Personal History VI -- Family Background-Lewis Side (updated)

Family Background– Lewis side (updated)
    The earliest Lewis for whom we have much knowledge is William Langston Lewis.  He and his family were living in Guilford County (now Rockingham) in 1773 just before the start of the Revolutionary War.  He was a signer of a petition regarding the location of the County Courthouse.  It is thought that he and his family were a part of group migration from coastal North Carolina.  He may have been born in England according to some sources and entered this continent in South Carolina.
    The Lewis ancestry appears to be largely from the British Isles, based on my own DNA tests and the surnames that appear on our genealogical history.  I suspect but have not proven that some of our ancestry was Scots-Irish, in addition to those who were from other parts of the British Isles.  This immigrant group was made up of families who originated in lowland Scotland, from worn-out land in the crossfire between England and Scotland, then were drawn to the Ulster province of Northern Ireland by British invitation to establish an antidote to Catholic dominance of Ireland but then abandoned, and who migrated in great masses to America in the 1700s, largely populating the upland South, and who contributed much to the ethos of this area of our country, a generally tough, self-reliant, feisty, independent, and not especially literate people.  Rockingham County in the North Carolina Piedmont has been identified as dominated by this culture during its early years.  The Scots-Irish people came to this country with allegiance to the Scotch Presbyterian kirk (church), but in the South many of their descendants gravitated to other Protestant churches, especially Baptist.  Names in our ancestry potentially with a Scots-Irish origin might include Robertson, Jackson, Johnson, Jones, Davis, Wilson, etc.
    During the Revolutionary War, William Langston Lewis was a volunteer and an officer in the Guilford County militia (the Guilford Rangers) which fought on the side of the American colonies.  He saw action in the battles for Cross Creek (Fayetteville) and Moore’s Creek bridge, was part of an expedition across the mountains to remove a threat by the Cherokee Nation (they had sided with the British), and fought in the decisive Battle of Guilford Courthouse, which badly damaged Cornwallis’ army and led to their surrender at Yorktown in 1781.
    William L. acquired ownership of several large tracts of land in the Rockingham County area as grants from the state of North Carolina.  This was land that the State confiscated from absentee British land-owners as part of the Americanizing of land titles by the North Carolina legislature during the war for independence.  He may have received some preferences in this due to his military service.  But he soon sold this property and then died prematurely leaving a widow and a number of children.
    William L.’s son John Penn Lewis had a farm on Matrimony Creek on the Henry County Virginia-Rockingham County North Carolina border.  The next Lewis generations then relocated to up on the Blue Ridge in Patrick County, Virginia, in a small community later called Vesta near the town of Meadows of Dan.  This was the living place of most for our Lewis family until my grandfather A. G. Lewis came west to Washington State in 1908.
    My grandfather, A. G.’s parents, Martin Elkanah Lewis and Letitia Mason, had eight children, including seven boys.  According to his grandson, Tom Newman, at some point, perhaps about 1886, Martin E. took his wife and younger sons to St. Louis, where he had a teaching job.  They stayed 4 years.  Letitia was sad and wanted to be near her family and returned to Virginia, while Martin E. went to Texas.  Letitia and the younger children were all living with Martin’s parents, William and Sarah Robertson Lewis, in the 1900 census, along with Letitia’s even more elderly mother, Ruth Philpott Mason.  Martin E. provided some support and returned home for visits from time to time.  That Martin E. was home in Virginia at the time of his father's death in 1914, we know because he supplied the death certificate information to the state of Virginia.  But he himself died in Dallas, Texas in 1919.
    Tom Newman was a son of Jettie, who was a the only sister of A. G., and my Dad’s first cousin.  He lived in Roanoke, Virginia.  He supplied quite a lot of Lewis genealogical information to my mother after she and my dad met him on one of their trips to Virginia after their retirement.  Wendy and I also got acquainted with their daughter Elaine while on our mission.  At that time, she was disabled and being cared for in a nursing home.  My mother called Elaine “my convert” because after their visits with her family, Elaine was taught by our missionaries and joined the Church.  Here is a short biographical sketch:
     Graduate of William Byrd High School in Vinton, VA and received a Batchelors of Science degree from Longwood College, Farmville, VA, with a major in History.  At graduation, she received a certificate to teach.  Diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at age 27.  Worked at the Passport Office in Washington, DC and for the U. S Postal Service (Roanoke Office). Retired with a medical disability.  Interests include reading and family history.  Was a convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1978.  Spent many years as a teacher and worker in the children's program of the Church.
     Obituary
NEWMAN, Nancy Elaine  Nov 13, 2019
November 8, 2019 Nancy Elaine Newman, 70, of Roanoke, Va., went to be with her Heavenly Father on Friday, November 8, 2019. She is survived by her loving brother-in-law, Jack Smith; and very special friend, Darla Anderson [from the Roanoke ward].  Services will be held at 2 p.m. on Friday, November 15, 2019, at Oakey's Vinton Chapel. Interment to follow at Fair View Cemetery.
    My grandmother, India Agee’s family, had lived in the Floyd/Montgomery County area of Virginia for a number of generations.  (Floyd County lies just northeast of Patrick County and was formed out of Montgomery County in 1831.)  The Agee name (pronounced A G just like the letters say) is French.  They were members of a Protestant religious group called the Huguenots.  The Huguenots suffered severe persecution at the hands of the Catholic majority in the late 16th century, and many escaped to Holland and England, and then immigrated to America.  Our ancestors lived initially in a Huguenot settlement in Manikin Town in Goochland County, Virginia, but from there, moved into the mountains of southwestern Virginia.  Religion-wise the Huguenots were Calvinist, but seemed not to have maintained a unique church for themselves in America.  Our Agee ancestors appeared to have found a religious home in the emerging Primitive Baptist faith.
    There is also a second Huguenot line further back in our Agee ancestry, with the surname of Bilbo or Bilbeau.
    There were also English lines in my grandma’s paternal ancestry.
    Many of the ancestors of my Grandma Lewis’ mother came from a German Lutheran background.  We found lots of records for them in the old Zion Lutheran church of the town of Floyd, in Floyd county and before that Montgomery country, Virginia.  The surnames included the names Gilham, Epperly (Eberle), Guttekinst, Sauer, Beheler.  Some of these early church records were in German.  I do not know in what time period these persons came to America.
    The marriage of A G Lewis to India Agee was the second for both of them.

My grandfather, A. G. Lewis
    Aubrey Gordon Lewis was born April 22, 1880 in Vesta, Patrick, Virginia, the son of Martin Elkanah Lewis and Letitia A. Mason.  He died 2 Feb 1950 in White Salmon, Klickitat, Washington.  He was buried in the Mt. Adams Cemetery, Glenwood, Klickitat, Washington.
    A.G.’s first wife was Laura Belle Justice who he married on 17 Apr 1902 in Meadows of Dan, Patrick, Virginia.
    Regarding Laura Belle Justice Lewis and a child born to A.G.'s first marriage, a letter from Eugene Newman, dated 6 Jul 1963, states "My mother [Jettie Lewis Newman] said that she [Laura Belle] died in Jan 1903 and the baby died and was not named."  However, our cousin Marylin Davis reported to my sister Dorothy that the baby lived, was cared for by relatives and when A.G. and India went west, to Washington state, they eventually lost track of the child.  "I asked her if she were interested in some of genealogy that we have been finding, and she said that once when she was sick, she had spent the day with Grandma and Grandpa Lewis.  She always wondered why she was so dark, and they told her that she had French ancestry through the Agees.  They were evidently talking about other things when Grandpa told her that he had been married before, and his wife, Laura Belle Justice, died in childbirth, leaving him with a baby girl.  He said that he had to work and was having to travel and couldn't care for her.  Her family took her, and he somehow lost touch with them because of his and their moves.  I had the impression that Grandma was in on this conversation, so must have thought all this was true.  It's strange that they would then tell our mother as she was collecting family history that this child was stillborn."  (Recorded by REL 3 Nov 2003, revised 29 Jul 2007.)
    Here is more discussion about this child.  Assuming that Marylin's report was true I attempted to see what if I could confirm from the family history records.  First, I tried to find Laura Belle's family origins.  Her marriage record named her mother as B. Justice.  No father was named.  Was she born out of wedlock?  The surname Justice was not common among families living in Patrick County and vicinity and seemed to have been spelled in more than one way, for example Jestes.  I found one large Justice family living in the area, that of John Justice and wife Mary Ann "Polly" Hollingsworth. They had at least 11 children, who appeared in the 1850 and 1860 census records, and whose birth years ranged from about 1840 to 1859.  John, the dad, appear to have died in the Civil War.  A 1870 census record remains for Polly and youngest children.
    Most of the other children established families in Patrick county or the near vicinity.  I was impressed that this was a family that struggled.  They were mostly not literate.  There were census years lacking records.  An teenage older sister was living away from home as a housekeeper for another family.  I found a record of an illegitimate child in one of the next-generation families.
    Then I paid more attention to the name of the youngest child of John and Polly, Elizabeth, born about 1859.  Could this be the B. Justice who was the mother of Laura Belle, the B standing for Betsy or Betty?  If true, that would probably confirm that Laura Belle was illegitimate, with no dad in the picture.  I have not yet discovered records for Elizabeth after 1870, nor have I found any records for Laura Belle before her marriage to my grandfather, on 17 Apr 1902. The marriage record gives her age as 18, indicating that she was born about 1884.  There should have been at least an 1880 census record for her mother and a 1900 census record for Laura Belle. (Remember that the records for the 1890 census were destroyed in a 1921 fire in the Commerce Department building in Washington, DC). But I have not been able to locate any records naming either of these two ladies and I have tried to document all the next generation Justice families, plus have gone through 1910 Patrick County census records line-by-line.
    I did find one possible lead.  I found an intriguing census record for a John and Polly Justice granddaughter, named Jerusha Ada or Addie Fain Justice Wilson.  Her mother was an older sister of Elizabeth, Louise Justice who married Daniel Fain.  In 1910
Ada and her husband, Joseph N. Wilson, were listed as having an adopted daughter Luellen, whose age was in line with the age of a possible daughter of A G and Laura Belle Lewis.  Here is the record:
1910 U S Census for Blacksburg, Montgomery, Virginia (Sheet 16A, hh# 200/210, 17 May)
Joseph N Wilson  Head M W age 35  Mg1 for 13 years   b.VA   Fa b.VA   Mo b.VA  Carpenter
Ada G Wilson     Wife F W age 31  Mg1 for 13 years 0 children   b.VA   Fa b.VA   Mo b.VA
Louellen Wilson  Adopted-Dau F W age 6   b.VA   Fa b.UNK   Mo b.UNK
    At this point I have not been able to find more records about this Louellen person.  Her adoptive mother died in 1918 and the records for her father are indecisive.  I have yet to find any later records for for Luellen Wilson or Louellen Lewis.  I considered that she might have died and be buried near her mother, but could find no death or record there.  Good Virginia death and marriage records exist for her whole lifetime but I did not find anything with her name.
    The following is a summary of the lives of A. G. and India, composed by my mother.
Aubrey and India (Agee) Lewis came to Glenwood, Klickitat County, with their three children in the Spring of 1908.  They were from Meadows of Dan in the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Southern Virginia.  Their ancestors had come from the British Isles before the Revolutionary War.  One branch of the family also came from France, and another from Germany by way of Pennsylvania.
    “Aubrey Lewis was born April 22, 1880 and India Agee, January 10, 1884.  They were married March 16, 1905.  They traveled by train to The Dalles, Oregon, and then by steamboat on the Columbia river to Lyle, Wash.  Then by wagon they went over the hills to the Glenwood valley.  At first they lived in a house on “Snake Island” near Lakeside, and A. G. drove a team freighting lumber to White Salmon for Ed Huffsmith.  They used to enjoy fishing for catfish in the old canal.
    “They bought some land out on Sage Flat and over the years cleared off the big pine trees, and later on farmed it.  Water was a big problem, especially in the late summer and when the snow pack was low some winters.  A.G. worked hard to get more water to the valley by helping to form Hell Roaring Ditch Co.  A canal was built to carry the water from Hell Roaring creek on Mt. Adams and some of the Big Muddy and smaller creeks down to the farms. It took years and much time and money to build but the valley really depends on it now.  Meanwhile he operated grocery stores for a living, three years in Centralia and then in Glenwood, where about 50 bands of sheep came through on the way to the Mt. Adams range and needed supplies.  In 1925 they moved to Bingen where they had a grocery store and a wholesale feed business for several years.  They bought groceries and feed by the carload, as trains were the main transportation and hardly anyone had trucks or cars.
    “When the irrigation water came through they moved back to the ranch for about ten years, then they sold out and spent their retirement in Bingen.  A.G. enjoyed going after the mail and visiting with old friends.  Everywhere they lived India had a garden and flowers as she had a natural talent for them.  She enjoyed having the family get together and loved to cook for them.  Through the years out in Glenwood they enjoyed going to the old church at Lakeside, especially on Mother's Day, when people would come from all over for a program and pot luck.  In the early days the children would play one-o-cat while the older folks were inside having services.
    “The children of the Lewises are: Nancy (Kidd), Clarence, Grace (Davis), Harold, Edna (Woosley), Russell, Virginia (O'Grady) and Lorene (Ladiges).  (Written about 1980 by Hazel Lewis) “
    Here is the obituary for Aubrey Gordon Lewis:
    RITES HELD FOR A.G. LEWIS
    Aubrey Gorden Lewis was born in Vesta, Virginia on April 22, 1880. He married India Agee, March 16, 1905 in Meadows of Dan, Virginia and they moved to Glenwood in 1908.
    He bought 80 acres of brush and timber from the state and cleared and improved the land.  Over the years he operated grocery stores in Centralia, Glenwood and Bingen.  In 1948 he sold the ranch and retired to Bingen. He passed away at Skyline Hospital in White Salmon on February 2.   In April of this year he would have been 80 years of age.
    He is survived by his wife India and three sons, Clarence of Glenwood, Washiigton, Harold of Bingen, Washington, Russell of American Lake; and five daughters; Mrs. Henry Ladiges Jr., of Glenwood, Mrs. M. J. O'Grady of Hermiston, Oregon, Mrs. Verley Woosley of Hood River, Mrs. W. M. Davis of Glenwood, Washington and Mrs. Walter Kidd of Portland, Oregon and 17 grandchildren.
    He is also survived by a brother, Elmer, and a sister, Mrs. Jettie Newman, both of Vesta, Virginia.
    The funeral was held last Friday, February 5 at Gardners; burial was at the Glenwood cemetery and Kenneth O. Shellbach officiated.
(The Enterprise, White Salmon, WA., February 11, 1960, page 8)

My Grandmother, India Ada Melinda Agee:
    India Ada Melinda Agee was born 10 Jan 1884 in Floyd County, Virginia to John Thomas Agee and Mary Gilham Epperly.  She died 1 Jun 1966 in Bingen, Klickitat, Washington and was buried in the Mt. Adams Cemetery, Glenwood, Klickitat, Washington
    Here is a record of first marriage, to William Percy “Billy” Pendleton.
     Marriage: 23 Jul 1898. India A. Agee (age 16, of Floyd Co.) and Wm P. Pendleton (age 21, of Floyd) s/ of J. W. & Rosa B. Pendleton (Floyd Co. Va. Marriages).
    Notice that her age was given as age 16.   With a birthdate of Jan. 10, 1884, she was really only 14 when she first married.  This age was not too unusual for girls in that time and place.  The reported age of 16 probably means that she had parental permission.
    A year and a half later, 29 Mar 1900, Billy and India had a daughter that they named Nancy Olivia.
    Billy Pendleton died 9 Oct 1903 in Floyd County, Virginia, I understand, of tuberculosis, leaving India as the 19 year old Widow Pendleton, with a 3 year old daughter.  India married A. G. Lewis on March 16, 1905.  They first lived in a cabin on a hillside which was in Floyd County but just a few hundred feet north of the Patrick county line with closest town being Meadows of Dan.  While there she bore two more children, my father Clarence and my aunt Gracie.
    I visited the site of that cabin in 1901 after some meetings in Washington D.C.  Agee relatives in the area took me to the place.  We drove about an eighth of a mile south from the Mabry mill on the Blue Ridge parkway and pulled off on the side of the parkway. It was an easy hike of about 150-200 yards along the side of the hill westward to the site of the Lewis cabin.  I saw the remains of the fireplace and chimney of the Lewis cabin.  Foundation timbers were visible. The house was perhaps 15x20 feet in size.  I think I recall someone saying that it had two rooms.  A short way from the back of the house, I observed nearby a large Laurel (Rhododendron) bush and also a small gully just in front of the Laurel bush. That was the start of a small spring where the family got their water. It trickled down (northward) to a creek called  the Laurel Fork.  This site was east of the divide in Appalachians (the top of the ridge ), so the Laurel Fork, fed into Big Reed Island Creek, which ran west to the New River which became the Kanawha River and flowed through West Virginia to the Ohio River, which emptied into the Mississippi River, which flowed to the Gulf of Mexico, 1000 miles away.
    On my visit I also was able to observe a nearby site on the Laurel Fork where India’s father, John Thomas Agee, had owned and operated a grist mill that served farmers in the surrounding area and also see an old Agee family cemetery, which contained many family graves.
    This was her obituary:
DEATH CALLS INDIA LEWIS WHO WAS GIVEN CHOICE OF LIVING IN BINGEN
    Funeral services for Mrs. India Ada Lewis, 82, Bingen were held at 1 p.m. Tuesday, June 7 at Gardner's Chapel, White Salmon. The Rev. Kenneth Schellbach of Clatskanie, Ore. officiated. Burial was in Mt. Adams Cemetery, Glenwood.
    Bearers were sons and sons-in-law: Clarence Lewis, Harold Lewis, Verley Woosley, Henry Ladiges, Wallace Davis and Maurice O'Grady.
    India Ada Agee (who chose to live in Bingen because she loved it) was born Jan. 10, 1884 at Floyd, Virginia and was married to the late Aubrey Gordon Lewis on March 16, 1905 at Meadows of Dan, Va. where India's father owned a grist mill that is still in operation -- or was when Mr. and Mrs. Lewis celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in 1955.
    In April 1908 Mr. and Mrs. Lewis left their home on the crest of the Blue Ridge Mts. and moved west to Glenwood Valley in Washington where "A.G." bought 80 acres of sagebrush and timber for the state for $1085 and sold it 40 years later for $16,000.
    After freighting lumber and produce from Glenwood to Bingen from 1908-11, "A.G." moved his family to Centralia where he ran a store for three years before returning to Glenwood and building a house.
    The following fall, he started a grocery and feed store in Glenwood which he operated until 1915 [REL: 1925 is correct] when the Lewis family moved to Bingen to put their children in a better school [REL: I am doubtful about this latter being a motivation since he moved back to Glenwood while Lorene was still school age] and started another grocery which he sold to Tom Norby in 1936 to return to his beef and dairy ranch in Glenwood.
    When illness forced him to give up farming in 1948 "A.G." told India the she could choose their next place to live. She chose Bingen. After Mr. Lewis died on  Feb. 2, 1960 she continued to occupy their home where she died of a heart attack Wednesday night, June 1.
    She is survived by eight children, 17 grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren and one sister, Mrs. Frances Colburn of Meadows of Dan, Va.
    Her children, in chronological order, are Nancy, Mrs. Walter Kidd of Portland; Clarence of White Salmon; Grace, Mrs. W.M. Davis, Glenwood; Harold, postmaster of Bingen, [WA]; Edna, Mrs. Verley Woosley, Bingen; Russell, Spanaway, [WA], Virginia, Mrs. [Maurice] J. O'Grady, Hermiston, Ore.; and Lorene, Mrs. Henry Ladiges, Jr., Glenwood.
(The Mt. Adams Sun, Bingen, WA., June 9, 1966, page 4)

What I Remember about My Lewis Grandparents
    I remember my Grandma Lewis as being always jolly, positive, accepting, and encouraging.  She seemed pleased to have her grandchildren around.  Sometimes we were allowed, when little, to sleep over at her house all in a big bed in an upstairs bedroom.  She made it a happy gathering place for her family.
    She always kept a garden, and grew as much as she could, in the cold Glenwood climate, of vegetables like string beans and corn to feed her family.
    Usually she was in the kitchen.  But she had a card game called Pitch that she liked to play with us.
    I think that she was inwardly religious and approved when members of her family did religious things, although she did not attend service regularly at the Glenwood church.  She might have attended regularly, if someone had been more forward to provide transportation since she herself didn’t drive.  The Glenwood church was about a mile away from their house.
    When still living in Glenwood, before moving to Sunnyside in Yakima valley, her sister Olivia would pick her up for Sunday school.  I have a remembrance of the pair sitting together and both singing the hymns in high pitched squeaky voices.  I think my mother explained that this was the style used in their old Primitive Baptist congregations in Virginia.
    I understand that she was never baptized as a Primitive Baptist.  They were rather fussy and only baptized persons in their adulthood, and then only after the person had had some sort of conversion experience.  I also understand that they have had a terrible time holding on to their youth, and in many places in the South today there are unused Primitive Baptist churches and many less congregations than there used to be.  In fact, there was such an empty Primitive Baptist church on a major rural intersection no more than a mile from our Mt. Zion Branch building in our mission. Also, the Primitive Baptist church that Claudia Agee Harris attended in Meadows of Dan was only occasionally used, only when traveling ministers of the church came through. (Claudia was the daughter of Eden Agee, brother to Grandma Lewis.  Wendy and I were acquainted with her daughter Virginia Hodges, and visited her in Roanoke, VA, while on our mission.)
    Later, while living in Bingen, our missionaries found Grandma Lewis, and tried to teach her.  My mother said that she was positive and liked the elders and the doctrine they were teaching, until she found out she would have to give up her coffee to join, and that ended any further discussion.
    My cousins liked our Grandma a lot, and invented a name for her–Joy Joy Bunny.  We also had a name for our Grandpa–Skunky.  Sometimes when we saw him we would hold our noses when he came into the room.  The emphasis in our interactions with our Grandpa was almost entirely joking and teasing.  I recall that he sometimes played tricks on unwary grandchildren.  For example, he got a couple of forks from the kitchen and had a child sit down on the floor–it was linoleum– with legs spread apart.  Then he poured some flour or created a puddle of water in between the child’s legs.  He had the child take a fork in each hand with the tines downward.  He had a towel or rag in his hand.  He then challenged the child to keep him from wiping up the mess, and maybe feinted moving in to do this which the child generally resisted by poking at his hand with a fork.  Then quickly he would grab the child by the feet and pull them through the mess so that their bottom end and pants wiped up the water or flour.  I would never allow him to trick me, but some of my cousins fell for his jokes.
    I sometimes compared his personality to a character call “Boss Hog” in an old TV show called the Dukes of Hazard.  He was loud and obnoxious in a Southern way.  He retained his Southern drawl throughout his life.  But he had men friends who liked him and could laugh and joke with them.
    These were the Lewis children, in order of birth:
    1. Nancy Olivia Pendleton, born 29 Mar 1900 in Burks Fork Dist., Floyd, Virginia.
She married Walter E. Kidd  23 Jun 1926, in Vancouver, Clark, Washington.  They had no children.  She died 28 May 1981 in Clackamas County, Oregon.
    Although her father was William Pendleton, she was raised as a member of the Lewis family.  Aunt Nancy qualified herself to teach school and I believe she was a much loved elementary school teacher in Portland, Oregon.  I had special feelings about her also, because she also sent me a birthday card, and seemed to take a personal interest in me (and I suppose each of the other cousins also).  Aunt Nancy was a religious person, and attended some kind of Bible church in Portland.
    Her marriage seemed a little strange.  They lived apart most of the time.  Walter was an academic type and eventually acquired a Ph.D. in English literature.  He taught at various universities across the country.  He would usually come back to their home in Portland during summer vacations.
    2. Clarence Monroe Lewis, born 24 Jan 1906 in Floyd County Virginia (near Meadows of Dan).  Married Hazel Lufkin Davenport 18 Jan 1931 in Portland, Multnomah, Oregon.  They had three children, Donald, Robert, and Dorothy.  He died 14 Sep 1990.
    3. Grace Mary Lewis, born 31 Dec 1907 in Floyd County Virginia (near Meadows of Dan).  Married Wallace Marion Davis 31 May 1930 in Vancouver, Clark, Washington.  She had two children, Marylin and Evelyn.  She died 20 Mar 1983, in The Dalles, Wasco, Oregon.
    Aunt Gracie went to college and got a teacher’s certificate and was my first grade teacher.  She taught this class in Glenwood Schools for many years.  She was a member of the Presbyterian church, and served on the board of  Elders of the Glenwood church. Wallace ran a dairy farm in Glenwood.  I recall that he became increasingly unhappy and difficult over the years and a trial to Gracie and Evelyn.
    Dorothy and I were good friends to Marylin (note the unusual spelling) and Evelyn and liked to be with them at out Grandma’s place, although they were several years older than us.  They were both pretty girls and popular at school, especially Evelyn.  Marylin was engaged to be married and lost her fiancé to a tragic drowning.  She married another, but did not have any children.  Her husband died young.  She had a lot of love for and was close to nieces and nephews of her husband.
    Evelyn contracted epilepsy in her later teens years and began to have major seizures.  These were never effectively controlled.  She lived with her parents and became increasingly debilitated from falls and from the epilepsy over the years until she passed away at age 55.
    4. Harold Wilson Lewis, born 5 Nov 1913 in Glenwood, Klickitat, Washington.  Married Fern  Janet Baker, 28 Aug 1940 in Vancouver, Clark, Washington.  They had one son, Bruce.  Harold died 21 Mar 1996, in Hood River, Hood River, Oregon.
    Harold served in the military in World War II and was postmaster in Bingen, for many years.  I do not recall much else about them.
    5. Edna Letitia Lewis, born 7 Aug 1915, in Glenwood, Klickitat, Washington. Married 1) Edwin Harris (divorced, no children), and 2) Verley Roosevelt “Wig” Woosley, 31 Dec 1936 in Vancouver, Clark, Washington.  They had two children, Roger and Terry.  She died 18 May 1994 in Vancouver, Clark, Washington.
    I remember Edna as being a nice and kindly person.  She and her husband Wig were active members in some Protestant church.
    We liked Roger a lot.  I remember staying at his house a time or two when his family lived in Hood River.  Roger was always friendly and outgoing and fun to be with as a young man.  We have become reacquainted with him and his wife at family reunions.
    6. Russell Thomas Lewis, born 7 Apr 1917, in Glenwood, Klickitat, Washington.  Never married.  Died 5 Mar 1991, in Tacoma, Pierce, Washington.
    Uncle Russell became disabled because of his World War II experiences in the South Pacific and spent his entire adult life in an institution for veterans, in American Lake, Washington.
    7. Virginia Lillian Lewis, born 21 Jul 1919, in Glenwood, Klickitat, Washington. Married Maurice James “Micky” O’Grady, 4 Sep 1937, in , Skamania, Washington.  They had seven children, Judith, Barbara, Maurice Jr., Maureen, Dennis, Terence, and Karen.  She died 28 Sep 1994, in Silverton, Marion, Oregon.
    The dad, Micky, was a barber.  For much of the time when I was younger they lived in Hermiston, Oregon, then later in Portland.  We knew Judy and Barbara a little as they were closest to our own age.  Judy was trained as a nurse and married a doctor who was raised in Magna, Utah.  I recall that he had attended Judge Memorial High school, then went to medical school in Oregon.
    8. Anna Lorene Lewis, born 25 Jan 1924, in Glenwood, Klickitat, Washington. Married Henry Carl Ladiges, Jr., in Vancouver, Clark, Washington.  They had three children, Kathleen, Warren, and Anita.  She died 13 Apr 2018 in Glenwood, Klickitat, Washington.
    I remember Lorene as being friendly and kind.  She hosted Memorial Day Lewis family reunions at their farm in Glenwood.  We became reacquainted with her and her children, as we attended some of these reunions.  I also formed an adult friendship with Kathleen in the last few years.

Carried Along

Carried Along
    Wendy and I woke up on Monday, May 11th, both having had a restless night and feeling something was wrong.  I had felt light headed or dizzy, my hands were clammy, I felt weak.  Wendy suggested that in spite of social distancing policies we were trying to follow, I should see a doctor.    But which doctor?  There was my GP, Dr. Gale.  I also had my cardiac doctor, Dr. Carter, and his team as a possibility.  At this point, I experienced a really warm, good feeling about contacting my cardiac team.
    I called their number and was able to get an appointment to visit with one of Dr. Carter’s PAs, Jennifer Butcher, who has been following my case recently  for 2:40 that afternoon in their Orem office.
    In that appointment, we talked some about my symptoms and she looked at my record and suggested that it might be timely to do some in-depth evaluation of my heart’s functioning that hadn’t been done for a couple of years.  She suggested that we do what is called a cardiac stress test and an echo cardiac test, and I was set up with appointments to get this testing in the next week or so.  She also proposed that they set me up with a heart monitor for a few days to see how my heart was beating.  Like earlier that morning I had a strong warm feeling that the heart monitor was the right move.  They had one available, and she attached the leads.  To facilitate the testing with the monitor, she asked me to temporarily discontinue a medication that I have been taking, metropolol, to smooth out my heart beat.  At one point in the conversation, knowing my history Jennifer opined that the time may be coming soon when I need a pace-maker.  We went home, planning to wear the monitor for four days, day and night, looking toward further testing.
    On Tuesday, May 12th, we got up about 8 am.  Wendy checked our phone messages, we had turned the ringers off so as not have our sleep interrupted, and I had one as of 12:40 am, saying this was the heart monitoring station, that I had just flat-lined for 5 ½ seconds and that I should go immediately to hospital emergency.  In a few moments, Shauna Whatcott, my other cardiac PA, called.  She and Jennifer were together at an office.  She said that they didn’t like the flat-lining and that I should see Dr. David Wang (pronounced Wong), who is an electro-cardiac specialist.
    I called his office and got an appointment for the following Tuesday.  I communicated this to Shauna/Jennifer.  They soon let me know that Dr. Wang could see me this Wednesday at 2 pm.  They said they would compile a complete record of my cardiac history and get it to him to review.  It would include another 24 hours of the record made by the monitor I was wearing.  They also cancelled the appointments for the cardiac stress test and echo cardiac test.
    On Wednesday, May 13th, we visited with Dr. Wang in his Provo office.  He said I had flat-lined some more in the last 24 hours and one of the episodes in the night extended for 10 seconds.  He said I needed a two- fold procedure.  First was what is called an ablation which is to correct the top of the heart misfiring and making the beat inconsistent.  To do this they go in through blood vessels in my groin with catheters to my heart and ablate (cauterize) places to stop them from misfiring.  And second, they would then install a pacemaker to regulate the heartbeat.   He was able to find a time on Friday afternoon to do these procedures.  He assured us that they have a better than 98% success rate with these procedures.
    My reaction as was repeat of the earlier feelings–this is the right thing to do.  I really felt a little like President Eyring expressed in a recent biographic book.  I felt “carried along.”
    On Friday, May 15th we got to Utah Valley Hospital just before 1 pm. Wendy wasn’t allowed inside, so she dropped me off at the main door to the new tower building and went home.  After quite a bit of prep work, I got into the operating room at about 2 pm and awakened at a  little after 4 pm in the recovery room.  The report was that the procedures went well.
    I stayed overnight and was released to come home in the late morning Saturday.  I have a pacemaker.  There is a monitoring system, with a box in our bedroom, sending in reports during the night about the performance of the pacemaker.  For a few weeks, I am wearing a big heavy-duty strap around my chest and left upper arm to keep me from raising that arm to where I put pressure on and pull out the leads that were placed in my heart.  I also am not supposed to do any lifting with my left arm.  This will go on about a month.
    I am feeling stronger and have more energy every day.  There are some other symptoms that are gone or nearly gone also, some that I didn’t even associate problems with heart, the lack of energy and endurance, light-headedness, dizziness, shortness of breath, an achy feeling in my chest.  I am trying to go for a walk each day with Wendy and enjoy being outside again.  I feel so blessed and “carried along” to have had this restoration of energy and life.  Many thanks to the Lord.

Personal History V. Persons of Special Influence in My Life

Personal History V. Persons of Special Influence in My Life

Mozart C. (Moz) Burles
    He was the White Salmon Branch President during my teen years.
    From what I know, President Burles was raised in Provo, as a member of the Church and believe at some early point that he received the Melchizedek Priesthood.  As a young man, he left for California, and worked in the movie industry.  From things I have learned about him, I have assumed that he spent a number of years not living the Church’s standards.  More about that later.
    He arrived in White Salmon as an employee of the company that owned the movie theaters in Bingen and White Salmon, the Canyon and the Cameo, to manage these places.
    We knew him when he started to visit us about 1950.  It appears that he had assigned himself to be the home teacher for our family.  He came faithfully every month, as I recall, usually during the daytime, such as Saturday morning.  I do not think that he made an appointment, but we were usually home anyway.  And we loved his visits.  He was accepting and so very enthused about the Church and what was happening in the Branch.
    After he had been visiting us for a little while, he discovered that my mother and I were both compulsive readers.  He began to bring church books for us to borrow and read from the Branch Library.  The story behind these books was interesting.  A young man from White Salmon had joined the military. While in the service, he met another soldier who introduced him to the Church and he was baptized.  He came home on leave and introduced himself to the Branch.  At that time, Deseret Book or Bookcraft, publishers of books about our Church, were offering a “Book of the Month” program, in which they mailed out a new book every month, giving subscribers the option to read the book and keep it.  He was anxious to build for himself a good library of Church books, but he had a problem.  In his travels in the military, he did not have a place to store all his books.  Therefore, he made an arrangement with the leaders of the White Salmon Branch to send his books to the Branch library to keep for him until his term of service was completed.  He gave permission for persons in the branch to check out and read any of these books.  So, President Burles was able to have a constant supply of new Church books to bring to us, leave with us for a month or two, then return them to the Branch library.
    What a blessing.  My mother would leave them sitting on a table in the living room and since they were books, I would pick them up and read them.  At one point, I remember estimating that before I graduated from high school I had read as many as 40 Church books.
    I also saw President Burles at the Canyon theater many times during my teen years.  We had no movie theater in Glenwood, but one of the joys of playing on the various Glenwood high school sports teams was that our coaches often would indulge us, and as we were traveling back home from a game, particularly those in Oregon, like Cascade Locks, Dufer, or Mosier, where we had to cross the Hood River Bridge to head back home to Glenwood, we would pass the Canyon theater and they would let us stop for a show.  Typically everyone gbuy their ticket and would hurry through the lobby to take a seat in the theater.  Meanwhile I would go hunting for President Burles.  Sometimes he would be in the box office selling tickets, sometimes up in the projection room.  I would find him and we would talk Church for two hours.  It was so fun.  He always called me Robert, and shared some of the challenges he had as Branch President and we talked doctrine.  He just was a good friend and supporter to me.
    In the summers of my 15th  and 16th years, I worked in the haying all summer for Ollie Kreps.  He paid me in a lump sum in one check when the summer was over.  My parents helped me establish a checking account of my own to keep my savings.   Each year I wrote a check for tithing on my earnings and presented it to President Burles when I saw him next.  And he seemed so pleased.
    He was instrumental in helping me get baptized.  I was just 17 years old.  It occurred like this.  I had been praying since I was eight years old that I could be baptized into the Church.  On a Saturday, the day following my graduation from high school, President Burles, showed up at our house in Glenwood with an invitation.  “Next Saturday at 5 p.m., our branch has scheduled a baptismal service at the Hood River wardhouse.  Why don’t you and Dorothy come and be baptized?”  My mother persuaded my Dad to bring us to that service, and we were baptized.  And I was confirmed a member of the Church that night by President Burles.  
    I laid out of school for the next year and he was excited to learn I had been accepted to attend BYU in 1957.  I still was not attending church at the Branch regularly.  But before I left, he said, “We need to get you some priesthood before you go to school.”  I went down to the Branch again, and they sustained me to receive the Aaronic Priesthood and I was ordained a Deacon by one of the Counselors, Brother Bammes, on 5 Jun 1955.
    At first, President Burles answered to the President of the Northwestern States Mission in Postland, then latter to the Mid-columbia Stake President.  Sometimes he shared with me some of the dilemmas he had to keep the work going.  Once he said that “They tell me that I shouldn’t give callings or assignments to persons who are not fully living the gospel.”  I assume he was speaking about word of wisdom or tithing.  Then he said, “But if I didn’t ask them to do these things, they wouldn’t get done at all.”
    Maybe in some respects, he was speaking about himself.  Once he told me about getting his endowments.  The closest temple was Idaho Falls, and the Branch Presidency determined that they were going to take their youth there to do baptisms.  They made the long trip and the young people were getting dressed.  The temple president had greeted them, and then said, ”While your youth are in the baptistry, why don’t you do an endowment?”  President Burles explained that he had not yet received his endowments.  The Temple President said then he could go through the endowment session for his own self.  President Burles expressed that he did not have a recommend to get his endowments and he wasn’t sure he was worthy.  The Temple President replied, “If you are worthy to be a Branch President, you are worthy to get your endowments.”  So he received his endowments that day.
    He was very helpful and encouraging to me about serving a mission.  When I started my sophomore year at BYU I began to have feeling of indebted to the Lord for the blessings I had received by being in the Church, and that I should try to share these blessings by serving a mission.  Young men were being called at age 20 then.  When I came home for Christmas vacation I sought out Pres. Burles and discussed my feelings and desires.  I said that I thought with my summer job, I could stay and work about 6 months and have enough savings to support myself.  He said that they had never sent a missionary out before but promised he would find out all that was needed to do that.  And he did.  By midsummer he had all the forms and instructions, and we carried them out and I soon had my call.
    While on my mission, I learned more about President Burles background and history prior to being Branch President.  I was serving in the town of Dauphin, Manitoba, Canada.  We had Sunday School, but were a part of the branch that was at Brandon, 165 miles south.  About once a month, a member of the Brandon Branch Presidency would come to our Sunday School as visitors.  One of these times the visitor was one of the counselors and I found that this brother was raised in Cardston, and served a mission in the United States, in the Northwestern States mission.  Not only that but he had served in White Salmon, Washington.  It was 1948 and he and his companion were trying to get a Sunday School started for a few scattered members who lived in that area.  They were looking for a priesthood holder who could conduct the meetings.  He said that there was one who was an elder, a Moz Burles, a single man, who ran the theater and lived by himself in a what had been an old motel with a kitchenette.  He said that the man had a drinking problem and on Sundays they would go to his place early and work with him to “sober him up” so he could conduct the Sunday School later in the day.  Did I know him?  I was amazed to hear this.  It seemed unbelievable.
    After I had served my mission and again was at the branch, I visited with President Burles and as tactfully as I could, asked him about this revelation I had had from my mission.  He confirmed its truth.  He had this experience with the Sunday School that the elder s had provided, and just love it so much, that he worked at changing.  With every change, he loved the Church more and more.  He told me of an experience he had that put the final seal on his cleaning up his life.  He said he loved the church so much that that was all he wanted to talk about.  He was one of the businessmen in the town of White Salmon and they all had good relationships with each other.  Every business morning, about 45 minutes before they opened their stores they all met for coffee at the local restaurant.  He was sitting at the counter with a bunch of these businessmen, each with their cup of coffee, excitedly telling them how wonderful his church was.  He looked down at his own coffee cup, and thought, “This is not consistent with what I am telling my friends.”  He never broke the Word of Wisdom again.
    But he seemed to have this wonderful empathy for people and their struggles.  And he was so good for me, not pushing, but cheering for and reinforcing every positive thing I did in my life.

Paul T. McNutt
    Paul McNutt came to Glenwood for the last perhaps three years of my high school and served both as the head of our school musical program, bandmaster and choral director, but also as superintendent of schools.  The family moved to some other a coupe of years after I left for college and I had no further contact with them. 
    Dr. McNutt helped shape in several ways in my educational development and also the shaping of my understanding of life itself.  He presented to me a model of an educated Christian man.  Education-wise I remember him saying that her held two doctorates, one in music and the other, I assume, in educational administration.  I am not sure why a man with these attainments would come to Glenwood, but I think he was a sort of an adventurer who wanted to experience, along with his family, a wide variety of things of this life.  He had a wife and five children, three teenage boys and two younger girls. The oldest boy Ron was in my class, and we became friends.  I am not very sure of Dr. McNutt’s history, but know that the boys were his sons from an earlier marriage.  How he came to have custody I do not know, since their mother had remarried and was living in California.  I did a little research and found this record for the original family in 1940:
     1940 U S Census for Webster, Hamilton, Iowa (Sheet 2B, hh# 38, 5 Apr)
Street: 856 ½ First
Residence in 1935: Salina, KS
Paul T McNutt        Head M W age 28 Md  Ed: 4 years college  b.KS  Music teacher, Public School
Thelma H McNutt  Wife F W age 26 Md   Ed: 4 years HS   b.KS 
Ronald J McNutt    Son M W age 3    b.KS
Charles N McNutt  Son M W age 1    b.IO
Michael N McNutt  Son M W age 3/12 b.IO
    Apparently, soon after this time he volunteered for the military and served most of the war years in the Coast Guard.  He married Margaret, his wife that we knew, in Florida in 1944 and they had two younger daughters.  What happened to the first marriage to Thelma and how or when the care of his boys became his I do not know.  When we knew them in the 1950s, they seemed to be a happy and united family of seven.
    The first couple of years in Glenwood the family lived in what we called the Teacherage, a house next to the school grounds supplied by the school district.  Then during a summer he and the boys built a home for themselves.  Seemingly he was trying to make sure that his sons learned the manual arts and I recall them saying that they had the family goal to build a new house for themselves wherever they lived.  I was impressed that Dr. McNutt valued and combined both academic and manual learning.  Here was this “larger-than-life” person with two doctorates, who knew everything about music and most other subjects, giving equal value in his life to sawing boards and hammering nails.  This suggested to me that all forms of labor were perhaps of equal value.
    I was grateful, even fascinated, for the insights about music I got from Dr. McNutt.  One significant idea was that a person’s religious experiences was enhanced through sacred music.  Music appeals to one’s feelings and emotions and therefore may deepen a person’s faith and spirituality.
    Dr. McNutt was a member of the Presbyterian Church and  a believing and practicing Christian.  He is the only non-LDS person I have ever known who paid a full tithing.  The family quickly fit into the Glenwood Church, which was nominally Presbyterian, and he began to try to help in its work.  He volunteered to use his choral music training to create a youth choir in the church and brought several young people from the school choir into participation who normally didn’t attend church meetings.  I participated also and became more appreciative of the religious nature and value of historical choral music.
    He and his wife also initiated a Christian youth program for the church.  It followed a structure of programs found in other larger Presbyterian congregations.  It was called Westminster fellowship.  It was for older teens and we met monthly in the McNutt home.  In these meetings, we discussed Christian behaviors and commitments and morality at a teen level.  I found it interesting and perhaps reinforcing for living a life that was clean and full of service.
    At one point after a church meeting, Dr. McNutt found me and asked if I would like to be baptized in the Presbyterian church.  He said this in a gentle and  non-pressureful sort of way.  I responded, “No thank you. I intend to be baptized in the Mormon church.”   Thinking back, I am not sure why that response came to me so clearly but I think it helped me to clarify this objective.
    I took his question as a friendly gesture, and he did not seem offended by my response or endeavor to press me further.
    Overall, I think it was valuable to me to see in Dr. McNutt an intelligent, educated person who also was sincere believing Christian.  His approach to religion helped me to respect positives in the faith commitments by persons of other religions.  And he also set an example of caring and respectfulness to me personally.

Paul C. Child
    President Child was my major mission president, and played a sort of Grandpa role in my life.  He helped me particularly with my mission finances when my personal savings account ran out of money, taught me a love of the scriptures and how study them, and gave me a closer personal understanding of those in general Church leadership.  After my mission, I visited him and Sister Child several times in their home, and he performed my marriage to JoAnn in the Salt Lake Temple.
    In the early 1920s, President Child was serving as a Bishop in the Pioneer Stake on the south and west side of Salt Lake City and called Harold B. Lee as his counselor.  Soon after President Lee was called into the stake High Council, and then as Stake President, calling President Child as one of his Counselors.  This stake was hard hit by the Great Depression, and these stake leaders aggressively built a welfare program.  Presidents Lee and Child were asked by the President of the Church to give leadership to build the welfare program in the general church and their stake program  became the model for the Church-wide program in 1936.  Elder Lee was then called as an apostle and President Child served a term as President of the Pioneer Stake.  President Thomas S. Monson grew up in that stake.
    An anecdote from a conference talk by President Monson illustrates President Child’s love of the scriptures.  Pres. Monson reported:
    “As I approached my 18th birthday and prepared to enter military service in World War II, I was recommended to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood. Mine was the task to telephone President Paul C. Child, my stake president, for an interview. He was one who loved and understood the holy scriptures, and it was his intent that all others should similarly love and understand them. As I knew from others of his rather detailed and searching interviews, our telephone conversation went something like this:
    “Hello, President Child. This is Brother Monson. I have been asked by the bishop to visit with you relative to being ordained an elder.”
    “Fine, Brother Monson. When can you see me?”
    Knowing that his sacrament meeting time was 4:00 and desiring minimum exposure of my scriptural knowledge to his review, I suggested, “How would 3:00 be?”
    His response: “Oh, Brother Monson, that would not provide us sufficient time to peruse the scriptures. Could you please come at 2:00 and bring with you your personally marked set of scriptures?”
    ...It was a long interview, but I have never forgotten it. At the conclusion, President Child put his arm around my shoulder and said, “You are now ready to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood.” Remember that the Lord blesses the person who serves Him.”
(Thomas S. Monson, “Our Sacred Priesthood Trust,” April 2006 General Conference)
    “Perusing the scriptures” was so President Child.  I heard that phrase many times.  I think it meant to study in-depth, to compare these verses with other verses, to make notes and cross-references.  His standard works were filled with his cross-reference entries.  Missionary lore said that he wore a set of scriptures out from use and notations every five years.  Then he copied all his cross-references and notations into a new set, and willed the older set to one of his children.
    We understood that these voluminous cross-references had been developed in concert with Harold B. Lee, then in 1958 one of the senior apostles of the Church, when he and President Child were in Bishoprics and Stake Presidencies together.  We had heard that these two men had lived in an era when a person could take their scriptures with them to the temple.  They viewed the endowment as a fifth standard work and studied it in connection with their scriptural study.  The left their scriptures in their lockers while going through a session and then were able to arrange for a place to study together.  Part of their study, according to more of our missionary lore, was to cross reference the temple ceremony wording with the other standard works.  I myself recall President Child in a missionary meeting speak of the endowment, and saying, “The ministers of other churches don’t know it, but its all there,” as he patted his Bible with his hand.
    We missionaries experienced what might be called “scripture envy” when we saw his standard works.  They didn’t lie flat.  The outer edges of his pages were raised an inch or two wider than at the binding.  Then some missionary discovered how we could make our standard works look like the President’s.  You would need to go through each book page by page and crush each single page with your hand.  Soon every elder’s scriptures looked just like the President’s.  We said this would also help us find scriptures more quickly, if we were in a discussion with someone else.
    President Child’s connection with Elder Lee blessed us one year as Elder Lee was the general authority who toured our mission.  We were privileged to have him testify of the experience which gave him an apostle’s witness of the Savior, and also to have a personal interview with Elder Lee, who we were pretty sure would soon be the President of the Church.
    As President Child performed our marriage, he gave me some important specific advice that has informed my personal actions and influenced my understanding of moral principles.  As he spoke to us prior to performing the ceremony, he spoke directly to me saying that until this time I had been free to have a romantic interest in a variety of women, but now, in marriage, my desires needed to be only to my wife. 
    I pondered the meaning of this direction.  I understood that it was my responsibility and my capability to channel and focus all of my romantic and sexual desires toward JoAnn and JoAnn alone.  And it seemed to assure me that I had the power personally to accomplish this, through faith and through my own agency and mental strength (my own Mindful Awareness or Impartial Spectator).  If ever I had different thoughts I was to immediately dismiss them as being unworthy or inconsistent with who I was or intended to be and with the promises that I had made.  And I would not allow these kinds of thoughts to in any way define my own identity.  I applied these insights in my general understanding professionally of human nature and capability.

Louis Poore
    Louis Poore when our Bishop when we bought our home and moved to Taylorsville.  In his professional life, he was a math instructor at SLCC.  He was strong and humble with a lot of wisdom.  “You can’t get to the temple on left-over time.  You need to make plans to be sure to do what is important.”
    He was very organized and on top of every administrative matter.  He was my model for good Bishop.  Later he served as a counselor in the Stake Presidency with President Lindsay, at the same time I served as Stake Executive Secretary.
    His wife was also strong and capable.  I recall a time, as I served as Stake Young Mens President, when I interviewed her along with some other parents of Eagle Scouts.  I was asking about what these parents had done to support their boys in scouting, and why.  She gave a very significant response.  She said that she and her husband had been raised in the farm country near Oakley, Idaho.  She said that they had done everything right as they were taught.  They went to Church, they obeyed the commandments, Louis served a mission, they got married in the temple, he got an education and then a good job teaching.  They had some children, including two boys.  One day they both realized they were stumped in how to raise their sons to be strong men.  How could they teach them to work, to be unselfish, to serve others.  They both agreed that the only pattern they knew had to do with farming, working alongside their dad.  But they were living in the city.  She said that she and Louis fasted and prayed and sought for answers.  How can we raise our sons to be good men in a city?  Then one day the answer came to them both: “Scouting.”
    I believed her and had the same answer.

Richard Barker
    We moved to a new home in Taylorsville, Utah in 1969, and three weeks later I was called as Elders President in our new ward.  I discovered that the Stake President, Richard Barker, had a very serious and elaborate strategy for generating high quality home teaching in his stake, and it provided me with great respect for his commitment and leadership.  We had over 100 families assigned to our quorum. Under this program, we achieved nearly 100% of families visited each month and I believe a relatively high level of ministering relationships.  Here are details:
    1) Home teachers averaged about four families each.  In the quorum presidency, we divided the supervision of about 30 home teaching pairs into three districts of about 10 each.
    2) The stake took most of the responsibility for overseeing that all home visits were made.
        a) Every weekend of the month, at about 9 pm on Saturday, I received a call from the High Councilor assigned to our ward, in which I was expected to report on which families assigned to my quorum had already been visited.  He had a current copy of a list of all our families and checked off the ones I reported.  In order to make that report, I and my counselors needed to have made contact, probably earlier in the day or week, with all the senior home teachers we supervised to get information about the status of their visits to their families.
        b) Early on Sunday morning there was a meeting in which these High Counselors reported the month’s home visit progress to President Barker.
        c) This process continued weekly until the full month’s visit report was made.
        d) The goal was 100% of families visited.  Occasionally, our Quorum Presidency made these visits as a back up.
    3) Members of our Quorum Presidency were expected to conduct an accountability interview with each Home Teaching pair monthly.
        a) We generally did these on about the second Sunday, before or after Church, at the churchhouse.
        b) Our quorum secretary arranged the appointments.
        c) We allocated about 15 minutes time for each interview.
        d) Contents of the interview included prayer, discussion of needs of the families, and  identifying goals for work with each family and actions the home teachers planned to take to reach these goals.
        e) We had a small pre-carboned form that the member of the presidency used to take notes on needs, goals and action plans, and shared a copy with the home teachers.
        f) Follow-up meetings, of course, included discussion of progress on goals and plans.
        g) The stake required a report at the end of each month on accountability interviews conducted and expected 100% compliance.
    4) Our Quorum Presidency met monthly with the Bishopric to discuss the needs of our families and strategies for filling these needs, with an emphasis on the quality of the visiting and ministering to our families.
        a) This meeting was usually held mid-month.
        b) It would typically last at least an hour.
        c) It was separate from administrative meetings such as ward council
    5) We were instructed and tried to minimize failure by home teachers.  We recognized that some home teachers had capabilities and limits different than others, and would not be as successful with so many families.  “It looks like in your situation right now having only two assigned families will work best.”  We also recognized that almost every family knew the expectation of at least a monthly visit by their home teachers, and possibly would interpret the lack of visits as not caring, making a ministering relationship more difficult to achieve.   Therefore we did not allow the lack of visiting of a family to continue more than a couple of months, but would reassign these families and give different home teachers a fresh start for building the desired rapport with their assigned families.
    6) I found the atmosphere for working with home teachers under this arrangement comfortable and satisfying.  We were able to counsel home teachers and see them grow.  It seemed to help create a climate in the ward that was positive and supportive.
    I was very impressed with the power of this program, with the high level of commitment to quality efforts in Church programs that this represented.

Richard Lindsay
    When we took a Division of Family Services state office job and moved to Taylorsville in the Fall of 1969, Richard P. Lindsay was a Counselor in our new Stake Presidency.  He was also the Director of our Department in the State government.  I don’t think that had much or any relationship to our decision buy a home in Taylorsville.  Someone I worked with directly in the state office suggested that area as a place in Salt Lake Valley that had safe neighborhoods and reasonably priced homes.  And that was where we found a place to buy.
    President Lindsay had a Ph.D in political science and soon left for a position at the University of Utah, but I formed a closer relationship with him through my Church callings.  And in a few years, he became our Stake President.  At that point I was given a calling as Stake Executive Secretary and worked with the Stake Presidency in this capacity for several years.  He also ordained me a High Priest at the time of my calling.
    He later was called to be a member of the First Quorum of Seventy and he was the main speaker at our Michael’s funeral.
    Although he had good academic credentials, was a student of the gospel and authored at least one Church-related book, but his primary strength, or so seemed to me, was with people and relationships.
    I recall one Tuesday evening when our Stake Presidency was meeting.  We were in the high council room and the door to the Stake President’s office was open.  President Lindsay had just given me an assignment.  He said that it had been a while since he had had the opportunity to visit personally with members of the stake family, that is, persons who had stake callings, such as High Councilors, clerks, auxiliary presidencies, etc.  He gave me a couple of times and dates when he would be available, and asked that call each of these persons and schedule appointments with each one, at 5 minute intervals.
    At that moment, the telephone rang in the Stake President’s office that adjoined the high council room.  President Lindsay arose and went into the office to answer.  While he was gone, President Poore, who seem to always be in charge of administrative discipline for the stake, leaned over to me and said, “See if you can get him to change the length the length of those interviews to 15 minutes.  In 5 minutes, he won’t even have gotten down to asking how the dog is doing.”  We got him up to 10 minutes, but this illustrated a point about his human relationships  and how much he cared about other people.
    I remember at other times meeting him in the hall at the stake house.  He would ask, “How are you doing?,” listen carefully to my response, then ask, “And how is JoAnn?  Then systematically ask about each child in our family in turn. 
    I finally decided, not really facetiously, that he had a computer-like function in his brain that maintained a listing of everyone he knew, in families, probably in age-order, and with the name stored a description of the last event in each person’s life that he had been made aware.  “How is Alison?  The last I heard she was attending BYU and doing thus-and-so.”  When we answered it was like he was updating the latest fact in his brain person data base.
    I concluded that he really cared about a lot of people, and had this wonderful memory capability that facilitated this caring, that I could only envy.

Douglas Brewster
    Douglas Brewster was the Stake President when I was called as Bishop.  I don’t have a lot
 to report except how kind and supportive he was of me, and the high level of trust in me that he communicated.  That helped me a lot as I tried to meet the demands of my calling.  I could wish that every person had that level of positive support.

Personal History IV. Music in My Life

IV. Music in My Life
    I had an early fascination with music and things that make music.  Thinking back about something that happened when I was a small boy makes me think I was attracted to music and almost felt an entitlement to anything that produced music.  I was young when World War II began.  Sometime in 1942, my uncle Rodney volunteered to serve in the Military.  He had a talent for music and played the reed instruments, saxophone and clarinet, expertly.  They were living in Bingen, and he had his own dance band, the Columbians, who played for dances in the small towns up and down the Columbia River.  His band had a thirtyish “Big Band” sound on the order of the Dorsey brothers.  Through his dance band, he had become acquainted with Doc Severinson (Johnny Carson’s band leader) who was raised in Arlington, Oregon, and he took some credit for helping Doc get started in his musical career.  At some point later, I understand that Doc invited Rodney to come to Los Angeles to be a part of his band, but Rodney turned him down believing that this would not be a good way to raise a family.
    Just before Rodney joined the military, he was still single.  His father (my grandfather, Frank Davenport) had recently sold his house in Bingen and moved to Utah, so Rodney had no place to store his musical instruments.  We had a couch in our living room with a large storage area  under the cushion.  My mother volunteered to keep Rodney’s sax and clarinet while he was away and store them in this couch. During the 3 years before Rodney reclaimed them, those instruments seemed to keep calling to me, wanting to be played.  I was especially attracted to the saxaphone and thought it made such beautiful sounds.  But my mother would not let me touch these instruments.  At age 6 or 7, I just could not understand why I was forbidden to try them out.  I has this calling to produce music.  But there was no give in my mother’s prohibition, so I had to be patient.  As it turned out, I never did get to learn the saxophone.
    We got a lot of music in our home.  We always had a piano, and we sang a lot.  Although my mother didn’t play the piano or any instruments, she had a nice alto voice and knew how to harmonize or make up an alto part if a group were singing.  Occasionally she would sing duets or with a small group on special church or community occasions.  She also led the singing for many years in the Sunday School of the Glenwood church.  She and my dad also knew lots of songs, which we would sing on family nights (like Sunday evenings) or as we were traveling someplace in our car.  We had a game we played.  Someone would say “Let’s sing all the songs we know about the moon.”  Someone would start to sing “Looziana Moon, I’m Lonely” or “Moon Over Miami” and we would just keep going until we couldn’t think of any more.   Then some one would say another topic and would take off again with songs on the new subject.  Some of the topics, I recall, included national anthems, songs that mention states, songs that mention other countries, cowboy songs, songs that mention animals, etc. 
    When my dad was young adult age, there was fad about the mandolin.  My dad go himself on and taught himself to play.   He often played his mandolin, sometimes alone and sometimes he and I played together, my chording on the piano to accompany him.  I think Dorothy took lessons, and could play some things on the piano.
    My mother enjoyed serious music also.  Elsewhere I have noted that she tried to acquire some records of classical pieces and that we often had a radio opera broadcast turned on on Saturdays.  My favorite music for listening is symphonic.
    I had hoped to help my chldren learn to appreciate all kinds of music including serious classical.  One of my strategies was to have available in our home, following the pattern of my mother, records and tapes of serious music, especially symphonic.  One idea we tried was to designate a week for a Beethoven or Tchaikovsky festival, and that be the only music that was heard in the home.  I would try to play all of the symphonies of these composers during the at times when most of the family was home.
    As I reported earlier, during my first year in school, my mother arranged for me to take piano lessons.  But I could not seem to remember to run back into the school for the lesson when there was ball to be played with my friends.  I guess that baseball also had a way of calling to me.
    My next big step in music happened one day as we were in our car traveling some place as a family, when I was about 7 or 8 years old.  I can almost place the spot where it happened, somewhere along the wooded hillside south of Conboy Lake in Glenwood valley as we were on the road to BZ Corners and White Salmon.  My parents knew lots of songs from their youths and from their families of origin, and we often would sing them together as we traveled in our car.  Singing together as we traveled was also a ploy that my mother used to keep Dorothy and me from squabbling or teasing each other, which made my dad nervous and grouchy while he was driving.  So the result was that we sang a lot while going places as a family.  We were singing a song called “Now is the Hour” (Maori Farewell).  All of a sudden, in a flash, I could hear a harmony part in my mind, which I began to sing.  From that day to this, I have always been able to compose harmony parts for songs, on the fly, by ear.
    Although I never was given further opportunity to study the piano with an instructor, I began to take a further interest in that instrument.  Our family had inherited the Davenport family piano, when my Grandpa Davenport broke up housekeeping after the death of his wife, my Grandmother Kate.  This piano had a deep, rich tone and had been owned by the Lufkins in Logan.  It was the piano that Grandma Kate used before she married and then inherited, and I understand played very well.  Angela currently has it in her possession.  My mother brought it with her, when she and my dad moved to Ogden from Washington state.  After my dad passed away and my mother moved into an upstairs bedroom at Dorothy’s place in South Weber, Dorothy and I divided up the two big items of her furniture, Dorothy getting the big dining table with the lion feet and I got the piano.  Later, we got another piano, and I gave this piano to Angela who didn’t have one at the time.
    My major piano accomplishment during my middle childhood years was teaching myself how to chord.  I learned to play a 2-octave base note with my left hand on the downbeat, and an associated chord with the right hand on the other beats.  My dad liked to play along with me.  As a young man, he had learned to play the melody for a lot of pieces on the mandolin.  He would carry the melody and I would provide the accompaniment on the piano.  We played songs that had been popular during his youth, southern folk songs, Christmas songs and hymns that he knew, mostly southern Protestant.  It got so that the two of us sometimes did special musical numbers at programs at the Glenwood church.  A couple of our favorites were hill-billy hymns “When the Roll Is Called Yonder (I’ll Be There)” and “Life Is like a Mountain Railway.”
    While at home, I also learned basics of some of the stringed instruments.  As a teenager, I had access to a guitar and my Dad’s mandolin.  I learned how to finger the basic guitar chords and played some on the mandolin.  Although the mandolin seemed to largely be designed for playing the melodies and I never got to the point where I could do this as well as my dad, I taught myself basic chords and could strum it and make it sound something like a ukelele.
    When I was in the eighth grade the Glenwood Schools began a new emphasis on music.  The school board hired an experienced musical director, Orin Fjeran, and he began programs in both band and choral music.  The director began the program by inviting interested young people and their parents to a big meeting where he laid out his plans.  Families were given some opportunities to choose the instruments they would like to learn, and the invitation to participate was extended clear down to the middle elementary classes including Dorothy.  Here was my chance to live out my dream to play like my uncle Rodney and Jimmy Dorsey.   But no, my parents said that a saxophone would be way too expensive.  All that they could afford would be trumpets for Dorothy and me.  Somewhere they found a used one for Dorothy and they ordered the cheapest one they could find in the Sears & Roebuck catalog for me.  So, both Dorothy and I were in the brass section.  For most of my time in the Glenwood band, I was in the First trumpet section. 
    Our band started playing at high school music festivals across the State. And we soon had our own uniform, which was Levis, a Levi jacket, and a red bandana around our neck.  Eventually we held fund-raisers and we able to buy full-fledged band uniforms, black pants, red jackets, and caps like army captains, to match our school colors.  We also learned some about playing our music while marching, by tramping up and down the Glenwood main street during band time practicing our music.
    Although we had our personal instruments, Mr. Fjerin also was able to find some funds for some of the more exotic instruments.  I got to try all of the other brass instruments, alto horn, French horn, baritone horn, tuba, and could play them except I never learned the slide positions on a trombone.  Eventually Mr. Fjerin left and was replaced by Paul McNutt, who served both as Superintendent of Schools and also director of the music program.  Both were expert musicians and musical directors and I learned much from them both.  At one point, Dr. McNutt taught a music theory class for a term that I really enjoyed and incorporated into my understanding of music.  Among other things, I remember that we studied about harmony and musical arrangement, and also the physics of musical sound.
    After several years,  the band was able to acquire a Sousaphone (you know, an oversized tuba, with a large bell and tubing that wraps around your shoulder), and I was offered the opportunity to play it in my Junior and Senior years, which was quite fun.  A highlight of my senior year was playing a Sousaphone solo in a piece we performed at a high school music festival in Ellensburg, Washington.  I doubt if very many people could put this on their musical resume.
    Dr. McNutt had had a lot a of experience in choral directing and led both the choir at Glenwood High School, but he also started a youth choir at the Glenwood Church.  In the process, he introduced us to some of the wonderful religious choral literature.
    When I got to college, a whole new world of vocal music opened up to me.  It started sometime in the fall in my freshman year in the Provo Edgemont ward we were attending.  At that time, there were no young singles ward, so I and my roommates were going to a regular family ward a couple of miles north of campus.  One Sunday, the announcement was made that they were organizing a ward choir and wanted volunteers.  I thought I could do that, so showed up at the appointed time for choir practice.  The choir director was Ralph Woodward, who was also a new member of the BYU choral music faculty.  I probably was introduced to him and rest of the choir as a new freshman BYU student.  He had each of us vocalize a line or two of a hymn, then worked with us on a piece of music.  Afterward choir he called me over and suggested that I drop into his campus office and he could give me some tips to help my singing. 
    In a few days, I sought him out in his Lower Campus office (the building that now houses the Provo City Library).  He listened again to my attempt to sing, and then suggested that I might start voice lessons with him.  We were on the quarter system then and it was time to register for Winter classes, so I signed up for private voice lessons from Brother Woodward.  At the same time, he also invited me to register for the Mens Chorus, which he was directing.  Thus began a long, growing, and satisfying relationship.  I learned that Dr. (Brother) Woodward was a recent convert to the Church, through his wife Margaret, who as I recall he had met originally while both were students at some kind of music institute back east.  Sometimes she soloed with our choir and had a wonder bell-toned soprano voice. 
    In addition to having several years of private voice lessons with Brother Woodward, I also sang in his university choirs for almost six years.  I traveled with the Mens Chorus on tours of New Mexico and Arizona and later to Edmonton, Alberta.  I remember a short tour in which we sang at Spanish Fork, Payson, and Juab high schools.  Occasionally Brother Woodward invited me to solo.  I had acquired a guitar and sometimes did folk songs.  Our little choir tour to high schools was during JoAnn’s senior high school year and I sang a folk song with guitar accompaniment for her student body.  She didn’t recall my song (I am certain that she must have skipped the performance), but I remembered becoming acquainted afterwards with some student body leaders (who were cousins) J. Preston Hughes and Bob Hughes.  JoAnn mentioned a funny(?) experience with the former in her Personal History book on page VI-8.  When JoAnn and I returned to Spanish Fork from Detroit, we were in the same ward as Bob’s dad, who helped us by giving me some temporary employment with his dairy, with a milk delivery route.  Wendy and I are now acquainted with Bob again because he lives in a neighboring Spanish Fork ward in our stake and serves with us in the Payson temple. 
    I also served as Mens Chorus president for one year.
    In term of the relative status of BYU choirs, our Mens Chorus was good but somewhat down in the choir “pecking order” for the school  We were about third in on an elitism scale, below the Madrigals and the A Capella choirs, and a little above the University Chorale.  Sometimes we combined for performances with the Women’s Chorus which Brother Woodward also conducted, so we got some experience with a large two gender choir.  Later in his career, Brother Woodward advanced upward to be able to conduct the A Capella choir.
    In the music we performed, there was a lot of emphasis on traditional religious choral music.  Brother Woodward taught us to feel and emphasize the spiritual message as we sang.  He helped me to love the singing of Handel’s Messiah.  I had a special feeling about the choruses, especially the ones based upon Isaiah’s prophecy of the atonement.  “Surely he has born our griefs, and carried our sorrows...”  The tones were so somber and harmonies even dissonant, and I could feel the Savior’s pain deeply.  Then right in the middle of this horrible dirge, there was a distinct break and change into a light and airy and bouncy mode.  “All we like sheep, are gone astray ay ay a, are gone astray ay ay a, are gone astray ay ay, ay ay, ay ay a a a .”  I got a sense from the music of how lightly we took Christ’s suffering for us, how shallow were our values.  In my mind, I saw little sheep dancing and frolicking in their pasture land with no concerns for the momentous things around them.  And then the music turned again to the most somber and dissonant and growly passage in the entire piece (the entire world of music?), “And the Lord has laid on him, the iniquities of us all.”  I could sense that even in our shallow appreciation of the gospel, God still loved us, and the atonement was worked out and available to bless us.
    One of the blessings of BYU choir singing for a little farm boy who came from far away from the Church’s center, was that our BYU choirs combined to sing at General Conference a couple of times.  I took that as an amazing privilege, sitting in choir seats in the famous old Tabernacle, usually occupied by the famous Tabernacle Choir with the famous organ as our accompaniment.
    I also sang with Brother Woodward at least one more year, after college.  After we had returned from Detroit, and I obtained work with the Utah Division of Family Services and we were living in Orem, and was then working on my MSW degree and was commuting to the U, I learned that he had formed something called the Ralph Woodward Chorale.  So I volunteered.  It drew on community persons, not students, and particularly Utah county music professionals, for membership.  I probably was one of the few persons in the choir not working in the music field.  In fact, Margaret Woodward with her trained operatic voice was one of the sopranos.  We did our performances in the old Provo Tabernacle.  The highlight for that winter was our performance of The Messiah in the Provo Tabernacle (now Provo City Center Temple building), using some of the latest and best scholarship about how it was originally performed, especially as a small chamber choir, not a massive choral group. 
    Late in my BYU undergraduate time, I took a class for religion credit in church choir conducting.  I had the chance to apply these things shortly after we moved our family to Taylorsville.  I was called by our Bishopric to be the ward choir director.  Our ward had a tradition of good choirs, and singing interesting music, and I tried to apply everything I had ever learned about good choir singing.  As I think back, I remember this calling as being one of the most challenging if not frightening positions that ever served in.  When the choir is performing, you stand with your back to the congregation and are responsible for everything the choir does.  If you make a mistake, you have no idea how the listeners are reacting.  But this calling was also satisfying, when the musical production was good and especially when the choir members were feeling the spiritual impact of the music.
    What skills did I develop through all of this choral music experience?  I think I developed into a good sight-reader, as good as any professional music person in the Ralph Woodward Chorale.  I could sing on pitch.  I learned a lot about word pronunciation and enunciation, so that what comes across to audiences is understood and sounds attractive.  What part did I sing?  The answer is, when a young man and when my voice was fully conditioned I could sing all men's parts.  I had at least a two octave range for choir singing, from F or G below the bass clef to G above middle C.  I think my singing range was truly right in the middle.  I could not sing a real rich low G and I had to stretch to hit the high G, or slide into falsetto.  I typically sang bass in choirs with women, but in male groups baritone or second tenor.  In the last few years in church choirs I have usually sung bass, because I have had a persistent nasal condition that hinders me singing high notes softly.
    Occasionally in the wards in which I have resided, I had the chance to solo in sacrament meetings, or to sing in a quartet for some service.  I guess I would have liked to have had more of these opportunities.
    Here are some other musical items in my life.  The summer that I was anticipating a mission call (1957), I thought that there might be some point in the mission where it would be helpful to be able to play the piano for hymn-singing.  So in my spare time, I went completely through the Church hymnbook of that day, to be able to play all the hymns on the piano.  At this time (age 83) I probably still could stumble through, hopefully with a little practice, playing most of the hymns for singing, at a level that would be good enough for a priesthood group.  Now I still play the piano occasionally for my own enjoyment, but largely by ear.
    Starting when I was in college, I developed an interest in folk music, with several dimensions.  First, it was part of the southern heritage received from my father.  I found a book by Burl Ives which was a collection American or Southern folk songs and learned to sing many of them, with my own guitar accompaniment.  I also discovered an interest in folk songs and early hymns of our Church.  I took a special interest in what we called Grandpa Davenport’s (actually my great-grandfather, Jeremiah Franklin Davenport) song, thought to be a composite of 18th century folk music sung by members of the family or Church.  I learned this song from my mother and have promoted its use by our Lewis family.  My freshman year at BYU, I had an English teacher, Thomas Cheney, who was a collector of Mormon folk-songs, and I recorded this song for his collection.  Accessing local bookstores, I acquired a collection of early church hymnals, and taught myself a number of hymns that are no longer in the current hymnbook, but that seemed to tell the story of the earlier Church.  During the time we lived in Taylorsville, from those old hymn books and from Dr. Cheney’s collection, I prepared a fireside program which I presented on a couple of occasions, and sang with attendees these wonderful old hymns plus folk music that was a part of our Church heritage, accompanying the group on my guitar.
    The husband of the family that we purchased our Taylorsville house from was a violinist in the Utah Symphony.  As part of the purchase arrangement, we were to pay off a loan they had acquired to make an earlier addition to the house.  He had a second job working in the shop and store of a violin maker, which was in downtown Salt Lake only three or four blocks way from my office.  Every month, I would walk over to his shop with a check.  One day, knowing that I was interested in music, he presented me with a kit for constructing a folk instrument, called a Mountain Dulcimer, which a customer had partly finished and then returned.  I gladly accepted this gift, completed the construction, and then taught myself how to play it.  It was an interesting little instrument from the mountain South.  It had a neck and frets like a guitar, but tuned quite differently.  It had four strings.  The bottom two were drone strings, always played with the same notes, a bass note and its fifth tone above.  The top two strings (toward the musician) were tuned the same, like on a mandolin, and played the melody.  With the instrument on his/her lap or in front of him/her, the player used a short wooden dowel (called a “Noter”) to depress only the melody strings as needed to play the tune.  The right hand either held and used a pick or   strummed with the thumb all of the strings rhythmically.  The musical production was somewhat like a bagpipe, with the drone strings always playing the same basic chord. 
    My Mountain Ducimer repertoire never got very large.  It was “Amazing Grace,” Marching Through Georgia,” and “Scotland the Brave.”  The instrument hangs on our living room wall as decoration.
    Occasionally, I would compose songs of my own.  I wrote three songs for JoAnn in a folk song style, when we were courting and engaged, “I’m in Love with Joann,” “I Have a Fair Love,” and “What If My Love Were Here Beside Me?”  JoAnn’s brother Allen was helpful and took the lead in creating a surprise broadcast of these songs in the recreation hall during our wedding reception.  (By the way, we still see that church building, the Spanish Fork West Stakehouse, whenever we are heading to I-15 or to shopping at Macy’s or Costco.  Another famous person, one of the Osmond brothers, also had their wedding reception in this building a few years after ours.)
    When the children came along, I began to write little (sometimes nonsense) songs to sing with them or help them to learn: “Talk to the Doggie,” “Where Is Your Nose?,” “What Does the Doggie Say?,” “Who Loves You?,” “The Ants Come Crawling,” “I Am Getting Bigger,” “I Want to Be a Happy Child.”  In 1967, I wrote “We Are the Lewis Family,” which we have used as a sort of family theme song ever since.  And I love the parodies that each sub-family added for a recent Lewis Family Camp.
    Later I wrote a song (1975) for a stake road show with an American liberty theme, “Freedom’s Song,” which our older girls helped present as an interlude number between each ward act.
    I also composed several pieces with a religious focus. There were three Christmas songs,  “Oh Beautiful Night,” which depicts the beauty and glory of the night when the Savior was born, and “How Strange That Angels Would Appear,” which portrays the miraculous birth of Christ against the background of doubting and prideful Israel, and “The Time Cometh Quickly,” whose language emphasizes Book of Mormon prophecies of Christ’s birth (Mosiah 3:5-8, Alma 7:10-15).
     “O God, We Take of Emblems Bless’d” was a sacramental hymn I composed that speaks of the atonement and our dependence on the grace of God, and of a future time when the saints of every age, hopefully including myself and members of our family, will take the sacrament together with the Savior, through the blessing of the sealing power of the priesthood (D&C 27:5-14).
    “A Few Years Ago I Left My Heavenly Home,” speaks of the doctrine of the great plan of salvation, of our pre-existence, and  the purposes of our earth-life, all with a strong beat.  And it sound just like Elvis could have sung it.
    David, Emilie, and Scott helped me to record all of these songs and hymns, and save them to our family Google site We are the Lewis Family.