I couldn't answer that question off the top of my head, which meant I needed to spend time contacting my grandparents! (Which, I'm sure, was the intent of that question). I'll be sharing love stories from FIVE sets of grandparents!
Laurin (who goes by his middle name of Kent) and Linda Peterson are my maternal grandparents. They are currently serving their second couple's mission in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I emailed them this question and I'm going to just copy and paste their response because I think it's best in their own words:
"To start Chelsey we must tell you about some of the church programs that we had when we were teenagers that we do not hear much about now. Perhaps it is because the church is a world-wide church now and that required some changes to some church programs.
Every year starting in the fall, each ward in the stake would take a Friday or Saturday night and host a ward Gold and Green Ball. All of the married couples would attend at least their own ward’s Gold and Green Ball and perhaps other wards also. Then The Stake would be the last to host a Stake Gold and Green Ball. These had live music. There was a local band that played ballroom music. The young men and young women, those who were “Mutual” age would learn dances that they would perform for a floor show half way through the dance. There was usually a boy and a girl from each ward that was invited to learn the dances and be in the floor show for the Stake Gold and Green Ball.
At that time, the church also would hold an “All Church Dance Festival” in Salt Lake City on the University of Utah football field. The youth who danced on the stake dance teams from all the stakes in the church that were close enough to come would come a perform all together on the football field. We all learned the same dances. We learned a Tango, Foxtrot, and Waltz. We practiced every week starting in the spring until the festival sometime in the summer.
I was the girl dancing with a partner from Nampa 2nd ward. Grandpa was the partner to a girl he was dating in the Nampa 5th ward although he wasn’t living in that ward. At dance practice was the first time we saw each other. We both noticed each other. I learned the dances and was able to go to Salt lake and dance in the All Church dance festival. Grandpa had graduated from High School and was working to save money to go on a mission. He and the girl he was dating had ended their dating and so Grandpa did not go to Salt Lake.
We had stake dances two Saturdays each month. The Nampa Stake would have a live band one Saturday and records on the other Saturday.
We both liked to dance and would go to the dances. Grandpa had a friend, Ed, that liked a girl named Marsha, who was in my home ward and was a friend of mine. They introduced us. That night after the dance Grandpa asked to take me home. I had to go call my parents to get permission. That was the beginning. We dated until Grandpa went on his mission. At that time we realized that we really cared deeply for each other so we decided to write to each other while Grandpa was on his mission, as well as I would keep his journal. The agreement was that I would date but that I would be waiting for him and we would see if we still felt the same way when he returned from his mission. Which we did! Grandpa returned home from his mission in April 1966. When I went home from Ricks College to see him the weekend he returned, I found a dozen red roses waiting for me. I finished that semester and went back home and got a job for the summer. Grandpa enrolled in summer semester at Ricks College and would hitchhike home on some weekends to see me. We were married and sealed on August 23, 1966 in the Manti Temple."
Elvin Hegstrom and Virginia Vasser
Elvin and Virginia Hegstrom are my great-grandparents. They are the parents of my grandma Linda. Elvin passed away in 2012, and Virginia is still alive (she is Benjamin and Luna's great-great-grandma). I called my grandma last week to talk with her and ask her how she and grandpa met. I, of course, took her off guard. I really should have planned this better so that she could be better prepared. I was pleased with what she told me, but she wasn't and wants to tell me more later.
Virginia and Elvin met in high school. I asked my grandma, "So you were high school sweethearts?" And she said, "Yeah, I guess you can call us that. We went on a few dates, but he didn't know how to behave!" I laughed and asked her what that meant and she said, "Well, he grabbed my ink bottle out of my hand and threw it down the hallway like a bowling ball!" She told me that when the war (WWII) broke out, his mom asked them to marry each other so that Elvin wouldn't go to war. (He did get drafted and went off to the European theater, which you can read about here.)
She said, "We didn't have much of an engagement. Once we decided to get married, we got married." She said that everyone was completely preoccupied with the war. Many people didn't graduate from high school because they were either going to work or to fight, plus getting married. I'm going to try and remember her exact words because they were really touching. "No one told me what my options were because there was this war going on, and everyone was so worried. Germany was closing in from one side and Japan was closing in on the other; and all of these young men were leaving school to go and fight. And every time a plane flew overhead you didn't know if it was American, or German, or Japanese. The big cities even had black outs, where I lived didn't, but other places did. And people today just can't understand. It's not the same today as it was at all. Today you can see what's going on live, but back then it would take weeks for something to show up in the newspaper. I remember a week after Pearl Harbor we went into the auditorium and listened to the radio. It was just so different than it is today."
While my grandpa was in Europe, my grandma lived on her parents farm. She helped out on the farm, and she and her mom briefly worked at a place to prepare potatoes to be sent to Europe for the soldiers. Everything was about the war. She told me that grandpa wrote her a few letters while he was in Europe, but he couldn't write while he was on the battlefield. My grandpa got injured in France, and was sent to a hospital in England. After a while he was sent to a hospital in Walla Walla, Washington. My grandma and her cousin went up to visit him there.
The conversation turned to her earlier life. She talked about riding in a horse drawn buggy to get to school. She told me that her dad courted her mom in a horse drawn buggy. She said that they each had their own horse and they rode them all the time. She told me about her older brother who was one day riding his horse, and fell off (I think he took a turn really fast) and hit his head on a rock. He didn't survive that accident. She also told me about helping raise her youngest brother. They are 9 years apart, and she was like a second mom to him.
Talking about all of this with my grandma was really special. I greatly enjoyed hearing her talk about her younger years. This summer I am going to visit her, and she has a book full of pictures, letters, and other things that she is going to show me. I can't wait!
John Larson and Carol Wisdom
John and Carol Larson are my paternal grandparents. John passed away in 2015, and Carol is still here with us. The night before I planned to call my grandma to ask her how she and grandpa met, she was admitted into the hospital for bleeding in her brain - she is now in a rehab center and is doing better, but it's going to be a long recovery for her. So I have to go off what little I already know for this story.
According to my dad, John and Carol met at a Church dance, or some sort of Church function. John asked Carol on a date, and she said yes. While they were on their date, my grandpa asked my grandma how old she was. She told him that she was 18 and asked him how old he was. He told her that he was 29. She told me, "If we had not been driving on the freeway, I would have gotten out of the car right then!" Three generations of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are very happy that they were on the freeway. They got married in the St. George, Utah temple a short time later.
I'm going down to St. George in April to visit, and I'm going to get to talk to her then, and I'll hopefully add to this story!
Even though these stories are about how my grandparents met and fell in love, I learned so much more than that. I learned about what life was like during that time. I learned about Church culture from Kent and Linda, I learned about life during WWII from Virginia, and I can't wait to see what I learn from Carol. I love my grandparents so much and I am so grateful for the relationships I have with each of them.
Note: I have the biographies of two of my deceased grandmothers. One I knew before she died, the other died before I was born. I'm going to look through them and do a second post on how they met their husbands, my grandfathers.
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