Interview with Addie Olivia Alger Truman

Addie Olivia "Olive" (Alger) Truman was interviewed on June 3, 1968 in St. George, Washington County, Utah by Fielding H. Harris, a representative of the Voices of Remembrance Foundation. She related her personal history of living in various parts of Utah and Nevada.

FH:Would you please give your full name?

AT:[My full name is] Addie Olivia ["Olive"] (Alger) Truman.

FH:[What is] your date of birth?

AT:[I was born] April 30, 1894.

FH:Where were you born?

AT:[I was born] in Cleveland, Emery County, Utah.

FH:What was your father's name?

AT:John Zera Alger, [Sr.]

FH:[What is] your mother's [full] name?

AT:Anna Mary (Barnhurst) [Alger].

FH:[Do you have any] early recollections?

AT:I remember one little incident that happened in Cleveland before we moved from there. I was three years old the next December [1897] so I remember this incident when I was only two and a half years old. I remember that there was a little neighbor boy whose folks were living in a cellar not far from where we lived. [It had] a dirt floor and dirt roof. He and I had something in our arms and we were going up the steps out of this cellar. I remember it [was] melons, but my mother told me afterward that it was citron that his mother was sending over to my mother. They divided their garden [produce]. That is [my earliest] recollection.

I [do] remember when we were moving to St. George from Cleveland. When we 00:02:00[arrived] my mother impressed upon me that I was seeing my grandfather who was ill at the time. She wanted me to remember Grandpa [John] Alger. He was standing at the steps up above me and I was standing on the steps below. He died soon after. [My] mother took care of him before he died.

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FH:[Are there] other [events] you can remember?

AT:After grandfather died, we moved to Diamond Valley. [It is] about twelve miles north of St. George. My mother was pregnant again and expected to have a baby in August. Father was building a new house for us. Mother was anxious to get into this new house before the baby was born because we were living in a dirt-roofed, dirt floor, one little room log cabin. But she had the baby in that place because the house wasn't [finished] in time. Old Sister Higgins delivered [the baby]. Sister Higgins and Dr. [Silas] Higgins were the main people [who] delivered [babies] and [did] all the doctoring in that part of [Washington] County at the time. My oldest sister [Mary Ellen "Minnie" Alger] had married a man [Clarence Henry Oakben] [who] had a ranch south of Enterprise [Washington County, Utah] called the Calf Spring Ranch. After the baby was born father 00:03:00traded the place in Diamond Valley for the one at the Calf Spring Ranch. There was a cabin built of logs [or] cedar posts with a rough fireplace, dirt roof and dirt floor. That is where we lived until I was eight years old. We [did] move to Hebron [Washington County, Utah], which is now a ghost town, for three or four months [in] the wintertime. [This is] where the older girls [were] in school.

I started school in Hebron [during] one of those winters when I was seven years old. I had had poor health for most of my life and I didn't get to [start] school until I was seven. Lou Bastion was my first teacher. My oldest sister, 00:04:00"Minnie", [moved down from] Sunnyside [Carbon County, Utah]. [She had] adopted a girl by the name of Victoria Tobiason. About that time [she] and her husband separated. [She] brought Victoria [and] came to live with us. [Victoria] has been like a sister ever since. [Mary Ellen "Minnie" later married John Lytle.]

FH:How old was she?

AT:She was nine [years old] when I was seven [years old]. We started to school together and before the winter was over she was in third grade. I had missed so much I didn't even make the first grade. I had to start over again the next winter.

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AT:While we lived in Hebron a baby sister was born, Eva Pearl [Alger]. Sister Higgins also delivered her. I want to tell a little bit about Sister Higgins. She came there and lived with us for a month or two before the baby was born. Soon after the baby was born, she was anxious to get back to St. George where she lived. The only means of transportation at that time was with horses and buggies. But father was coming to St. George with a load of hay and so Sister Higgins was hoisted onto that load of hay to ride from Enterprise to St. George which took two days. I remember the outstanding part of it was how he loaded her on that load of hay. [Laughter] He had her step on his hands so she could step up on the hind part of the horse. Then from there [he] had to kind of hoist her 00:05:00on up on the load of hay. But she swore that she enjoyed that ride as much as any ride she had ever had because hay was so easy to ride on. They had to camp at [the] Chadburn Ranch [in Brookside which is between Central and Veyo in Washington County, Utah] overnight and [continue] on the second day.

That baby was not perfect. There was something the matter with her. Soon after Sister Higgins left there, she started going into convulsions. Her head was badly crushed in a different way than most of them are. The top of her head and the back of it was about a full half inch higher than the front part of her skull where this crack is in the skull, the back part and the lower part. So she kept having convulsions and they kept getting worse. I remembered hearing one of my little playmates [say] her mother had said it was too bad that Sister Alger's 00:06:00baby couldn't die because she wouldn't ever know anything with her skull out of place like that. My sister, Neva [Alger], next younger than me and between me and Eva, and I were playing on the floor in the kitchen. All at once I heard mother say, "Sadie," [Sarah Anna Alger] come here quick!" Sadie ran into the front room where mother had the baby on her lap. Of course, we younger [children] ran in there too. She said, "Hand me the olive oil off the mantel, please." There was always a big tall bottle of olive oil on everybody's mantelpiece. She handed [it] to mother [who] poured some of it in her hand. She was crying and praying at the same time. She rubbed that baby's head with [the] olive oil and started pressing it into shape. Before she quit, she had that baby's head in perfect shape [by] rubbing it with this consecrated oil and 00:07:00praying. She went on praying until the baby started breathing naturally and [turned] a natural color. [The baby] was almost black when she started.

[In] her prayer, mother had outlined Eva's life. That prayer was actually a prophecy of what that baby would do. I remember naming over the things that she wanted that child to live to do. One of the main things was to be the mother of sons and daughters [who] would preach the gospel and do the things that the Lord wanted her family to do. That mother has raised twelve children and four of them have been on [LDS] missions and she has had four grandchildren on missions 00:08:00already. Now she has thirty-two [grandchildren]. That has been an inspiration to me all my life because it was something really outstanding. There wasn't an elder around to perform [the] blessing.

FH:She gave a blessing; it wasn't in the name of the priesthood but it was a blessing of faith.

AT:I have always felt like it was through the priesthood [because of the] consecrated oil.

FH:No, the oil was consecrated by the priesthood but the faith of the blessing is what [inaudible].

AT:The faith of the woman [who] was doing it was what did it.

FH:Is the baby still alive?

AT:Yes, she is still alive [and] is [celebrating] her golden wedding anniversary next Saturday. Her children are all outstanding children. She has professors and I don't know what all in her family, four or five of them. They are not all very old yet.

FH:What was the baby's name?

AT:That baby's name now is Eva Pearl (Alger) Paxman. [Eva Pearl Alger married Charles Haven Paxman.] She is an inspiration to everybody [who] knows her and has been all her life. She has been an outstanding spiritual guide for all the rest of the family. Even though she was [the youngest], we can all go to her and know that we are going to get something good out of her instructions and her advice.

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AT:After the baby was breathing normally, mother nursed it and she finally [got] up on her feet with the baby in her arms. It seems to me now that there was a halo around mother's face at that time. I have always felt like there was something very unusual going on. She walked across the floor and laid the baby on the bed and was still talking to the Lord. It seemed to me like the whole room was just something sacred. I didn't dare move. I didn't want to spoil anything. I was only seven years old at the time. The spirit [and] the 00:09:00atmosphere that was in that room has been an inspiration to me all my life.

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The next spring after Eva was born we were moving to Hatch [Garfield County], Utah. I became [very] sick and by the time we [came] to Enterprise, which was only seven miles from Hebron, I [became] so bad that mother, I and the other children decided to stay there while father took a load of furniture on to Hatch. They kept me there all during the month of April. The doctor finally came from Modena [Iron County, Utah] and pronounced [my problem as] appendicitis. [This] was the first time my father and mother or [any] of us had ever heard the word appendicitis. After the doctor had gone I remember saying to pa, "What did he say?" He said, "The doctor said your guts are too long. He has to cut some of 00:10:00it off. But we are not going to have that done. If we have to bury you, we will bury you all in one piece." I remember hearing that so well.

They didn't have it done but through administration and mother's faith again, she stood over me, with that constant prayer in her heart. If she wasn't saying it, I knew it was there and I felt like she wouldn't let me die. I finally got over it but I was [very] thin and we moved on to Hatch. We [arrived] there the day after I turned eight years old.

The climate in Hatch town is [very] cold. [It is] just north of the rim of the Great Basin. We had a hard life there. The snow would be deep and I couldn't go to school. I felt bad any time I [had to] miss any school. We lived about a mile from where the schoolhouse was and if I [went] there at all I would have to wade through snow. Mother wouldn't let me go very much of the time. We lived there two years and during that time the Hatch Dam broke. Father became discouraged and left [Hatch] to hunt a job. The next year he sent two teams and two wagons from Enterprise to Hatch to move us back. We hadn't seen [him] for six months. I remember the hardships we went through that winter. That was about the worst 00:11:00[place] we ever lived. We always had bread, of course, and we had molasses. Mother would toast the bread. We had one old cow we called "Jumper" because she was so breechy. She furnished the milk and butter for the whole family. For breakfast we would usually have toast with the homemade butter and hot water with a little bit of milk.

FH:That was Mormon tea.

AT:We would take bread to school and put some butter on the lid. Then [we would] slice the bread and put it on the butter and let it warm that way. The bread was usually frozen. That is what we would eat for lunch. The memories of that winter [are] sort of a horror to me because my oldest sister [quit] high school in Beaver [Beaver County, Utah]. When she came home for Christmas she made up her mind she wasn't going back. She [found] a job teaching school [to] students in the [lower] grades. That is what saved our lives, her teaching and drawing $30.00 a month to provide for us. Father was in Las Vegas [Nevada] or someplace down in there and wasn't getting his wages. If he did, he was robbed a time or two. Anyway, we didn't [have] much money and mother [took] in sewing. Uncle Sam 00:12:00[Barnhurst] furnished sheep pelts. [He] is my mother's oldest brother. [Mother] cut the wool off from the sheep pelts, washed it and we [children] would pick it. She carded and spun [the wool] to make each one of us two pairs of long, knit stockings. They lasted us for ten years. I remember wearing those same stockings when I was fifteen years old. I learned to knit during that winter when I was [about] nine years old. I learned to knit after mother had set up the stockings. I knit one whole stocking.

FH:Were you baptized at this time?

AT:I was baptized [when we lived] in Hatch. I was baptized in July but the water was almost icy. They baptized me and two or three others down under the dam 00:13:00where the water was coming out from the bottom of the reservoir. I remember screaming my head off when they put me in that cold water. As quick as I [was] out and could get my breath I said, "Well, I am a Mormon now." [Laughter] Bishop Lynn from Hatch baptized me and Uncle Sam confirmed me there and then.

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AT:─ from Hatch back to Enterprise and [arrived] there the day before I was ten years old. My father was [still] on crutches. He had been laid up for months and months with something the matter with his back. He hurt his back some way. He had rented the Pulsipher place in Enterprise. Anybody from this part of the country would know which house that was. We lived there all summer and winter. 00:14:00The next summer we moved back to the Calf Spring Ranch. [I don't know] whether father bought it or leased it. I think his sister, Addie Price, bought it and had cattle up there and he was running her cattle for her.

We went to school in Enterprise from then on until I went to the Murdock Academy [in Beaver]. One of the teachers [who] made a big impression on me in Enterprise was Seth Jones. I remember he would give us a little lecture nearly every morning. He was teaching from the fourth grade down. I was in the fourth grade when I was ten years old. [He] impressed me most [of] any of my teachers [because] he gave a demonstration on forming habits. It seemed to impress me right then and there. All my life I have tried to form the right kind of habits 00:15:00and keep from forming habits that are not good. I think it helped me by impressing on me when I was ten years old how important it was.

FH:That would make a difference.

AT:I remember him telling [that] how you button your coat or pull on your socks [show] that you don't know [or know] what you are doing. You do it automatically after you [have] the habit. He showed us how desperately we needed to form those habits in our early childhood. [Other] teachers were Wallace McMullin, James Cottam [and] Amos Holt. Amos was teaching the lower grades and his brother, George O. Holt, taught the upper grades all in one room with a curtain between. [School] was [held in] the old brick church that was built in Enterprise and it still stands.

I was about fourteen years old before I was permitted to go out evenings [to] Mutual [Improvement Association meetings]. Nobody was supposed to go out at night until they [were old enough to] go to Mutual. I didn't have much association with boys except [when I went] to the Holt Ranch to live with my sister. Heber Holt was a buddy. He was about my age. We grew up together. I lived there with my sister every summer from the time I was twelve years old until I was nineteen with the exception of one summer. Heber was always there. 00:16:00We [came] to be like brother and sister. We lived across the street from each other when we were in town. We spent the summers out there. But we never were sweethearts. We were never close that way. We were like brother and sister [and] we had to use the same books. We didn't have books enough in those days for everybody to have [their own]. He would have to come to my place evenings to study. He would carry the books. He carried them all the time and kept track of them. We would go to school together and come home together because we lived so close.

I started going with the boys was when I was fifteen [years old]. We moved to Deer Lodge near Fay, Nevada. I [received] my first proposal there the summer I was fifteen. A man thirty-five years old proposed to me and, boy, he was charming! He [was a] dreamy dancer. [That] made a big impression on a fifteen year old, but not enough. I knew I didn't want him. I wanted somebody nearer my age than that. He came to spend the Christmas holidays with us just before I was sixteen [years old]. I started going to the dances and that showed the boys I was big enough to have beaus. So they started dancing with me too. From then on, 00:17:00I very seldom missed a Friday night dance. The Church [of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] held them.

FH:What kind of music [did they play]?

AT:There was a [very] good old fiddler and usually [there was] organ [music]. Once in a while [there would be] guitar and harmonica [players]. But it was usually a fiddle. I mean fiddle, not violin! [Laughter]

FH:Did you do a lot of square dancing?

AT:Yes, we square danced. [They] were always held in the church, the little old red brick building. [The dances] was held under church supervision. There was always the bishop or one of his counselors there in charge. We opened with prayer and dismissed with prayer and [the dance was] carried on very orderly. But, boy, did we have fun! I always danced the quadrille with Jonathan Hunt and I danced the Danish slide off with Dave Farnsworth. Amos Hunt [did] barn dances with me. There was a pair of twins, John and Hen Day, and they were dreamy dancers. Hen [had] the habit [of] giving us girls a special little squeeze at the end of every waltz. Was that a thrill! What a let down it was [for] me to find out that] he was doing [it] to the other girls, too! [Laughter]

The stage [began to] come through there. It brought the mail every day. We were getting modern then. We would all meet after school down in the John Day store because he ran the [United States] Post Office. I would have to be sure and be there on Fridays to bring the Washington County News home so dad could find out what was going on in the world. That was almost our only communication outside of town, the old Washington County News.

I was there one Friday afternoon with a gang of the [students] after school waiting for the mail to be looked over. Here came the stage with a different man on it. He got off the stage and brought in a suitcase. He was dressed in a long brown overcoat, brown cap, brown shoes and trousers. He was dressed up! He walked right up to the heater, looked at the fire [stove] through the door and 00:19:00held his hands out there to the fire. Soon he picked up his suitcase, walked out and never even looked at me. I was [really] put out! I was used to being noticed. He looked [very] nice to me. He looked different. He wasn't one of the country jay boys like I was used to going with. But I thought I hadn't better let it worry me much because he was some [what] older than me and somebody I didn't know. I saw his sister in school the next morning. She said, "Tom" came home last night." I found out this was her brother, "Tom" [Thomas Harrover Truman]. She talked to me some about him.

Time went on for a few weeks. She and I were going to make some divided riding skirts to ride in. We had the khakis to make them and the pattern. She insisted 00:20:00on me going up to her place and helping her with her skirt. Then I [would be able to] make mine. I went up and there was "Tom." He [was seated at] a table in one corner of the room. The sewing machine was in another corner. His table [was] littered with papers and a set of law books. He was very absorbed in his study of law. She told me he was almost a lawyer. He sat there not paying any attention to us for an hour or so. After a while, he brought a big sheet of printing paper over. It was all written and he came over and said, "I would like to have you sign this. Will you, please?" I said, "My ma says for me not to sign anything until I have read it." I read it and he had written out a contract that the undersigned would be as one from that day forth. He went right on with the 00:21:00marriage ceremony completely in legal terms. That whole page was legal terms making us as one from that day on.

I belonged to a girl's club where we had false foolish names. I said, "I will sign my club name." He said, "Okay, sign that." After I signed my club name he said, "That is just as legal as any as long as you are known by that name." He argued with me the rest of his life that that document was legal. From that day forth, he never let up on me. He camped right on my trail. This was the second day of February [and] on June 16 we were married. As I went to leave that night, he said, "I will [come for] you for the party tonight." They were having a surprise party [for] Duane Canfield. That was the way he proposed to me. He 00:22:00never proposed any other way. It was already taken for granted. That was settled! [Laughter] No questions about it. I think he was [very] clever.

FH:This is unusual to say the least!

AT:[Very] clever, wasn't he? We went together about six months and were married the next June.

FH:Where were you married?

AT:[We were married for] fifty-four years. [We were married] in St. George. We came to St. George [for] a civil wedding in the old parlor at my Aunt Addie Price's home up here on Diagonal Street. [We were] married by John E. Pace. He was an old family friend of my dad's.

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FH:[What] can you remember about your father?

AT:My father was a grandson of Zera Pulsipher who was one of the right-hand men of Joseph Smith. You [will] find his name mentioned a lot of times in the history of the church. My father's mother [Sarah Pulsipher] was Zera Pulsipher's daughter. She married John Alger. She named her boy John Zera [Alger] after her father and his father. Grandpa Alger had five wives. Grandmother was the first wife and Aunt Jane [Burnett] was his [fourth] wife. They agreed [and] got along fine. Grandmother helped make a living while Aunt Jane raised the [children]. They had a lot [of children] between them [but] I don't know how many.

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AT:I think my father's life was influenced by being raised in a polygamy family. After grandfather [became] what they considered old at that time, he was past sixty, he was [excommunicated] from The Church [of Jesus Christ of Latter-day 00:23:00Saints] because he took a young girl about fifteen years old for his fifth wife. Grandmother and Aunt Jane [did] not approve of the other two wives. He already had three [wives] besides those two. They [excommunicated] him from the church because of that. They claimed that he had not had any revelation and [neither] had the authorities of the church. Grandpa said he had as many revelations as the rest of them did and so that was the way it went. My father was always in sympathy with grandpa. He thought his revelations were just as real as anybody else's. Grandpa died out of the church. Father developed a little bit [of] skepticism about the church authorities from then on.

Grandmother's father had been converted to the church in Philadelphia 00:24:00[Pennsylvania]. He had been married and had two children. The children were little girls when he joined the church. His wife wouldn't come with him. So he left her and the two babies and came to Utah with the pioneers. He was a well- educated man and had iron foundry property in Philadelphia. He left it all and came to Utah. When he [came] here, he was a teacher in Salt Lake [City, Salt Lake County, Utah]. [A] little Danish girl was brought [to Salt Lake City] and [she] couldn't speak a word of English. [She] was only sixteen years old and he was nearly thirty [years old]. The authorities of the church advised him to marry her because she needed protection and he was alone in the world. So they were married. They became very devoted to each other as they grew older. My 00:25:00mother was a twin. Her name was Anna Mary and her twin's name was Mary Ann. Mother used to talk about how her father would sit by the fire and watch the embers die in the fireplace. The children would all be very quiet when he would take [on] those moods. Grandma would shoo them all off to bed. She used to 00:26:00imagine what grandfather was thinking, wondering where his other wife was and how his two little girls were and all those things [inaudible].

When mother was sixteen years old, she met [my] father. Her father was building a home in Cedar City [Iron County, Utah]. My father and his father were doing the building. [They] had the contract to build the house. It was one of the first houses in Cedar City to have glass windows and a board floor. While they were there, my father fell in love with mother and her twin, almost. He thought he knew mother because she was a little bit shier and bashful, a little blond with long ringlets, blue eyes and white hair [almost]. She was still wearing ringlets.

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AT:Erastus Snow was the presiding elder here in St. George [and] one of the twelve apostles, wasn't he? He met my dad on the street one day and said, "Johnny." My dad thought: well, now what have I done? Erastus is going to say something to me. "Johnny, I want you to go on a [LDS] mission. I want you to go up there and get those little Danish girls and marry them both if they will have you. But get one of them anyway and go to Moenkopi, Arizona on a mission among the [Navajo] Indians. [My father] said, "If I can get them, I will sure do it." He got in his wagon and went right up the next morning to Cedar City and brought mother back with him. He told her that Erastus Snow had given those orders and for her to come on. Grandpa said, "Go on, Mary," so she went. She was nuts about 00:28:00dad anyway! He was big, tall, handsome, dark complexioned, [with a] black moustache and very charming. He always [had] a charming personality and mother was a little shy, pale-faced blonde. They went to Arizona on [a] mission among the Indians. They had a lot of experiences.

FH:Did they both go together?

AT:Yes. They used to tell about the trip down across the Grand Canyon [Arizona]. They went across Lee's Ferry. That was in 1876. John D. Lee had just been arrested and was in the penitentiary in Salt Lake [City]. Mother used to tell us [the] stories going around and about their experiences at Moenkopi and how they 00:29:00went across the [Colorado] River. They had one mule that they could hardly get [across the river]. They would tie him to [a] raft and put their wagon box and some of the wheels and go back and forth and back and forth to get across the river. But this mule wouldn't go for quite a while. They finally had to [almost] drag him across the river. After he [went] across the river the first time, when the raft went back the mule followed it. They said he kept his tail up in the air and whirling around and followed [the] raft back and forth every time it went [for] six or eight times, with his tail up whizzing in the air.

That was one of the [stories] my dad liked to tell. He always wanted to tell [about] the funny things in life. He was always good company. They [came] back about the time the endowment house was finished by the [St. George] Temple. They had their endowments and were married in the temple then. Erastus Snow had married them before they left, but they were sealed in the temple [this] time.

[Mary Ellen] "Minnie" [Alger], my oldest sister, was born a year [later] in June. I don't know where she was born. [She was born in St. George, Utah.] When she was born, mother was terribly disappointed. She thought she was going to have a big, black-eyed boy. But, instead, it was a little white-headed girl like she was. She just didn't want that kind! [Laughter] "Minnie" heard mother tell about that one time and it gave her a complex the rest of her life. She thought that mother shouldn't have been so disappointed. That shows partly, though, the influence of a mother, a parent or anybody can have on children, how it can really affect them.

Johnny Zera [Alger], Jr. was the second child, the oldest boy. He was born down on the Beaver Dam [Arizona] while the beavers were still working there. They would get in there and break [the beaver] dams. They would have a [difficult] time with their crops there. It [was] so hot there that mother could remember their corn patch being burned up in about two days from the sunshine. The leaves 00:30:00on the corn would shrivel just like a fire had gone through [the field]. They had dysentery and all the diseases [prevalent] in those times and all the hardships.

They moved back to Cleveland [Utah]. While they were there, Sadie [Alger] [was born]. My next sister was Sarah Ann [Alger] and then Ada [Alger]. Then [she] had a little boy [James Grant Alger], just what mother had been wanting all these years. Every time she had a girl, she wanted a black-eyed boy. Finally she got him. He lived about a year and died. Then I was born. So there was quite [a period of time] between me and Ada. Then we moved back here [to Washington County, Utah] and Neva [Alger] was born in Diamond Valley. Mother lost a baby 00:31:00between me and Neva, come to think of it, up here on Diagonal Street. [Jane Elizabeth] was born dead about the time that grandpa [John Alger] had died. Then we moved to Hebron and Edith [Alger] was born. That tells about the family being born.

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AT:We lived in Enterprise, where I spent most of my life, from the time I was ten years old until I was married. During that time I was teaching the kindergarten class in Sunday school just before I was fifteen years old. I was also asked to be a member of the choir when I was fifteen. The first time I sang in the choir [was] for Brother Pendleton's funeral. I sang in the choir until I finally [became] a chorister. I always took a very active part in all [of] the church activities. I was a teacher in Relief Society [for] the social science class. I have always taken the Relief Society magazine.

I moved to Fallon [Nevada when] I was older. I was secretary of the Relief Society [from] the first day I [was] there. We lived there for twenty years. During that time, I held almost every office there is in the church for a woman to hold up to the stake president of the Relief Society. I was a first counselor to the president when it was first organized in the Reno [Nevada] Stake. I loved the work. I have always felt like that prepared me for the bigger jobs I had [later]. I have had a lot of responsibility all the time. I was president of the Relief Society during The [Great] Depression in Fallon. We were all so darn poor. The church was starting [its] welfare program. But where were we going to 00:32:00get the welfare from? There was nothing for anybody. If anybody had anything to donate, we all needed something.

"Tom", my husband, raised a big patch of tomatoes the first year I was president of the Relief Society. We canned a hundred quarts of tomatoes [from] his patch that first summer. The church sent a truck to California and got a load of peaches and we canned them. We had that with church welfare and a few other smaller things. That was a big job for [anybody] at that time because the church welfare was new. Nobody knew what to do about it. It was a [very] big responsibility for anybody as green as I was and everybody [was] in such poor circumstances. Most of the Mormons there were farmers out in the country. They 00:33:00had about what they wanted to eat, but nothing else [and] no money to spend.

FH:Was that a good training program for you?

AT:You bet! I even had to lay out some for whoever died. I would have to lay them out and I was the chorister. I was the Relief Society president [and] I felt like I had most of the responsibility for everybody. I would have to preach the sermon, do the singing, prepare the dead and see that they were laid away. There were several people [who] died while I was in office.

Finally they released me as president of the Relief Society [and] put me in as assistant to the stake president when the Reno Stake was organized. That was about 1939 or 1940. After I was in that office about two or three years, my 00:34:00husband decided to go to the Hawaiian Islands. I was released to make [the] trip. I was to be gone a year, which we were. I had some good experiences over there with the Hawaiian people. I made up my mind when I went over there that I was not going to try to go into American society. I was going to try to mix with the Hawaiian people and learn the different nationalities; learn something I didn't already know, in other words. I had a lot of fun with those Hawaiian people. I joined a Hawaiian ward and they were very nice to me. After I started to go to their Sunday school, they divided the class and those that couldn't understand English had a separate adult class. They did that for me. Now wasn't that good? They had a class to speak English just for my sake. They sure made 00:35:00use of me.

FH:They are very cordial people.

AT:Yes. They were as friendly and sweet as they could be. For them to expect the ward to accommodate me like that, I felt highly honored. I had heard some wonderful testimonies. The bombing of Pearl Harbor [Hawaii] happened December 7, [1941]. In January, there was a Sister Peters, a nurse, [who] [stood] up in [a] testimony meeting. She was part Hawaiian. After the bombing, all the nurses and doctors [were] to report immediately to Hickam Field [military base in Hawaii]. When she [arrived], there was no doctor; nobody there to give any orders at all. 00:36:00The boys [servicemen] were being brought in ─ some of them butchered, just dying. Some of them were struggling. She said she thought, all at once, I am a Latter-day Saint and the Holy Ghost will be with me. She said she looked up into heaven and said, "God, please help me." She took her apron off, took her scissors and started cutting her apron in strips and bandaging the boys. The other nurses saw her doing [that] and so they started doing it. [Later], the government gave her special honors for bravery. I have always felt like that was a real testimony too.

After the bombing, we went through everything that anybody else did there. My husband came off his shift at seven o'clock that morning, came out of the hole. The job he had there was supposed to be one of the machine drilling men. They put him in as what they call nipper to go around and show all the other miners how to run [the] jack-hammer machines. They humored him [almost] to death because he was four years older than was supposed to be allowed on the job. But he looked so young that he got through without them discovering that he was too old. Then the boys [started] calling him dad!

The morning of the bombing I had gotten up to send our boy to do his job as a grease monkey down on the beach. We could hear [the] bombing and the whole neighborhood was outside looking. We only lived about two miles from Pearl Harbor. We could see [the] planes going up and around. It reminded me of a Ferris wheel going up through this cloud over the harbor. They would go up on one side and down. As they came down, we would hear another boom, boom, boom. 00:37:00When [my husband] came home, he brought a passenger [who] he was hauling back and forth. When I saw his face I turned pale. He had such a ghastly look on his face. I almost fainted just looking at his face. I didn't know what had been going on. Just before he [arrived] there, a bomb had hit the side of the hill just under the Kamehameha College. We were living right at the foot of the hill. A submarine repair man was living next door to us and said, "That is no practice. That is something real." That was [when] it really dawned on us that there was anything seriously going on. By that time the bombs were hitting all around between us and Pearl Harbor.

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AT:While we were living in Enterprise [in] about 1939, "Tom's" sister, "Amy" [Emma Lasine (Truman) Hafen], passed away. Four months later, in June, her husband [Joseph Hafen] passed away. They left four children. The court appointed us guardian of the two youngest ones [Anna and Donald "Don" Hafen]. "Tom's" sister, Lois [(Truman) Huntsman], was the guardian of the two older ones [George Andrew and Dorothy Hafen]. We had these two children, and every summer, the two older ones would come to live with us in Fallon. We practically raised the four children. When Dorothy, the youngest of the [older] ones, was fourteen, Lois died. Then we took all of them. Anna [Hafen] had passed away. She was the girl that we took when she was twelve [years old]. So we had the three [children] all 00:39:00at once.

We had [the] boy [Donald Hafen] [who] was sixteen [years old] with us when we went to the [Hawaiian] Islands. He turned seventeen [years old] while we were there. The morning of the bombing he had gone to work down at Waikiki [Hawaii] where he was working as a grease monkey in a garage. During the bombing, it was officially announced for all the mechanics and businesses to send trucks and help to Pearl Harbor to gather up the bodies [and] help evacuate the citizens [who] were living close to Pearl Harbor. "Don's" boss put him in a truck and sent him up there. He worked under the direction of the [American] Red Cross for 00:40:00that entire week. He never came home to stay or to eat until the next Saturday night after [that] Sunday morning. He came home a time or two because we lived between Honolulu [Hawaii] and Pearl Harbor. As he would go by, he would stop in. One day he came by and I could tell he was sick. He was just as pale as he could be. He told me about what he had been doing, that he had been gathering up parts of bodies and even a head or two and things like that. There were signs around [Pearl] Harbor that said, "Place parts of bodies here for identification." It was getting him down. So they changed him from that to having him move people [who] were in and near Pearl Harbor down into Honolulu.

That affected that boy, I think; from then on, I noticed a difference in him. He 00:41:00would take things more seriously than he ever had before. He would cry and be emotional more than he ever had before. I think an experience like that is [very] hard on a [young person]. After that, he went to work with the engineers at Pearl Harbor. They were working underground. "Tom" was working [on] the underground fuel storage. That fuel storage in Pearl Harbor is on what they call Red Hill. They were making oil [and] gas tanks down under the ground so they could load them into the ships for the [United States] Navy.

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AT:We stayed there until the next July [1942]. That was the first chance we had to get home. They were sending everybody home by convoys. They notified us that 00:42:00we had [put in] our year [at] that time. They sent all the women and children home, the sick people, and we were allowed to come home. We came on a convoy and "Tom" rode with us. We came on the Lurline. "Tom" could have [come home] for nothing if he had gone with the [United States] Navy, but we would rather have him with us so we paid an extra $115.00 for his ticket to ride on the Lurline with us.

The ship had about ten people where it was supposed to have one on it. We were crammed in there like sardines in a can. I remember they had three tiers of beds in the room where I slept. I slept in the middle one [bed] and every time I would turn over I would almost touch the woman below me. The big fat one had to 00:43:00sleep above because there was more room between her bed and the ceiling than there was any other place. She turned over on me every time she turned over. I think one thing that impressed me the most about ship life was the deck gossip. There is more gossip on a ship than anyplace in the world, I do believe!

FH:Scuttlebutt.

AT:All kinds! But our voyage was lovely. The first day out we were in this convoy and were zigzagging across the ocean. It would take a long time to describe that, but it was very interesting. There were two airplanes, a submarine, a battleship, a troop ship, the Lurline and another smaller passenger 00:44:00boat that were in our convoy returning these men [who] had been working [in Hawaii]. We missed one of the airplanes the second morning out. It was with us all [of] the first day. The next morning it was gone. We never did find out [and] finally decided that it turned back [because someone] decided we didn't need it. The passengers generally didn't know that there was a submarine. But, about the second day out, we saw [the] submarine. Some of us [were] quite excited thinking it could be most anything. About the third day out, we went through a school of porpoises and that was very interesting. You could see the porpoises for miles in [each] direction and the boat just went right through the school of porpoises. [Another] day we drove into a rainbow. The colors of the 00:45:00rainbow came right up to your feet on either side of the boat. We were right in the center of [the] rainbow. All the people were [on] deck looking at [the] rainbow and trying to find [the] bucket of gold! [Laughter]

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AT:We were all waiting to get to San Francisco [California] and were all dressed and carried a life preserver, a great huge thing that made us stick out all around. We couldn't go through a door two of us at a time but we had to have them on all the time. We took them off to go to bed to sleep. We [were] to have it hanging on our bedpost. We [were] very tired of carrying those things around. Every once in a while, somebody would get stuck in the doors. The women all had 00:46:00to wear britches.

About the last night out into the ocean, we were in the dining room. They let us have that lit up. The rest of the boat had to be dark. The ship's chaplain would try to entertain us there. He had a little platform built in the dining room and he would have us sing. He was a very poor chorister! I thought I was a good one [chorister] and I got itchy and wanted to get up there and make them sing. He had us sing John Brown's Body. Everybody knows that you leave off the last word, of course. So I thought: here is my chance. Before he started, he said, "Anybody [who] sings when they aren't supposed to [will have] to get up here." The tables were so close together with so many people in there that I had to beller out 00:47:00when I wasn't supposed to. I sang "John Brown's Body lies a-molding in the grave." Then everybody around me [said], "Get up there. Get up there." So I just walked on the tables, stepping from one table to the other until I [was] up [on] the platform. [While] I [was] up there I had them start singing rounds. Everybody sang. I thought I made quite a hit that night because I had people singing. When I [was] through, they [almost had to] carry me back to my table. The next day everybody on [the] boat knew me and they were all guessing whether I was a school marm [teacher] or a professional singer or what I was. It was quite a thrill to have people come up to me and they knew my name. They said, 00:48:00"Truman." That was one of the nights out.

When we [were] ready to unload, [we were] notified [that] everybody [was] to be dressed for the streets. We were going to get off the boat the next morning in San Francisco. We were dressed for Market Street. We [went] up on the deck and, as quick as it became daylight, we were all looking for the lights of San Francisco. We looked and looked but nobody saw a light. Finally, we could hear fog horns booming and [there were] fog horns all around us. Then we discovered that the fog was so thick that you could hardly see the other fellow on the deck. You could just feel that fog. There we sat for twenty-four hours in that fog all dressed up and we couldn't get off the boat. They cast anchor there and 00:49:00waited for the fog to lift.

When we got off, it was the morning of the Fourth of July. We stayed in San Francisco that day [and] watched the parade. It was almost entirely a military parade and it didn't make me happy at all. I had seen enough of that. "Don" took the train home that day and beat us there. We waited until the next day. We wanted to do some shopping.

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AT:We averaged saving more than $100.00 a month which we thought was almost fabulous. We didn't know what to do with it. We had [almost] $1,500.00 when we [arrived] home that we had saved in the year that we were there. "Tom" [had] a chance to buy one of the biggest dairies in the Fallon valley. The boys ran that for a year and then sold it and doubled their price on it. Then he bought a 00:50:00ranch fifteen miles from town. I never did get back into [doing] very many church duties until the present time.

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AT:While we were living in Fallon on Stillwater Avenue, "Tom" was drinking quite a bit. He spent his time at a certain bar and the bartender lived across the street from us. "Tom" would hang out at this joint every night for so long a time. The bartender would bring him home. I was telling "Tom's" sister about it one day and she was sympathizing with me. She said, "Why don't you beat up on "Tom" sometime. Uncle Gary used to do that [drink]. Aunt "Em" [almost] beat him to death one time and he never took another drink." But I couldn't make up my mind to do anything like that. I didn't think I could to start with.

One night I was laying there and "Tom" had been drinking. This [neighbor] had been bringing him home every night. I was sleeping where I could look out the front window. I saw them coming along about one or two o'clock in the morning. [The] neighbor brought him up the steps. I could see ["Tom"] could hardly walk. The neighbor opened the door and kind of pushed him through. When I saw him coming I jumped out of bed in my night dress and [went] behind the door. As the neighbor pushed him through the door I shut the door right quick and grabbed "Tom" by the hair of the head. I started banging his head against the door frame. I practically dragged him to the next door and banged his head on the door frame into the kitchen. He [was] down [on] the kitchen [floor]. I trounced him but I was barefooted and couldn't hurt him as bad as I did myself. But I got right up on him and I tromped him as hard as I could. It seemed like the harder I banged and the harder I tromped, the madder I [became with] all the fury of my past years of his drinking, embarrassment and the life I had had to live with him. I [became] madder and madder, and the madder I [became] the harder I tromped. Finally, while he was down on the floor I looked around for a stick of wood or anything. I am afraid I might have killed him that night if I had found anything. But when I found myself looking for something to kill him with, I kind of came to. I brought him up by the hair of the head again and pushed him out through the back door and into a little back room we had on the porch. I kind of gave him a shove.

Then I went back into the house and I started to bawl. I thought what a terrible thing I had done. I went back into my own bedroom and thought about it. Along towards morning, along about four or five o'clock I got up and I was the most repentant, humble little wife that ever was. I was sure going to apologize to him and everything was going to be alright from then on. I knew he would quit drinking. I knew he would never take another drink. I had the coffee pot on and we were sitting there waiting. After a while he opened the middle door and he stuck in his head. He had one black eye and a goose egg on his head as big as your fist. He was gasping for breath like he was in pain. He stuck his head in and he said, "I must have been in one hell of a fight last night." [Laughter] Every time I tell that, the house roars! But that is what he said. I said, "Oh, never mind. Come on in here and have a cup of coffee and we'll see what --." "Oh, the hell with it," he said. "I am going downtown and kill the S.O.B. that tried to kill me last night." Naturally, I never told him who it was that he had had that fight with. I cracked a rib or two while I was tromping on him. He looked awful. He never did know that it was me for years afterwards. Then he didn't know which time it was. It was me that beat up on him. That is just one of those stories.

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AT:We had gone broke [and] lost our store and garage, all our homes but one little old lumber shack up on the hill. We were living there and he was drinking all the time down on the streets. I would have to go down and visit bars every night and bring him home.

[END OF TAPE ONE -- SIDE TWO]

AT:I was getting awfully tired of it. I was getting to where I was just about fed up. Now I didn't hate "Tom". I wasn't even mad at him by this time. I just endured it. He had [become] so low that it just didn't seem like it was worth 00:51:00the effort to even try to stay with him [or] try to do anything for him. I made up my mind one night after I went down to the Lincoln Hotel and [almost] had to drag him through the snow up the hill [to] where we lived. I finally got him home about two o'clock in the morning. I was lying there and I thought: I won't do it again. I won't do it anymore. I will take what little bit of money I [have]. I had about $300.00 and I thought I can go someplace and lose myself. I don't want to ever be seen by anybody [who] has ever seen me before. I think I was as low in morale as anybody could be. I didn't want to see anybody that ever knew me. I thought: I [have] money enough to take me to New Orleans [Louisiana]. I thought I had always [wanted] to go there anyway and that was a melting pot. That was what I needed, a melting pot.

So the next day I fixed up all my clothes, mended everything, washed, ironed and 00:52:00packed my suitcase. I was going to take the stage out the next morning. "Tom" went downtown late in the afternoon and never showed up. It was snowing and blowing. The snow was about two feet deep and if anybody would make a trail up to our house [inaudible] no time at all. There wasn't any trail. Just as it was becoming dark I looked out the window and down the hill. I could see an object coming way down the hill and somebody stumbling along in the snow. I watched him closely. I felt surely "Tom" won't be coming home this early, just at dark. But it turned out to be "Tom." I would see him fall down and, after a while, I discovered there was something with him and [it] was a dog following him home. He would fall down in the snow and [the] dog would lick him and nose him and try 00:53:00to urge him up. He would get up and stagger on another rod or two and go down again and the dog would stay with him. What in the world was there about that dog doing that? But it made me hate that dog. The psychological response I had against that dog [was that] I felt like [the] dog was doing what I should be doing.

I fully intended to leave "Tom" the next morning. I bet $1,000.00 I would. That dog followed him home and when he [was] up onto the porch I thought that dog is not coming in the house. I waited until "Tom" [was] right [at] the door and I opened the door [very] carefully but the dog beat him in. He was about a half- grown mongrel pup. I couldn't get that dog out. He kept on the opposite side of "Tom." Finally, "Tom" got over into a chair by the stove and the dog stayed on the other side of "Tom" until I finally gave up. I sat down and argued with that 00:54:00dog just as much as I ever argued with anybody. I sat on the other side of the stove. That dog sat there and would turn his head and look at me back and forth, turn around and lick "Tom's" hand [and] lay his nose on his knee. Then he looked back at me and kind of half growled if I moved. There was some power that brought that dog in there, something besides the dog. I will always think that. He finally stayed right there all night. When I opened the door the next morning [the dog] left. I finally laid down for an hour or two toward morning. I had made up my mind there that I was not supposed to leave. I would have to stay with "Tom" to help him through.

I made up my mind that I would stay with him until I could get him buried at least. I didn't think he would live any time at all because he was getting so badly bloated and so gone in his mind, his object, his ideals, [everything]. A 00:55:00few days [later], my brother ["Johnny"] came through on [his way] to Dixie. I came with him and left "Tom" laying there. I kind of half had a prayer in my mind that I would never have to see him again or that I wished the house would burn down with him in it. I wanted so desperately to be free of the whole [situation]. When I [arrived] home I didn't have anything to do and no place to go. My folks [inaudible] would take care of an extra widow. So I started this rest home. It wasn't long until "Tom" was here between maneuvers with the [children] we had raised and then he was trying [very] hard to quit drinking. He was grasping at straws, anything to get out of it, to get sobered up and get on 00:56:00his feet. Finally, he went to an AA [Alcoholics Anonymous] meeting and never took another drink after that first meeting. He lived fifteen years after that and never took a drink.

FH:They had a powerful effect on him.

AT:They sure did. He had tried so hard all his life. He had never wanted to drink but he did want to be a social drinker. He never intended to get drunk. He was always just going to have a drink and be a jolly good fellow with the rest of the boys. But he was always the first one to get drunk and laid out. He never was mean to me at all. I could have anything I could get. "Don" was flat happy anytime he was drunk because he would give "Don" anything he had. He would take "Don" with him anyplace he wanted to go.

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AT:When we were first married he didn't drink to amount to anything; [maybe at], a Christmas party or something like that and just for the party. The next day it would be alright. But it kept growing on him. The occasions were more often and lasted longer which is always the case, I think, with alcohol if you keep monkeying [using] with it. It kept getting worse and worse until finally I came to this trial in Parowan [Iron County, Utah]. [That] was when he kept getting [very] bad from then on until we went to Fallon. He had a job [as] an engineer in one of the mines. Then he let up. He stopped drinking for about seven years until we came back from the islands.

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AT:Living in Fallon there was a [fellow who] lived there by the name of Cy Cobbs. He was quite a noted prospector and had made a lot of money prospecting and selling the property. He [made] more [doing this than] working in the mines. 00:58:00He met "Tom" one day and they had [became] good buddies. He talked "Tom" into taking a lease on a piece of property he had out near Westgate [Nevada]. "Tom" didn't have the money to go ahead so he talked to Mrs. Dalton. [She] was a widow [living] on a ranch [and] had quite a bit of money. He told her the story and she said, "I will finance you, "Tom", and then we will split what we get out of it. If you don't make anything, nobody will cry about it. If we do, we'll split it."

He got his groceries and machinery and everything he needed and went out to work. He worked there for a week or two and would see just a little trace of gold every once in awhile. There was another [fellow] maybe a hundred yards or half a mile from him. They were doing the same thing on the same knoll. Finally, he came in after groceries and I went back out with him. I stayed out there in 00:59:00the camp and enjoyed it. I was doing the panning and would find a little trace of gold every once in awhile. I loved to pan for gold. I finally decided I better go back home. I had been home a day or two back in Fallon when I [received] a note from this [fellow who] was [working] next to him. He brought a letter from "Tom" and he had sealed it. In this letter he said, "Olive", we have struck it rich. Don't tell anybody unless it is Mrs. Dalton, but don't tell her over the telephone. When you see her personally, tell her not to tell anybody else until we kind of see exactly what there is there. I have struck the richest vein I have ever seen." I went to bed that night [so] sure I was rich. I lay there thinking about it and planning what I would do. There was a certain block in Fallon that I was always kind of worried about. It was right almost in the middle of town. [There] was an old shack on it and businesses all around it. I thought I will buy that lot. [That is] the first thing I'll do [even] if it costs me $500,000.00. I was going to have plenty of [money]! I [would] build a home for children there. I went on from [there]. I planned and spent millions of dollars that night just as real as if you could spend it. I [would] take my sisters all around the world.

FH:You had a lot of fun!

AT:I had the most fun and I lived through it all so real. Along towards morning I kept thinking what it would lead up to -- now what would that do to "Tom" to have a lot of money? He was still just drinking a little bit once in awhile. What would it do to "Don"? I knew it would wreck "Don". I thought: well now, then what about me and my friends? If anybody was extra good to me, I would think they want some of my money. I went through all of that. I went through that so real until about four or five o'clock in the morning. I half consciously uttered a prayer that if it was right, if we would use that money right, let us have it, but if we wouldn't, just take it away. There won't be any. The next day when "Tom" came home, he said, "It fizzled out. There was a piece over there about the size of your head. It was the richest thing I have ever seen in my life and I couldn't find another crumb of it."

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AT:-- from Eureka [Juab County, Utah] landed here in St. George in 1950. I started the rest home then. "Tom" was with me at that time but he was still drinking. He came home late one afternoon. He said, "I am going out tonight." I said, "Where are you going?" He said, "I am going to an AA meeting. I never heard of it until the last day or two. I am going with one of the boys tonight." I said, "Good luck." The next morning [I] got up quite early in the morning and he came up missing. He had gone up to Grant Harris' place. When he came home he sat down and told me about what had been going on. He said that he had been to the AA meeting the night before and the next morning he wanted a drink so bad. The thing to do [according to] AA was to find another AA [person] right now. So he had been up to Grant's place and [they] had had a good heart-to-heart talk. 01:00:00He felt like he was going to be alright for today. That was their motto -- I won't take a drink today. Maybe I will tomorrow. I didn't pay much attention to it. There had been so many times that he quit drinking. I didn't have any faith in it at all. But he never took another drink that week, the whole week.

I could tell he was looking forward to the next Sunday night when they would have another meeting. He never missed a meeting for fifteen years, for as long as he lived. It seemed to change his personality so much that he seemed like a different person. He started trying to find anybody that would drink, if they were drunk or if they weren't drunk or if they were having trouble. He sought that company. It seemed to give him more strength to find another drunk and try to help him than anything he could do. That is what he spent his life at from 01:01:00then on. There was one man, in particular, while we were in the rest home business. One of the chamber maids at the El Peso Motel [110 West 100 North in St. George] [who] called me up one morning. She said, "Send "Tom" down here. There's a drunk down here [and] something has to be done for him." "Tom" was always raring to go if there was anybody that needed him for any purpose. He went right down there and the chamber maid showed him the room. He went to the room and she opened the door. The man was living there.

It turned out to be a [fellow] by the name of Bill Gartmond. He was working for RKO [Pictures as] one of their traveling representatives. He had been so sick and drunk [for] so long that he was going into dts [delirium tremers]. "Tom" walked up to him and said, "Fellow, what do you want?" Bill said, "I have to have a drink." "Tom" said, "Alright. I will see that you get one." He left and 01:02:00came back with a bottle about as quick as he could get back. He gave Bill a drink and then started picking up Bill's clothes. Bill said, "What are you going to do?" He said, "You are going up to my place right now." They packed up his suitcases and he brought him up [to the house]. He could hardly walk [and] "Tom" had to help him into the house. That was on a Wednesday afternoon. We kept him that night. "Tom" called in some of the AA boys and they held a regular meeting all night long with Bill. I made coffee all night and moose milk. That is a cure [used] to sober up. At first he couldn't even hold his own cup. They would have to hold it up to him and he would slobber all over himself. You could tell he was a young, attractive, swell young fellow.

They kept him Wednesday night and Thursday. One or two of the other AA boys was there nearly all the time with "Tom." They watched over him until the next Sunday morning. Then he said, "I have to go on. I am [up] on my feet now and I think I can make it." So he went on. "Tom" offered to take him part way. He said, "No, you have done enough." He never took another drink after that. That was in [about] 1956. From then on, never six months passed but what we would hear from Bill or he would come to see us.

When "Tom" passed away, "Don" called him. He was living in Hollywood [California]. He is still living there. He told his wife that "Tom" had passed 01:04:00away and Bill called me the next day and said, "I am coming up for "Tom's" funeral. Whether my job is good or not, I am coming." He called me again from Las Vegas to have somebody meet him at the bus in St. George. When he called me, I asked him if he would like to give a talk at "Tom's" funeral. He said, "I have been praying for that opportunity." He gave one of the main speeches [at] "Tom's" funeral. He didn't change it a bit. He told it completely as it was so that everybody could see the whole [story]. He said when the chamber maid agreed to call somebody, he thought: I hope it [won't] be a Mormon bishop coming in here [to] start giving me a lecture. He said when "Tom" stepped in [the room], the first thing he looked like was Will Rogers. He had that lock of hair always on his forehead like Will Rogers. He said, "I can see Will Rogers in everything 01:05:00he did. He walked up to my bed and did everything I asked him to do. He had such serenity and simplicity, no airs whatever. If you people believe in a miracle, you see one standing before you now. If it hadn't been for "Tom" Truman, I wouldn't be alive today." [Those] are remarks he made at ["Tom's"] funeral.

[Bill] was just one of "Tom's" pet babies. That is what [he] called them. I don't know how many men and women he did those things for. He [helped] one woman on the program and kept her straight. Every time she would feel like she wanted a drink, she would hunt up "Tom." He kept her straight for four years. She finally slipped again a while before "Tom" died and died an alcoholic after "Tom" died. This [area] all knows who it was. A couple of years before he died, 01:06:00[there] was a man he would bring home. I would have to fix the coffee for him.

FH:[Did] you work with him?

AT:Yes. He would bring them home, anybody [who] wanted to come. He brought one particular man home. He had been there [for] about three weeks. He was almost in dts when "Tom" brought him [home], but he sobered up and kept getting better and better. He went to three or four [AA] meetings and [even] talked in one or two of [the meetings]. You could see the change coming over this [fellow]. "Tom" was putting his whole soul into it. He stayed right with him and watched him. [He] did everything he could for him.

One night he came into our bedroom and woke "Tom" up. He said, "Tom", I wish you would get up. I am kind of afraid of something. I am afraid to be alone." It was about four o'clock in the morning. "Tom" got up and went in [his room]. He told 01:07:00["Tom" that] he didn't want to be alone anymore and he had a pain in his shoulder. "Tom" fixed him some coffee and put about a tablespoonful of liquor in it. That helped to bring him out of it a little bit. He sat there talking and finally said, "I wish you would go call "Olive", your wife." "Tom" said, "I will in a few minutes." Then he kind of slumped down in his chair and "Tom" came dashing in and woke me up. He said, "I wish you would get up. Cecil doesn't feel right." He was tossing his head back and forth. I felt his pulse and went straight to the telephone and asked the doctor what to do. He said, "Send him over right away and I will meet you at the hospital." I said, "We will have to call the ambulance." He said, "Do that, then. Let me know when they leave and 01:08:00I'll be up there."

I called the ambulance [and] Wilford Cannon [William Wilford Cannon from Cannon Mortuary] dashed right over. [When] he [arrived], he came in and sized the man up. He could see he was [very] bad and felt his pulse. He was still alive. He brought his stretcher back in. By the time he [was] on the stretcher, his pulse had gone [and] he was dead. They brought him to [Cannon] Mortuary instead of the hospital. The doctor called me a half hour or so afterwards and wanted to know where was [the] patient. I told him that he had died [and] I just hadn't gotten around to calling him. That was Dr. [Milton Konrad] "Kon" [McGregor]. That shook "Tom" badly. He could hardly get over it. He would refer to it every time he [was] feeling miserable. He would remember [the fellow who] died in the chair so quickly and so unexpected. I believe it kind of stayed with him. He felt like he 01:09:00wasn't going to last long [and] that he would go like that. He did almost [die] about that unexpected.

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AT:There was one man, I don't think it would hurt to tell his name, Jimmy Sammon, [who] had been quite a bad alcoholic in this [area] for years and years. He would straighten up and then he would slip and want to kill somebody. He had a mania for guns. One night the telephone rang. We kept the telephone right by our bedside all the time. Jimmy was in Las Vegas at one of [the] big hotels down there. He wanted "Tom" to come get him. [It] was about two o'clock in the morning. "Tom" said, "Okay, I will come down first thing in the morning." He went back to sleep and the telephone rang again and he was calling again from Las Vegas. He said, "Haven't you left yet? You get down here as soon as you can." So "Tom" got up about four [in the morning] and drove to Las Vegas.

When he [arrived] he went to this hotel. He sent the porter up to the room to get him and he was out. He had gone to sleep and they couldn't wake him up. So they took a wheelchair up there and brought him down the elevator and loaded him into the back seat of the car and "Tom" brought him home. But he had to pay a $160.00 hotel bill to get him. "Tom" wrote out a check for that and brought him home and put him in a motel here in St. George. He didn't seem to want to go to his own home. Finally he [was] straightened out and his wife [Beulah Garff] let him come home. He paid the money back just as soon as he [was] sobered up [enough that] he could.

He finally [received] word that his [Jimmy's] mother was dying back in [one] of the southern states. He wanted to go and see her but he was locked up in jail 01:11:00for carrying a gun on the streets. "Tom" went to see the [Washington County] Sheriff and talked him into letting Jimmy go back and see his mother before she died. He made the trip back there, came home and got as far as Las Vegas. He called his wife this time from his hotel and wanted to know if she would take him back. She was leaving him. She told him no, [not] until he stayed sober a certain length of time. The next morning they [received] a long distance call from this hotel saying that he was dead. He died. [It always] shook "Tom" anytime [he would] lose anybody he had worked [and] labored with. He had taken that [fellow] out on rides [and would] go anyplace until he could get over that urge for another drink. There were dozens of cases.

FH:A lot of people owe him a direct debt of gratitude for the help he gave [them].

AT:[There was] another one in Washington [City, Washington County, Utah]. His wife called "Tom" one morning and wanted him to come see what he could do for her husband. "Tom" went down and ran across this husband's brother on the street. He advised him not to go then, to wait until he [had] sobered up. He said he was too drunk [and] you couldn't get anything over to him. He never did sober up. He died before "Tom" [was able] to see him. That really shook "Tom". He never did get over that. He always felt like he should have gone to [see] that [fellow] even before his wife called.

FH:He spent about fifteen years in service to people [who] needed it.

AT:There never was a time when he didn't have somebody that he was working 01:13:00[with]. They were all over this [area].

FH:That is a wonderful record.

AT:There was a woman from Montana. How in the world did he [find] her?

FH:What else did he do besides this after he quit drinking?

AT:He helped me with the rest home business. Maybe I better tell a little bit [about] that too. When we first came back here from Eureka, I had $100.00. I rented a house and started the rest home business. The welfare [department] told me that they would be thankful [and] they would back us in it. The doctors all encouraged us. We rented the [Glen] Prisbrey home [at 310 South] Main Street and we ran [the rest home] there for two years. Then we had to get a license on the building and the operator had to have a license. We couldn't get the license on 01:14:00[that] building [and] we had to get a different one.

By this time "Tom" had sobered up and he was working [very] hard in the rest home business, backing me up. All the old folks loved him. They all loved him more than they did me. If "Tom" was on, they felt secure. He had a way of making them love him while I had to do the disciplining! [Laughter] If there was any disciplining that had to be done, "Tom" would come up missing. [Laughter] But I could do it [and] I didn't mind. Finally we bought the [Charles F.] Foster home and built what is now called the Cooper Rest Haven.

We had a lot of struggling to do. All we had was what little bit we had saved on this other job. [To start], we rented the house [for] $100.00 a month. We built 01:15:00up the downstairs floor and we rented the downstairs floor. Then we rented the upstairs floor with the understanding that [the] rent we were paying would go [towards] the purchase price in case we wanted to buy it. We lived there for about two years that way and finally they sold it to us and gave us credit for [the] rent we had paid as a down payment. Otherwise we couldn't have made it. From then on we were paying $100.00 a month.

We finally started building [on to the] house. One part of the addition we built [was] five rooms and one bathroom. "Tom" was kind of half fighting that. He just hated a debt. He was scared to death of debts. But we finally finished that. 01:16:00Then I saw that I could take another eight patients and hire somebody else to take care of them for me under my license. We had to build some more [rooms]. "Tom" and I didn't see how we could do it and yet I felt like we must do it. One night I lay there most of the night thinking. I think I have done my most constructive thinking all my life in the night when some people would say I was worrying. I wasn't. I was [thinking thoughts] that were worthwhile, making up my mind [what] needed to be done.

FH:This was your time of meditation.

AT:The next morning I thought I need to get out alone somewhere, get away from everybody and think, [have] kind of a communion with myself and the higher power. So I went out into an old granary that was on the back lot of our rest home property. I was sitting there half praying and half crying and wondering 01:17:00what in the world to do. A little breeze came up and turned the pages of a magazine that was on the floor by me. I glanced down there and there was a poem, about a six or eight line poem. The name of [the poem] was something like No Man Knows What He Can Do or Anybody Can Accomplish If They Want To, something like that. It answered my prayer right there. It told me to go ahead. I didn't know what I could accomplish. I [had] already bought [the] place and made one little addition. Now I wanted to make a big one.

I went back in and said, "Tom", we are going to build another addition on that place." "Go ahead. I can't stop you," he said. I started ordering people around. I [found] a carpenter to come down. I had "Tom" and some of the old folks dig 01:18:00the foundation. My nephew helped me out with the plumbing and the heating system. We finally built that [addition]. We filled it [with residents] and had to build some more [rooms]. We made an application [for a] homeowner's loan and they sent a couple of men down from Salt Lake [City] to look it over. They said, "Yes, it is feasible. We ought to have [your loan] underway by Christmas." This was along about in May. I was so elated about it.

[END OF TAPE TWO -- SIDE ONE]

AT:We hired [an] architect from Cedar [City] to come down and get my plans. I had about what I wanted all ready [drawn] on paper. They made a real blueprint and it cost $2,000.00 to pay for [the] architect's blueprint. We parleyed back and forth, just foolishness it seemed to me like, for three years with that 01:19:00homeowner's loan. They sent as [many] as seven men down there in one month to look it over and okay it. [We had to do a lot of] bookkeeping to do to try to [inaudible]. Finally [the word] came [that] this bank [approved] the loan, but we would have to get the money from the bank in Salt Lake [City]. What is the name of that bank across the street from the Newhouse Hotel [in Salt Lake City]?

FH:It was [the] First Security [Bank].

AT:That is it [and] we were supposed to go there. I went to Salt Lake [City] to get this loan and when I [arrived] there they said, "How much do you have on deposit? How much money do you have in the bank?" I said, "[We have] $2,000.00 [in the bank]." [The banker] said, "You will have to have $20,000.00 at least to get another $80,000.00 [loan]." We wanted to build about a $100,000.00 addition. 01:20:00That [almost] knocked me over. I argued with him and I told him how much the property [was] valued. I thought that would be enough to back it, but he stuttered about it and put me off. He didn't exactly turn me down but they called this bank, back and forth, and the FHA [Federal Housing Administration]. Finally, I called "Tom" that night and he came up. He went over to the bank with me the next morning. [The banker] made it plain that it was particularly against the bank's policy to loan that much money without so much already in the bank. "Tom" kind of flew off the handle and said, "Forget about it. Just forget about the whole thing." As we went out I said, "We'll go home and build that rest home without your darn money." We had about $2,000.00 in the bank.

We came home and hired a tractor to start leveling [the] ground and paid him 01:21:00off. We went to [Lloyd Leon] Jennings. He said, "I will back you with anything you want. You can have any amount that you want to build that house with." We had already gotten the lumber for the other one before that for two other additions. If it hadn't been for the business people in this community [who] had gained enough confidence in us, we never could have done it. But they backed us up to the fullest. We went to the building and loan [office] here in St. George.

FH:The St. George Building and Loan.

AT:They agreed to let us have the money as we needed it to build. That is what we did. We finally [built] the building [and], by that time, we had already sold half interest in it to Evan Cooper. When we finished [the building], we sold him the other half. That is what I have to live on from now on.

FH:Tell us about these children you have raised.

AT:"Tom's" youngest sister had [very] poor health and had babies quite often. Her oldest child's name was Emma. Her husband was a hard working [fellow] but he was quite small in stature and he had been quite a dreamer. He wanted perfection. He wanted [inaudible]. He wanted to have something wonderful for his children and worked every way that he could. But, in those days, it was hard to find a job to support a family like they were having and [we didn't] have any children. We never had any hopes of a child. I think that that might have been 01:23:00one of the things that made "Tom" drink. When he found out that we weren't having any children and he knew that it was his fault, it gave him such a complex. He knew that I wanted children although I tried not to let him know how badly I wanted them. But I think that is one of the reasons he drank.

Another thing that made him realize that was because I have always wanted some other children around me. I would get the [children] anytime. I would take his sister Lucy's children any time I could get one. She had ten children and lost two of them as babies. I came so near raising those children that nearly all of them would write Mother's Day cards to me, called me their second mother and make comments like that. When his sister, Amy, passed away and we [were] placed 01:24:00[as] guardians over them, we had them all the time. We usually had some of Lucy's [children]. My sister [Ada (Alger) Holt] died with the flu. She left four little children. I took [the] baby and kept her until she was old enough to go to school. Her father [James Amos Holt] married again so then he kept her. I came from Fallon to Enterprise two or three different times and took her back with me and kept her for the summer with the other [children]. So we had some of them in our home all the time. If I can't have some [children] around I am not a bit happy even yet! The [children] get on my nerves sometimes. I am getting so old and cranky but I still love them! [Laughter]

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AT:After "Tom" passed away, I was advised to make out a will. I didn't have much property but I didn't have any direct heirs either [to] leave it to who I wanted 01:25:00to have it. I decided I would leave it to my nieces and nephews and "Tom's" nieces and nephews. I made a list of their names and I discovered I had sixty-two heirs, one just as much entitled to our property as another of the sixty-two of them. Now I had had enough interest in raising those [children] so I felt as obligated to give it all to one as any of them. I decided I simply couldn't give it away that way. So I made provisions in my will that, if there is any of it left, it is to be divided as equally as it can between each one of the direct families. One of each family would receive a portion or a certain amount. So that is the way my will rests today. I might change it some day but I don't think I will because there won't be enough there.

FH:That is really wonderful. Would you like to leave some counsel and advice to 01:26:00these children?

AT:There is one thing that I do wish the young people of today would have more confidence in themselves. Anything that I have ever accomplished in this life is because I thought I could do it. Don't feel inferior over anything. If they want to bad enough, there will be a way opened for them to do it.

In all our lives, especially since we came to Dixie, it seems like the world has been in our favor since "Tom" quit drinking. One thing after another came up to give us opportunities and we had sense enough to accept them. Now that is where so many people lose out. They will have the opportunity and don't accept it. There are such wonderful opportunities today ─ especially in the rest home business. We started out with not a bit of money. We had to borrow the first 01:27:00month's rent. When it [came] to where we had to have a license for that building and couldn't get it, the whole thing fell down. I couldn't imagine what we were going to do. I had the blues so bad. I had that house full of patients but what was I going to do. I started the business and was doing [fairly well] at it. I was looking at the newspaper, hunting another place to [buy] that would pass the examination for a license. I came to [an] advertisement that said, "Apartments free for caretaker." I had "Tom" look [it] up and it turned out to be the [Charles F.] Foster home, one of the big old mansions of Southern Utah. We rented it for so long and finally ended up buying it. We had as high as thirty patients in that big home at one time and had applicants going to somebody else all the time. The doctors, the welfare [department] and everybody sent them 01:28:00here. We built up quite a reputation at that time. We didn't know what to do. Then is when I started building. We just kept building. We would build a little bit at a time. We didn't know how we would pay for it but we always paid for it before the [loan was due]. For the first addition, we borrowed money for three years and had it paid in two [years]. .

FH:In other words, it was just a matter of being determined and going ahead.

AT:[Be] determined and look around. Keep your eyes open. Don't sit and sleep on it. Lie awake nights once in a while. It won't hurt you a bit. Think, plan, be determined and do something worthwhile. We didn't know we were making a fortune. In that rest home business we were so busy trying to keep those old people all happy, keep the right kind of a staff [and] keep our store bills paid. When we 01:29:00went to get our financial statement, the [fellow] said, "You folks are well off. You are worth $75,000.00 or $100,000.00." We hadn't even figured [it] out. We didn't know what we had. We were too busy doing the things of today.

FH:You lost yourself in your work.

AT:We were busy and [very] interested. I buried myself in that rest home. I didn't try to go to church. I didn't try to go to anything. I stayed right on the job with those old people [and] "Tom" mostly did too.

FH:This is a wonderful story. I think you are certainly to be commended for your accomplishments.

AT:Many of the old people loved him so much. There were two or three of them. One [was] named Annie Roundtree. She was up in her nineties and she almost worshipped "Tom". I will have to tell a little bit about her. One day she was 01:30:00getting [very] hard to handle. Some of the nurses wouldn't handle her at all because she would get spunky -- slap them, bite them and spit in their face. When "Tom" would come in [her room] she was the sweetest little old lady you ever saw. If I came in [her room] she would usually say, "You are sure dressed up like Esther's horse today." She just thought I was okay. Every once in a while "Tom" would go to the pool hall in the afternoons. One day when he came home Annie said, "Where have you been, "Tom"?" He said, "I have been doing my business alright." She said, "Why, of course, you have been down at the office." From then on, the pool hall was "Tom's" office! [Laughter] She looked up to him all the time just like she would one of the apostles.

She had taught one class in Sunday school in Salt Lake [City], the Thirteenth Ward or the Thirtieth Ward, for forty years, The Book of Mormon class. She had 01:31:00taught Richard L. Evans, his brother and a doctor. She told [this to] so many people [when] they came to see her there in [the] rest home. She was quite a notorious old girl herself.

I was in Salt Lake [City] on business and she [became] quite bad. [The staff] thought she was going to die for sure. She was in a coma most of the day. Finally she heard somebody say, ""Tom"." She said, "Oh, is "Tom" here?" Then he heard her and went in [her room]. She said, ""Tom", kiss me please." So he kissed her and she died right [then]. She had been hanging on all day to get him to kiss her. There were two or three of them that did that. She wanted him to kiss her just once before she died. That is the way they loved him.

FH:Do you have something else you would like to say?

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AT:Something I want to add and that is my regrets. Everybody has regrets. I can see now how impossible I was to live with and keep my husband happy. My regret is that I couldn't make him happier than he could be. I think it was because I was too much of a perfectionist. Mother had expected me to be happy and she made me believe that if I was perfect or anywhere near it, the world would treat me just right. I expected my husband to be more perfect than it was possible for a human being to be. He felt like it was impossible to satisfy me because I would say right in public, "He doesn't ever do anything right. He never finishes things." For a wife to make remarks like that is not the thing to do. I can 01:33:00think of so many things now, that it is too late to regret. I would like to impress that on the husbands and wives while they are still alive. No matter what they think of [their spouse], be careful what you say because I really think that I helped to give "Tom" that terrible complex that drove him down to where he just finally felt like he couldn't come up to my standards so what was the use of trying. So that is my regret. I guess that is enough.

[END OF TAPE TWO -- SIDE TWO]