Life History of Serge J. Lauper
My heritage is of Swiss and Danish descent, my mother coming from Copenhagen [Denmark], my father from Switzerland. I think I should be a good cheese-maker, coming from those little countries. I think of myself as a very conservative person. I probably would not have been an American revolutionary, but would have been a Tory; I would have stayed with the king. I don't like to change much. I have to be very sure before I make changes. I don't like to move. That was bred in me because we had so many moves when I was a child. I wanted to have something solid that I could count on.
I have been told with some truth that I've been too careful with my money. In some people's eyes, I'm stingy. My daughter Paulie says that I'm too close to my money. My own judgement is different. I want a dollar to give a dollar's worth of return, a pretty hard thing to come by when you think of dollars in the 1980s. They buy so little. I have grown up with the idea that money was hard to get, and I have lived through very hard times. I know how difficult it is to get some things. I am definitely of a conservative nature. I believe in giving where the gift is valued. I dislike waste. I don't like to buy things that will not be used. I want full utility, right up to the wear-out stage.
It's not in my nature to pay much attention to people who talk too much. I have negative feelings about people who do a lot of talking and not enough doing. As the years have gone by, and I have accomplished my aims, I find that the things I valued early seem to diminish. My values have shifted. I'm talking from the vantage point of eighty-nine years or thereabouts. I have come to think that some of the big things are not that big anymore. The things that really count are family members.
I know that I have been fortunate with my family. I believe that my children are an improvement on the old stock. So far as my philosophy of life goes, it has been pretty well summed up in a little poem that comes to mind.
I guess this matter of unwaste is a fetish with me. I don't have all the words that I need to explain things, but that is some of the substance of my thought.
I believe that I'm an optimistic person. I believe that what we have gone through is proof-positive that we can take whatever comes. The future is not black; it's not going to be impossible. I have the conviction that everything will come out allright. In the end, decent things will survive.
I've lived in the same place in San Francisco now for over fifty years. I've seen the city change, some good things and some not so good. In the overall, though, I think we'll still come through. I've never left San Francisco, but what I was glad to come back. So they will find me here when the time comes for the final wind-up.
Over the many years of my life, I've had some very close associations with Latter-day Saint Church officials. I've welcomed this as an opportunity to strengthen my own faith. I would say, without question, that all of the Church officials that I have known have been good men. Some of them have made terrible mistakes, such as Richard R. Lyman.
I've also thought of the various philosophies of the churches that I have known although I have not had intimate knowledge of them. I have attended some wonderful meetings and listened to some good sermons of other denominations. I have known other church leaders, and I have thought how wonderful it was that they could do so much with what little they had. In my own studies, the Mormon Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had so much more depth and so many more answers than any of these other denominations.
Over the years, as I face different things, I have been grateful for the share of faith that I have had to meet the conditions of my life. I have spoken at many, many funerals and visited many people with illnesses, although I was never very good at hospital visits. That's one of the things I did with great reluctance.
I think of the philosophy of Emerson where he said that all he had seen taught him to believe that he should accept the things that the great creator had in store for him. The quotation doesn't go just like that. The quotation is "All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen." I believe that.
On the other hand, I have not been as voluble at trumpeting my convictions as some others have been. Some of those who have made such positive reports of what they know haven't measured up in ordinary living and staying with things. I don't think they had lasting convictions. I am grateful that all my children and grandchildren are, as I believe, under the sheltering care of the Church.