Dorothy

My senior year in high school I worked as a Telephone Operator---in the days of "Number Please". This helped me obtain a job as a switchboard operator at college at USAC in the fall.

After my freshman year I went with my sister Grace and her children to meet her husband Al in California. Al was a Naval Officer in the SeaBees, returning from serving in the South Pacific on Guadalcanal. He was stationed at Port Huaneme, near Oxnard, Calif. I spent the summer with them in Oxnard. I was working at the Sprouse Reitz dime store on V-J day.

I returned to Utah and my friend Gae talked me into going to BYU that fall. I lived in an older home owned by BYU just at the bottom of the hill from BYU. There were four of us in this house. I couldn't find a part time job anywhere in Provo so I only attended one quarter and went back to Brigham where I got a job as a clerk/typist at Bushnell General Hospital in the Registrar's Office. The hospital was closing now that the war was over so I went to work again as a Telephone Operator until the end of 1946.

In January, 1947 I returned to school at Utah State. I lived with my sister and brother in law Lola and Willis . Willis was an Engineering Prof. so I did typing for the Engineering department and also worked as a switchboard operator again. In the summer of 1947, my friend Miriam and I went on a Red Cross scholarship to Catalina Island to a Water Safety Instructor school. I returned to Brigham and worked in the first "super market" in Brigham selling soft ice cream--something that was brand new back then. I returned to school in the fall. By the end of 1947 I was out of money again and didn't return to school.
My Stake President called me and asked me to interview for a secretarial job with the Boy Scout office in Ogden. I got the job and I lived at the YWCA for a few days and then to an apartment when a friend Dorothy , who was getting married, asked if I was interested in moving in her apartment with her former roommate Beverly Cummings, which I did. Eventually I moved back home and commuted to Ogden daily. Bushnell hospital had become the Intermountain Indian School where native Americans came from the reservations to attend school. To repay the Red Cross for sending me to Catalina, the Scout Executive kindly allowed me to leave work early once a week to teach swimming classes to the Navajo Indians. I was told they don't speak English and I didn't speak Navajo. I was also told that most of them have never seen more water than what a person could take a bath in. For some, there was great fear and there were others who were fearless, not realizing they could drown. It was quite an interesting experience.

During this time my friend Miriam had gone on a mission to Hawaii. She wrote letters encouraging me to think about a mission. At that time one had to be interviewed by a General Authority so I took off work a half day to go to Salt Lake. The Scout leaders in the office warned me that if Spencer Kimball interviews you, you will go to the Indian Mission and if Mathew Cowley interviews you, you will go to New Zealand and then they said if Joseph Fielding Smith interviews you, you will go to where the Josephites are. I'd never even heard of the Josephites.

At the church office building I asked to see Elder Mathew Cowley. My father had gone to New Zealand on his mission. He wasn't in town at the time so they had me see Elder Joseph Fielding Smith. I was petrified and just sat across from him half weeping all thru the interview. When I got my letter in the mail, my mission call was to the Central States Mission with headquarters in Independence, Missouri--- headquarters of the Reorganized Church or "Josephites" as they were called by some.

The above photo was taken in Ogden. In our mission you could send a photograph to a place in Arkansas and have 100 photos printed up like postcards for something like $10.00. The missionaries exchanged photos with each other. This became my missionary photo . I loved my mission. It was by far the best decision I ever made in my life and has made all the difference in the world for me. I served from June, 1950-Dec. 1951 in Kirksville, St. Louis, and Indepence, Missouri.