I need your help again.‏

Aunt Viola Smith Wing was anti-Mormon for many, many years. Her daughter, Verna, however, was very active and Weston was a sealer in the Provo Temple for more than 20 years. I  cannot make the funeral. I think Gordon is disappointed in me. I am sending Verna a card with money from all of us. If any of you, in Utah, can make the viewing tonight, please tell Gordon and Roberta that you are there in my behalf. If Deloris is there, tell her hello from me as well. Sorry. Thanks, Mom


Verna (Mrs. Weston) Garrett
795 East 150 North
Provo, Utah  84606

Phone 801-373-4425

Melanie: Love you. Sorry that you had such a tough decision. I would love to have gone, but unfortunately, I would have been late.
 Mel

Shawn: Sorry. I did not see this until late Friday night.

Myrna: That's why I said: "any of you, in Utah." I knew you would be too late and that it would really have been "Mormon time." ;) Love you!

Melanie: I hope it went really well. I am going to use your story of your life in my young women lesson tomorrow. I was thinking about you all day today. We had Stake Women's Conference and the Stake Relief Society President was telling about average women, who are more than average their families. The story she related was so like your own, that it brought tears to my eyes. I remember hearing one of the church leaders tell from the pulpit the story of their average mother. I was totally offended when he said that most of us had average mothers. I have never felt like you were average. I had to repent, because I realized he said, "most" of the congregation...that meant that some of us had above average mothers. As I was telling my Beehives last week about all the things that we watched you do, I made my 60 year old advisor smile and tear up...she said her mother was just like you...but, much older. :)


Thank you for praying for me. Thank you for teaching me how to cook, sew, clean, and sing.

I love you.
Mel

Myrna: You are my amazing woman. I honestly don't think, that if we were both your age, I could begin to keep up with you. I think Heavenly Father knew I needed a daughter just like you to bolster me up, hold my hand, dry my tears and calm me down. But most of all, I think He knew that I needed a good friend and you have always been that. Even when you were a little girl, you were my friend as well as my daughter. I am thankful that you paid me such a tribute. I have wondered so much the past few months if being what I am, and am still becoming, was good enough. I see so many things in my life that I need to repent for and so many days that I would like to live again hoping that I could take my experience back with me and would have the wisdom to do better. Garth, when he was on his death bed, said to me: "Myrn, do you think I have been good enough?" I told him, "You have been an idol of mine all of our lives together. How could you have been better and not have been translated?" I feel that way about you. How could you possibly be better than you are and not be translated? I do love you and admire you. Mom

Melanie Bolton: It's funny...I always have felt that way as well. Am I good enough? Do I do things that matter most? When my children are struggling, I think about the time I spent with them and wonder if I taught love enough, if I taught patience, diligence, perseverance enough. I remember hearing one of the leaders in our Stake remind us that we need to be patient with ourselves as well. I have often said that I was totally amazed that you turned out as well as you did. You had no real righteous father figure in your life, except Uncle Fred and some of your local leaders. There were good fathers who helped you to understand that you wanted a man like our Dad, one devoted to you and to our family. I know first hand how hard it is to make a marriage work. I am grateful that I had parents that prayed me to righteousness. Yes, you did the best you could with what you had. As we age, we get wiser and our decisions about what matters most change. I would have let Siovhan sing as loud as she wanted, the same note over and over and over, if I had known how much I would miss it when she wasn't home. I try to remember these lessons with Mikaela and I think that is why sometimes the older ones think the younger ones are spoiled, because with age comes the reality that not all things matter, some things are completely not worth the fight.


I hope you had an enjoyable day at the Temple. My advisor was just called to be a coordinator. I told her that I would do whatever I can to help her not feel too stressed, because I know what a hard calling that is. She serves all day at the temple, then helps me out on Wednesday nights for activities. I told her that she didn't need to kill herself to always be there, but she said that the activity nights are her favorite part of the calling....so of course she was going to come. That reminded me of you. :)

I hope that everything went well with the funeral and that you will be able to attend Kyle's court of honor. What a great legacy for you all to have four Eagle Scout grandsons, and a few more very close.
I love you.
Good night.
Mel

Shawn: Sorry, I didn't see the email until late Friday night.


Myrna wrote: I'm sorry also. The funeral was on Saturday morning and the viewing was Friday evening and Saturday a.m. I was hoping that you might get there because you are always so good to do that. I love you, Mom 

From Gordon About Kilroy Was Here

For the WWII generation, this will bring back memories. For you younger folks, it's trivia that is part of our American history. Anyone born in the mid-thirties is familiar with Kilroy. We didn't know why, but we had lapel pins with his nose hanging over the label and the top of his face above his nose with his hands hanging over the label. No one knew why he was so well known, but we all joined in! 

So who the heck was Kilroy?

In 1946 the American Transit Association sponsored a nationwide contest to find the real Kilroy, offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article. Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax, Massachusetts, had provable identity.

Mr. Kilroy was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war who worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy. His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework and got paid by the rivet. He would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn't be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark. Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time, which resulted in double pay for the riveters.

One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then he realized what had been going on. The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn't lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his checkmark on each job he inspected, but added KILROY WAS HERE in king-sized letters next to the check mark, and eventually added the sketch of the long nose peering over the fence. That nose became part of the Kilroy message.

Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks.  Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up when the hull was painted. With the war on, however, ships were leaving the Yard so fast that there wasn't time to paint them. As a result, Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced.

His message apparently rang a bell with the servicemen, because they picked it up and spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific. Before war's end, "Kilroy" had been here, there, and everywhere on the long overseas hauls to the war zones and beyond. To the troops outbound in those ships, however, it was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that someone named Kilroy had "been there first." As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, (then saying it was already there when they arrived.) 

Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had "already been" wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable.... (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest , the Statue of Liberty, the underside of l'Arc De Triomphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon !

As the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI's there). On one occasion U.S. servicemen reported seeing enemy troops painting-over the Kilroy logo!

In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference. Its' first occupant was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is this Kilroy, anyway?"

To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters. He won the trolley car, which he gave to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a playhouse in the Kilroy front yard in Halifax, Massachusetts.

So, now you know!

Knight Coat of Arms