peaches he became ill.

Dad's big brother Stewart and his wife decided to go to the "Y" as well, and they asked dad to stay with them.  They bought a small two bedroom condo near the campus.  Stewart got a job with a cab company and dad worked nights dispatching and counting the money.  It wasn't much fun and when the semester ended he wasn't too excited about going back.

In January, 1947, dad thought he would likely be drafted into the army so he enlisted for eighteen months.  Dad spent most of his enlistment assigned to the motor pool in the Second Medical Battalion at Fort Lewis, Washington.  He became the company motor sergeant in charge of all the vehicles in the company.  Dad's company was sent to Alaska for a time, which was really an adventure.  They spent most of their time around the Big Delta south of Fairbanks on the Yukon River.  The weather was extreme.  One day it was 45 degrees below zero and a week later it was 40 degrees above. The wind blew hard a lot but their clothes were excellent and generally he was plenty warm except for his face.  They were out in the weather most of the time pulling sledges and sleeping in little tents. 

After returning to Ft. Lewis dad's company was sent to Portland to help fight a flood.  One night they were sleeping at an air field close to the flooding river when about two o'clock in the morning they were woke up and told they had five minutes to get out because the dike had broken.  The zipper on dad's sleeping bag stuck and he couldn't get the darn thing opened.  Dad panicked.  Somehow he got out, the dike had not broken, and he lived through it.

Dad was discharged from the Army in June, 1948.  On his way back to Arizona he stopped in Salt Lake City and was interviewed to be a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints, (the Mormons) by Elder Bruce R. McConkie.  Dad was called to serve in Northern States Mission, but while he was there the mission was split into two, and dad finished serving in the Great Lakes Mission.  He worked hard, studied a lot, and gained a strong testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Dad's mission was hard but it was a good experience.  He was not successful in actually baptizing a single convert, but he later learned that nine of the people he taught eventually joined the church.

Dad made two important decisions before he left his mission.  First, he decided that he needed to go back to college and get his teaching certificate.  Second, he and mom had exchanged letters throughout his mission, and he decided to go home and marry her.