Geraldine Grant History
I was born December 3, 1927 in Salt Lake City. I was named after Geraldine Farrar (February 28, 1882 – March 11, 1967) an American soprano opera singer and film actress. I had red hair when I was born and my dad said I even had red hair down my back. He was happy to have a red headed child because his mother and sister had red hair. It has been ‘strawberry blond’ my whole life. I have blue eyes. I was the first child born into my family. My sister, Marge, was born about two years later and my other sister, Mary, another two years after that. My brothers, Rick and Allen, came along six and nine years afterward, respectively.
My father was Charles Arnold Curtis, but he always went by Arnold. He only went through the eighth grade because he and his older brother, Fred, had to get jobs to help support the family. That was common back then. My dad’s parents were Fred Curtis and Katherine Hopewell. They both came over from Nottingham, England. We would visit them almost every Sunday for 4 o‘clock ‘tea’. Grandma Kate had bad diabetes. She died in 1936. My dad’s siblings were, oldest to youngest, Fred Allen, my dad, Winifred (Winnie), and Virginia (Virgie). Virginia had red hair, like me. Winnie was a telephone operator. I thought that was the neatest job. I often played ‘telephone operator’ as a game when I was little. Fred’s daughter, Gloria, was about six months older than me and we have been close our whole lives.
My mother was Myrtle Hazel Amott. (She always hated both the names Myrtle and Hazel). Her parents were George and Mary. Grandpa was a plumber for the church. Grandma was relief society president for about 16 years. She baked the bread for the sacrament all of those years. My mother was the oldest of her siblings; then came Lawrence, Charles and Louis. Louis and his cousin were killed in a sledding accident as teens. Finally, there was Earl and then Eleanor.
One of my earliest memories is of when I was very young and the depression hit us personally. We had recently bought a beautiful home on the East Bench and we had a nice new car. My dad was working for Union Pacific (I think) in accounting and he lost his job. We lost the house and the car and moved into my Amott grandparents’ basement on Emerson Avenue. I was in heaven because I loved my Grandmother Amott as well as my favorite uncle and aunt, Earl and Eleanor, who still lived there. My aunt Eleanor always brought me books for birthdays and Christmas. When I was older she gave me Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. These became beloved stories because she gave them to me. She would play “I’m in the mood for love” on the piano and we would all sing along. My Uncle Charles often played ‘stardust’ on the piano. It was the only thing I ever heard him play and it was beautiful. I’ve always said that I want it played at my funeral because I have such fond memories of this. My mother tried to get us girls to take piano lessons later on, but sometimes I would take the money for the lesson and go buy candy with it instead; then call the teacher and say I was sick.
We only lived there about two months because dad got a job at Utah Power & Light. He worked as a teller, taking payments, downtown. He eventually became the statistician. He was smart and would help the executives, writing their letters and such, but since he didn’t have as much schooling, he couldn’t be promoted higher. I think that kind of bothered him.
We moved into a big old house (5 bedrooms) originally built by Parley P. Pratt. It was 2 stories plus a basement but only had 1 bathroom, downstairs. It was a large bathroom though, with an old-fashioned claw foot bathtub. The house was built without any nails. It only had wooden pegs. My dad was always remodeling and would curse at the wooden pegs because they were impossible to remove. I had chosen a bedroom with blue walls, and my father lowered the ceiling in my room and another room to put in an attic. I had wallpaper that had fairies on it. My room overlooked the backyard. My sisters and I would look out my window at the party-goers when my parents would have parties in the back yard during the summer. My dad put in a big fish pond; he built an outdoor fireplace out of rock-with a chimney, and a pergola; and he had a large vegetable garden. He wasn’t a contractor but he has always building and remodeling, with the help of others; like my Grandpa Amott and my uncles. One of my favorite memories of this house is sitting on the basement stairs as a little girl and singing “I Stand All Amazed”.
Every summer, each of us girls would get to spend a week alone with grandma and grandpa Amott. She would take us to lunch at Kresses. One summer, my family took a trip to Yellowstone and rented a cabin. One of the windows in the cabin wouldn’t close all the way but my dad figured it wasn’t too important. We went out for a walk one day and a bear got that window open and climbed in. He got into the food, scattering flour and sugar and anything not in a can everywhere. When we got back and my dad saw that bear in the middle of that huge mess, he was so mad that he got a branch and hit that bear on the nose. The bear ran off.
At Christmas, we would go to Grandma & Grandpa Curtis’ for Christmas Eve. I believed in Santa till I was twelve years old because my best friend, June, wouldn’t let anyone tell me he wasn’t real. My favorite gift was a big doll house my dad had made for us girls. It had an electric train running around it with smoke coming out of it. Christmas was always a big deal. One year for Christmas, we girls got one bicycle to share between us. We would take turns riding around the block; but I would go an extra block so that I could ride further. My sisters always wondered why I rode so slowly.
I remember walking to school on the first day of first grade. Columbus Elementary was three long blocks away on 5th East. It was on the way to school that I first met June Okland. She lived on 6th East and I lived on 7th East. We quickly became best friends and stayed best friends our whole lives. We even repeated first grade together. My other best friend was Pat Doyle. She lived a block away in the other direction from June.
When I was ten, my mother began to suffer from severe Rheumatoid arthritis and my whole life changed. It was difficult for her to do anything, even take care of my baby brother, Richard (Rick). We had a young woman in the ward come in every day to help out. Dad paid her $5 a week. Also, My Grandmother Amott would ride the bus down to our house and cook and clean two or three times a week. She became a surrogate mother to us. She taught us girls how to cook and clean, etc. My father took wonderful care of my mother and was very attentive. He would carry my mother up the stairs every night and everywhere she needed to go. He put wheels on a regular chair so she could roll around the kitchen and entry hall, where her favorite couch was. One day she tipped over and fell. My dad was so upset, he smashed the chair. It saddened me that she could never come to my school or to church. My dad didn’t go to church either since she couldn’t, but he sent us kids.
About three years later, my mom got pregnant again. The doctor (Dr. Kimball) was willing to do an abortion because of my mother’s bad health. She couldn’t even walk. Abortions were illegal except in cases where the health of the mother is at risk. But my mother said that she had nothing else to do, so she would keep the baby. As it turned out, she felt much better during the pregnancy. Hormones are released in the body during pregnancy that helped her. She even got up on her feet and walked a little bit. She never felt him move once during the pregnancy so she didn’t even think he has alive, but my brother Allen was born, a large baby boy. He did have some heart/lung problems his whole life. My mother, however, continued to feel better even after the birth. She was still able to walk a bit and do a few things, although she would continue to suffer from RA the rest of her life, as there was no cure.
As a teen, I grew quite tall, with long legs. I was skinny too. In about junior high, I developed a large group of close girlfriends. Besides June and Pat, that had been my friends since elementary school, there were Jean Anderson, Martie Green, Louise Burbage and Jane Miller, Viola Stange, Margaret Lake and Donna Lou Archibald. We had a lot of fun. We were all on a basketball team together at school. We would walk to Sugarhouse, play monopoly, or go to the movies and then Snelgroves for ice cream. I hated when my mother made me take my sisters with me, and they always wanted to go. In fact, the worst trouble I ever got in was when I was supposed to take my sister Marge to the movie with my friends, but I left her home instead. My conscience got to me and I ran home to get her, but my dad wouldn’t let me go back. It just about killed me. I didn’t get into trouble very often. Every Spring Break, June, Pat & I would ride our bikes all the way to the Hogel Zoo. That was our tradition. My friends and I stayed close throughout our lives and continued to have get-togethers into our “golden” years. We even called ourselves “the golden girls”.
I dated a boy named Johnny Green the last year of the war that I was quite serious about. He was in the service posted in Salt Lake. He was a staunch catholic though. He had been drinking one night when my parents had him over to dinner and he got sick. My parents were very unhappy with me and didn’t like him. He went back home to Oregon and I wondered why he didn’t write me. I only later found out he was writing me but my mother was throwing away his letters.
I got my first Job at 14 years old, selling shoes at Keith O’Brian’s department store. Pat and I had gone downtown looking for jobs one day. We started at ZCMIs and went into most of the stores down the whole street, asking for jobs. Pat gave up and went home but I said I was going to one more store. I went to the shoe section and asked the man there where to apply; he asked if I wanted to sell shoes. His name was Mr. Bess and he ran the shoe department. I put down that I was 16 on the application because I was too young. It was hard for me at first and Mr. Bess almost gave up on me, because I had no idea what I was doing. Eventually I got really good though. While I was working there, employees could buy clothes and things and the company would take it out of our paychecks. At one point, the boss upstairs called me in to tell me I couldn’t spend so much because I spent more than I made. I worked there throughout high school and into college.
I had some other jobs too. During the war (WWII), my girlfriends and I got jobs boxing crackers for the soldiers. We didn’t last there though because we spent too much time waving at the soldiers. I was working at Harris Dairy when the war ended. My cousin Gloria and I were the only ones there and we closed it down to go downtown to celebrate.
One summer, Keith O’Brian’s closed down for three months for remodeling, so Jean Anderson and I got jobs through Jean’s uncle (He was a big wig with the railroad) at Bryce Canyon as waitresses. Workers usually had to start as maids, so everyone hated us at first because we were able to start as waitresses, the best job. We told them that we could sing and dance on the job application, which we couldn’t. Employees sang to guests as they came and left and put on shows regularly. When we were interviewed, the interviewer asked me to sing. When I got half way through, he said “I’ll put you in the chorus”. It was a fun job.
I went back to Keith O’Brian’s after the summer; but the next summer, I told my boss I was leaving to go back to Bryce Canyon. He was very upset. He hired me back when I returned though.
June, Marty, Jeanne Anderson, and I all went to University of Utah for college. Pat Doyle had gotten married right out of high school and Louise went to BYU. June and I were going to go with Louise but we decided at the last moment that we couldn’t afford it. Jeanne, Marty and I joined the Tri Delta Pi sorority. We had so much fun there.
I had known of Keith because he lived in my neighborhood, but he was five years older than me so I didn’t get to ‘know’ him till after the war- when we were both at the university. He had been fighting in WWII so he was still in school. He was sitting on the steps of the union building one day and I stopped to talk to him. I subtly said ‘they sure have good milkshakes down there at the drug store’. That was the first time we went out. Sometime later we were talking about skiing. I skied a lot but he had never been so he asked me to go with him. He bought a pair of skis at the army surplus store that were way too long for him, but I didn’t tell him that. This was one of our first dates and when he came to pick me up, my girlfriends were waiting on the lawn with me for a ride up to the ski resort. He was very surprised that I would invite my friends to go on our date but he still asked me out again. Once we started dating, that was it. We were serious.
That summer, I went to Bryce Canyon to work again. Keith didn’t want me to go but I did anyway. Towards the end of the summer, Keith came up to visit me. He brought a diamond ring and asked me to marry him on the rim of the canyon.
We were married the following March, the 18th, in 1948. He had a final exam that morning and we got married at my house that evening. My Uncle Fred officiated. My best friend, June Okland, was my maid of honor. Her brother, Jack Okland, was Keith’s best man. He was also his Brother-in-law. He’d married Keith’s only sibling, his sister Jeanne.
When we got to the Hotel Utah that night, they had given away our reservation because we got there so late. They had the bridal suite available but it was ten dollars. Keith wasn’t sure he wanted to pay that much but he agreed.
I quit school when we got married and I got a job at the stenographic bureau on campus. A group of girls tried out but I was the one hired because I was the only one to fix my mistake. We lived in the basement apartment of Mrs. Hall. Jeanne and Jack lived there before us. My sister Mary and her husband Dick moved in there after us. Then my brother Rick lived there with his first wife, and then Mary moved back in.
We didn’t go on our Honeymoon until June, during summer break. We went on a road trip, first to Yellowstone, then over to Oregon, Seattle, Washington, Vancouver, and Victoria in Canada. It was a nice trip.
I had my first child, Jan, about a year and a half later, in 1949. They wouldn’t let pregnant women on campus back then so when I began to ‘show’, my boss told me I could take a typewriter home and type thesis but I couldn’t work on campus anymore. Shortly after Jan was born, Keith graduated from University in electrical engineering and got a job. We bought our first home by the Wasatch Lawn cemetery for $12,000. He came home one night and told me we could make an extra $20 a month by joining the marine reserves. All he had to do was go to meetings now and then. He told his friend Gene about this deal and they both signed up. A few months later, the Korean War broke out and they were called up, in 1950. That was one of the worst moments of my life, sending him off to war. Keith’s mother said to me ‘he’ll never come back from a second war’ and I was afraid it was true. Gene was so mad at Keith. He had been on Iwo Jimo in WWII and saw most of his friends die. But Gene ended up staying in San Diego and never had to go to Korea. Keith didn’t end up fighting either. He was putting up electrical poles, but he was right on the front line; so it was still very scary. Right before Christmas, he was transferred South where it was safe. I said it was the best Christmas present I ever got.
I went to work part time in the office at Keith’s employer, Silver Electric, when he went to war. I dropped Jan off at my mother’s while I went to work. He served a one year ‘tour’ before returning home.
Keith and his sister were converts. His parents went to the Methodist church. He was made an elder while he was in the war. He came home from the war and said to me “we are going to the temple and be sealed as a family”. Grandma and Grandpa Amott went with us because my parents were inactive and Keith’s weren’t members. I remember them bringing Jan in to be sealed to us in her little white dress.
After Keith returned home from the war, he went back to Silver Electric; but he wanted to work at a power company, so he applied at Cal Electric in Riverside, California. He quit his job, we sold our house and packed up and drove to California before he had even been hired. I remember waving at my parents as we drove away and feeling sad about leaving them. Keith pulled up to the company in downtown Riverside and told me to wait in the car while he went into check. When they saw him, they asked “how did you get here so fast, we just sent you your letter.” So he went to work there and we spent the next twelve years in Riverside. Those were good years. We really liked our church wards there and had good friends.
I was about six months pregnant with our second child, Russell, when we moved to California. The doctor that treated me in Salt Lake before we left didn’t charge me a cent. I had Russell almost exactly nine months after Keith returned home from Korea. Three years later, I had Leigh. Then I had a miscarriage about three years later. That is the only time I really remember being depressed. My parents took my family on a trip to Mexico soon after. I think they took me to help me get over my depression. My mother said “don’t worry. I took Spanish in school so I speak Spanish.” She didn’t understand a thing. Soon after, I found I was pregnant again. This time, it was with Curtis. He was born on December 13, 1960. I said he was the best Christmas present. (I am accused of saying a lot of things are ‘the best ever’). I got pregnant with Gayle only nine months later. I blamed Keith and was mad at him for getting me pregnant so fast. Jan was about twelve or thirteen by this time so she was able to help me. She would carry Curtis around and I would carry Gayle.
Around that time, the company Keith worked for merged with another and we would have to move to L.A.; so Keith got a job with Nevada Power in Las Vegas instead. I stayed in Riverside for a few months until our house sold and then we joined him. Jan and I cried the whole drive from California. Jan was in junior high so it was a difficult time for her to move. I was sad to leave the friends I had made too. But Vern Christiansen, a friend from Riverside, had moved to Vegas a few years earlier. Keith called him and asked where a good place to buy a home was. He found the home on Colanthe for us before the move so we were able to move right in and we were in the same ward. That was about 1963.
About a year after Jan graduated from high school, she eloped with her first husband, Dennis McCoy. They had Brian & Jason in the next few years before divorcing.
Russell went to BYU for a year of college before his mission to the Philippines in 1971. That year I got a big surprise, Jennifer! I was almost 44 years old and already had two grandchildren (Jan’s boys) when she was born.
Leigh married her first husband, Doug Edwards, on May 21, 1972. They moved to New York State right afterwards. They had Annie & Keith there. They moved back to Vegas in 1977.
Around 1974-5, Jan had a baby boy, Brandon, that died after only a few hours. They told us he would die but Jan and I held him for a while first. Then she had Heather in 1976. The father of both children is Kim McKellar.
My mother passed away in 1974. My parents were wintering in Mesa, Arizona at the time. My parents had been married for 48 years. My father was devoted to her and felt her loss keenly. Some months later, a friend of his sent him to fix the sprinklers of a widow, Grace Jones. They immediately hit it off and were married a short time later. They had 16 years together, traveling and enjoying their mature years. Grace took care of him when he became ill, until his death in 1990. I stayed good friends with Grace until she passed away in 2000.
Around 1975, we gave into Gayle’s intense desire for a horse and moved to 700 Kenny Way, which was ½ acre and zoned for horses. The first one, Big Red, was ‘green broke’ which means it wasn’t very tame. Shortly after we got him, Gayle, her best friend Sharon, and Sharon’s sister all got on him. They were going to walk him across the street. The horse began to buck and threw them all off. I had to run them all to the emergency room. Sharon had a broken arm and her sister’s leg was scraped up. That horse never was tamed. He bucked people off all the time. Jimbo was the next horse. He was an old barrel racer. He was a good horse but he was so old, he would stumble. The last horse had a beautiful tail, and Gayle cut it off, braided it and put it in her room. The day we got rid of that last horse, I was so happy. But then we got a sailboat, and that scared me worse than the horses.
Leigh divorced Doug shortly after moving back to Vegas. She married John Lucas in Oct, 1978. They had Jessica, Johnny Jo, and Dylan. They later moved to Northern California. They divorced a few years afterward. Leigh later lost Annie and then Jessica. Annie had suffered the loss of two babies of her own.
Leigh and John were living in Moab, Utah in 1980 when Gayle went to visit them. There she met Russell Anderson and they were soon married. They had three boys, Joshua, Caleb, and Timothy. Russell, beloved husband and father, died of brain cancer in 2010. Gayle was blessed to find another good man, Doug, and married him in 2013.
Jan married her second husband, George Mushner. He had a daughter from his previous wife named Nicole. Her mother had been killed in a car accident. Jan moved up to Cedar City and George would drive up on the weekends. They had Jan’s youngest, Matthew. They divorced and later Jan married a rancher from New Harmony, Ned Huntsman. He adopted both Heather and Matt so they took his last name. When Jan was little she always wanted to have a lot of animals, so she finally got her wish.
Russell married Teresa a little later. She had two young girls, Jessica & Nora from a previous marriage, and he adopted them.
Curtis married Brooke Jackson in 1985. They had four children; Cameron, Bree, Colton, and Brady.
Jennifer married Derek Holt in 1991. They had Devin & Daisy. They divorced about ten years later. When Daisy was 15, jenny had her own ‘surprise’, Charleigh. Jay Markovich is Charleigh’s devoted dad.
I lost my beloved husband, Keith, to heart disease in 1997, after 49 years of marriage. We raised six kids and went on many wonderful trips during our later years together. We were able to go to Nova Scotia (Canada) and Scotland to research Keith’s genealogy. We also went to England, Norway, Ireland and Austria- where I broke my leg skiing, so we had to go back a second time. Our favorite destination though was Hawaii and we went there many times. We had a trip planned in June 1985 when Curt and Brooke decided to get married; so they came along for their honeymoon. The last trip we made there was less than a year before Keith died.
Despite these losses, I’ve had a wonderful life. I am grateful for all God has given me. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the most important thing in my life and has brought me more joy and peace than I can express. I know that I will be with my husband Keith for eternity and the Plan of Salvation is God’s plan for us to return and live with Him. My life-long prayers are for all of you to know what I know and have that same Love.
After I have passed on, please paste my obituary as the last page of this history.
THE END
p.s. My heartfelt thanks and LOVE goes out to Brooke Grant who gathered and typed this History for me.
I was born December 3, 1927 in Salt Lake City. I was named after Geraldine Farrar (February 28, 1882 – March 11, 1967) an American soprano opera singer and film actress. I had red hair when I was born and my dad said I even had red hair down my back. He was happy to have a red headed child because his mother and sister had red hair. It has been ‘strawberry blond’ my whole life. I have blue eyes. I was the first child born into my family. My sister, Marge, was born about two years later and my other sister, Mary, another two years after that. My brothers, Rick and Allen, came along six and nine years afterward, respectively.
My father was Charles Arnold Curtis, but he always went by Arnold. He only went through the eighth grade because he and his older brother, Fred, had to get jobs to help support the family. That was common back then. My dad’s parents were Fred Curtis and Katherine Hopewell. They both came over from Nottingham, England. We would visit them almost every Sunday for 4 o‘clock ‘tea’. Grandma Kate had bad diabetes. She died in 1936. My dad’s siblings were, oldest to youngest, Fred Allen, my dad, Winifred (Winnie), and Virginia (Virgie). Virginia had red hair, like me. Winnie was a telephone operator. I thought that was the neatest job. I often played ‘telephone operator’ as a game when I was little. Fred’s daughter, Gloria, was about six months older than me and we have been close our whole lives.
My mother was Myrtle Hazel Amott. (She always hated both the names Myrtle and Hazel). Her parents were George and Mary. Grandpa was a plumber for the church. Grandma was relief society president for about 16 years. She baked the bread for the sacrament all of those years. My mother was the oldest of her siblings; then came Lawrence, Charles and Louis. Louis and his cousin were killed in a sledding accident as teens. Finally, there was Earl and then Eleanor.
One of my earliest memories is of when I was very young and the depression hit us personally. We had recently bought a beautiful home on the East Bench and we had a nice new car. My dad was working for Union Pacific (I think) in accounting and he lost his job. We lost the house and the car and moved into my Amott grandparents’ basement on Emerson Avenue. I was in heaven because I loved my Grandmother Amott as well as my favorite uncle and aunt, Earl and Eleanor, who still lived there. My aunt Eleanor always brought me books for birthdays and Christmas. When I was older she gave me Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. These became beloved stories because she gave them to me. She would play “I’m in the mood for love” on the piano and we would all sing along. My Uncle Charles often played ‘stardust’ on the piano. It was the only thing I ever heard him play and it was beautiful. I’ve always said that I want it played at my funeral because I have such fond memories of this. My mother tried to get us girls to take piano lessons later on, but sometimes I would take the money for the lesson and go buy candy with it instead; then call the teacher and say I was sick.
We only lived there about two months because dad got a job at Utah Power & Light. He worked as a teller, taking payments, downtown. He eventually became the statistician. He was smart and would help the executives, writing their letters and such, but since he didn’t have as much schooling, he couldn’t be promoted higher. I think that kind of bothered him.
We moved into a big old house (5 bedrooms) originally built by Parley P. Pratt. It was 2 stories plus a basement but only had 1 bathroom, downstairs. It was a large bathroom though, with an old-fashioned claw foot bathtub. The house was built without any nails. It only had wooden pegs. My dad was always remodeling and would curse at the wooden pegs because they were impossible to remove. I had chosen a bedroom with blue walls, and my father lowered the ceiling in my room and another room to put in an attic. I had wallpaper that had fairies on it. My room overlooked the backyard. My sisters and I would look out my window at the party-goers when my parents would have parties in the back yard during the summer. My dad put in a big fish pond; he built an outdoor fireplace out of rock-with a chimney, and a pergola; and he had a large vegetable garden. He wasn’t a contractor but he has always building and remodeling, with the help of others; like my Grandpa Amott and my uncles. One of my favorite memories of this house is sitting on the basement stairs as a little girl and singing “I Stand All Amazed”.
Every summer, each of us girls would get to spend a week alone with grandma and grandpa Amott. She would take us to lunch at Kresses. One summer, my family took a trip to Yellowstone and rented a cabin. One of the windows in the cabin wouldn’t close all the way but my dad figured it wasn’t too important. We went out for a walk one day and a bear got that window open and climbed in. He got into the food, scattering flour and sugar and anything not in a can everywhere. When we got back and my dad saw that bear in the middle of that huge mess, he was so mad that he got a branch and hit that bear on the nose. The bear ran off.
At Christmas, we would go to Grandma & Grandpa Curtis’ for Christmas Eve. I believed in Santa till I was twelve years old because my best friend, June, wouldn’t let anyone tell me he wasn’t real. My favorite gift was a big doll house my dad had made for us girls. It had an electric train running around it with smoke coming out of it. Christmas was always a big deal. One year for Christmas, we girls got one bicycle to share between us. We would take turns riding around the block; but I would go an extra block so that I could ride further. My sisters always wondered why I rode so slowly.
I remember walking to school on the first day of first grade. Columbus Elementary was three long blocks away on 5th East. It was on the way to school that I first met June Okland. She lived on 6th East and I lived on 7th East. We quickly became best friends and stayed best friends our whole lives. We even repeated first grade together. My other best friend was Pat Doyle. She lived a block away in the other direction from June.
When I was ten, my mother began to suffer from severe Rheumatoid arthritis and my whole life changed. It was difficult for her to do anything, even take care of my baby brother, Richard (Rick). We had a young woman in the ward come in every day to help out. Dad paid her $5 a week. Also, My Grandmother Amott would ride the bus down to our house and cook and clean two or three times a week. She became a surrogate mother to us. She taught us girls how to cook and clean, etc. My father took wonderful care of my mother and was very attentive. He would carry my mother up the stairs every night and everywhere she needed to go. He put wheels on a regular chair so she could roll around the kitchen and entry hall, where her favorite couch was. One day she tipped over and fell. My dad was so upset, he smashed the chair. It saddened me that she could never come to my school or to church. My dad didn’t go to church either since she couldn’t, but he sent us kids.
About three years later, my mom got pregnant again. The doctor (Dr. Kimball) was willing to do an abortion because of my mother’s bad health. She couldn’t even walk. Abortions were illegal except in cases where the health of the mother is at risk. But my mother said that she had nothing else to do, so she would keep the baby. As it turned out, she felt much better during the pregnancy. Hormones are released in the body during pregnancy that helped her. She even got up on her feet and walked a little bit. She never felt him move once during the pregnancy so she didn’t even think he has alive, but my brother Allen was born, a large baby boy. He did have some heart/lung problems his whole life. My mother, however, continued to feel better even after the birth. She was still able to walk a bit and do a few things, although she would continue to suffer from RA the rest of her life, as there was no cure.
As a teen, I grew quite tall, with long legs. I was skinny too. In about junior high, I developed a large group of close girlfriends. Besides June and Pat, that had been my friends since elementary school, there were Jean Anderson, Martie Green, Louise Burbage and Jane Miller, Viola Stange, Margaret Lake and Donna Lou Archibald. We had a lot of fun. We were all on a basketball team together at school. We would walk to Sugarhouse, play monopoly, or go to the movies and then Snelgroves for ice cream. I hated when my mother made me take my sisters with me, and they always wanted to go. In fact, the worst trouble I ever got in was when I was supposed to take my sister Marge to the movie with my friends, but I left her home instead. My conscience got to me and I ran home to get her, but my dad wouldn’t let me go back. It just about killed me. I didn’t get into trouble very often. Every Spring Break, June, Pat & I would ride our bikes all the way to the Hogel Zoo. That was our tradition. My friends and I stayed close throughout our lives and continued to have get-togethers into our “golden” years. We even called ourselves “the golden girls”.
I dated a boy named Johnny Green the last year of the war that I was quite serious about. He was in the service posted in Salt Lake. He was a staunch catholic though. He had been drinking one night when my parents had him over to dinner and he got sick. My parents were very unhappy with me and didn’t like him. He went back home to Oregon and I wondered why he didn’t write me. I only later found out he was writing me but my mother was throwing away his letters.
I got my first Job at 14 years old, selling shoes at Keith O’Brian’s department store. Pat and I had gone downtown looking for jobs one day. We started at ZCMIs and went into most of the stores down the whole street, asking for jobs. Pat gave up and went home but I said I was going to one more store. I went to the shoe section and asked the man there where to apply; he asked if I wanted to sell shoes. His name was Mr. Bess and he ran the shoe department. I put down that I was 16 on the application because I was too young. It was hard for me at first and Mr. Bess almost gave up on me, because I had no idea what I was doing. Eventually I got really good though. While I was working there, employees could buy clothes and things and the company would take it out of our paychecks. At one point, the boss upstairs called me in to tell me I couldn’t spend so much because I spent more than I made. I worked there throughout high school and into college.
I had some other jobs too. During the war (WWII), my girlfriends and I got jobs boxing crackers for the soldiers. We didn’t last there though because we spent too much time waving at the soldiers. I was working at Harris Dairy when the war ended. My cousin Gloria and I were the only ones there and we closed it down to go downtown to celebrate.
One summer, Keith O’Brian’s closed down for three months for remodeling, so Jean Anderson and I got jobs through Jean’s uncle (He was a big wig with the railroad) at Bryce Canyon as waitresses. Workers usually had to start as maids, so everyone hated us at first because we were able to start as waitresses, the best job. We told them that we could sing and dance on the job application, which we couldn’t. Employees sang to guests as they came and left and put on shows regularly. When we were interviewed, the interviewer asked me to sing. When I got half way through, he said “I’ll put you in the chorus”. It was a fun job.
I went back to Keith O’Brian’s after the summer; but the next summer, I told my boss I was leaving to go back to Bryce Canyon. He was very upset. He hired me back when I returned though.
June, Marty, Jeanne Anderson, and I all went to University of Utah for college. Pat Doyle had gotten married right out of high school and Louise went to BYU. June and I were going to go with Louise but we decided at the last moment that we couldn’t afford it. Jeanne, Marty and I joined the Tri Delta Pi sorority. We had so much fun there.
I had known of Keith because he lived in my neighborhood, but he was five years older than me so I didn’t get to ‘know’ him till after the war- when we were both at the university. He had been fighting in WWII so he was still in school. He was sitting on the steps of the union building one day and I stopped to talk to him. I subtly said ‘they sure have good milkshakes down there at the drug store’. That was the first time we went out. Sometime later we were talking about skiing. I skied a lot but he had never been so he asked me to go with him. He bought a pair of skis at the army surplus store that were way too long for him, but I didn’t tell him that. This was one of our first dates and when he came to pick me up, my girlfriends were waiting on the lawn with me for a ride up to the ski resort. He was very surprised that I would invite my friends to go on our date but he still asked me out again. Once we started dating, that was it. We were serious.
That summer, I went to Bryce Canyon to work again. Keith didn’t want me to go but I did anyway. Towards the end of the summer, Keith came up to visit me. He brought a diamond ring and asked me to marry him on the rim of the canyon.
We were married the following March, the 18th, in 1948. He had a final exam that morning and we got married at my house that evening. My Uncle Fred officiated. My best friend, June Okland, was my maid of honor. Her brother, Jack Okland, was Keith’s best man. He was also his Brother-in-law. He’d married Keith’s only sibling, his sister Jeanne.
When we got to the Hotel Utah that night, they had given away our reservation because we got there so late. They had the bridal suite available but it was ten dollars. Keith wasn’t sure he wanted to pay that much but he agreed.
I quit school when we got married and I got a job at the stenographic bureau on campus. A group of girls tried out but I was the one hired because I was the only one to fix my mistake. We lived in the basement apartment of Mrs. Hall. Jeanne and Jack lived there before us. My sister Mary and her husband Dick moved in there after us. Then my brother Rick lived there with his first wife, and then Mary moved back in.
We didn’t go on our Honeymoon until June, during summer break. We went on a road trip, first to Yellowstone, then over to Oregon, Seattle, Washington, Vancouver, and Victoria in Canada. It was a nice trip.
I had my first child, Jan, about a year and a half later, in 1949. They wouldn’t let pregnant women on campus back then so when I began to ‘show’, my boss told me I could take a typewriter home and type thesis but I couldn’t work on campus anymore. Shortly after Jan was born, Keith graduated from University in electrical engineering and got a job. We bought our first home by the Wasatch Lawn cemetery for $12,000. He came home one night and told me we could make an extra $20 a month by joining the marine reserves. All he had to do was go to meetings now and then. He told his friend Gene about this deal and they both signed up. A few months later, the Korean War broke out and they were called up, in 1950. That was one of the worst moments of my life, sending him off to war. Keith’s mother said to me ‘he’ll never come back from a second war’ and I was afraid it was true. Gene was so mad at Keith. He had been on Iwo Jimo in WWII and saw most of his friends die. But Gene ended up staying in San Diego and never had to go to Korea. Keith didn’t end up fighting either. He was putting up electrical poles, but he was right on the front line; so it was still very scary. Right before Christmas, he was transferred South where it was safe. I said it was the best Christmas present I ever got.
I went to work part time in the office at Keith’s employer, Silver Electric, when he went to war. I dropped Jan off at my mother’s while I went to work. He served a one year ‘tour’ before returning home.
Keith and his sister were converts. His parents went to the Methodist church. He was made an elder while he was in the war. He came home from the war and said to me “we are going to the temple and be sealed as a family”. Grandma and Grandpa Amott went with us because my parents were inactive and Keith’s weren’t members. I remember them bringing Jan in to be sealed to us in her little white dress.
After Keith returned home from the war, he went back to Silver Electric; but he wanted to work at a power company, so he applied at Cal Electric in Riverside, California. He quit his job, we sold our house and packed up and drove to California before he had even been hired. I remember waving at my parents as we drove away and feeling sad about leaving them. Keith pulled up to the company in downtown Riverside and told me to wait in the car while he went into check. When they saw him, they asked “how did you get here so fast, we just sent you your letter.” So he went to work there and we spent the next twelve years in Riverside. Those were good years. We really liked our church wards there and had good friends.
I was about six months pregnant with our second child, Russell, when we moved to California. The doctor that treated me in Salt Lake before we left didn’t charge me a cent. I had Russell almost exactly nine months after Keith returned home from Korea. Three years later, I had Leigh. Then I had a miscarriage about three years later. That is the only time I really remember being depressed. My parents took my family on a trip to Mexico soon after. I think they took me to help me get over my depression. My mother said “don’t worry. I took Spanish in school so I speak Spanish.” She didn’t understand a thing. Soon after, I found I was pregnant again. This time, it was with Curtis. He was born on December 13, 1960. I said he was the best Christmas present. (I am accused of saying a lot of things are ‘the best ever’). I got pregnant with Gayle only nine months later. I blamed Keith and was mad at him for getting me pregnant so fast. Jan was about twelve or thirteen by this time so she was able to help me. She would carry Curtis around and I would carry Gayle.
Around that time, the company Keith worked for merged with another and we would have to move to L.A.; so Keith got a job with Nevada Power in Las Vegas instead. I stayed in Riverside for a few months until our house sold and then we joined him. Jan and I cried the whole drive from California. Jan was in junior high so it was a difficult time for her to move. I was sad to leave the friends I had made too. But Vern Christiansen, a friend from Riverside, had moved to Vegas a few years earlier. Keith called him and asked where a good place to buy a home was. He found the home on Colanthe for us before the move so we were able to move right in and we were in the same ward. That was about 1963.
About a year after Jan graduated from high school, she eloped with her first husband, Dennis McCoy. They had Brian & Jason in the next few years before divorcing.
Russell went to BYU for a year of college before his mission to the Philippines in 1971. That year I got a big surprise, Jennifer! I was almost 44 years old and already had two grandchildren (Jan’s boys) when she was born.
Leigh married her first husband, Doug Edwards, on May 21, 1972. They moved to New York State right afterwards. They had Annie & Keith there. They moved back to Vegas in 1977.
Around 1974-5, Jan had a baby boy, Brandon, that died after only a few hours. They told us he would die but Jan and I held him for a while first. Then she had Heather in 1976. The father of both children is Kim McKellar.
My mother passed away in 1974. My parents were wintering in Mesa, Arizona at the time. My parents had been married for 48 years. My father was devoted to her and felt her loss keenly. Some months later, a friend of his sent him to fix the sprinklers of a widow, Grace Jones. They immediately hit it off and were married a short time later. They had 16 years together, traveling and enjoying their mature years. Grace took care of him when he became ill, until his death in 1990. I stayed good friends with Grace until she passed away in 2000.
Around 1975, we gave into Gayle’s intense desire for a horse and moved to 700 Kenny Way, which was ½ acre and zoned for horses. The first one, Big Red, was ‘green broke’ which means it wasn’t very tame. Shortly after we got him, Gayle, her best friend Sharon, and Sharon’s sister all got on him. They were going to walk him across the street. The horse began to buck and threw them all off. I had to run them all to the emergency room. Sharon had a broken arm and her sister’s leg was scraped up. That horse never was tamed. He bucked people off all the time. Jimbo was the next horse. He was an old barrel racer. He was a good horse but he was so old, he would stumble. The last horse had a beautiful tail, and Gayle cut it off, braided it and put it in her room. The day we got rid of that last horse, I was so happy. But then we got a sailboat, and that scared me worse than the horses.
Leigh divorced Doug shortly after moving back to Vegas. She married John Lucas in Oct, 1978. They had Jessica, Johnny Jo, and Dylan. They later moved to Northern California. They divorced a few years afterward. Leigh later lost Annie and then Jessica. Annie had suffered the loss of two babies of her own.
Leigh and John were living in Moab, Utah in 1980 when Gayle went to visit them. There she met Russell Anderson and they were soon married. They had three boys, Joshua, Caleb, and Timothy. Russell, beloved husband and father, died of brain cancer in 2010. Gayle was blessed to find another good man, Doug, and married him in 2013.
Jan married her second husband, George Mushner. He had a daughter from his previous wife named Nicole. Her mother had been killed in a car accident. Jan moved up to Cedar City and George would drive up on the weekends. They had Jan’s youngest, Matthew. They divorced and later Jan married a rancher from New Harmony, Ned Huntsman. He adopted both Heather and Matt so they took his last name. When Jan was little she always wanted to have a lot of animals, so she finally got her wish.
Russell married Teresa a little later. She had two young girls, Jessica & Nora from a previous marriage, and he adopted them.
Curtis married Brooke Jackson in 1985. They had four children; Cameron, Bree, Colton, and Brady.
Jennifer married Derek Holt in 1991. They had Devin & Daisy. They divorced about ten years later. When Daisy was 15, jenny had her own ‘surprise’, Charleigh. Jay Markovich is Charleigh’s devoted dad.
I lost my beloved husband, Keith, to heart disease in 1997, after 49 years of marriage. We raised six kids and went on many wonderful trips during our later years together. We were able to go to Nova Scotia (Canada) and Scotland to research Keith’s genealogy. We also went to England, Norway, Ireland and Austria- where I broke my leg skiing, so we had to go back a second time. Our favorite destination though was Hawaii and we went there many times. We had a trip planned in June 1985 when Curt and Brooke decided to get married; so they came along for their honeymoon. The last trip we made there was less than a year before Keith died.
Despite these losses, I’ve had a wonderful life. I am grateful for all God has given me. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the most important thing in my life and has brought me more joy and peace than I can express. I know that I will be with my husband Keith for eternity and the Plan of Salvation is God’s plan for us to return and live with Him. My life-long prayers are for all of you to know what I know and have that same Love.
After I have passed on, please paste my obituary as the last page of this history.
THE END
p.s. My heartfelt thanks and LOVE goes out to Brooke Grant who gathered and typed this History for me.
