Interview with David Conrad "DC" Kleinman

Content Warning: Contains words/images that are inherently offensive, insensitive and harmful.

David Conrad “DC” Kleinman was interviewed on April 26, 1969 in St. George, Washington County, Utah by Fielding H. Harris, a representative of Voices of Remembrance Foundation. He related his personal history of living in various parts of Utah, Arizona, Saudi Arabia and North Africa.

FH:What is your full name?

DK:[My name is] David Conrad Kleinman FH:When were you born?

DK:[I was born] February 17, 1898.

FH:Where were you born?

DK:[I was born in] Central [Sevier County] Utah.

FH:Where is [that] located? What is it near?

DK:It is north of Panguitch [Garfield County, Utah] and east of U. S. Highway 89. I don’t know what county it is in.

FH:[What was] your father’s name?

DK:[My father’s name was] David Franklin Kleinman.

FH:What was your mother’s [full] name?

DK:[Her name was] Eva Almira 00:01:00(Rappleye) [Kleinman] FH:What can you remember from your early childhood? Can you think of some [events] that happened to you or that you know about?

DK:One fall when I was five years old, father rented his place and moved up to Tropic [Garfield County, Utah]. I remember that trip very well. We crossed the Colorado River [at] Lee’s Ferry and when on up to Tropic. He was going into the sheep business with his brother-in-law, Ed Rappleye, but it didn’t work out. It was right in the middle of winter and the snow [was] piling up in Tropic and everybody was getting smallpox. Father [was] kind of afraid of it, and [so] he [put] us all in the wagon and headed for home. When we crossed over the mountain over towards Paragonah [Iron County, Utah] the snow was axle deep to the wagon. It took us three weeks to get down to Mesa, Arizona. [By the] time we [were] down there, 00:02:00the [inaudible] weed was three feet high.

FH:That was really a rugged trip.

DK:Down in this area we crossed the Virgin River several times. Every time father would stop his team, before he crossed the crossed [inaudible]. He [would] lead a horse behind him all the time. The horse was named “Old Quito.” He would ride across that river and [search] out on the other side where he could get [across]. Then he would water his horses before he started, so they wouldn’t want to stop and drink. He would never stop in the river because the quicksand was so bad that he never would get started [again]. So he would do [this] and then he would come back. He would tie his horse behind his wagon and drive across. He did that all the way down. We crossed the river down about where the Virgin [River] entered the Colorado [River]. [We] went down through Kingman, Arizona and then on right down into Phoenix [Arizona] and then in to Mesa.

FH:Was that was a long hard trip?

DK:Yes.

FH:And you clearly remember all of this??

DK:Yes FH:Where did your early [education] start? 00:03:00DK:[It started] at Alma School in Mesa [when] I started [the] first grade. The first day [of] school I was the only [student] there. Nobody knew me and I didn’t know them. I would just stand around and swing on the post that held the roof up. I was a stranger. But it didn’t take long to get acquainted. I graduated from the eighth grade there and went to Mesa to Mesa Union High [School].

FH:Tell a little bit about that first school. Did you have all the classes in one room?

DK:No.

FH:[Did] you have separate classes for each grade?

DK:Right. They built the school 00:04:00so that they had a room for each [grade].

FH:You were fortunate to have this kind of school.

DK:Yes, in those days.

FH:You went through the eighth grade and then where did you go?

DK:I went to high school [at] Mesa Union High School. It was two miles and a quarter from my home.

FH:Did you feel that your [education] was good? Did you feel that it was quality?

DK:Yes, you bet. They were very good schools. We had some wonderful teachers.

FH:Did you enjoy school?

DK:Yes.

FH:Tell about some of your school activities. Were you active?

DK:I thought I [would] like to play baseball. I tried out for baseball, but it seemed like my fingers always got in the way and the baseball would hit me on the end of the fingers somewhere. I would have a bum finger for a week. So I quit that. When they started basketball, I played [and] was a success in basketball. Football hadn’t come in to our country [area] then. The last year I was in high school they brought in football. We [did] not have football before that, so I never was on 00:05:00the football [team].

FH:Did you have success in your basketball career?

DK:Yes. We had some very fine teams, [and some very fine] boys on our team. They had to have a standard grade before they could play on the team. I think most schools are that way. It used to be. The last year we played, when I was a senior, I was the captain of the team. I [played] the guard [position] and we won every game. We were the champions [my] last year.

FH:Was this state competition?

DK:Yes.

FH:[You were] state champions. Very good.

DK:They didn’t [have] districts like they do now. We just had the state [competition].

FH:What about other activities 00:06:00in school? Was there singing or glee club or plays or anything like that?

DK:Yes. I used to be in the plays and I used to be in the singing clubs.

FH:[Did] you enter in to all of the activities?

DK:Yes; besides, I had to milk a bunch of cows before I went [to school] and after I came home from school FH:How many cows did you have?

DK:We only had five or six at a time.

FH:You [did] your share?

DK:Yes.

FH:In other words, was your boyhood life pretty normal as far as farm life goes?

DK:Yes. The last year I went to high school I had a horse and saddle and I could ride the horse and didn’t have to walk.

FH:How far was it from home to school?

DK: [It was] two and a quarter miles. 00:07:00FH:That was good then.

DK:Yes.

FH:All these years were you pretty active in [The] Church [of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

DK:Yes. When I was ordained a deacon I thought that it was one of the finest things that [had] ever happened to me.

FH:[Did] you go right on up through the priesthood quorums?

DK:Yes. I was ordained a teacher when I was of age, priest and administered the sacrament. When we were getting married in the temple, they ordained me an elder.

FH:Did you go to Primary [and] Sunday school?

DK:Yes. In those days, after school they had what they called a religion class. That was before institute or seminary programs.

FH:Was that on a daily basis?

DK:Yes.

FH:Was that practically the [same as] seminary?

DK:No, it wasn’t [on] a daily basis; it was one day a week.

FH:Was this actually the forerunner of the seminary [program]?

DK:Yes.

FH:Were you active in MIA [Mutual Improvement Association] work?

DK:Yes.

FH:[There were] a lot of activities.

DK:The fact of the matter is: I am a life member. 00:08:00In 1919, I think, they came out [with] life membership and I bought [one]. I am a life member in the MIA. You can take part in their plays.

FH:There aren’t many life members of the MIA.

DK:They don’t do that anymore.

FH:No. Did you live near the temple when you were a youngster?

DK:When I was a youngster, we [did not] have [a] temple. That was the reason [we] had to go to Salt Lake City [Salt Lake County, Utah]. You see, the [Mesa] Temple wasn’t dedicated [until] 1927.

FH:So you were not near the temple?

DK:No. When they dedicated the temple, our ward sang in the choir and at one of the dedication services in the temple. 00:09:00FH:Tell some of the things that you remember about your father in those years. Talk about him.

DK:Father and his three brothers owned a cattle ranch twenty-five miles east of Mesa. Father was gone a great deal of time because one of [his] brothers [Andrew Phillip Kleinman] was blind and the other brother [Daniel Heber Kleinman] had a bad arm. The [third] brother [Orson Conrad Kleinman] was kind of [a] real estate man. Father had to take charge of the ranch and he was gone a lot taking care of the cattle.

FH:[Did the] responsibility fall to him?

DK:Right. Any calf or cow he saw, he could tell its mother and where it was born, any place on the desert. He would see one of these cattle [and] he could tell its mother. He knew the cattle.

FH:That is quite a necessary thing.

DK:Yes. A lot of times he worked Mexican people. He could speak Spanish and Mexican as fluently [as a native]. You put 00:10:00my father and a Mexican in a room and shut the door and [listen to] them talking. You couldn’t tell which one was the Mexican; he could speak it so well.

FH:That would be a real satisfaction to be able to do this where he was working with them all the time.

DK:He has passed on, [but] I think he is in the spirit world teaching the gospel to the Mexican people.

FH:I wouldn’t be surprised. If he has a fluent language like that, wouldn’t it be normal and natural?

DK:His word was as good as his bond. Whenever he said he would do anything, [even if] it would cost him money, he would do it.

FH:Wouldn’t that [be] a characteristic that would be well for a lot of people to emulate today?

DK:Yes.

FH:Did you know his parents?

DK:Yes.

FH:Can you tell us their names?

DK:My grandfather Kleinman was Conrad Kleinman. He came to this country when he was eighteen years old. [He] moved to Nauvoo [Illinois] in 1841 and came out [west] with the first company. He was one of Brigham Young’s scouts [who arrived] landed in Salt Lake City. His name is on the 00:11:00Brigham Young Monument in Salt Lake City. My grandfather’s name on my mother’s side [is on that monument], too. They both came out the first trip.

FH:[What is] the name of your grandmother on your father’s side?

DK:Her name was Anna Benz [Kleinman].

FH:[Do] you know the names of your mother’s parents? Do you know their names?

DK:My grandfather was Ezra Tunis [Cutler] Rappleye was my grandfather’s [name] and his wife was — [TAPE RECORDER TURNED OFF] DK:— Jane [Lucinda] Black [Rappleye]. There [were] two Blacks [who] came over from the old country years ago. One of them was called Black-Black and one was Red-Black. They never did tie each other together. We are descendants of the Black-Black family [through] 00:12:00my grandmother.

FH:[Laughter] What do you remember about your mother?

DK:My mother was one of the kindest women. As far as I can remember, mother was as wonderful a housewife as anybody, like my wife. My wife takes care of me like I was a king. My mother took care of father the same way. They recognize — FH:Do you appreciate this after you visit other places?

DK:Yes. She stayed home and took care of everything because father was gone so much. 00:13:00FH:Did the women whose husbands had to be gone a lot have to practically carry the whole load?

DK:Yes. That is the way my wife is [because] I have been gone so much. [TAPE RECORDER TURNED OFF] FH:How many children did your parents have?

DK:They had ten [children].

FH:Can you name them for us?

DK:[There were] three girls and seven boys. Blanche was the first girl, then Anna [Jane], then I was born, “DC” [David Conrad], Ezra [Tunis], Earl [Franklin], Vivien [Jack Rappleye], Elizabeth, Heber [John] and Lloyd [Eugene Kleinman].

Heber [John] and Lloyd [Eugene] were killed in World War II. Lloyd was over in that Battle of the Bulge that went in to France from England. Heber was killed by a thief down here in the [United States] Navy base in California. He and another man were security officers. 00:14:00They were getting a little refreshment and when they came out, there was a fellow tampering [trying] to steal their car. He got in and went around, and the fellow went the other way, and he came out and got in the car and the partner got in. That fellow went around and was tampering with his partner. My brother got out and walked around there to straighten him out and he just hauled off and shot him right there. He lost his life there. The rest of us are all still alive.

FH:Have your brothers and sisters been active in the church?

DK:Yes, most 00:15:00of them have.

FH:Have they carried on the tradition of your father and your mother?

DK:That is right.

FH:Are there some faith-promoting experiences in your life that you [can] recall and tell about?

DK:I can’t remember any particular [event] when I was growing up, only that the people were healed when we anointed them with oil in our ward and our home. When I was growing up, I knew people [who] were healed from their illnesses.

When I got out on the job and began to work — I was driving to Roosevelt [Arizona] one day with a flat rack. I had a fifty-gallon barrel of oil and a box of dynamite caps. I had the dynamite caps in a box and laid them right on a seat to the side of me, so they wouldn’t get jarred [and] blow up. I was coming off of the hill and when I got down [to a] pretty nice road there was quite a little sway where a wash [had] been through..

I must have been going 00:16:00too fast, because when I hit that it buckled the front spring on this Dodge truck and it took off down that wash. A little ways down the wash, there was a bush that had about twenty-five or thirty sticks coming right out of the ground, about an inch [or an] inch and a quarter in diameter, or about an inch and a half, and about ten feet high. I ran right over that bush. It knocked the whole front end of my truck right under my seat and it came loose. The tire jack and the tire tools and everything that was under that seat came out on the floor. When I got stopped, I looked down and the dynamite caps were gone. I got out and looked around and that box of dynamite caps were on top of the tree that I had just run over. [Inaudible] FH:Somehow it got there, didn’t it?

DK:[It] must have been the power of the Lord, because there was no other way. It saved my life. That could have blown me to kingdom come. 00:17:00That was a real faith-promoting experience.

When I was in Hawaii on a [LDS] building mission, we had several chapels and I had to supervise them. Sometimes, the supervisor who was building the chapel kind of felt hard towards me because I didn’t come to his chapel to work. But I had to make the choice to go where it seemed to me was most important. Sometimes I would be the one [to] be at one chapel and the other supervisors of the other chapels would think that I would be there. There had been some talk about it.

When I [was to be] released, Brother Wilson told me that he had three jobs that he wanted 00:18:00me to do and then I could go. He wanted me to go over to Maui and put in the sound system on the ceiling that had been lowered in a recreation hall. They had to take it out and then I had put it back in. Then he wanted me to go on the other side of Maui where they had built a new chapel and put the sound system in there. Then they wanted me to go up north, all the way up to that other island, I can’t tell you the name of it, [and] put the sound system in there and then I could go home. I didn’t know whether the Lord accepted what I had been doing or not, so I prayed that He would give me some kind of a manifestation that I had been doing the right thing, even when these fellows had been talking. 00:19:00While I was putting the sound system in this last chapel — I always hung the horn right in to the chapel. I would hook the microphone up and then hook the amplifier up. Then I would try to test which lines I had and get it to play. I had a little transistor radio sitting right by the mike and it would [be] playing, then I could follow all the way through. I couldn’t get the horns to even make a squeak. I had it hung in the recreation hall. I brought it back and hung in the chapel with all the wires sticking out and I couldn’t get a noise out of it. I thought maybe the wires were cut where it went underneath the platform and up the wall. So I set it right on the rostrum. I could reach up and touch it and I couldn’t get that thing to make a noise. I just bowed my head and said, “Father, what is the matter with this thing?” [Emotional] It started playing instantly. I never even hooked it up and it never had a bit of trouble. So I think the Lord was giving me [an answer]. [Emotional] FH:He was letting you know 00:20:00that it was an acceptable work.

DK:Yes [emotional].

FH:What a wonderful blessing.

DK:I [came] back to Salt Lake City [and] [went] to the electrical engineers and we decided to come to St. George [Washington County, Utah]. I asked him if there was anything in the chapel that [had] to be wired down here. He said that they had two on the job but they were all but wired. Then he thought a minute and said, “We have some wiring to do on the St. George Temple. We have been hanging on for two years; we can’t get anybody to do it. Will you go down there to the building missionaries and wire that temple?” I told him I would. I came down, and [was] rewiring that temple. In one of those sealing rooms, the wall was eighteen feet high. I had to go up and take the floor out. I [had [to] take the carpet up in the upper floor and take the whole floor [out] and put all the conduit in and then put it back.

This particular place [where] I took the floor up, 00:21:00I [had] drilled a hole down about an inch and a half long and about three-quarters of an inch wide. I came down to a switch. I went down and put the switch box in and took this piece of conduit, I had to splice it because they were only ten feet long. I put that down in there and it slipped out of my hands, dropped and went clear to the floor. I went down and took the box out and reached in. I could reach in [as] the[rafters] were close there. I could reach in to pull that pipe over and let a cord down there. I tied it on there, then I had my helpers pull the cord. Here I was down here with my hand in that little hole so I could steer that pipe, twelve feet long, and I couldn’t get it in that hole until I said a prayer. Then that pipe went right through that hole and never touched a bit of wood. 00:22:00FH:The Lord really works with people when they will ask. This is a [good] thing, isn’t it?

DK:Yes, it sure is. Any experiences I have had and the blessings I received from our Lord and Master, there is no question in my mind but what this is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. A lot of people in the world will confess that Jesus is the Christ, but the thing we have to have in our heart is to know the church that we belong to is the church of Jesus Christ. That is the testimony we must have. In order to get that, we must be faithful to the commandments of God. I am sure that the Lord has blessed me with that testimony because I know with all my heart that this is the church of Jesus Christ. 00:23:00FH:Is this attitude something that came to you from your parents and your grandparents?

DK:Yes.

FH:[That is] wonderful. In those years when you were growing up, your youth and young manhood, you had a lot of fun. Tell about some of the things you did just for fun.

DK:Father wasn’t much of a fisherman; he wasn’t home enough to go fishing, so I didn’t get to be much of a fisherman. But we used to go and spend our summers out on the cattle ranch. My uncle had drilled a well out there. Maybe a lot of people believe in water witches and I guess they are alright. We had a water witch go out on the desert. [He] went all around and said [that] right here [we could] 00:24:00get water. He said to my uncle, “You could get water [at] eighty feet.” He got water [at] eighty feet; he only missed it by 200 feet. He had to [do a] pick and shovel job [for] 280 feet [to] the water. We had to pump an old Stover gas engine. I had to go out there in the summers. When father would be out working I had to be there and keep the pump running, because you had to be there all the time with that little engine. We had it pulling all the horsepower it would pull in that deep a well. [There] had to be [somebody] there [to] keep it running. That was my job.

A lot of time my friends would come out there and we would go bird hunting. A lot of times the old road runner would come in there to get a drink. He would be full of water and I would follow him out there and tree him. Or the quail would come in there and get a drink. They just lined the corral fence to get water 00:25:00and we would follow them. You can follow quail when they get full of water on a hot day. You can tree them a little while and catch them.

Sometimes the neighbor [inaudible] bulls and cattle would come in there. I would have fun with them. Sometimes there would be a cow [that] came from way up in the cactus country there. She would have chollas all over her face and on her side where they eat the pears. Way out there. about a quarter of a mile, it would take about an hour to get in to get water. She would take a couple of steps and then she would stop and look and listen; then she would take a couple of more [steps]. Just wild as a deer. When she would get in there and while she was drinking water, I would slip around the corral and lay down right by the gate where she would come out. Just as she got in the gate I would throw some dirt out and she jumped all four feet straight in the air about four or five feet and snort. [Laughter]. I used to lay there 00:26:00and just laugh. I used to have fun that way. The neighbors had an old muley bull and he came in there one day. I threw some dirt at him and he didn’t do anything but come right around the fence after me. I had to climb the fence. [Laughter] FH:[Laughter] He wasn’t going to be buffaloed was he?

DK:No. We had a lot of fun out there. We would go rabbit hunting and eat the rabbits. Around town, when we were still home, our fun was cutting cockleburrs. When we didn’t have to go to school we had work to do on the farm. A lot of times we would go swimming, but we didn’t have very many picnics. We didn’t have the time to do things like that.

FH:Was life pretty earnest?

DK:Yes.

FH:What about music in your life? Have you enjoyed music?

DK:Yes. We used to sing in the stake choir and ward choir. 00:27:00The fact of the matter is we had a choir [and] when the Mesa Temple was dedicated we sang in one of the sessions. I never learned to play an instrument. My father bought a piano when I was a young man for my sisters to take music lessons. They took music lessons, but I learned more by ear than they did by the music, I think, because they never did carry on with the music. I can play a few pieces by ear. I can’t play by music, but I can read music enough to sing.

FH:What about reading? Have you enjoyed reading?

DK:Yes, I enjoy good books. I think that is the finest way to learn to build a testimony is to read the books of other people, the experiences and the testimonies that they bear in these books, especially [of] our general authorities. I think it is [a] marvelous thing.

FH:That is a terrific way to get educated, isn’t it?

DK:Yes. We take the National Geographic because it 00:28:00describes places where we have been and places we haven’t been. We learn more about them and it is a great book to learn about other places. I see in the National Geographic, this last one, they spent forty million dollars to move statues away from the lake where the [inaudible] dam is backing up on it. [They] moved them up on higher ground. Like one of the boys [said], if people are spending as much money trying to save their souls as they were trying to save their heathen gods, they would get in to heaven better, wouldn’t they? Forty million dollars!

FH:That is a lot for that. [Were] you called to military service during World War I?

DK:When we went [for] our examination, they put me in class 4-B. I was married 00:29:00and had one baby. When they came out with the declaration that, if we would join up, we would be in active service in thirty days, I volunteered to go. I was set to go on a Wednesday and peace was signed on a Sunday, I think. So I didn’t get to go.

FH:[You] just missed it.

DK:Yes, I just missed it. [Inaudible] Both of our sons served in military service.

FH:Did you also attempt to get into military service during World War II?

DK:Yes. During World War II, I volunteered to be a chaplain. I figured the experience I had filling [LDS] missions, had studied and knew the gospel pretty well. I figured I could help out, but according to [the] regulations you had to have a BA [Bachelor of Arts] degree in order to be a chaplain. 00:30:00So I wasn’t accepted.

FH:Tell about your courtship and your marriage.

DK:My wife [Ellen Jane (Ashcroft) Kleinman] came to Mesa with her grandmother. Her grandmother had arthritis [very] bad and was told to come [to] Arizona. She lived with her uncle. On my way to school I passed right by their house. I would see her and got attracted to her, because I thought she was a fine girl. We started going together in high school. We went together for three years and three months. [That is how long] we courted before we were married. We 00:31:00decided to get married on July 28, 1918. This last July we celebrated our fiftieth anniversary. She is a wonderful woman. For me, there is no better woman in the world than my wife. She is conscientious, she is a good worker, takes care of the house and she takes care of me.

FH:Where were you married?

DK:We were married in my father’s home in Mesa, Arizona [at] six o’clock one evening. The next morning at two o’clock we and the company of two other automobiles started for Salt Lake City to be sealed. We were going up without being married, but our bishop recommended that we should get married. So being together we would save talk, because a lot of people talk. 00:32:00So we were advised to get married there and we did.

FH:Was this customary in that day?

DK:Yes. [END OF RECORDING ONE.] DK:I was by a well. The next morning when 00:33:00we went over the hill my car got hot. It was quite a steep hill, but that was the only trouble we had. When we were crossing the dry lake before we came into Las Vegas [Nevada] the day before, one of our partners had an old Columbia, and the other was driving a big Overland. This Columbia would stop at about noon and we sat in the car. We had a couple, a Johnson boy and his sister, which we were going to bring up to Milford [Beaver County, Utah] with us. We sat there for an hour and those people didn’t come. We were in the lead, so we turned around and went back. They had a noise in the motor [of their car] and they had a mechanic with them. He had taken the pan off and was checking that motor from one end to the other to see what was making that noise.

I said, “Start it up and let me hear it.” So they started it up and that experience out on the cow [cattle] ranch [with] that old 00:34:00Stover gas engine we [had to] drop a little oil out on the pistons once and awhile, [or] it would make that same noise. Just as soon as I had heard it I said, “Take out the spark plugs and put a little oil in there.” They took them out and put a little oil in there, put the plugs back in and all the noise stopped. That was an experience I had. [Laughter] FH:[Laughter] Experience is a [very] good teacher sometimes.

DK:Yes. So we came on to Las Vegas and we took these two couples to Milford and then we camped all night at Paragonah [Iron County, Utah] on the desert. That was the first time we had been alone. We had these other two cars.

The next day we went over the mountain to Panguitch [Garfield County, Utah]. I had a sister [Blanche (Kleinman) Adams] in Panguitch [who] was married. They were going up with us to be sealed in the temple at the same time. We picked them up, went up to Salt Lake [City] and [were] sealed in the Salt Lake Temple. We came back through New Mexico 00:35:00on our way back. My wife’s folks lived in New Mexico, so we came back through there.

FH:You had a good long trip.

DK:Tires those days were guaranteed for 500 miles. On the old desert just before we got in to Moab [Grand County, Utah], we pulled a valve stem out of one of the tubes. We stopped, had to jack the car up [and] take the wheel off. My wife and my sister went over [under] a little sagebrush bush to get out of the [heat]. It was hot. We had to put a valve back in another place in that tube, seal it in and pump that tire up before we could go on.

FH:[Laughter] Did you have any misgivings? [That] maybe you wouldn’t be going again?

DK:[Laughter] No, we had more faith than that.

FH:Where did you settle to make your home?

DK:After we were married we went out to Goodyear [Arizona]. I got a job [there]. When I was in Mesa, still living with the folks, I got a job at a cotton gin. I was the bale man. 00:36:00I would get the cotton and bale it. The supervisor, the electrical man from Goodyear, came in there one day and was talking to the electrician, trying to explain something to him. The electrician didn’t seem to understand. So I started telling him. The electrician said, “What do you know about it?” I said, “I just saw what you said.” He invited me to go out there and work. I went out there and got a job. We moved to Goodyear and I was the lineman helper. In those days they called them grunts.

FH:Yes, well, they still do.

DK:Sometimes they call them squeaks. I was a lineman helper out there. While I was a lineman helper I wired two or three of the houses they were building. This was when they called me on a [LDS] mission. I didn’t get to go on a mission before I was married because of the war. Father asked me, and my wife and I discussed it [as] we had one baby. 00:37:00So I went on a mission [for] two years.

FH:Where did you go?

DK:I went to Tennessee.

FH:Who was your mission president?

DK:Charles A. Callas was the president. I was gone two years and my wife worked down at the Indian School in Phoenix. Then she went back [to stay] with her folks [in New Mexico]. Actually, [after] about a year, [The Great] Depression hit 00:38:00my folks so hard it cost more for father to pick his crops then he could sell [them] for. His crops and his cattle they couldn’t sell and they couldn’t send me any more money. We had a conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee and President Callas said, “Brother Kleinman, I guess you are going to have to go home, unless I send you down to a Mexican mission. You can just put a rug around you.” I said, “Okay.” But he didn’t. He sent me out in Tennessee again. [I] paid for my train fare, got on the job [and] had $0.25 left. From then on, all summer the only money I could get was to sell books [The Book of Mormon]. I would order them from the office and then sell them and use the money for what we needed for transportation. In the fall, my wife got a job over in New Mexico at the Indian School. In the fall she sent me $30.00. My shoes had worn out, both of my toes were sticking out on [one] shoe and the toe on [the other] was sticking out. 00:39:00My shoes were gone and my pants were worn out and I had patched them three times. [When I received] that $30.00 I bought me a pair of shoes and a pair of pants. [Emotional] They [lasted] until the mission [was over].

FH:You had a wife [who]t was willing to work and help you.

DK:She does yet. She sure is.

FH:Was that missionary activity a wonderful experience for you?

DK:Yes. There is nothing like it in the world. Every young man should have a [LDS] mission. Everyone. And every girl [who] doesn’t get married first. Of course, their first responsibility is to raise a family.

FH:Yes, I understand. Did you already have one child?

DK:Yes.

FH:What happened when you came back?

DK:I had been a lineman 00:40:00grunt before and linemen [were paid] $0.75 an hour. An electrician [was paid] $1.00 an hour. While I was out in the mission field, I wrote to the Indian School in Shiprock, New Mexico asking for a job as [an] electrician. When I came back, I went there and wired the Indian School with electricity. Then I followed the electrical game [trade] from then on. Only just a few times had I been a lineman. When I was in Saudi Arabia I was a lineman. When I worked [for] the Water Users Association [in Arizona] I was a lineman. The other times I have been [an] electrician.

FH:You had a job to go right on.

DK:Yes. I did all the arranging just before I got home.

FH:Tell about your children. Name them and tell about their character and their personality traits as they relate to you. How do you feel about 00:41:00them individually? Start with the oldest one and name each one and tell a little bit about them.

DK:Our oldest girl was named June [Kleinman]. She was a very happy, beautiful girl. In fact, when I came home off a mission, she knew me. She had seen the pictures and the wife had told her about me. She knew me and accepted me right off of the bat. She is married now, living in Phoenix and raising a family. She is still a beautiful girl. [TAPE RECORDER TURNED OFF] FH:She had a nickname or something for you when you first came home. What did she call you?

DK:She called me “Daddy Boy.” Mother [my wife] talked to her [and she] called me “Daddy Boy.” [Laughter] After we got through wiring the school at Shiprock, we came down back to Mesa and Phoenix. I [found] a job with the Salt River Valley Water Users Association in Roosevelt [Arizona] as a lineman. While we were there, 00:42:00our second girl [Bonnie Kleinman] was born. While I was there, they started to raise the spillway on the dam. They had a bunch of men there. They had [a] mess hall [to feed] all [of them]. The cook got sick and quit so we took the mess hall over. We cooked for seventy-five men. In between times, I would go out and do an eight-hour job. While I was gone, the wife would be baking bread and [cooking] meat for the meal. I would come home from work [and] I was the official pearl diver [dishwasher], if you know what that means. [Laughter] FH:[Laughter] Yes.

DK:We had three or four people helping us feed that many men. We would go out on the cattle ranches and buy the beef. They would butcher for us and bring [the meat] in. We would get our vegetables 00:43:00and things [in] Phoenix. A freight truck came in there and we ran that. I worked up there for three years, I think it was. Then we came back and went to work in Phoenix. We came back to Mesa and I [found] a job and worked in Mesa. Our first son [Donald Walter Kleinman] was born in Mesa after the two girls. While we were in Mesa I got a job in Fort Grant, Arizona. That was the only political job I ever had. When [George Wylie Paul] Hunt was the governor [of Arizona], I applied and [was hired] as engineer. I went over to [the] correction school where they take boys and girls who [get] in [to] trouble. I was the engineer there. Before I went over, our second baby 00:44:00was born in Mesa. “Don” [Donald] and Charles [Lee Kleinman] were both born in Mesa. I worked over there until the politics changed and then I came back.

FH:Tell about the boys now. How about their personalities?

DK:They [have] very pleasing personalities. My oldest son [Donald] joined the [United States] Navy when he was nineteen [years old]. He spent three years in the Navy. The Navy put out an invitation to the men to join the submarines. They had to meet certain qualifications. He qualified, so he was in the submarines during World War II. In fact, he was in the China Sea when the peace was [declared]. 00:45:00He said at one time they [received] an order that a plane was down out of their area. They went out to search for it. Before they [could] get it back in, the United States Navy was coming to invade Japan. They fired on this submarine because they didn’t know what it was. He said that they opened every valve and within five seconds they were 500 feet under [the] water. He said that it went down so fast before they could even level off that they were 500 feet under that water. This [aircraft] that fired on them. It circled around and they didn’t find any oil so they knew they hadn’t hit them, so they went on. He was telling [this] to my niece’s husband one day and he said, “You know, I was in that ship 00:46:00that fired on you.” He hadn’t finished high school [when he joined] so I talked to him [when] he [was discharged]. I said, “Maybe the thing for you to do is to get into some trade. To learn some trade.” We went to Salt Lake [City] and talked to some of the refrigeration engineers about it. They thought that was a good idea. After being in a submarine for so long, he just walked the floor. He was like a lion in a cage and he couldn’t settle down. The first thing [he did] was [to] get in his Jeep and head to Logan [Cache County, Utah]. He signed up to go to school [Utah State Agricultural College] up there for a year. Before the year was up, he had finally completed the course. He graduated as a refrigeration and air conditioning engineer.

FH:[That is] a [very] good field too.

DK:He came back to Salt Lake City 00:47:00and is now working for Minneapolis Honeywell in Salt Lake City. He is their fire alarm and burglar alarm engineer [at] Honeywell.

Our youngest son, Charles, fulfilled a [LDS] mission in eastern Canada. Our oldest son never did get to do that because of [the] war. When he came back from the mission, [he was drafted] into [military] service and [they sent] him to Korea. He was in Korea for sixteen months on that police [situation]. He had married just before he [left] and his wife had a baby while he was there. They put him in charge of the servicemen’s group in Korea. Then he was head of the PX [Post Exchange]. 00:48:00He said that the only time the PX ever [was] out of the red [was] when he had charge [of it]. It interested him so much that, when he came back to school, instead of taking up refrigeration like he was doing, he took up business management. He graduated in business management. Now he is in Bountiful and is the public relations man for the Tastewell Cheese Company.

They called him to be a bishop in Logan. This is what he told me. He said while he was in Korea, the first baby was born and he was made the group leader over there. When he came back, the next baby was born and they called him to be the M-men’s [young men] leader in the ward. The next baby was born [while] he was stake M-men leader in the ward. He said when the next one was born, 00:49:00several weeks [went by] and nobody called him. So he said to his wife, “I guess they have forgotten us.” He said one evening the stake president called him and said, “Charles, will you and your wife come up to my office?” He said yes. He went up there and the stake president said, “Charles, we are going to divide the Tenth Ward. We are going to put all the people [living] in trailer houses in a ward. We would like to have you be the bishop. Does that surprise you?” Charles said, “No. Would you like to hear about it?” He said, “Yes.” He said, “All my life, I thought any job in the church would be just wonderful, even to be a bishop’s councilor. But to be a bishop, I didn’t want to have a thing to do with it. But for three days I have had the greatest desire to be a bishop. In fact, I knew right 00:50:00where we were going to meet. We were going to meet in that big red chapel up east of the college.” The stake president said, “That is wonderful.” So the Lord prepared him for that job and he is one of the finest bishops. All these students [who are] under him, no matter where they are, everyone that I [have] ever met, [who] come here to the temple, say, “We just love that son of yours.” [Emotional] FH:This was a testimony to him that this stake president had [an] inspiration of the right spirit.

DK:Right. They are both good workers now. Charles is superintendent of the Sunday schools in his ward. “Don” is in the stake MIA. My oldest son, “Don,” was one of the finest explorer leaders [of the Boy Scouts of America] they have in the church.

FH:That is a hard job. That is a job that takes a [very]special person. 00:51:00I would like you to tell about your own activities through these married years. Have you had a lot of [positions] in the church?

DK:Yes. [I have had] a lot of [positions] in the church and they all [have been] important to me.

FH:Name some of the [positions] you have [been] called to?

DK:I have been [in the] Sunday school superintendency, in [the] MIA superintendency, a branch president in Kingman, Arizona, taught classes in MIA, Priesthood and in Sunday school. I was a high priest group leader when I was in Hawaii. We were called in New Zealand to be officiators in the temple. That was a great blessing. When we moved to Hawaii, they said that the temple president mailed a letter right to the temple president in Hawaii, 00:52:00so for three years we were officiators in the Hawaiian temple. When we came to St. George, a letter came right [to] the St. George Temple, so we were called here to be officiators. We have always been active in the church, except [for] a few years when we were in Roosevelt. We had no branch there. I think they had a branch in Globe [Arizona]. It was thirty-five miles away and we just didn’t do much. But as soon as we got back where there was [a] place to work, we have been active. Never once did our children say on a Sunday morning, “Mom and daddy, are you going to Sunday school?” FH:They didn’t have to, did they?

DK:No, they knew we were going. Our oldest daughter said that in our home she never heard 00:53:00her mother and father in an argument. She said she came in and stuck her head in the door one time, and we were discussing something. She went away, but we never discussed our troubles before our children.

FH:Your church activities have been varied. You have had a little bit of everything in the church, haven’t you?

DK:Yes.

FH:How many missions have you had altogether?

DK:[I have had] eight. [I had] a two-year mission in Tennessee, the southern states, in 1920 and 1921. I came back in 1922. In 1933 I was out of a job, and the Seventies Quorum in Mesa wanted to send someone on a mission. I volunteered and my wife agreed to it. I [served] six months in the [inaudible] Michigan on a mission. My wife [had] a job [at] 00:54:00JC Penney and worked while I was gone. When I came back, I was called on a stake mission in Mesa. When we moved up to Tooele [Tooele County, Utah], we were called on a stake mission in the Tooele Stake. Then we moved to Logan and were called on a stake mission in the East Cache Stake. In 1957 we were called on a building mission [in] Hawaii and stayed a year and a half. I wired nearly all the classrooms and the auditorium in the church college [in] Hawaii. When it was dedicated, they released us and we were sent to New Zealand. We were down there for three years on a building mission. I have wired twelve chapels in New Zealand.

FH:[Did] you [go] right from Hawaii to New Zealand?

DK:Yes. After three years, 00:55:00they started the temple building program back in Hawaii. They released me and called me to Hawaii. In between that time, we came home and visited for a couple of weeks and then we went back. In Hawaii we were there another three years. We built and wired another twelve chapels. [I] installed the sound system there.

FH:You had some wonderful experiences during that time.

DK:Money couldn’t buy the experiences we have had. That is for sure.

FH:Did you find any pretty good people over there?

DK:The most wonderful [people] in the world. There are people [who] join this church no matter where you go. When we left North Africa and drove 6,000 miles through Europe, we would attend Sunday school wherever we could find it. In Frankfurt, Germany we attended Sunday school [and] we couldn’t understand a word they said. But we could still feel the spirit there and we knew what 00:56:00they were doing, because we were acquainted with the program of the church. [It is] the same anywhere you go. No matter what you are, if you are in an LDS meeting you can feel the spirit and know what is going on. We have met some wonderful people every place in the world. We met some wonderful people [who] didn’t belong to the church. That is the reason to send missionaries out after them.

FH:That is correct. Is there anything further that you would like to tell about your building missions that would be of interest? [TAPE RECORDER TURNED OFF] DK:We went down to Christchurch, New Zealand to wire a chapel. It was right on the main road 00:57:00that went into the airport. I lighted it up beautifully, so you could see it from the air [and] from many directions. I had mercury vapor lights all around it. It was right in the middle of a sixteen-acre park. It was a variable park. It took five men to take care of it. It belonged to a man and wife who had the Caterpillar agency [for] all [of] New Zealand. The man died. Several people had tried to buy this beautiful garden, but she wouldn’t sell it to them. So President Biesinger went there to buy it. He had done business buying equipment before [her husband died]. She told him that she would sell it to him if he didn’t cut it into lots for people to live on. He told them that he wouldn’t.

It was kept as a garden. It was a beautiful garden. Just before the river got to the estate, it divided, 00:58:00and part of it went one way and another part made a big loop down around and came back into a mill on the south part of the estate. Right in that bowl is where they had the cow pasture. That is where we built a chapel. We didn’t disturb any of the gardens whatsoever. We built a chapel right in this cow pasture with this river running by it. [There were] big trout about eighteen-inches long swimming through it, but you couldn’t fish there because it was private property. The ducks would come and land on that river. It was the most beautiful place in the whole world. I think it is the most beautiful place the church has for a chapel. We wired that chapel. When we had what we called a Thanksgiving service, on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we had it open for visitors. They [had] 1,260 referrals for missionaries to come and see the 00:59:00 people.

Since we built the chapel they had 135 members. Now they have such a big ward [that] a year or so they had to divide it. They have two wards there. People would come there and they would just marvel [at the sight]. The Lord said in the last days He would do a marvelous work and a wonder. The people cannot understand how we could go in there with just a supervisor like me and a supervisor for the carpenters, and take some men who had never had a chisel or a hammer in their hand before and build a beautiful chapel like that in such a short time. It was a marvel to them. They couldn’t understand it. Of course, they feel we couldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been for the help of the Lord. It was His work and was a marvelous thing that He had done.

I had another experience down in [inaudible] north. 01:00:00They bought a piece of ground and were going to build a chapel on it. When the neighbors found out that the Mormons were going to build a chapel there, they all signed a petition and took it in to the city so that the Mormons wouldn’t build a chapel. When the supervisor came down, he heard about it as soon as he got there. He took the plans back to the city and said, “This is the plan. [This is] what we are going to build.” They said, “We can’t see anything wrong with that.” The supervisor said that you tell those people that, if they want [us] to, we will build a wall twenty-feet high so they can’t see it if they don’t want to see it. We will just build a wall as high as they want it. He started building the chapel and [by] the time I got down there to wire it, the chapel was in pretty good shape. Every one of those people [who] didn’t want it [built] came and apologized. They built the chapel. Lyndon Bradshaw [from] over in Hurricane [Washington County, Utah] put up the bricks.. Right between the chapel property and the property next to 01:01:00this man, they started building a wall. They came and said, “How high are you going to build that wall?” “Just as high as you want it.” They said, “Oh, keep it down [to] about four feet.” People drive by that wall on the road and stop and see that wall. You can’t see a wave in it, it is just as straight, the full length of that lot. They will stop and back up and go in there and say, “Who built that wall? That is a beautiful piece of work.” So it is a testimony to us that the Lord works in a marvelous [way] to get these things done.

FH:What a blessing to the people down there, too.

DK:Yes. It was said by the authorities that dollar for dollar spent in missionary work and chapels being built, they convert more people [through building chapels] than the missionaries do.

FH:Tell a little bit about the people. How do you feel about the people?

DK:The Maori [people] are down in New Zealand. 01:02:00They are some of the finest people in the world. They are the most hospitable, [but that is] the same way with the Hawaiians. All those Polynesians are so hospitable. You can have anything they have. If you need it, you can get it. They will let you have anything. In fact, the Samoans would sell every bit of property they had just to go to New Zealand. [They would] spend every dime they had, sell their home and go to the temple. They thought it was that important to [go] to the temple. [They would] go to New Zealand, do their temple work, come back and start all over again.

FH:It is that important, but how many people feel that way?

DK:That is right. They [are] wonderful craftsmen. In that building-mission program, we taught electricians. That is how [they] got on their own: [by] doing electrical work. We taught welders, carpenters [and] plumbers. We taught those boys. They never would have known a thing about it if we had not had that building program. Now they are on their own and raising a family 01:03:00and serving the Lord. We had one [who] came up from conference over here in Hurricane. We went over there. He was a bricklayer for Lyndon and he now is a bishop down there in one of the wards.

FH:[That is] wonderful. How did you feel about it when you realized that time was getting close [to] when you were going to come home? Were you happy?

DK:Yes, because our family was over here and we wanted to come home. Those were wonderful places to live, but they were too far away from our children. Our children were rooted here so they couldn’t come over there. A lot of people, when they leave there, would get up and say they had mixed emotions. It never mixed me up much. [Laughter] FH:[Laughter] [Did] you know it was time?

DK:Yes. We had spent seven and a half years [away], and we thought we would come home, but if it was necessary 01:04:00we would go back.

FH:I think you have already spread the desire to the church [of] wanting to go back [to] someplace.

DK:Yes. [END OF RECORDING TWO.] DK:When we were going to be released, we started to think about where we wanted to go. While we were in Hawaii [there was] an earthquake up in Cache Valley. It shook our house up so bad [that] it was condemned. It cost $150.00 to have it torn down. All we had was a lot and a garage. My wife and I discussed the matter. We had been by a temple ever since the Arizona Temple had been built. Every job we had had, outside of where we worked, we were by a temple. We wanted to be by a temple. We thought about [the] Mesa temple. When we [came back from] North Africa in August, we went down to Mesa. It got up to 123° 01:05:00and we suffered with the heat. So we didn’t want to go back to Mesa. We thought we couldn’t get within forty miles, probably, of the Los Angeles, California Temple or the Oakland, California Temple. To buy a piece of property that we could afford, we wouldn’t be within forty miles of either one of them. All the rest of [the temples] were too cold, except [the] St. George [Temple].

We had traveled through St. George many times. We had come through here when we were going up to get married. We said, “It must be St. George [where] we are going to go.” We made up our minds to sell the lot up in Cache Valley and move to St. George. When we came back to Salt Lake City, I went in to [inaudible] electrical engineer’s office in the [inaudible] building and asked if [they] had any [work] in St. George, any chapels to wire. He said, “We have two chapels being built, but I think the wiring is contracted out.” Then he sat there for a few minutes and then he said. 01:06:00“We [have] some wiring to do in the St. George Temple. [The job has] been hanging on for two years and we can’t get anybody to do it. Will you go down there as a building missionary and wire the St. George Temple?” I said, “I sure will.” So we came to St. George. We looked around down [in] Las Vegas and we bought a trailer and moved it up here and lived in a trailer. The temple was open and I had to wait until the temple was closed in order to do the work. In the meantime, I went to work for Clark Empey, the electrician. I worked for him until we could get into the temple. Then I wired the temple. We had to tear up the floor, pull up the carpet, pull up the boards and run the conduit down in to the walls and the partitions. [It was] right in the middle of summer. [I] crawled through [the] attic and never found a termite in that whole 01:07:00attic. [In] all the floors we tore up, I never found a termite in that temple. While we were wiring it, I had a helper. [Inaudible] Lord helped me to do that work or I could [not have] done it. [Inaudible] were going to put a switch in it. The walls [to the] ceiling were eighteen feet high. I went down and cut a hole in the wall where I wanted to [put] the switch box. I took out the floor and had to cut a hole in the — anyway, the plate had come over and I bored a hole about an inch and a half long and about three quarters of an inch wide so I could get the pipe down the eighteen feet. I had to slice the pipe 01:08:00and when I went down to put it in the box it slipped out of my hand and went clear down to the [inaudible] floor.

That floor is four feet below where it ought to be, so I went down and took the box out. The rafters were close together, but I could see the little hole that I had for a switch box and get a hold of the pipe and bring it over and try to drop the cord down from the top and tied it around it. I had my helper pull it up [with] me down in that little bit of a hole trying to guide in that little hole up there. I couldn’t get it in there. [I] tried the best I could and I said a prayer. Then that pipe went through that hole just as slick as a button and seemed like it didn’t touch a bit of wood. It went right into place.

That was a testimony to me [that], when you need help, 01:09:00the angels are there to help you. I am sure that I [received] help in that building. Before I [had] it wired, President [Rudger] Atkins wanted me to be a steady worker there because the engineer [who] was there was [going] blind and he was afraid that he would stick a screwdriver in a switch some place and it would burn him. He released him and asked if I wouldn’t be the electrical engineer on the project. [My] wife and I discussed it and I told him that I would. The brethren didn’t want to hire me because of my age, but President Atkins told them they didn’t need worry about that, that I was active enough to take care of the job and so they hired me. We have been there ever since.

FH:Have you been working in that work besides being an ordinance worker too?

DK:Yes. I have counted up awhile back and I have made about 01:10:00thirty-two electrical changes in and around that temple since I have been there to make it work better.

FH:Tell a little bit about the ordinance work that you have done. Have you accomplished a lot of ordinance work?

DK:We did a lot of ordinance work when we were in New Zealand, Hawaii and here, as far as doing work for the dead. But most of it here has been the baptizing. Last year I baptized over 8,000 people here in this font. This year [it] has been around — I think I have [baptized] 1,000 up until now besides officiating in the temple.

FH:[Do] you enjoy the work that you have here very much?

DK:Yes.

FH:There is another part of your life that we need to talk about. 01:11:00You took some jobs out of the country [on] a couple of occasions in foreign lands. I think you ought to talk about those.

DK:[In] 1948 [we] were living in Tooele. I read in the newspaper about a fellow by the name of Anderson who was going to be on Second South [Street] in Salt Lake City on a certain day to interview people for Saudi Arabia. I made it a point to go see him. I talked to him and he asked me a lot of questions. I answered him to the best of my ability and went back to Tooele. We took a two-weeks vacation down through Arizona and around New Mexico and came back up home. When I got back up to Tooele there was a letter 01:12:00stating that I could go have a physical [examination] and they would pay all the expenses. I told my wife and we discussed it and decided that I should go. They were to pay all of my expenses, my travel expenses going and coming, and I was to get $500.00 a month to go over there. So I signed up. August 10, I landed in [inaudible], Saudi Arabia. I flew to New York [City, New York] and then flew into the Azores and on over to Portugal and to Rome [Italy], then to Saudi Arabia. 01:13:00I worked there for a year and a half. They built one of the most modern powerhouses in the world, push button powerhouse, operated by natural gas that came out of the ground. When they drilled wells in Saudi Arabia, the oil [inaudible] out of the ground from 400 to 900 pounds [of] pressure. They didn’t need to pump it. They would take it to a refinery and they would separate the gas from the oil. We used the gas for this powerhouse. They had three [or four] big boilers [that were] operated from this gas. They built the first pump station on the Trans-Arabian Pipeline which is a thirty and a thirty-one inch line. It went all the way to [the] Mediterranean [Sea]. We built the first pump station [there]. I helped build forty-nine miles of power lines from [inaudible] to [inaudible]. They were 66,000-volt lines.

FH:Were you actually 01:14:00working for someone in Saudi Arabia?

DK:No.

FH:Were you working for an American company?

DK:I was working for [an] American company out of San Francisco [California]: Blue Middle East.

FH:[Did] they have a contract and you worked over there?

DK:That is right.

FH:How did you like it? How did you like the people over there?

DK:I didn’t like it. When we were on the power line, we had to carry a thermometer with us, because when we sagged that line according to the temperature, the copper contracts readily to heat and cold. We carried a thermometer with us and, according to the temperature ,we gave the line so much sag between the towers. So we would hold a thermometer up by our head and it [would go] up to 147°, but if you laid it down on the sand where we were walking it would go up to 160°. So when we were standing we would get on a camel [inaudible] 01:15:00to keep our feet off of that hot sand. We didn’t have any rain from April to December, so it was a [very] dry heat. When it is really dry you can stand a lot of heat. But we would be up and have our breakfast and be down on the job by daylight. We would put in eight hours.. Then we would go to our barracks, all air conditioned, and we would relax. You could read, do anything you wanted [to do]. By the way, we would all rush to the shower to get a shower first. You [would] turn the hot water tap on to get a clean shower. The water came fifteen miles across the desert on top of that sand and by the time it got there the cold line was boiling. They had the heat turned off of the hot water tank and the storage in the hot water tank would be cool. We would get a cool bath from the hot water tank.

FH:So you hurried to get first? [Laughter] DK:Yes. Does that make sense? [Laughter] What a place to live. No wonder Nephi 01:16:00said their wives and children suffered much tribulation. The temperature and the wind would blow in from the northwest or the south nearly continually. The sand would blow and that gravel would go back and forth across [the] desert until it was just as round as a ball. In fact, you can hardly mix cement with it because there is nothing for the cement to hang on to. They had to hunt around and get sand somewhere that wasn’t surface sand that wasn’t blown, because it was just as round as a marble and couldn’t make good cement.

FH:You almost had to crush some rocks to get something to cling to.

DK:Yes. [Inaudible] FH:Were you over there a year and a half?

DK:Yes. That was my contract.

FH:Did you learn to talk in the language a little bit?

DK:Yes. [Inaudible] a little bit. We [talked to people using] 01:17:00sign language. You could get along very well if you would talk a few words and use the sign language; [then] people could understand you. But if you could speak their language fluently, they would look up to you more than ever because you could talk to them in their own tongue. So we tried to learn as much as we could. I discovered that the language I learned in Saudi Arabia was entirely different [than] when I [was] in North Africa among the Arabs. In Saudi Arabia, [inaudible] was thank you, but over in North Africa it was [inaudible]. No relation to the words at all. They had fifty-two different dialects in the Arab world. When we started writing in [the] Arabic language [inaudible] it was [very] difficult because of the many dialects. You [can] see what I mean.

FH:Almost like American Indian dialects?

DK:Yes. 01:18:00Each one of them is different.

FH:[Did] you later go to North Africa?

DK:Yes. The contractor [who] hires you is responsible for you as long as you are out of the United States. I didn’t want to come back the way I went over, so I signed a waiver in Saudi Arabia that they were not responsible for me anymore. They paid me right there enough money in American dollars to get me the shortest way home. I went down to [Akabar] and I changed it over into Arabic money and made $71.00 on this exchange. Then I went to the airport and bought my ticket. Instead of traveling to New York, I flew around the world to San Francisco. I bought my ticket 01:19:00that way. I had my itinerary all fixed up all the way around, where I was going to stay, the hotel I would be in and how many days I would be there. I had that all before I left. I changed to come back to New York [and] I flew around the world and came to San Francisco and then to Salt Lake City.

FH:Now you know the world is round. [Laughter] DK:Yes, I know it is round. I flew around it. [Laughter] There sure is a lot of water. We were above the clouds nearly all the time, but you could look down when the clouds weren’t under you, and still see the white caps on the ocean.

FH:This was a wonderful experience for you.

DK:Yes. I was home a year and three months working [in] Salt Lake City in that powerhouse across the Jordan River. I saw in the newspaper one day [that] men were being interviewed for [work in] North Africa. 01:20:00North Africa had always been intriguing to me. Morrison-Knudson was advertising and had their office not very far from me. So on my noon hour I went down to see them. Just for kicks! In about two weeks I was on my way to North Africa. [Laughter] When I left, my wife had been in an [accident] and had one of her legs in a cast. I told her, “You don’t worry. I will have you over there pretty soon. Within a month I will have you over there” I went to North Africa and couldn’t get her over for six months. They didn’t have the housing [and] they didn’t want a lot of families over there in the way. She [obtained] a passport. 01:21:00That passport [was] not valid in North Africa, only on the permission of the [United States] State Department. About every week or so, the Arabs would have an uprising in North Africa. [We] were advised to stay in the camps or we might get our throat cut. That kind of worried me about my wife coming over. I worried about it and prayed about it. One night I had a dream. Some people don’t believe in dreams.

One night I had a dream. I was in kind of like a pit-like [place] and I was in the bottom of it. [There were] two big trees here, the big tree at the top. All of the sudden I looked up and there were three or four Arabs right up in between two trees 01:22:00on their horses. The thought came to me: it is my time; they were going to come cut my throat. Those Arabs looked down at me and turned around and rode off. I knew just as [inaudible] as anything in this world that my wife would be safe in North Africa. [Inaudible] So I wrote and told her, “You get a passport to England and [inaudible] you can come in there. You get a passport to England, you can come in to Tangier and I will meet you.” I had been going back and forth to Tangier; you had to cross from Spanish Morocco into Tangier Morocco. When you go through there, you have to go through customs and you have to go through the police. I would talk to them 01:23:00about it and they would talk to me about it. My wife was supposed to be in Tangier on Christmas Eve, but she got to France and they had a strike so she couldn’t get out of France. I was in Tangier and I called and talked to her on the telephone. She said that she couldn’t get out, so I went back to [inaudible] and worked another week. I went up for New Year’s. When she got there I already had a place for her to stay in Spanish Morocco. The week she got there [inaudible] they call it, the customs and the police. I decided to take a chance. I just took her down to the line and took [our] passports and I went in to the customs and the police [office] and 01:24:00both of them stamped it, went over to France and they stamped it, and I took her right on to North Africa. They couldn’t understand English and so [I] took her down there. I left her with Spanish- speaking people. She couldn’t understand Spanish and they couldn’t understand English. I left her there for three days [because] my apartment that I had rented wasn’t ready for her. We lived in North Africa for a year and a half. [The landlord] was just like our mother and father. They gave us one of their little children, a beautiful little girl. They gave [her] to us to bring her to America. Of course we [inaudible] give [her] back to them. We didn’t want to bring her here and [have] one of our grandsons marry her. We didn’t want that. But the fellow we were renting from, he filled his truck up with gas. He had a panel truck and I followed him to Tangier. They wouldn’t let us bring it down the last time 01:25:00and we left it up there. He filled it up with gas, handed me the key and said I could give it to the North Americans. “They can bring it down to Tangier.” [He] never charged us a dime. They are just as our [inaudible] that means mother and father, they loved us so much. They are wonderful people FH:Did you enjoy living there? Was it an enjoyable situation or was it pretty hard?

DK:No. North Africa is just about the same climate as Southern California. They [grow] some of the finest citrus and vegetables.

FH:Is there enough water?

DK:Yes. From Tangier we drove that little car we bought, an Opel, bit of a German made [inaudible]. We drove [it] through Europe, 6,000 miles, 01:26:00and sailed out of Liverpool [England] for New York. It took us forty days [to cross the ocean].

FH: You really had a trip. Forty days!

DK:I went into a store in Spain to buy some lunch. We would carry a lunch with us. We would just eat one meal a day. [There was a] Spanish lady by the counter and a little girl [standing] behind her. She could just look over the top [of the counter]. I said, “Hey, what is your name? Rosita?” That mother about passed out. Her name was Rosita. With my white hair, I guess she thought I was [inaudible]. [Laughter] That was a wonderful trip. You learn more like [that] than you [do] out of books. You can’t get things out of books that you see in places over there. 01:27:00FH:Is there anything else in the history of your life that you feel like you want to talk about? [TAPE RECORDER TURNED OFF] DK:We left Tangier and we floated over to Spain. We drove up through Spain.

FH:[Did] you go on a ferry boat with your car?

DK:Yes. [We took] a ferry boat across the Strait of Gibraltar. We traveled up through Spain and all the way over to Madrid. We stayed a day or two in Madrid and we went out to Barcelona. It is about twenty miles from Madrid.

FH:[Was it] in Spain?

DK:[It was] in Spain where they buried the king. We [went] in there. They had a patio 01:28:00and all the walls all around that patio were [pictures of] the life of Christ painted on the walls. It took three sides of the wall. It was a marvelous painting. Then we went inside and down [to] a cave below. We had to go down a few steps. Down in the hole was where the kings were buried. They are buried in marble caskets [and placed] on shelves. They were three high, if I remember right. All around the room was where the kings were buried.

FH:[Was it] like a mausoleum?

DK:Yes, like a mausoleum. Then about halfway up the steps that we had come down there was a door that went out to the west. We went out on kind of a little patio like. It was open on one side [inaudible] and there was where the queens were buried and other nobles. Right 01:29:00where it made a turn to go around this patio, around the steps was a big thing like a birthday cake, a big white thing. We asked [the guide] what that was and he said that was where the king’s illegitimate children were buried. [It looked] just like a big birthday cake. Then we went [to] see where the queens and the nobles were buried. [When] they bury them they have their full body carved on the outside of the lid, where the kings were not. They were all solid marble. [Inaudible] FH:They have a statue carved on them,?

DK:Yes. Then we went to the museum in Madrid. We were living in a hotel [and] a little Spanish girl went with us. 01:30:00She took us to places where ordinary tourists don’t go. We went into the museum and there was a little bottle back in there just about an inch wide and an inch and a half long and just about inch thick with a little Bible. On the wall was a family tree of all the kings. This was something that was interesting to us because of our genealogy experience. It was a family tree of all the kings and their families. In the roof during the war some [inaudible] would come down through the roof. They had never patched the inside, but they had patched the roof. In the ceiling you could still saw the hole where these things came through.

If you stood on the streets of Madrid and not listen to anybody talk, and just looked at the way people were dressed and the buildings [in] the city, you would think you were in an American state. 01:31:00You would be so [inaudible]. [Inaudible] As soon as you hear them talk, you know you are not in America. [Laughter] Right in the center of Madrid there is a little patch of grass about twenty or thirty feet in diameter. There were two doors [going] down in it, one over there and one over here. I didn’t want to go in, so I stood there awhile to see if someone went in. Here came a man and so I followed him. When I [got] down there, both the doors opened to one big room with no partition in there. There was a desk and a lady and a man there talking. On the side of the wall was a urinal 01:32:00with water running down the side. You could walk up there and urinate right there. [Inaudible] people going to the bathroom. They are all the same. [Laughter] Amazing to me!

FH:[Laughter] [Inaudible] DK:We left Madrid and we went to Barcelona [Spain]. The gypsies live around Barcelona. We went up over the mountains and crossed the line into France. We followed the [inaudible] around all the way down to Rome [Italy]. We went right through Monaco and didn’t even know it until we got home and read it in the newspapers, where Princess Grace [Kelly] married [Prince Rainier of Monaco]. We went right through that place and didn’t even know it. We saw the gambling joints off down there, but we didn’t go down there. 01:33:00We went from Rome to Italy. Before we got down out of — I just messed up there. I wanted to tell you this. When we came down off of the mountain, we had to follow around the Riviera and the towns along there [had lots of] grapes. All the grapes that the French grew were up on the side hill. They would carry the grapes down on baskets. They would carry the fertilizer up there. It was terraced all around that mountain.

Just as we dropped down, the first stop sign we came to, our brakes froze right there. We had been using the brakes all the way around that mountain. We would have sky-rocketed off in that dugway. 01:34:00If those brakes had frozen up there, nobody would have known where we were because the Spanish people wouldn’t care. Right across the road from where the brakes went bad was a garage and they fixed it in a few minutes. We went on down the road about ten or twelve miles, and I heard something snap. I stopped the car and got out and started looking. We had a luggage carrier on top, and I started to feel those [braces] that held it. I found one that was broken. If that had broken when we were making those turns, our luggage would have [gone] down that mountainside. Every morning before we left, we prayed to the Lord to have our car function properly and that we would be protected. I know that we were protected on that trip because of our faithfulness and the Lord protected us. 01:35:00We drove from there up to Rome. We went to Florence [Italy]. From Florence we went over into Milan [Italy] and went over the Alps into Switzerland. We went all the way up to Bern [Switzerland] and saw where [the church] is going to build a temple. They had started excavating. Then we went way up to Heidelberg, Germany and stayed three or four days. Then we cut right across into France.

FH:You saw all of the beautiful [places] over there.

DK:My younger brother [Lloyd Eugene Kleinman] is buried in the St. James Cemetery in St. James, France. We went over there and dedicated his grave. It is a lovely cemetery. All the headstones were made of white marble. Each one of them had inscriptions. [Inaudible] 01:36:00We followed [inaudible] up to Belgium and spent the night. Then went on up to Holland [and] stayed at The Hague in Holland where the headquarters of the church are. We came down to [inaudible] Holland and crossed over into England [inaudible].

When we got into [inaudible] they told us that we should drive on the left side of the road. The car is on the opposite side. By the time we got through the customs I had forgotten all about that. We headed down the road to go to London and here came a car right toward us. I said, “Look at that darn fool! He is on the wrong side of the road.” Just about that time, it came to me and I got over. We would have had a head-on collision. 01:37:00[END OF RECORDING THREE.] FH:[Laughter.] DK:So, then we had to drive on the wrong side of the road all the while we was in England. That’s why we got got fairly used to it.

And we still have our little kids [inaudible]. Before we left, our youngest daughter was gonna have a baby, and they were gonna have to take it cesarean. And so, we was a’hurrying. And when we come to New York, our youngest son had been on a mission up there, had bought an Oldsmobile because as many of the missionaries went into Korea and they wasn’t supplyin’ them with enough missionaries. So he wrote to us in North Africa and we sent him the money. And he went in the United States and bought a 1952 Oldsmobile and used it in his mission field and he parked it at the mission home when he come home, that’s what he [???moved???]. When we come to New York, he met us there again, in Canada, and he brought 01:38:00his little Opel to New York, and we got on it and drove down to where our older son was, who was workin’ for Minneapolis Honeywell, he was sent back there to get some instructions. And he had been in Canada and got the Oldsmobile because his time was up, and he’d traded him the Opel for the Oldsmobile. And then he was hurryin’ home because our youngest daughter was going to have this baby. And so we drove across the United States. We drove from Nauvoo [Illinois] to Hyde Park [Utah] in two days.

FH:Wow.

DK:And [crosstalk; laughter].

Well, I’d drive a few hours and then I’d stop and our son, Charles, would drive a few hours, and I’d get in the back seat and lay down and relax. And we’d drive ninety miles an hour all the way across on these beautiful roads. Then, when we left Salt Lake City for California, I told Charles we’d better set it down to eighty miles an hour 01:39:00because we were getting some drag in places. [???Who better than –.???] Our youngest daughter, she had married an army boy, and this was their youngest son that was being born. And we got in there just as the baby was, just a day after the baby was born. It didn’t live very long; it died. We dedicated it and were holdin’ the funeral – FH:Oh, yeah.

DK:Dedicated the grave and holdin’ the funeral for it.

FH:Now, she had other children.

DK:Yes, this was her last one. She had three other children.

FH:Three others, alright.

DK:She had Otis, then Irvin, and then Julian [???Jillian???], and this little baby.

She lives now in Redding, California.

FH:You did make it in time, then?

DK:Yes.

FH:[Chuckles.] DK:She lives in Redding, California and Irvin, the second son, has been on a mission back to New York. The oldest son is back east somewhere, still in the service. And the girl is still home. 01:40:00Her and her husband now, they have a fine family and she’s pretty active in the church. She does the Relief Society, and Sunday school, and Sacrament meetings, and things like that. They’re doing very well.

FH:Well, now, I think that it’d be a fine thing for you to give advice, some counsel to your descendants. Keep in mind, this is for some that aren’t even born yet.

DK:Yes. Well, I think the greatest thing in our lives is the [inaudible] and the admiration of our lord and master. That he has given us commandments, and as I well know and most all the people who are in the church and have been studying, that we have been gifted in the spirit world where an offering of our 01:41:00Heavenly Father is good children, and by our conduct of spirit, it is determined how we were born on this earth. Now, a lot of people who have condemned the church [for not letting in] negroes to the priesthood, and they do this because they do not understand the situation. A negro in the spirit world rejected the authority and the priesthood God. And so that brought a kind of a condemnation upon him. Now, the Japanese and the Chinese and the Arabs and other people of this world were born here according to how they lived in the spirit world, according to their conduct and their intelligence. Now, when we leave this life, we’re going to wake up in the same situation as we was 01:42:00born here, because when we’re resurrected, we are going to be resurrected according to how we lived here. And many times, I have said, it is not how long we have lived on this earth, it is how well we have lived while we are here.

FH:This is it.

DK:And that’s the thing. Now, a lot of our members who have been ordained in the priesthood and are not functioning in that priesthood or are not valued in the testimony of Jesus Christ, and they’re going to be in the Lord’s kingdom when they’re resurrected.

FH:Not gonna work, for ‘em, will it?

DK:And it will be justice, because of the way that they have lived here, and it was justice the way they were born here. It wouldn’t be a just God for, if we were all on the same equal in the spirit world, to be born like we are here in this eternity. And it’s not gonna be a just God if we all go to the highest of his glories if we did not merit it. And so, here is the place.

Now, a little girl, the other night, said to me, “Well, 01:43:00I wonder if we’ll notice a difference in our age in the time we are spiritually – we are full-grown spirit, will we notice any difference in our age from the time we left the heavens and were a spirit, and the time we were resurrected?” And I said, “Well, [???little???] sister, if I live to be a hundred years old, according to the Lord’s time, I’ve only been on this earth ten years. Now, so according to the Lord’s time, that’s not very much the same as my age in the way that God figures time, is it?” She says, “No, it sure isn’t.” So, you see, the time that we live here is a very small time in compared to eternity…. Now, this life is where we’re gonna prepare to be for now on and forever.

FH:Amen.

DK:So, I advise all mankind, including our family, to live the best of their ability to merit 01:44:00that highest degree of the blessed Lord, so God will prosper us. And I know without a shadow of a doubt that this is the only way to live. [END OF RECORDING FOUR. END OF INTERVIEW.]