Letter to the Family

This week, we have several birthdays. David's was on Sunday, AnnMarie and A.J. will celebrate on Tuesday and little Jens will be age two on Friday. Hopefully, everyone has money inside their envelopes. ;) I had Gramps look while I was putting the money inside so, if there is a mistake, it took two of us to make it.

I remember the excitement we felt as we wecomed each new addition to our family. What joy we knew then and that joy has just grown over the years.

Auntie Helen is healing well. Her knee is nearly better and she will be able to have Nanci go home. Nanci has been so good to stay the entire time that Auntie has needed her. As you know, because she writes, Auntie Eva is still doing as well as she can. She does not have a car anymore but she does have a motorized cart that she can use to get around closeby.

Matthew really injured himself Saturday when he crashed and burned on a friend's motor scooter. He has some bad injuries to his knee and elbow. Auntie AnnMarie is doing her best to help him heal with her nursing/doctoring ability.

The other grandchildren are all doing well. You know that Braden is now in Peru. Siovhan was nominiated for an Emmy. Alyssa is going to be in a musical this summer. Donovin's ball team is doing well. Dane and Kyle are graduating. Kyle and his father get to travel Europe this summer because of the TimpView music department. Each grandchild has achieved in all kinds of activities. We see some of the performances, like Emily's and Tyler's via Facebook postings. We just are so proud. We are proud of our missionary grandsons and the work they are doing to aid their fellow beings.

We have been very, very busy at the temple the past two weeks. Of course, we usually are as the universities are out for the summer. That is a time when all of the young people chose to marry so we are accustomed to that. However, this year has been a bit different. We are getting many young men who are soon to graduate from high school and will be leaving on missions in the next few weeks. I can only imagine what that has been like--getting ready for graduation and getting ready for a mission at the same time. Also, I have been over the specail dressing room, as part of my calling, for the women. We have had a great number of young women, age 19, who are now preparing to leave for missions. Each mission, I am certain, benefit from the willingness of the youth in stepping up to serve.

We have also had big sessions at the temple with women filling the sessions as part of the "Dressed in White" program. That has been most helpful and we hope will continue to bring people to the temple. We have seen many people from our youth and folks that used to live near us in Carbon County and also many who lived in Nephi at one time or another.

Some of us sisters were laughing at a time line that one of the sisters had filled out with her personal feelings. There was a large space between birth and age 20. Then, each decade, the space got smaller between the decade marks. Finally, she had drawn age 70 and several letters "s" and had followed that with age 80 and a large "P" which she then explained. It seems that life streateches out before us with lots of time to accomplish our goals when we are young. Then we hit age 70 and the scared age, when we know time will be short. Then comes age 80 and the panic sets in. We know that we will never get our 30-years worth of repenting done in the time we have left. None of us will be here in another 30 years and, if we are, we may not even know who we are. The upshot is, do not wait for deathbed repentence. Do as you should while you are young.

"As we draw near to God, He will draw near to us. And day by day, the hope of God’s light will grow within us, 'brighter and brighter until the perfect day.'" —Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "The Hope of God's Light"

We wish you well. We are praying for your success and for your happiness. Keep up the good work. We love you.

Great Grandmother Pritchett

I always referred to my Great Grandmother Pritchett as, “Grandma-with-the-cane,” and, I think, Garth (Childs) did also. I don’t know how much David (Childs) remembers about her. She used a cane because she had fallen and broken her hip and it was always somewhat weak after that. Grandma and I and, also, once or twice in the company of Aunt Renee and the "Boys" my only cousins on my mother's side of the family, did visit her in California where she moved in her later years. She was lived with Aunt Jessie and Uncle Gilbert then. In her 80s, she had several strokes which, eventually,  took away most of  her memory and, ultimately, her life. However, since she was grandmother to me, I loved her dearly. She lived with us, in Price, for awhile before I started school and I have happy memories of those days.

One winter day, for example, she sent me outside with a salt shaker. She told me that if I could put salt on a bird’s tail, I could catch it. I really tried. In fact, I spent most of the day trying to catch a bird. She stayed inside at the window and watched me, as I worked to catch one of those ever elusive creatures. It was still a bit cold outside (early spring), and I was bundled up warmly. When Grandma Smith came home from school, I told her I had tried to catch a bird by putting salt on it’s tail. She scolded Great-grandma a bit. “Oh, Mother, how could you?” Then she explained to me that, if you could get close enough to a bird to put salt on it’s tail, you could catch it without the salt. Great-grandma had a little of the practical joker in her. It always caught you by surprise because she was, otherwise, a very practical and proper lady.

Once she told me that I needed to be careful of tramps. This was after the war when many returning soldiers could not find work. We lived on Carbon Avenue in Price at the time. I had invited a raggy-looking fellow into the house while she was taking a nap. She was somewhat handicapped with her cane, which she always used after breaking her hip. She scolded me for that and explained that I did not invite strangers into the house. There were a lot of tramps after the war. I remember seeing one walking down the street, shortly after my inviting the one in, and he was not very tidy-looking. He had rumpled hair and awful clothes. I asked Great-grandma if he was the “boogie man” and she said he very well could be. Well, we children were all afraid of the boogie man so that took care of that.

Of course, our house was always a hit for a good meal. The men would offer to do chores around the yard for food. They usually chopped wood, or something like that. It was mostly in the summer when they traveled looking for work and a better life. One day, a man sat on our front lawn and ate spaghetti. Garth and I watched, fascinated, as he slurped the spaghetti into his mouth just for our pleasure, I am sure. We tried it later and it did not go over well. But you know, and I am honestly speaking, the lawn later died just where he sat on it. Grandma Smith wondered, aloud, if he had weed-killing chemical on his pants from the rail car he had ridden to town. I have wondered, in the years since, if it had an adverse effect on him. What if he got sick and thought it was the spaghetti and not the weed-killer?

I have some great photos of Great-grandma in my “Treasurers of Truth” book which I put together in Mutual when I was a teen-ager. I was, after all, 16 years old when she died. I remember being a bit resentful that I could not go with Grandma Smith to the funeral. She, Grandma Smith, took the train and I stayed home with Aunt Renee. I am certain that it was the expense but I was pretty spoiled and thought money “grew on trees,” as I was often told. And it did not!

I have a photo, for those of you who do not know, which features Aunt Grace and Uncle Woody Selby, Great-grandma, and Aunt Jessie. Woody grew up as a Pritchett and, later, went back to his own surname, Selby. He was the son of Great-Grandma Mina’s sister, who died when Woody was just an infant. He was “brother” to Grandma, Aunt Jessie, and Uncle Frank. He did have a brother or two, who went to other relatives on the death of their mother. She died of something like appendicitis or gallbladder. Whichever it was, the organ ruptured and she died of the resulting infection.

He never had children. He married a woman, Aunt Grace, who had two daughters. The girls were babies when he married Grace and he was their father in all senses of the word. He was a Wonder Bread Regional Manager and lived, at the time of Grandma Smith’s death, in Idaho. I didn’t keep in touch, sorry to say. I didn’t used to do a good job of keeping track of people. I have repented now, however. I guess he must no longer be alive because I can’t find him. If any of you are better at “People Search” than I am, do the job and let me know what you find. His full name was Woodrow (like President Woodrow Wilson) Selby.

Jessie and Vivian

When my Grandmother Vivian and her sister, Jessie, were teens, Jessie tied my grandmother to a bedpost and then went downstairs to tell her (Vivian's) date that she was going to be late? Jessie visited with him and visited with him. Grandma couldn't get loose. FINALLY, Jessie went upstairs and let her go. THEN she wondered why Vivian was angry because she was just having fun. It ended up being OK, probably right away, but for certain 40 years later when they were all laughing about it one evening. That's how I heard the story. They did love each other a lot. 

Jessie also had a little teasing streak with her father. They lived in a house next to the girl's gym in Provo. (The building still stands across the street from what was once the BYU Accademy but is now Provo City Library.) The house they lived in is no longer there. Now it is an apartment building. But BYU held dances in the gym. The students were allowed to waltz but they could not fox trot. Grandpa Pritchett liked to watch the dancers from his upstairs bedroom window which faced the girl's gym. Aunt Jessie, knowing he was watching, would take her dance partner over along the edge of the floor so Grandpa P. could see them and do a few steps of the scandalous fox trot just to tease him. After the dance, he would scold her and she would laugh.

Grandmother Smith chose Jessie's name. She said that when Jessie was born, they lived in Sanpete County. Down the street from their home a young woman lived. She had the most beautiful read hair. Her name was Jessie. So when the parents, Mina Ericksen and Frank Pritchett, asked Vivian what she would like her sister to be named, she suggested "Jessie." They honored her request.

The day that Jessie was born, the doctor was sent for and Vivian was sent outside to wait. When the doctor came back out of the house, he told Vivian that she could go back inside and see the baby. "Where did she come from?" Vivian asked. "We found her under a rose bush," the doctor replied. Hmm, well, we all know the truth of that story. Aunt Jessie said, in later years, "Well, after they found me they hung me on a clothesline to dry and I fell off into a mud puddle. That's why I have all these freckles."

We all remember what a quick wit Aunt Jessie had and what fun she was. In all of her snapshots she is laughing. I wish we could hear what she was saying. I think that we would laugh also.

In the above photo: Left to Right, Mina Ericksen Pritchett, Minetta Black Pritchett, Vivian Christene Pritchett Smith, Toni Fexer (Jessie's granddaughter), Myrna (Me), Jessie Pritchett Brighton.