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William Donald Hunt - Life Story Son
of Purcell Byron and Stella Cora
Hill Hunt. Histories Scenes From My Lifetold by William Donald Hunt
Date: July 24, 2002 Location: Orem, Utah Recorded
and written by: Jennifer Hunt
Johnson Off to a Great StartWhere were you born?Date: September 12, 1924 Where: at home, delivered by a midwife Birthplace: Ora (Ashton), Fremont, Idaho Vital statisticsWeight: 12 pounds Eye Color: brown Hair color: black, wavy Temperament: mild, laid back FatherName: Purcell Byron Hunt Date of Birth: January 12, 1898 Birthplace: Richmond, Cache, Utah MotherName: Stella Cora Hill Date of Birth: October 12, 1900 Birthplace: Ora (Ashton), Fremont, Idaho Were you named after someone?I was named after William Henry Hill, a grandfather on my mother’s side. Did you ever have a nickname?I’ve always gone by “Don.” The only other one I can remember is “Browny.” I was kind of short, but I had big, brown eyes. I was also called “Donnie,” especially by Billie’s side of the family. What are the names and birth dates of your brothers and sisters?Beatrice February 20, 1921 Ora (Ashton), Fremont, Idaho Ronda Purcell October 3, 1922 Ora (Ashton), Fremont, Idaho Mildred Fontella April 12, 1928 Ora (Ashton), Fremont, Idaho John Keith May 23, 1930 Buhl, Twin Falls, Idaho Did you fight with your brothers and sisters?Yes, but not too much. I was always the friendly type—never got in any quarrels with anybody. I got along well with people, especially my family. Growing UpWhat towns did you live in when you were growing up?The first place I can remember anything about was in Buhl, Idaho where I started first grade. Then we moved from Buhl to Besslen (Dietrich), Idaho. All Besslen had was an elementary school and a depot. We moved from Besslen to Carey in 1937. Describe the house you remember the most from your childhood?The house in Besslen is very much etched in my memory. It was a tarpaper shack—that’s all it was. There was one room for Mom and Dad and everyone else slept in the room that had a heater in the middle. I slept by the window and the snow would sift through the cracks onto my bedclothes. We had a big, potbellied heater in the middle of the house where we burned railroad ties and sage. The fire threw sparks up on the roof and that scared me to death. I used to run outside in the middle of the night to make sure the roof wasn’t on fire. I had nightmares about that for a long time. There was also a wood-burning stove in the kitchen. When Ronda and Beatrice got big enough to go to the dances with my parents, I had to stay home and baby-sit. I’d look out the window and I’d swear it was too light out there. I’d run out to see if it was on fire. Golly, it was bad. We had no electricity or running water in that house. We had an outhouse and we had a well that we hand pumped until we got a gas powered pump that pumped it for us and the livestock. We pumped a lot of water by hand. We took baths in a #5 galvanized tub; that was bigger than a #4. There was one closet in Mom and Dad’s room. We must have just stacked our stuff, but we probably hung some of our stuff in their closet. We had a root cellar that was cool. We dug it by hand—just a big cave with some shelves in it. That’s where we kept our milk. We couldn’t play marbles in the house because they’d fall through the cracks in the floor. We weren’t any poorer than the other people around us. Everybody was poor. A lot of people were out in the small farms like us. Dad was renting a farm from his cousin in Twin Falls and homesteading. We probably had about as much income as anybody. I’m not sure where the house in Besslen came from. I think they probably built it. There’s no semblance of it left now, just a few articles that are scattered. We hauled rock out of the way, to build the house I guess, and put in a big fence along the ditch—a pretty good-sized canal, really, that had the water in it we used to irrigate with. Mom planted a lot of yellow roses along the big rock fence and that’s about the only thing that still remains and is in good shape. Those roses are still blooming. I don’t know of any pictures of it. There weren’t many cameras in those days. Billie and I and Keith and Mary went out to see that place, I don’t remember taking any pictures. We had a Maytag gas washer you started by pumping it with your foot. That created a spark that started the motor. It was outside. We lit the house with coal oil lamps until we finally got some gas lanterns. That was really a big improvement. One place we lived in, Marley, we had carbide lights. Carbide was a chemical you mixed with water and other chemicals to release electric current. We’d be in the house and when the lights started to dim, we’d run outside and beat on the carbide tank to stir the chemicals up. How did your parents punish you? Who was stricter?My dad was stricter. He did a little spanking, but not a lot. I can remember one time he beat my sister Beatrice with a belt because she got home too late from the dance. I lay awake all the time knowing it was going to happen and it just killed me when it happened. What was the naughtiest thing you ever did?I wasn’t very naughty, but one time we made some vinegar taffy. I took that vinegar taffy and hid it and ate the whole bunch of stuff, and I got kind of sick. I don’t think I ever got caught. I was always pretty good. I didn’t steal much or do anything very naughty. What were your favorite games?We played Sardines and Annie Over, where you threw a ball (a sponge one) over a barn or building and then you had to hit the other guys with the ball. We played a lot of Hide and Seek. All we had at Dietrich was just dust, dirt, and sage. We had grass at Carey. Later on we played a lot of Pinochle and Rummy [card games] with my mom and dad. Do you remember your favorite birthday present?We didn’t celebrate a lot. The only presents I remember were at Christmas. We did have some birthday parties. In seventh grade we had a function at school and I think it was around my birthday. My mother made me a clown suit that had black and orange solid circles on it. She really did a nice job with that old Singer sewing machine. I put on my mask and that suit and wore it and nobody knew who I was. I got the prize for the best costume. I was pretty proud. We did have the tooth fairy. We got dimes and nickels and stuff like that. I don’t know how they afforded a lot of things. In the book there [history of Dietrich] Ronda mentions the fact that Mom raised chickens and killed them and we had to dress them, pluck them and pick them and take them into town to sell them. That was the money we got for school or Christmas. We usually had to sell something—like a pig or calf or chicken. Our only income mostly was from a five-gallon can of cream. It was separated from the milk and taken into town. Did you ever go to the hospital?I did when I lived in Carey. I went to the hospital in Hailey for stomach problems—I couldn’t keep any food down. I threw up and threw up. I did that clear through college and clear up into the last football game I had. I still had my stomach problems. I was sick and they had a pep assembly outside my bedroom window because I couldn’t come over to the school. Then I went to the hospital in Twin Falls. The doctor there finally diagnosed my ulcer. He thought I’d had an ulcer all this time, but I never treated it. Nobody ever told me. The doctors just said I had a sensitive stomach. I didn’t go to any hospitals in Dietrich or Besslen—there weren’t any around. You had to go clear to Shoshone, which was about 22 miles. They did have a county health nurse who came around once in a while and gave us a going over. We had to go over the same routine every time she came. Put your hands out on the desk and she’d check your fingernails. Then put your hands over. Then move so she could see in your ears both ways. Then bend forward so she could check your neck and see if it was dirty. She did that every time she came, but our teacher did that about every day too—checking to see if you were halfway clean, which was pretty hard to do. She’d send quite a few out to wash up a little. Did your family have any particular traits?We were very family and horse oriented. Did you ever go sledding, skiing or skating?We had a long board we tipped up at one end and made a ski out of with one strap you stuck your foot in. You couldn’t control it much—you just went straight behind a horse or had a car pull us along the road. We had skates that clamped to your shoes that you had to tighten up with a wrench or skate key. We did a lot of sledding. In Carey we had some pretty good hills for sledding. Dietrich was pretty flat. It wasn’t much at all, but that’s where my dad homesteaded some land. So they had to stay on it. When we left, he leased some land again from his cousin, Mitchell, in Twin Falls. At that time he was a fairly wealthy guy. He had a lot of stock. In one place where we raised the hay and grain, Uncle Mitch and Uncle Jeff were contracted to build a lot of roads down around Nevada. They used horses. My dad ran a bunch of wild horses on the desert that they used to pick from for their workhorses. He’d bring them in a couple of times a year and pick out horses, break them to ride, and break them to work. Did you ever argue about your bedtime?Bedtime was regulated by the time we got through with our work. We’d get up early and milk the cows before you went to school, go in a eat breakfast, walk two miles to school. Tony never really believed me, so we drove down there in his car. It was only a mile. It was a mile to the road and another mile to the school, so if you missed the bus it was two miles. Did you like to listen to the radio or records?We never had a radio until I was a Junior in high school. It was a battery powered one. We listened to a graphaphone. I came home late from a date one night and there was a new radio sitting in the house. I sat and listened to it for quite a while—soft so no one would hear it. What kind of transportation did you have? Did you ever ride in a plane, bus, or train?I rode in a train. They were quite common. There were a lot of stops, a lot of stations. No planes or boats, except the boat we had at Redfish. When you had money, what did you spend it on? What could you buy for a quarter?For a quarter you could buy 25 pretty good chunks of candy or five milk nickels [ice cream bars]. We bought gum and candy. Mostly we didn’t have much money, so we just bought a few things like that. I had a place where I hid lifesavers away from everybody else. I tunneled back in a big straw pile we had and made a kind of a den. I put some boards around so it wouldn’t fall in on me and I kept my gum and lifesavers in there on a shelf. Did you have a pet? What was its name?We had dogs but they were everybody’s. I never really had a pet of my own except a horse. We had a dog called Laddie that was part bird dog. He was really a good bird dog. I went hunting with him in the evenings when it was kind of dark. I’d just follow it and he took me to where sage hens and pheasants were. If they flew up above the horizon where I could see them and shoot them, he’d go out and bring them back. That little dog just knew when I wanted to go hunting. I kept the gun in a closet in Mom and Dad’s room. I’d just head for that door to get the gun and he was at the door barking. We had another dog in Baker called Laddie—the little one that bit the postman. We also had Smokey. Smokey was my dog. I also had a dog called Lady. She was one that I registered. I had her registered as “Idaho Lady.” I had a horse named Rex, but he died on me early in life. He was the first horse that was really mine. He was the first horse that could outrun Redbell. Redbell was really a nice thoroughbred cow horse—really fast. Then we also had Sparky. Who was your best friend?In Dietrich and Besslen, everyone was your friend because there weren’t many there. I had some nice girlfriends, but I don’t talk a lot about it. :-) In Carey it was Calvin Sparks. CelebrationsWhat did you do on Thanksgiving?We had a big Thanksgiving meal with a turkey or a goose or sometimes a duck. I remember one year I shot some geese and we had that. Was your mom a good cook? What was your favorite thing that she cooked?Yes, she was. I still don’t know how she did it. All she had was an old wood burning stove. No hot water except what she heated in the reservoir of the stove – a flat iron she put on the stove to cook with and pots and pans and kettles. She was a good cook. She managed to find time to do it, which is amazing to me because she worked outside so much. She milked and cut hay and came in and cooked. One thing I remember was really good were cream puffs—really good ones. But she cooked a lot of just good old staples—potatoes and gravy and beef, because that’s what we had the most of. That always tasted good to me. Did Santa come to your house?We always knew when Santa had been around. One Christmas I was just sure that he’d left me a new bicycle down in the shed that was quite a ways from our home. I just knew he’d left one there. I went down there and looked and I was really disappointed. Another time I thought he’d left me a little horse with a saddle. The horse had a white bally face and four stocking legs and a flax mane and tail—a perfect little horse. I thought sure he’d left me that horse, but he didn’t. Describe your Christmas tree.I think some years all we had was some sagebrush. Some of the sagebrush grew quite big and was called buck brush. It had pretty thick limbs and a lot of smaller limbs branching out. It was one of the favorites to get for wood because it burned longer. There weren’t any pines around close to where we lived at all. We strung popcorn and made those paper chains from loops of paper and wound them around the tree. We had candleholders that we put around the tree and put candles in them for lights. Did you hang up stockings? What did Santa leave in them?We hung stockings. We most always got an orange, a few pieces of candy, maybe an apple—some fruit. What did you usually do on Christmas?We probably did a lot of sledding and skating and stuff. It was a holiday and you were free. There were a couple of ponds around and big reservoirs at Carey to ice skate on. In those days we were a lot richer. Did you make cards to give on Valentines Day?Valentines Day was a big thing. I’ve still got some the girls gave me and some little autograph books the girls wrote in. You had to give valentines out—especially to your best girlfriends. We made a lot of them but we bought some. The teacher would set aside time for us to do that and we’d go around the room and leave valentines at certain places. Did the Easter Bunny ever leave you a basket?I don’t really remember the Easter Bunny. We killed a lot of bunnies. [Reference to the rabbit drives in Stella’s story.] I remember getting some chocolate marshmallow rabbits and little baskets and old-fashioned eggs. We colored eggs every Easter and had hunts. I guess we did more on Easter than I thought. How did you celebrate the Fourth of July?We always had a big celebration at the church on the Fourth of July. We always had sparklers, and firecrackers were a big thing. We had a big rodeo. Dad kind of started the rodeos in Dietrich. [Don loved fireworks all his life. His fireworks displays were very popular with the family, especially the grandkids.] What did you do on Halloween?We didn’t dress up a lot. We had some Halloween parties at school and we did some trick-or-treating. The big thing to do, kind of a naughty thing, was to cut people’s clotheslines. We tipped over some outhouses. We also made a “rickrack” from a wooden spool. You cut little slots in it all the way around and wrapped elastic around it and put on a trigger. Then you put it up against a window. It made kind of a screeching, rattling or knocking noise. I had bad nightmares for quite a while. I was afraid of spirits. I knew that bad spirits were there and if I opened the door, they’d jump in and get me. That probably led to my throwing stuff around and hitting in my sleep. Did you remember having family reunion?We had family reunions at Lava Hot Springs. I remember putting a mattress and quilts and blankets in the bed of that old Chevrolet truck that we had. Us kids would get back there and get in the bed and we’d go see Dad’s brothers some. We made trips to relatives and that’s about all. School DaysWhat schools did you go to?Grade School Besslen Junior high school Dietrich (up to 7th grade), Carey (8th grade) High school Carey High School How did you get to school?Various ways. In the winter, we went in a sheep wagon that had a stove in the back. Sometimes we rode horses. My parents got the school transportation route and then we had a big long orange Chevrolet school bus. Mom and Ronda drove the little covered [sheep] wagon in the winter. Did you get good grades?Yes. They used to give county tests. Everybody in the county took the same tests and I got the highest grade in the county – 97. I got 100 on my spelling test and my teacher gave me two silver dollars. I thought I’d really hit it rich. She didn’t have much money – that was probably pretty nice of her. [He was also the student body president in high school.] Did you ever play tricks on your teachers?Probably did. We put something in a teacher’s drawer one time in Besslen. Seems to me it was like a little toad, a frog, or a lizard. But I didn’t do a lot of that. Were you ever on a sports team?I did everything they had. I played basketball. As a Senior, I was captain of the basketball team. I played baseball, but we only had it one year. I ran track, but we only had that one year. We had a little gym in Carey and the ceiling was fairly low. You couldn’t shoot too high. You had to shoot a pretty flat shot. The worst thing was that it had two wooden beams that came out and up from the stage and over the floor to hold up the backboard. If you shot in close to the basket you had to be very careful that you didn’t run into those beams. One guy ran right into one of those with his head and it about knocked him silly. The elementary school in Besslen had an upstairs gym and it had columns. You had to dribble around the columns—about six of them, I think. You had to be pretty quick and agile to make it if you went on a hard drive. We also had some nice dances there in that gymnasium. Going PlacesWhat was your favorite trip?We didn’t go on many trips, but we traveled a lot just visiting friends and neighbors. That’s what we did for entertainment. We’d hook up the horses to the wagon and go to the neighbor’s place and play some games. They’d feed you a little and then they’d come back and you’d do the same thing. Once we went to Shoshone Falls and also the Shoshone Ice Caves. It was about 22 miles from Besslen. That was quite a trip for us. The caves were right there in the middle of the lava rocks and you had to go down in a hole in the ground and it was cold. When I first went there you had to carry a torch, and the walkway was very rickety. Did you go fishing?We fished some in Besslen, but mostly in Carey in the Wood River reservoir and streams — Silver Creek. We mostly caught rainbow trout. How old were you when you learned to drive?I was very young. I learned to drive a tractor before anything else. I was maybe 12 or 13. We finally got a new tractor, but it was an older model. We didn’t have a car for a while because the guys from the dealers came and impounded it. Right away Dad got a new car from the guys in Twin Falls. They gave him enough credit. Us kids went and got it and drove to Boise where Beatrice was working. She came out and looked at it and drove it around. We thought we were something. We didn’t work on cars a lot. But the older cars you could work on because they weren’t so complicated and complex. The Teenage YearsDid you ever get into trouble with your friends?No, not really. I boxed one of my friends and bloodied his nose and cried about it. I told Mom I’d never box again. Tell about your dating years. How old were you when you started dating? What did you do on dates?My friend Calvin and I made a pact that we weren’t going to date a girl until we were Juniors in high school. We usually went to a movie in a church house on Saturdays. Sometimes we had two movies a week. We also had dances at school. I went with really nice girls. Lennox Adamson was one I thought a lot of. She lives in Salt Lake now. Her husband died. I also liked Millie Judy. Her dad hauled cheese from the cheese factory. We bought gas for 17 cents a gallon, but you had to pump it yourself. Once when I double dated with Mildred, I was driving and I got sleepy. When Mildred yelled at me I woke up and I was clear off the road. The girls thought I was a pretty good catch. I even went out with Ronda’s wife. A Close Call in the NavyThey used to patch things up with baling wire – like we do now with duct tape. One time the enemy had shot through a cable on our plane and we were using baling wire to hold it together. The cable was on the inside. The whole plane was shot full of holes and we were about to hit the water and when we did, we knew the plane would sink immediately. But the minute we landed, there were rescue boats on each side to carry us to safety. When Billie and I were DatingWhere did you first meet? What did you do on your first date?We met at an LDS Institute dance in Moscow, Idaho at the very first Institute built by the Church. I held her hand and walked her home. I’d watched her and her two girlfriends out playing ball and tennis. I thought she had pretty legs. We pretty much just dated each other, and maybe one or two others. Our first date was a movie. We would also go picnicking, to movies, ballgames, and dances. It cost very little, so we golfed a lot in Moscow. I even worked at the course for a while and then I could golf for free. During the war there were two girls for every boy. But then a flood of service men came home in ’46 and it was the other way around. How did you propose?I got down on bended knee. It wasn’t a big thing—just kind of led into it. What was your wedding like? Where did you go on your honeymoon?The wedding was in her backyard. Billie did all the work. She made the trellis we were married under, her wedding dress, corsages, everything. She worked herself silly for two weeks—cleaning up and taking loads of stuff to the dump. My mother and younger brother, Keith, came. My dad didn’t come for some reason. It may have been the summer he was gone with his brother. We
went to Yellowstone for our
honeymoon. My dad said he would
loan us his car if we would
visit all of his relatives
between Carey and Yellowstone. Early Married DaysWhere did you first live and where did you work?We first lived at my parents’ house for three months in Carey. I worked on the ranch, helping out. I put in a water system so we could have running water for Mom. Doing chores. I worked some for some guys putting up some hay. Billie helped Mom out with housework and helped with the horses by riding some and exercising them. What are some favorite funny stories about when you were married?Trouble getting Calvin’s car back home. My friend Calvin had kind of a coupe. He and I and Billie and a friend, who was a big guy, got in that little thing and headed for Carey. It was cold and as we went the windshield started to freeze over. It got to be a little hole and it kept getting smaller and smaller. Finally it was just a little peephole you could look out of. So we stopped in McCall and put cardboard in front of the radiator to stop the cold air from circulating through and came home the rest of the way. Once I caught a turkey at a celebration while visiting in Parma. I just reached up and caught him out of the air. They were throwing them off roofs and I reached up and grabbed it. We brought it back to Hazleton in a gunnysack. We were living in Saunder’s apartments. I took it in the kitchen to wring its neck. That didn’t work. Larry and Davy were in the bedroom. Davy was only a year old and we knew he couldn’t open the door to come in to where the killing was happening, but he did. I cut its head with a butcher knife and it flopped all over the floor, throwing blood all over the place. I don’t know why I did it inside. I guess I didn’t want the neighbors to see me killing it and fluttering around. Davy came right in to the middle of that mess. Raising the FamilyLarry was born in Moscow. Davy, Jenni, and Tony were born in Twin Falls while we lived in Hazleton. What are the names and birth dates of your children?Larry Alan May 26, 1950 David Ray October 22, 1951 Jennifer Lee May 2, 1954 Tony Wayne September 4, 1956 Redfish Days In 1952 we answered an ad for a couple that wanted to rough it for a summer job at Redfish Lake [near Sun Valley, in the Sawtooth Mountains]. We wondered if there would be dirt floors, or if the house would have closets. Sounded like we were going to live out of our suitcases. It sounded like a good summer job in a nice place. I was in charge of 36 acres that were leased from the Forest Service. I charged rent for those who camped in the campground. There was only one then, the little campground. It cost 50 cents per night per car, no matter how many people We furnished firewood and had to keep the camps and outdoor toilets clean. My main job was checking people in and out. We had lots of time at first to swim and ski and enjoy ourselves because there weren’t too many people who came. That changed later. We didn’t make much money at first, but got a lot more later. There were a few $100 days when I had my pockets bulging with silver. I’d tell Granny, “we had a poor today,” and then I’d pour out all this money and watch her gloat over it. She took the money down to the post office in Obsidian and got money orders to send home to the bank. We didn’t spend too much while we were there. That job kind of got us back on our feet. We usually bought a new piece of furniture after each summer. We went to Redfish for ten summers. We made a lot of friends at Redfish—we have friends all over the country from there. I caught a lot of fish at Redfish. One year I caught 26 salmon. The biggest one weighed 29 pounds. Occupying My TimeI got my bachelor’s degree, with [we think] a double major in PE and French, from the University of Idaho in 1950. Then I stayed another year and got my first master’s degree in Education Administration, with a minor in Physical Education. We stayed in Moscow because we had pretty good jobs. Billie worked in the Registrar’s Office until she was six months pregnant with Larry. I first taught at Hazleton, before it turned into Valley. They were the Hazleton Badgers. The next year they consolidated Eden and Hazleton and built the new school—Valley High. They were the Valley Vikings—your mother and I named them. We picked out the colors and wrote the fight song. It used some of the same words to the Parma fight song with the tune of the Marine’s Hymn. I coached everything. We had football, basketball, and baseball. Then I ran a summer program in the park. I was the head coach of basketball and track and assistant football coach. The second year, I coached basketball, football, and baseball instead of track. They hired me to be a coach, but I taught whatever was left over—American History, Government, Literature, English, and Shop. They didn’t care what it was. We went to Baker in 1957 where I taught at the junior high. I taught seven periods of General Science—enough to drive anybody crazy. I finally did talk them into letting me teach a couple of periods of French. That was like a ray of sunshine in my life. When I went to the high school, I taught Biology and PE. I coached track and JV basketball. I taught some other things they wanted me to. They were low on money, so when a teacher retired or quit, they just gave their job to somebody else. I ended up teaching Personal Finance and even Beginning Algebra. I was finally teaching Biology, but I’d been out of school for quite a while and I was kind of lost. After 15 years, I went back to Moscow for more school. The first summer I had a scholarship from the National Science Foundation for studying entomology. Then I went back two more summers and got my second master’s degree, with a major in Zoology and a minor in Botany. Some of My FavoritesColor Purple Book Tarzan series and Zane Grey books Movie Pride of the Yankees, Monty Stratton Story Song Red River Valley, Little Joe the Wrangler Sport Baseball Hobby Fishing Season Summer Holiday Christmas Pie Chocolate cream Candy Hershey almond bar Cookie Sugar cookies (like my mom used to make), Chocolate chip Ice Cream Peppermint, and licorice (but they don’t always taste right) I read every book in the library in Carey. They had lots of series then, girl’s books and boy’s books. Once I rode on a horse to the movies and saw the Last of the Mohicans. I wasn’t very old. They had the movie in a big tent—that’s how we used to have movies. They’d come around and set up their big tents and show movies in them. That movie showed all of these Indians shooting all these guys and scalping them. Then I had to ride home six miles in the dark. I had a friend with me for three of them but then he left me. So I just put the heels to that old horse and I went home three miles in a hurry. I could see an Indian behind every bush. If you could spend a week doing anything you wanted, what would it be?Going to track meets or BYU football. If you could, which age of your life would you most like to re-visit and why?When I was between 20 and 30, because that’s when I was most athletically active. As Time Goes ByWhat do you feel is the greatest technological change to happen in your lifetime?TV What fad do you remember most?Bell-bottom trousers during the war. I liked those. Is there anything you always wanted to do, but haven’t?I always wanted to pitch big league baseball. I was picked by the Yankees as a pitcher from tryout camp in Twin Falls by Joe Devine—one of the best-known scouts in baseball. He picked out Joe DiMaggio. I was supposed to go to spring training camp in California, but I injured my wrist in PE class in college and couldn’t go. I was very disappointed knowing that was probably my last chance for stardom. I couldn’t pitch as a Freshman or Sophomore, but I did as a Junior and Senior and lettered two years with the Idaho Vandals. Who are the people who influenced you the most in your life?My wife—and Larry probably influenced me as much as anybody. What did the family do for fun as the kids got older?We got a family golf membership each summer at Baker. It cost $55 for a membership the first time we got one and it stayed that way a long time. What fun things do you remember doing with your grandkids?The “magic sack” was a good old thing for a long time. I had a sack with candies in it. The kids could reach in but they couldn’t look and they had to keep whatever they got out. I have lots of good memories of the hot tub and kids making movies—also the kids riding the lawn mower, knocking down posts and making cracks in the garage wall. Whenever I took pictures of the kids with a Polaroid camera, we would say “apples, peaches, pears, and plums—look at the picture; here it comes” while we waited for the picture to develop. Addendum
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