Life History of Serge J. Lauper
I have lived in San Francisco for over half a century now, having come here in 1936. I first lived on 25th avenue, just a couple of blocks from where I later bought my house at 1731-24th Avenue. I've been right here in the same house which I call my Shack on the Sand for 52 years. I like the climate of foggy weather and cold summers. Whenever it gets very warm in the California valley, heavy fog and cold weather come to San Francisco. I call it the air conditioning of the San Francisco Bay. This house has been a haven to me, and this is the place where I have lived and worked. My family all grow up here and moved away. This is where my first wife passed on. I'm always glad to come back here. Despite the pressures from others to move over the years, I insisted that we stay here.
Early on, the second year we lived in San Francisco, because of a very difficult landlord, I was pressured into trying to find a place to buy. My first counselor in the bishopric was Claude T. Lindsay who was a builder. I wanted to be in the proximity of the new chapel which was being built, and Claude made a suggestion. He said he had a lot about three blocks from the church that I could get, and he would build me a house on it. Very little was asked in the way of a down payment. I got the whole house for less than $10,000, a nominal price. These houses have appreciated in value just unbelievably. I don't know what the selling price would be for my house now, but a house down the street just went for $350,000. It's an amazing thing.
My early days in San Francisco were very busy establishing myself with my company, the Charles R. Hadley Company. I continued to build a base of operations in that company and a very good sales record over the years. I was able to pay off my house in nine years instead of the twenty-five year contract the FHA would allow at that time. The interest rate was 4%, I think. I found out that if I only paid the monthly amounts, I could see very little change in the overall principal because I was just paying the interest on my investment.
So early on I made the judgement to pay off two, three, and even four payments in one month. The family suffered, and I guess I was unreasonable to the extent that I refused to buy a dining room set for three years. My children played in the empty dining room because I was making all these payments on my house. But I was able to pay it off in nine years.
I might mention something else too. The second month after I bought my home, I went in to a member's insurance office. I did not know him, but I had heard that he was a member. He said I was the only man who ever came in off the street and gave him some insurance business. I told him I wanted to have a term policy written up that would pay my house indebtedness in case of my death.
This house experience was an outcome of my early years as the oldest of ten children. I was faced with some of the headaches we had early on of moving, moving, moving. We moved nine times in the first sixteen years of my life. That fact alone shows the precarious economic condition of our family. We were always getting into some kind of difficulty. My dad never acquired the ability to meet the special problems of living in America. He came here as an immigrant from Switzerland, and he was a hard worker, but he was imposed on many times. We never acquired any solid base either in a house or in life itself. I decided that my family would not go through the same problems as we did. That's one reason I'm still in the same place.
Later when I had three girls in college at one time, I was glad that I had my house all paid for. I could use my income to take care of those school expenses. When the children were pretty much grown up and had moved away, I decided that I would fix up and repair the place. A certain amount of it was mandatory; it was easy to see that we had fallen behind on some maintenance. However, the fixing up didn't really get done then.
I had put a certain amount of money into a savings certificate of deposit which was locked in for a couple of years with the idea that we would use it to fix up the house. My wife Jean was offended because she said that she had counted on that money to travel. This strained our relationship for a while because she said I had no business to use the money in that way, and she stopped talking to me. I thought that the money should go into the house, but as she would not agree on that course, I invested the money so we could get some interest on it. She was travel-minded more than I was, and in large measure she was able to get some of that in.
Jean was my wife for forty-eight years. Early on we had had some serious disagreements, but we had adjusted our lives to one another. I was very pleased when I heard my oldest daughter say one time that she had never seen her mother and dad quarrel. Any accomplishment of mine was only of value depending on what Jean thought of it.
It was a disappointment to her that I did not want to go along on her trips. She took two trips to England and Scotland without me. I did make a trip to Europe in 1970 and visited five of the countries over there. I couldn't speak the language in any of them. Also I did go on one trip to England and Scotland with her. I did not have the real love for travel that she did. She could and did put up with terrible inconveniences and still had a wonderful time while I would be thinking of my bed at home, wondering when I would get home and how I could manage to shorten the trip some. As I said, I was a big disappointment to her, but I did make that extended trip to the Netherlands, to Germany, to Switzerland, to France, and to Austria. She also made two trips up to the Alaska area. One of them was with her Cousin Izy Steele. She also made many, many trips to visit my daughters as they scattered to many states across the country.
By far the most important of all the things that have occurred in my life have been the births and growth of my children Georgia, Claudia, Paulie, and Bonnie, and their development into wonderful wives and mothers, as well as loving daughters. As I look back, I think the most remarkable and outstanding highlight of my life was the day when Bonnie, our youngest daughter, was sealed in the Oakland Temple to Glade Goodliffe. On that occasion, my wife and I, our four daughters and their husbands, Crawford Gates, Richard Bushman, Gilbert Hutchings, and Glade Goodliffe, were all in the temple at the same time. It was the pinnacle of my life and the most marvelous of all occasions that they all could be there. Each one of my daughters married men of faith, good husbands, wise fathers and outstanding leaders in their professions. Whenever I have the opportunity, I am proud to introduce them as my sons-in-law.
Early on my daughter Claudia, arranged by her own initiative, without any real encouragement at all, went east to school and graduated from Wellesley College. She became acquainted with a student at Harvard, Richard Bushman, and later married this young man. So they established themselves in the east. Jean made trips there. My oldest daughter Georgia married Crawford Gates, and he had left his position at BYU as head of the music department to accept an assignment in Beloit, Wisconsin where he later conducted two symphony orchestras, one in the neighboring area of Rockford, Illinois and one in Beloit. My third daughter married Dr. Gilbert Hutchings. They established themselves in the dental profession in Fresno, California, the only daughter to stay in the state of California, where I live. He had been a dental student here in San Francisco. They live in a substantial and beautiful home in Fresno, and we have made many trips there. Bonnie, my youngest daughter, married Glade Goodliffe from American Fork, Utah.
When all the girls had left home, we considered moving to Utah to be closer to them. We even went to Utah to look for a suitable place. At this time, we had three daughters in Provo. Bonnie was going to school there, finishing up at BYU, and she had already announced that she was marrying an American Fork boy, Glade Goodliffe. They were certainly prime candidates to stay around there. Georgia, our oldest daughter, had her home in Provo. Her husband Crawford Gates was one of the professors at the BYU, and Claudia was married to Richard Bushman who was in charge of the Honors Program at BYU. They had their home in Provo. And we thought that moving to Provo to live out our days would be a reasonable thing to do. I seriously considered moving away from San Francisco. Then, as it developed, all three girls were gone within eleven or twelve months. Every one of them had made other arrangements and moved on. Then I said no, no, no, I won't even think of trying to chase after my children. Anyway, they all got established, every one of them, in good homes, and Jean used to make several trips a year to visit them. Sometimes I went with her, but she travelled more than I did.
She also had made these extra trips to Europe, and finally she persuaded me to go with her to England and Scotland where she had some relatives interested in her genealogical work. We did make a trip to Honolulu right after our European trip, but I did not get as much out of it as she did. She said that I was never much fun to travel with, and our trips did not work out too well. We had that difference.
There came a time when her health was not good. We had just come back from one of the major trips that I had taken with her to England. She had been there twice before, and she wanted me to meet certain people, and we had been home only briefly when she said she wanted to go to visit Bonnie who had recently moved to Salt Lake from California.
I was concerned about Jean's health and had been talking to a doctor she had recently seen because, as I said, her health was not the best. I said we should get some new opinions and help. She put me off and said she would do it later. Against my better judgement, I sent her off to Salt Lake to visit my youngest daughter Bonnie Goodliffe.
She was gone a week. She came back on an early flight, and I met her at the airport about 8 in the morning. She did not look well. We talked about a very few things, and I told her I had made an appointment with a doctor to see her the next morning. She said that she was tired. When we got home, I gave her her mail and went off to another appointment.
I came back later in the afternoon. She had gotten up and was watching television. She felt some better. She said that I had had a couple of phone calls. I had gone into my little office and made one call. She came back from the other room and said that she just had to tell me about Bonnie's house. She never finished the sentence. She just let a gasp out and slipped down in the chair. She seemed unconscious. I called the police department, which was only a few blocks away, and which was some help in emergencies. The officer was there within a very short time; he said that Jean had had a stroke. The officers brought some kind of apparatus along with them, but said that Jean would have to go to the hospital. I arranged for her to go to the Presbyterian Hospital.
Fortunately for her and for me and for everybody, her illness was not long and lingering. She would have been a very unhappy invalid after her very active life.
I will include here the remarks I prepared for her funeral. My good friend Ben E. Rich read them.
Words of Appreciation from Serge J. Lauper
Not 'til the Loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly, Will God unfold the pattern and explain the reason why The dark threads were as needful in the weaver's skillful hand As the threads of gold and silver in the pattern that he planned.At this hour I am thankful that the uncertainty as to the length of time and degree of suffering is past. I am grateful that I was with her when the seizure came, and that days just past had been happy ones visiting our youngest daughter Bonnie and the children she loved so dearly. In recent years we had anticipated this inevitable event, but I was not really prepared. Yet with my limited understanding, I am most thankful that Jean has gone first.
Many times I have been called upon to counsel others in sorrow, but with my own wife, the words are so feeble. It was my special blessing to have had her companionship for forty-eight years. All my successes had value and meaning only to to the degree of her approval. Now I have an overwhelming feeling of loss--not so much regret as a sense of sadness that I did not show enough appreciation for the things that were important to her.
At this time I acknowledge the kindness of friends, business associates, and neighbors, their telephone calls, visits, letters, beautiful cards and gifts for our welfare. For my relatives, some far away and others close at hand. To my sisters Alice and Viola who each in her own way has done so very much. Thank you, thank you. To my four brothers and their wives for their deep concern, their willingness to give themselves, but most of all for their sustaining faith. To my four lovely daughters and their husbands. Jean and I are so very proud of our girls. At this time of crisis they have joined together here without hesitation, arranging, planning, attending to the many details--all this with courage, with intelligence, skill, and harmony. They are indeed an improvement over the old stock.
I am fortunate for my share of faith. I believe with full assurance in the reality of the resurrection. As Brother Sterling W. Sill has said, "It would be a serious mistake to judge God within the narrow limits of our understanding and abilities. God has created worlds without number and is able to hold them in perfect control. We know that death is good. Certainly we would not dare to say that any procedure of God was superfluous or whimsical. Death is necessary in God's plan for human redemption."
Death is not the end in the great plan of the universe. There will be a time of reunion, when we will meet and know each other.
I will also include some of her life. As read at the funeral, it went like this.
About ten years ago, in response to a request from Bonnie, Jean wrote an account of her own life. Because her words are so vivid and bring her so much closer than any of ours, this biography has been excerpted from her own account.
I was born on April 6th, 1904, in the small town of Stirling, Alberta, Canada, the 2nd daughter and 4th child of James Frater and Margaret Elizabeth Schutt Gordon. My mother often told me I was particularly welcome because about 9 months earlier she had been told, in a blessing, that The Lord wished her to again become a mother, and here I was, the "Child of Promise."
When a few months old I became very ill on tainted milk and my life was despaired of. For weeks I seemed near death and was so frail I was carried about on a pillow. Each morning as my father left for work he would look at me, "One last time," sure I would have slipped away by the time he came home. But one day my eyes smiled at Mama and she called the other children to see. They were all sure I would live, and I did.
My early memories are filled with music. Dad down stairs, whistling and tap-dancing to get warm as the fire in the big black kitchen stove began to burn. Dad and Mama playing the violin and piano together, or singing duets as she played the piano. Mama playing lovely music as I was outside on the lawn, listening carefully to every note. My sister Hortense practicing, for she took lessons and was a talented pianist. She and my brother Fair playing duets on the piano.
When I was 10 or 11 Mama bought a used sewing machine and urged me to go ahead and sew. She had been unwilling or unable to sew, preferring to teach music lessons in order to have our sewing done. Now it was my turn to take over. I was excited by the prospect although I didn't know how to use the machine properly and turned out some very sorry things. I longed to sew well, but simply did not have any instruction and had to learn as I could. I became very adept eventually and later in my life a talented designer told me I should have been a milliner because of my imagination and ability with detail.
My parents had moved to Canada to colonize and farm. This proving unsuccessful, they moved from Stirling to the larger town of Raymond where my father did some civil engineering, and when I was 13 to Salt Lake City.
If one has had no experience with a depression, it just cannot be understood. The complete hopelessness, the dreary food, the uselessness of wanting anything. The winter I was 16 it hit hard all over the country. My brother Kenneth rode the rails looking for work unwillingly taking one of Mama's last dollars.
Mama worked diligently in the church and somehow managed to keep her sanity. But I almost folded under the pressure, and found myself too weak to walk alone, tearful much of the time and filled with emotional and physical pain.
At this time we met a marvelous woman. Beautiful, talented and successful, she influenced my life greatly. Stella Paul Bradford was teaching community music classes. She invited me to take part, and the baton she handed me changed my life. I learned art songs, light opera, oratorio, opera, folk music. Everything. I was hungry and thirsty for this sort of thing and walked 10 feet above the earth. I often think of her, and of my great debt to her. Without her influence in my life I would not have had the great joy music has brought me.
Our family gradually gravitated to Los Angeles. I found a job in the china department of the May Company and really enjoyed it. Such beautiful things.
After some time the personnel manager selected another girl and me to go to St. Louis for six weeks of training in special sewing and pattern alterations. When we came back we were available to help customers with their sewing problems.
At one time McCalls came out with a dress pattern called the "45 Minute Dress." The yardage department wanted it demonstrated. It fell to me to make 2 a day on the yardage floor for a week. I never ran over 35 minutes which included cutting and finishing. I really flew. Of course it was a very simple dress.
I was called to work on the Los Angeles stake MIA Board. At Matthews Ward I met a young man named Ivan Lauper who told me he had a brother on a mission in Florida. Another time he said his brother would be home soon. So I was not surprised when one day in the May Company I saw a young man demonstrating vacuum cleaners who looked like Ivan. I watched him then stepped up and said, "You sound just like a Mormon Elder," and stepped away.
Serge and I began to date now and then, but I was 23, stubborn and short-tempered, he 26, stubborn and short-tempered. After more than a year, Serge was sent to Oregon to work. Mama suggested that we get married before he left and that I join him later. It was General Conference time and it was hard to find a bishop or Stake President at home. We finally found a counselor, went to my sister Hortense Steed's home, and were married about 10 PM. I wept all the time and felt rather silly.
When I went to join Serge four months later he seemed a stranger at first, but before long we were having a very happy time. He had a nice little new dark red Ford and immediately taught me to drive it. He was so good to me. We had all of our disagreements before our marriage, and got along beautifully after.
The next November I realized I was going to have a baby. We thought it was time to settle down and chose Oakland, California. Then one night labor started. It went on for hours. At first the window was black, then gradually lightened, and finally the sun poured through.
I had never been one to hold other peoples' babies. I didn't know for sure I would like the particular baby I was going to have. But when they brought her to me, a miracle took place. It was as if I had stepped out into a beautiful meadow after spending my life in a small dark closet. I wept with joy. I was quite overcome with the perfection of this exquisite child, and then quite suddenly I knew why I was born. It was to be a mother.
I received many letters and cards from people who had known Jean and appreciated her many talents. President Ezra Taft Benson wrote that he had been greatly saddened to hear that she had died and that his heart went out "in pure love of the gospel."
You know the source of your strength. May you find it easy to draw close to the Lord during this serious and critical time. I know that you know that life is eternal, that the family is the greatest organization in time or in eternity, and that a happy reunion awaits those who are temporarily separated.
Our old friends Mildred and Ray Lindsay sent a particularly nice letter which said, in part, that it would take considerable time for us to become fully aware of the temporary change that has taken place in the Serge J. and Jean Gordon Lauper union, for the name of the Laupers has been almost synonymous with the growth and activities of the LDS church in this area for almost as long as many of us can remember, yours through your own participation in an ecclesiastical way, and that of Jean's through her musical ability and leadership.
Some time in the hereafter we are sure there will be a combined gathering of all of those who have been touched by your leadership and example and of those who have sung under Jean's inspired direction.
What a congregation and occasion it will be and what heavenly music will be in attendance. We can only hope and pray that we may be so fortunate as to be included among those privileged to be present.
Richard Sonne said in his letter that he appreciated things that I had done and that
Whenever the subject had come up of her passing or my passing, Jean would say that I should get married again. She even pointed out two or three people for me. Among them was a Scottish woman whom I met with her in Scotland. Jean had already thought that I should consider this woman. We even went out to lunch together. I want to emphasize that whenever she brought up the suggestion of what I was to do when she was gone, I would say not to talk about that. I thought she would live longer than I would as her mother died in our home at over one hundred years. I was sure that I would never, never marry again anyway. It was not to be discussed. It is a positive fact that I was not be interested in marrying again. It just didn't seem to be in my mind at all. But people change.
After Jean's passing, I was a worker in the Oakland Temple. I really did work at it. I put in longer hours at my little business than ever before. Whenever I got home to the house, I would be so tired that I would just go in and go to bed. I did not want to be around the house. The long months passed. But there were not too many months, because lo and behold, some eleven months later I was getting married again. That was a big surprise to me. Actually it still is.
I had women over in the Oakland Temple who were very kind to me. One sister did my temple clothes laundry for me. She talked to me, a very pleasant woman. I thought she was very nice, and I still do. I know that she would have been interested in more than just conversation. There were maybe two or three others who were available and would have been very acceptable to me and to others. And I had some of the ward members who were very kind and interested and who would invite me to dinner. But I refused most invitations.
Then I had a remarkable experience which came about in this way. I had known Winifred Matson, who lived about 200 feet from the church, for a number of years. She lived on the corner of Lawton Street and 23rd Avenue. She had been coming to church for fifteen years that I knew of, and she was librarian of the ward. I would see her come to Church and sit in the same place in the back. She would arrive just in time for the meeting and be gone immediately after the closing. She didn't do a lot of visiting around. I didn't know her too well. She said later that some time during that period I had driven her to take an inventory of a store, an activity conducted to make money for the ward. I don't remember it. So I hadn't paid much attention to her.
One day, just after the meeting was closed, as I was going down the aisle in the building, she stepped forward. It was just a short time after Jean's death. She started to talk to me and to say that she knew how I felt as she had gone through the experience of losing her husband. She said a very few things. As I said later, she said the right thing, at the right time, in the right way. I started to look at her and pay attention to her.
We held long conversations over the telephone. Or I would go over to her house in the evening, just three blocks away from my own house. We didn't go anyplace or talk in public. We didn't tell anyone about it. It was a surprise to the ward, a surprise to all my family, a surprise to me when we decided to marry. When we announced our engagement, the ward members were amazed. We never went any place together, and people were surprised that we were even acquainted.
She had been a widow for seventeen years, and was as lonely as I was. She accepted me when I asked if she wanted to take a chance on an "old loose-leaf salesman." We were married in the Oakland Temple on August 15, 1978. Winifred had three handsome, grown sons: Eugene, Ronald, and Gordon Tremoureaux. These boys have been very good to me.
Winifred is a wonderful homemaker and cook and has very high standards of house decoration. She went over my old place at 1731 and made many attractive and long-needed improvements. She put in new windows and blinds and a new garage door. She would have redone the whole upstairs bathroom if I hadn't put my foot down and insisted that the old fixtures stay, even if the toilet is a little cracked.
Her most ambitious improvement was installing an apartment with a tiled bathroom in the basement, making a comfortable place for visitors to stay. A big new window overlooks the backyard. Although I certainly think that the room is nice, it was very painful for me to realize that tiling the bathroom alone cost almost as much as the whole house did originally.
Winifred and I took a trip on Amtrak in April of 1979, crossing the country. We saw Georgia and Crawford in Beloit. Then we went to Delaware to visit Claudia, Richard, and family. We were in New York and went on to Boston to meet Clarissa. It was a wonderful trip. We had another marvelous trip in May 1984, when we went to the Holy Land with Dennis and Helen Lauper. Truman Madsen, my young second cousin, and his wife Ann were leaders on this trip.
Time takes its toll. At this writing, after almost twelve years of marriage, we are grateful for our blessings. We have a comfortable house, and we stay close to our friends at the Church. We are proud of our fine children and grateful that we have each other. Our good health and strength have left us. Winifred has a severe case of diabetes which has led to the problem of breaking brittle bones and of having difficulty with her vision. I have had strokes which have affected my mobility and led to some paralysis on one side. We both use canes now. But as I tell my daughters, I still get up every morning, even when I don't feel like it.
Winifred is a very good woman. She has been a great help to me. We certainly do have differences. I think that it's a very chancy thing to get married. And that is even more true in later life than early life. People get more set in their ways, and it is harder to adjust. But I have certainly been blessed to have two good women in my life.
I also have to pay high tribute to Mother Gordon, my wife Jean's mother. For sure, she's the major reason that Jean and I got married. I was twenty-eight years of age then, and she was twenty-four. Jean was very mature and strong-minded, and I was stubborn, and we had disagreements that seemed insurmountable at times. When I was sent off to Oregon, I told myself that I should tell her goodbye. I called her and she invited me over to dinner. I went over, and it was at that dinner, without any warning, that her mother turned and said to us both, to her daughter especially, "Are you and Serge getting married before he leaves?" There was no point in bringing it up because we hadn't said anything about it before, but she just did it. So I say that Mother Gordon had a large part in our getting married because it developed that we were married later that evening.
Genealogy was a major interest of hers, and she traveled all up and down the country in her later years. After she was sixty-eight years of age, she was called, by the church authorities, to take change of the genealogy of the mission from Arizona to Oregon. It was amazing that at her age she had been given this assignment. She could still wear out missionaries and other people along the route because of her energy. It was a big job, and she was on the move, travelling by bus, car, and train. In the interim of her travels, she would come to our place, arriving at all different hours. She was remarkable in that when she would come she would be very sensitive whenever we wanted to be together. She was careful about not interfering in anything that might be going on.
From the time I first knew her she was considered to be in poor health. Every time we got a telegram, Jean would think that maybe this was word of her mother. We lived with that fear all those years, yet she would come and go and still seem to have great energy. Of course, she was doing the things that she wanted to do. Genealogy was her life.
Well, the last three years were very different. She had lived for many years with her granddaughter Joyce Anderson, but Jean brought her into our home toward the last, and in fact, she died in our home in San Francisco. Jean was her last surviving child. Joyce and Mark had moved to Oregon, and they sold the house where she had a nice little apartment. They later came back to California, but in the meantime, Mother Gordon had her first airplane ride going up to see Joyce and Mark. It must have been about her 97th or 98th year.
I saw a gradual change in her attitude and characteristics. I guess that's just part of getting older and getting sick. I have always hoped that if I should get in such a condition that I would not have to call on people to help me. It would have to be strangers. I would not make those demands of family. That would be contrary to my instincts. I think. I hope.
Jean paid very careful attention to her mother. She prepared food that her mother really enjoyed; she always had a good appetite. But in these later years, Mother Gordon became very demanding which was a complete about-face from formerly. I am referring mainly to the last year. She would call Jean at any time and make requests for different things. Jean was just worn down by this constant running around. I made the suggestion that maybe we should put Mother Gordon into a convalescent home. Jean was furious with me about the idea that she wouldn't be taking care of her mother. I never brought the subject up again. One time I had been away to an October conference; I had only been home for about fifteen minutes when Mother Gordon died in my home.
The whole time was very difficult for Jean. As a proof of it, after the funeral, Jean would get up and go to the other room to check on her mother, even though she was gone. She couldn't go to church at all because if certain songs were sung she would break into tears. Her mother's illness and death had a disastrous effect on my wife; she was going to pieces over the whole thing. It was actually very serious.
To go from that generation to the next, I should say that I am very proud of my four daughters and the things that they have accomplished. I should say that I have been equally proud of each of my sons-in-laws. I had no sons of my own. I have my four daughters, and I am very glad that it was my good fortune to have daughters because I think that I could not have raised boys as well as my wife raised girls.
Each one of my sons-in-law is successful. They have all been educationally superior. They are all college men with added degrees. They have also been the right ones for my daughters. They have fitted into the family and become good husbands and good fathers in every degree. I think of their educational achievements with some pride. I talk about them with friends and associates. In my own case, my education was very limited. Most of the training that I got was received through association with church leaders and then again with business customers over the years.
I think of the hectic courtship of Georgia, my first daughter. She and Crawford did a lot of their courting on the telephone. The expense of it bothered me at the time. After they had announced their intention of being married, we sent out the invitations. After everything was public, the word came down, just about the time that we were to leave for their marriage in the Salt Lake Temple, that everything was off. I had already told my business associates that I would be out of town. I kept this change all to myself during the hours that I was finishing up some certain kinds of business papers. Then, some hours later, before I had told anyone that I was not going, word came back that it was all on again.
So then, the program was that we should drive up to Salt Lake. It was wintertime. There was ice and snow on the road. I left my business office at about 11pm and came home. I got my family out of bed, and we got on the road. It took about 19 hours to drive to Salt Lake because there were cars piled up on both sides of the highway. Many cars were out of commission because of icy conditions. We were fortunate to make it through at all.
You can imagine that I was not in the best humor all the way, and certainly not when I arrived in Salt Lake with no rest. I still recall, though, when we were met that morning by Georgia and Crawford, smiling and happy. Everything was well. We went to the temple, and the wedding was performed by a later president of the church, Spencer W. Kimball. He had been personally interested in Crawford's progress as a young man.
This was the beginning of their marriage. Crawford has gone on to wonderful success in his musical attainments as a composer and a conductor. In my judgement, his name is known throughout the church and in other circles, better than most of the church officials. Success in the musical field is very difficult as the field is so narrow; there are not many who make it, and he is one of the few.
In late 1947, our family travelled to Salt Lake City for the centennial of the pioneers' arrival in the state of Utah. Among the premieres of that day and night of celebration was Crawford's musical play Promised Valley. He had composed this musical which had been chosen to represent the celebration and was being premiered that night. Of all my family, my daughter Georgia who later married him, was the only one who was not there. She had gone off with someone else.
I can also say of him that he has achieved in that field economically. He has always had contracts, and copyrights. Sometimes these musicians do not have business sense, but I think that he has proven that he has keen sense about arranging all of his affairs. So I feel very proud to have him as a son-in-law.
My daughter Claudia was in the east going to school at Wellesley College. She had apprised us about meeting Richard Bushman, a student at Harvard. From her letters we could tell that they were getting along very well, so it was not a big surprise when the announcement came that they were engaged and planned to be married. He sent us a beautiful letter, so well-written, asking for my daughter Claudia's hand in marriage. I still wonder what I did with that letter because I've looked for it in the period since. I want it, but I can't find it. I guess I have lost it.
He wrote us another letter and invited himself to come out and stay with us for the summer. He said that it was his experience that when young people got married, the husbands took the daughters away, and the family never got acquainted with the son-in-law. He thought that he would like to know us better and have us meet him.
He asked if I could help him to get a position of some sort to work during the summer. I was not able to do that. I had a little prejudice against Richard as a Harvard man. I thought that people who were well-educated were not willing to work. But what happened was different. When he came, which he did, he got himself a job at one of the big warehouses belonging to a member of the church, O. Leslie Stone, head of the Payless Drug Company. I remember so well that Richard would get up very early in the morning and leave ahead of me to get over to Oakland. He would come back later at night with the back of his shirt white with perspiration. I said to myself that he could really work and that he would do. That was just a small indication of how he won his way in our house. He helped my wife Jean, scrubbing the floors. He would do various jobs that needed doing. He arranged some of my facilities in the basement. He became very much a member of the family.
As I have indicated before, this was only one small part of his activity. He has achieved and accomplished in the educational world. Then in the ecclesiastical world, he has been a missionary, a bishop and branch president in three places, a stake president, teacher of seminaries three times, as well as a scout leader. I have just heard that he has been called as a patriarch in the New York Stake. He has kept that side of his life very much in order.
When Paulie and Gilbert Hutchings were going together, I doubted that their relationship would come to anything. Paulie had numerous other boyfriends and was going back and forth to school in Salt Lake. She was a very active and forward girl with many friends. Gilbert was much more quiet. But I was proven wrong. He has been a very good member of the family. We have become well-acquainted with all his relatives, his father, his mother who is now deceased, his step-mother and his brothers and sister. We think of them because Paulie, her family, and her in-laws are the only ones who live in our state of California. The other girls and their husbands and families are in other states.
Paulie and Gib have been very generous in offering to take us on trips, two of which I will mention. On one of them we travelled to Tacoma where Paulie and Gib arranged for a recreational vehicle, and we travelled into Canada. We had a delightful time, visiting Vancouver and British Columbia. Some years later, Gib and Paulie arranged to take Jean and me and my brother Ralph and his wife Jane on one of their plane trips. We left the Bay Area and flew into Idaho, where we had breakfast, and then on to Canada where Jean's people had lived. It was kind of exciting to have him call on the radio on his plane to make breakfast arrangements in this little town in Idaho. Later on we flew in to Raymond, where Jean was born, and the Lethbridge area. It was a very windy day. We had a little trouble coming down in those wide-open spaces in Canada. I remember Jean wanted to visit the graves of some of the people she knew. We spent some time in Raymond, including where she had lived. It developed that that house had burned down. We did see the house where her Aunt Fanny, her mother's sister, lived. It still stood and was a very impressive house for that area, being larger than most. I mention this to show how generous Gilbert and Paulie would be in arranging for us to go on trips.
In fact they had an early freedom that most people did not have. They lived high and fancy, because there were no children, to their disappointment. For a number of years, they would come flying in, all dressed in sporty clothes, and taking us out for dinner. Or they would meet us at some restaurant down the peninsula. Later on they adopted four children, two of them are blood brothers as they found out later. They have had their share of child-rearing.
I mention the youngest daughter's husband as the only one that I resisted of any of my sons-in-law. I was not too welcoming or courteous to Glade Goodliffe whom Bonnie had met at Brigham Young University. They announced that they were engaged and were going to be married. Bonnie was my youngest, and I didn't think anyone was good enough for her. That's the only excuse that I can really give for not being too enthusiastic about Glade at first. Later on, Bonnie told her mother and me that we could never be good enough to him because we had been so mean to him at first.
Bonnie and Glade lived in our area in San Francisco at the beginning because Glade's firm, Ernst & Whinney, had a major office here. They lived in the Stonestown area for a while and later moved to Walnut Creek. For the last ten years they have lived in Salt Lake. They have made one trip here a year, coming down with the entire family. When they are here, they spend the whole time being active with the family, going places, entertaining the children. The family is a real group. Their oldest is a boy, but the rest of the seven children are girls. Glade is a very attentive, loving father. He has proven that he is anxious to be a good husband and to work with the family.
In passing I can say that Crawford and Richard have been bishops as well Richard a stake president. Gib is on the high council and Glade is working with the stake presidency as a stake clerk. Three of them have served missions. They have always been moral and clean and good men as far as I have any knowledge. They measure up to the place that I am always proud to introduce them and acknowledge them as sons. They have been very generous and respectful of everything that I have done.