Rex R. Whitmer
REX R. “CHUCK” WHITMER , SR.
December 28, 1910 – September 28, 1987
My Life History
I will have to start my story by saying I was the sixth child born of goodly parents – Angus Vanmeter Whitmer and Sarah Jane “Jennie” Judd, on December 28, 1910, in the old family home in Alpine.
Mother used to tell us that they were building on to the house and in the dining room, they just had the floor joists down, no flooring on them yet, at Christmas, just before I was born. She had to walk carefully across them and be sure and not fall even though she had Grandpa and Grandma Judd for Christmas dinner.
I guess my childhood was much better than lots of people. I remember Mother reading to us in front of the old fireplace and we always had a lot of fun. Mother sang a lot to us and that helped us all to learn to love and appreciate both reading and music.
When Harold and I were quite young, we used to milk the cows in the morning then in the summertime, we had to weed so many rows of potatoes and garden stuff before we could go out in the hills and catch chipmunks or whatever we could. Sometimes we’d brand them and ear mark some of them and then turn them loose again. They were our cattle.
Easter always was joyful for us. Mother would let us start hiding the eggs about two weeks before Easter. There were really some foot races at noon to see who could get home from school and get the most eggs. And then we would find each other’s cache and steal their eggs. The idea was to see who would have the most eggs by Easter time.
When Mary was born, we went to St. Johns. We moved down in a wagon. It was quite a hard trip for Mother. When we got about halfway between Springerville and St. Johns, Dad stopped a car and got them to take Mother in it. We all started to school down there. We all did better in school in St. Johns. I really like school down there. They put me up a grade and then when we moved back to Alpine, the Mays sisters were our teachers and they made me go back the way they had me before. That I didn’t like. I never took a book home all that year. But that was back in Alpine.
I remember Dad taking the whole family on fishing trips in the wagon, tying logs to the wagon to go off
into Three Forks to fish. One time Genevieve got lost on one of our trips but we had an old dog, I can’t remember his name but he brought her into where we could find her. One time I remember we were rounding up the cattle to dip for scab and we had a big bull elk in the herd. He sure looked big to me anyway.
Dad was Game Warden at the time Mary was born and he spent part of his time in Alpine taking care of his job. One day he saw a big wild goose go down in a man’s chicken pen so he caught it and brought it to the house. We kept it for a while and Dad tied a rope on its leg. Then Dad took it up to Phoenix and the State Game Warden had it mounted. It was such an unusually big goose.
Then the next thing that stands out in my life was when Dad, Mother and Ralph went to Montana. Don had finished his mission there and got Dad interested in Montana so Dad decided to go see it. They left Ethel and myself to keep things going at home. Ethel and I really enjoyed staying there. I worked the front yard over. I planted some aspen trees, planted a new lawn and really enjoyed myself. Ethel was a really good cook even that young.
I don’t remember just exactly why Harold and I were left at home to watch but I think it may have been because Cecil was having such a time with his leg where he had accidentally been shot. Anyway, Harold and I weren’t very old and we stayed to do chores and take care of things. We had some good milk cows that gave a lot of cream and I remember Ann Hamblin would come get the cream and make butter and she always made us really good cookies from some of the cream.
When Harold and I got a little older than ‘chipmunk days’ we farmed. Then we got to where we ran 4 head of horses on a plow. The older boys as soon as they were old enough, got a job with the Forest Service. So then we took their places farming. Dad was not a lazy man and he always seemed to have more than one iron in the fire at a time. He was rated as a ‘Big Farmer’ almost every year in the Bush Valley News, of course he had us boys to thank. Not really. Our dad was a very intelligent man and knew what he was about. And he was an honest man.
We all loved to hunt. And when deer season opened, we were up before dawn going hunting. I remember my first buck deer I killed. I was all by myself, and I didn’t have a knife. So I drug the hind parts uphill with his head down hill then I shot him through the throat so he’d bleed. Then I went for a knife. George Hamblin went back with me to get the deer.
He wanted to hang it in his service station to draw trade. He had a small store and gas station. That night a dog chewed on a hind quarter and that didn’t make me happy.
When I graduated from grade school, Cecil, Harold and I went to St. Johns to go to high school. I remember Mother giving me all the money she had. The other two boys had worked for Dad on a road job and had some money. We all worked chopping wood and whatever we could find to do. Again, I was pretty small for my age and the other two boys could get jobs when I couldn’t.
I was taking lessons on a violin, and it seemed I couldn’t keep going. So when I was offered work at Whitings Garage, cleaning up doing the janitor work, I took it. Then I was offered a job running the service station after the garage closed. So I took it.
I wasn’t doing very good in school and I was about to quit. Dad came down and saw what I was doing so he told me if I wasn’t going to school, he had a job for me being a farmer so I went back with him and started farming. It made me sad but I knew he needed me, so that was the end of my high school. After the crop was in, I was offered a job with the Forest Service. Uncle Obad was the boss and he liked me and asked me if I wanted to work. Of course it made me happy. I had a white horse that I had trained to follow me. The Forest Service required everyone to have a horse. So Uncle Obad offered me a job following the Grader, throwing the rocks out of the road that the Grader missed.
My horse, that I called Tom, stayed right with me. I liked my job. I could write a book about the things that happened but…we will skip them as this is supposed to be my life story. I remember they finished the bridge on the way to Luna. We went and had a dance on the bridge just as we came from work and we had a lot of watermelons and I ate so much I got sick from them and to this day I don’t like watermelons. We went to dances at Glenwood and had lots of fun.
I am only telling the good things that I did and not the bad things such as the barn burning down or the way I let Hermie Scott get off with Ethel’s turquoise ring. I don’t have to tell them. All the rest will do that! Then my next job was driving Dad’s truck hauling groceries and freight from Holbrook to Springerville for Becker Mercantile. I got a mail contract that year from Alpine to Espero.
They call it Sprucedale now. My dad told me if I would freight for him, he’d see to it someone would drive my car as I’d bought my first car, a Chevrolet touring car, and hauled the mail to Espero. As my dad didn’t drive he got my sister Genevieve to drive the mail and gave me the money from the mail check. She had to carry it twice a week. After I was through freighting for Becker, I took my mail job over.
I had quite a few girlfriends but was never serious with any of them. Somewhere along about this time, I met Claire. And I’m not a bit sorry I got serious about her.
I was still packing mail to Espero. In the winter, I had to pack it horseback with a pack of horses. They were very cold trips in the winter.
One trip I remember, I walked nearly all the way. It was about 32 below zero when I left the Post Office and I’m sure it got a lot colder. Anyhow, when I got there, it was getting dark. The Postmaster was gone and they left old man Suzzerburg to take care of the mail. He had stew fixed for me. I guess I would have eaten it even if I had known beforehand it was horse meat. I was tired and starved but I don’t think I was ever to eat anything Suzzenburg cooked again. The deal was, I’d pack kerosene and groceries over for them in exchange they would feed me and give me a bed and room.
I have had a happy life. In fact all my life has been happy. I have some very fond memories of my life. We all had to work as any large family does. I can’t begin to tell you all the hardships and trials we went through but it made us all love each other more. And I’m sure all of us had to say that we had a wonderful and happy life.
I remember one Christmas, I was about 10 or so I guess. Santa Claus didn’t get all our packages back in time and I was supposed to have a popgun for Christmas and it didn’t get here in time. Yet I don’t remember feeling too bad about it. As I said, along about that time I met Claire. The first time I saw her, her brother and her were sawing wood with a two man crosscut saw. The snow was over knee deep. They lived a little distance from us.
I guess Mother got me interested in knowing her better, for she said “there is a girl that has joined the Church on her own and will make some man a good wife.” Then as I was going out with my horses to pack the mail, she and her brother waved at me. Another time, later, she was helping my Aunt Iva out since I had taken Uncle Ernest to Albuquerque to be operated on. When I got back, Mother sent me up to help Aunt Iva with chores.
I went into the house and Aunt Iva had gone down to do the chores and here was this really cute blonde headed girl taking care of Aunt Iva’s three boys. She was down on the floor playing with them. She was no more talkative than I was so I left and went to help Aunt Iva.
About two years later, Claire returned from Phoenix to help her Mother and Mr. Terry out. Mr. Terry had married her mother at that time. When she came back she jumped off the barn out at Terry’s when she was doing the chores and hurt her knee. Her mother didn’t believe in doctors so she walked with a limp and her foot didn’t touch the heel down on that leg. We dated and then since her brother was coming back and one of her sisters needed her, she went to California. Well, when she did come back, we were married in Holbrook on September 25, 1933.
I worked road jobs, construction, farmed, trucked, Forest Service and anything I could get. We were never very well off but I never heard a word of complaint about the way I took care of my family from my wife. Along in here, I went to one of the last cattle drives to the railroad. That was one of the most interesting and enjoyable things I ever did. In 1934 we moved to St. Johns because our first baby was expected in August. We moved down the latter part of July and our baby was finally born September 14, 1934.
I worked construction road work before he came. Then we moved back to Alpine and I freighted for dad again. We lived in a little one room shack that George Hamblin had in a place about 3 miles out of Alpine. Of course we named our boy, Rex R. Jr. He took a whooping cough when he was about 4 months old and nearly scared us to death when he choked and coughed but he made it.
I helped Mr. Terry and worked wherever I could find work. Mr. Terry paid me partly by giving George Hamblin grain and we got a camp cabin and moved it up to my place. I had picked out of Dad’s place and traded him for a roan horse I had, he liked it real well, for another acre so that made me have 1 and 3⁄4 acre home.
When Rex Jr was about 17 months old he contracted pneumonia and got fluid in his lung wall. We had to move to Springerville to have him near a doctor. Those were pretty rough days. I sold all the cattle but one and all the hogs and pigs that didn’t get poisoned some place and died on us. But we kept our baby and by this time we were expecting our second child. Another boy that I named Lewis and Claire put the Leland on his name.
I continued to work just wherever I could find work and did just the best I could. Again I went to freight with Dad. Claire moved back to Alpine and lived in a camp cabin until we got things on my place and felt we owned the world.
I always had a garden so Claire would can food and put up fruit and we never went hungry. We didn’t have stylish clothes and so forth but no one went hungry at our house. We tried raising chickens to sell or feed the fishermen that came in the summertime and Claire had a lot of chickens to take care of. I worked away from home most of the time coming home on the weekends. Well, when our little girl came to us, we were very happy again.
When in about 22 months our third boy was born but before he made it here, we thought I would be left with three or four kids to raise by myself. The altitude was too high for Claire and she just about didn’t make it. But I guess the Lord heard our prayers for Claire made it and so did Orson Arza but the doctors told me I better get them out of the high altitude or I would lose both of them. So we moved to Phoenix and I worked three jobs at times but I didn’t let my family go hungry.
Then I started up to Utah to see about working in the mines up there. I got as far as Lordsburg and decided I might as well see what Phelps Dodge at Morenci had to offer. I was hired on and worked there for 34 years before retiring.
As also had the biggest sorrow parents can have there. Our fifth baby, a beautiful baby girl, Ionia Jayne, was born. She was born on the ninth of November and left us on the third of February. That was in 1943 and 1944. She was never well and she left us in three short months with double pneumonia. That was hard on us. During our life in Morenci and Clifton, Cecil, Evelyn, Afton, Von, Lawrence and Melvin at different times came and joined me working for P.D. but only Afton stuck it out till retirement beside me. Cecil worked for Bechtel Construction but he stayed with us and we all got to love him very much.
We had some fun times. Such as one water fight before Jayne was born. Evelyn, Cecil and myself were water all over and the kids were right in there helping and having their fun too. And there was a hot chili fight one time that got pretty wild. No one ever got mad. Just having fun. We had a lot of ‘just for fun’. Evelyn taking the boys swimming in the Clifton swimming pool Good memories.
Genevieve and Reeves and Billy Ray lived in Morenci for a while after I moved there. Also when the children were old enough they went on missions for our church from the Clifton-Morenci Ward. I believe ours is the only family in the Ward there so far to have sent three full time missionaries from one family. Rex Jr. filled Stake missions but the other three filled missions to Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and California.
We had a lot of memories of the times when Dad and Mother would come up and visit us. My children loved their grandparents and were tickled anytime they would come visit. There was a sad time when Vonnie (Von) and Zella came out to visit us and Lavor “Susie” took Polio and we had to let her return to our Heavenly Father.
Historical Profile
Rex R. (also known as Chuck) was born on 28 December 1910, in Alpine, Arizona. His mother Jennie was 26 years 1910, in Alpine, Arizona. His mother Jennie was 26 years years old at the time. Rex was the sixth of 17 children. His older siblings, Angus, Ralph, Cecil, and Harold were 7, 6, 3, and 1 years old when he was born. Another brother Lealand Claude was born but died of whooping cough on 8 August 1906.
The “R” in Rex’s name was only an initial having no name or meaning to it. According to David Keith Whitmer the Whitmer children were raised, “in the lusty rugged and amazingly beautiful White Mountains of Alpine, Arizona where the mountains reach 8,000 feet in the sky of neverland. Alpine is now a resort but in the early 1900s it was a very small place where farmers raised their cattle, vegetables and did whatever it took to feed their families. The Whitmer children knew the Blue well, a place where the cattle grazed in the winter. All the children were raised riding horses. It was a place where everyone had to work and work hard. Seventeen children were born here. Four died.
Rex’s sister, Geneva, was born in 1912 when Rex was 1 year old, the same year as that of the sinking of the Titanic. Another sister, Ethel, was born in 1914 when Rex was 3 years old, the same year as the beginning of World War I. Rex’s brother, Ray V was born in 1915 when Rex was 4 years old but he died of pneumonia on 3 May 1917. Also born in 1915 was Rex’s future wife, Mary Marion Ionia Claire Stout. She was born in Van Buren Township, Indiana, United States. In 1917 Rex’s brother, Afton, was born when Rex was 6 years old.
In 1918, when Rex was 7, a terrible flu pandemic struck the United States and the entire world. The Spanish Flu of 1918 infected over a third of the world’s population and killed more than 650,000 Americans alone, as the medical community desperately searched for better treatments or a vaccine. With World War I raging at the same time, it made for a very challenging year for just about everyone. Rex’s brother, Lawrence, was born this year.
Rex was 10 years old when the first public radio broadcast aired in 1920. A year later his sister, Mary, was born in 1921. Just over a year later Rex’s brother, Vaughn, was born when Rex was 11 years old.
Rex’s family were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and according to her younger sister Fern’s account, “Church and religion was our whole life. We all got up and went to Church. I don’t know if I learned a lot. My parents were so busy I wasn’t given much time. Church and Sunday School on Sunday, Relief Society and Mutual on Tuesdays, Primary Wednesdays. Dances on the weekends. Family prayer sometimes around my parent’s bed.”
Rex’s sisters, Faye and Fern, were born as twins when he was 14 years old. Two years later when Rex was 16, his sister, Blanche, was born, around the same time as penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming. This discovery would go on to revolutionize the medical world by saving lives and reducing the need for amputations. This discovery meant that many of Rex’s friends and neighbors, who would have otherwise died of infection, would now be able to survive infections.
Rex’s youngest sisters Blanche and Bertha were stillborn as twins in 1928 and were pronounced dead at birth. Undoubtedly a very difficult time for the family.
He loved to sing and he always was singing, either Church Hymns or country music. He played a harmonica and could make it talk. He loved to play the “Orange Blossom Special” and other special effect tunes.
When he was somewhere in his pre teens, he got a spring loaded gun that would shoot small rocks and so forth. One day in 1922 Dad took two of the boys to the Blue to feed the cattle even though Rex wanted to go too. Rex took the BB gun that he had gotten for Christmas. He shot up all these caps, and decided to take Afton and Lawrence to the creek which is right behind the barn. They looked up and saw the bird’s nest right over the barn door so they put some match heads in the BB guns and shot the matches in the nest. It caught fire. Pretty soon the whole barn was on fire.
Rex came running down to the house and said “Mama, the barns on fire.” Grandma said “What on the earth! How’d it get on fire?” Rex said, “I don’t know.” There were seven or eight calves shut up in there, four horses, seven harnesses, three saddles, corn fodder, a corn sheller and corn, a bin of wheat, even a hen sitting on her eggs. She went up too. We were able to get most of the animals out though. Dad had always wanted a barn. Just everything went! Harold was so afraid after the fire started that he hid for three days and his parents thought he had died in the fire, Angus was sick for days and wept many tears, more worried about losing his son than losing his barn.
Of that event, his mother Jennie wrote, “Life was never dull with such a large family. Something was always happening, either good or bad, such as the time Rex shot matches from the air rifle and set our barn on fire. We had the biggest barn in all of Alpine. It was Dad’s pride and joy before it burned to the ground along with his dreams and many prized possessions.”
When he was young, one of his uncles cut and shaved Rex’s head for summer. He claims to have always had straight blonde hair before that, but when it grew back in, it was wavy and black.
When Rex was 19 years old, the collapse of the stock market began a decade-long period of economic hardships in America known as the Great Depression. Beginning in 1930 and extending to 1942, these years would have greatly impacted the nature of the workforce at a time when Rex was most capable of working. Being in the Western United States, Rex wouldn’t have felt the ravages as acutely as his fellow citizens in the East, but it still would have made employment a precious and carefully guarded opportunity.
3 years into this period of uncertainty, Rex met, fell in love with, and married Mary Marion Ionia Claire Stout (Ionia) on 25 September 1933. She was 17 at the time and she began to be courted by both Harold and Rex Whitmer. Both were ardent suitors. She reported that Uncle Harold promised to kill himself if she wouldn’t have him. Uncle Harold was the eldest of the two, blonde, much taller than Rex. Rex was short, and of a dark complexion and black headed. Harold was of a rather intense nature, and a bit short tempered. Rex was always a cut up, cute, easy going, and very easy to talk to. Both were hard working honest men though both smoked at that time. At that time smoking didn’t have the disciplines against it that is existent in the modern Church, so it wasn’t so much of a detriment. Rex was five years her senior, and Harold about seven years.
The regulations against smoking and going to the Temple had been enforced Church wide and Dad had made the commitment to quit smoking. The agreement was that Rex would meet Ionia at the Holbrook train station and they would then go to a Justice of the Peace and be married and then go a little later to Mesa. Rex met her there, they went to the Justice and were married, but after the wedding, He reached under the front seat of his car and pulled out his sack of Bull Durham. Ionia’s heart sank at this, but she said nothing; and Rex offered no explanation.
He tried to quit many times after that, stopping one time for three years, but it was nineteen years before he finally broke the habit for good. One time when he was in his sixties, he confessed that even after all those years of not smoking, when he got in a room where people were smoking, he sorely ached for a cigarette.
Rex and Ionia would bear 5 children and raise 4 of them to adulthood. Rex R Whitmer Jr. was the first, followed by Lewis Leland, then Barbara Jeanette, Orson Arza, and lastly Iona Jane The same year that their daughter Barbara was born to them Europe would be plunged into what would become the most destructive conflict in recorded history, World War II. She was born on 24 July 1939. 2 years later and six months before the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor 30 year old Rex and Mary welcomed their third son Orson Arza into their young family on 8 June 1941.
3 years later while living for a short time in Clifton, on 9 November 1943 a daughter Ionia Jayne Whitmer ( Jayne) was born. Ionia desperately wanted to have at least six children. The doctor had told her not to have any more for her own health’s sake, but she got herself pregnant. Rex was upset with her about it, because he feared for her life.
Jayne came and was a beautiful baby. Ionia was fearful for her health and wouldn’t take her out of the house. She kept the house quite warm, but when she was three months old, she developed Pneumonia. Penicillin had been developed, but there was none being allowed for civilian use. It was all going overseas for the soldiers. Ionia Jayne Whitmer was born on 20 November 1943 and died on 3 February 1944.
Ionia felt that it was her fault that Jayne had died and was quite distraught about it. A doctor told her to get a job and get her mind off of it. Much to her children’s sorrow, she worked from that time on, until she could work no more. Rex didn’t enjoy reading. He could read, but most likely had dyslexia which also affected his spelling at times. Ionia was heard to read to him Ranch Romance stories.
Rex was reportedly an extremely hairy person. He had a heavy pelt on his chest and belly, but he was just as hairy on his back. Without his clothes on he resembled a gorilla! When the boys would wrestle with him they always tried to get a good handful of that hair. He had a heavy beard too, and didn’t like to shave himself. When he was working away on road jobs, he wouldn’t shave until he came home, then he would get his wife to shave him and give him the full treatment.
The next decade brought the dawn of the Atomic age and the end of World War II (1945), the Korean War (1950), a Polio Vaccine in 1953, and the Vietnam conflict stretching from 1955-1975. During this time Rex would see his father Angus Van Whitmer pass away at the age of 76. Rex would have been 44 at the time. His mother Jennie would live another 11 years until 1967 when she would also pass away at the age of 83.
This was a time of great change in culture, in technology, and in global events. Martin Luther King would lead the nation in a civil rights movement. United States astronauts would land on the moon in 1969. Beginning in 1970 Rex would begin to see his siblings also begin to pass, starting with his sister Geneva in 1970 at the age of 61, and his brother Angus at the age of 74.
A decade later, in 1982, he would say goodbye to his brother Ralph at the age of 77. Then a year later, his brother Cecil died at the age of 75 followed by the death of this sister Ethel in 1985 at age 71. Rex was 74 by this time. Two years later his brother Chuck died at the age of 76. Then finally, Rex died just three months short of his seventy seventh birthday in 1987. Rex died on 28 September 1987 in Cochise, Arizona. His funeral was on 1 October 1987 in the Sunsites Branch Chapel. He was buried in Alpine, Arizona on 2 October 1987.
NOTES AND OTHER STORIES ABOUT REX AND IONIA
Rex
Early Days in Morenci/Stargo
When Dad and Kay were divorced, Jim an dMike went to live with Dad while David and Rex stayed with Kay. At first, Dad lived in Flagstaff, AZ with Aunt Barbara, but later moved in with Grammy and Grandpa. It wasn’t long before Dad announced he was getting married again — not a completely exciting happening for two confused little boys. But we ‘soldiered’ on and prepared for the changes that were coming.
After a little while, David came to live with us and eventually Rex also joined us in the little mining town (by then we had a home in Stargo, Greenlee, AZ — also part of the Phelps Dodge operation). Within the first year of their marriage, Dad and Catherine (Mom) had a beautiful, dark-haired little girl (Naomi) to increase the population. I can’t imagine the stress this must have been on a brand new wife who also struggled with the trials of epilepsy. But over the years we all banded together and made a wonderful life, filled with love, joy, growth, and eternal happiness.
In a future posting there will be more shared concerning those early years of the family experiences.
I was baptized in the Clifton Ward building in 1963. I don’t remember much about the baptism part but when Sunday came and I was confirmed I remember thinking the men who laid their hands on my head were trying to push my head down through my body. It was a very uncomfortable experience – one that stuck with me. When I was eligible to perform such an ordinance I was very careful to remind those who were participating to not push and make the experience difficult for the one being confirmed. These things should be memorable for the right reasons!!
For a time we lived with Grandpa and Grammy Whitmer but we eventually got our own house in Stargo. I think we actually had two different houses, cause I remember one was a little larger than the other.
The 2nd Stargo house was on a hillside (at least the backyard went up and the other side of the road in front went down) and offered lots of play areas for little boys with imagination. One of our favorite activities was take turns in the wagon (red kind) being pushed around the house. You could steer (sort of ) with the handle of the wagon and the others would get behind and run like banshees. The best fun was to try and slide while going around the corners – sometimes rolling over when the angle was too sharp. I think we all loved to do that (have to ask the other boys for sure) cause it was ‘dangerous.’
Another highlight for boys was building traps for catching the little ground squirrels (chipmunks?) that we’re prevalent in the area. We would use old fruit boxes and make an elongated box with a trap door on one end and some screen material on the other.
The door was attached to a simple trip device that would let the door fall down when the ‘victim’ ate the bait we placed within. (Sometimes I felt bad for catching the little guys because they would bloody their noses trying to get through the screen. ) I suppose someone taught us how to make those traps, but it was lots of fun and gave us something we could do on those long, hot summer days.
I just went on Google to see if Stargo was still around. It appears that it was destroyed as the mine was expanded. Sad!! I had hoped to visit there another day.
Jim and I often found ourselves staying with Grammy and Grandpa for various reasons. Grammy was always willing to take us in but I think Grandpa was less receptive. To me, he was kinda gruff (except when we played Cribbage -then he would lighten up and we could laugh together.) I was always afraid of him but now I wish I had taken more time to be with him. We did have some good days riding horses and milking cows and other stuff, but my relationship with him was never like my brother’s. They all have wonderful stories to share and I feel kinda sad I don’t have any. Part of that was because I was less inclined to spend time with him- refer above to gruffness and part was cause he liked to work hard and I wasn’t real keen on that kind of effort. 😉
There were some experiences with Grandpa Whitmer that were memorable. We often went with him to the corrals to help do the chores and feed the animals. He always had a cow, some chickens, sometimes turkeys, and other assorted livestock. On one occasion he took me and asked me to feed the cow. When I went inside the corral, the cow took offense to my existence and knocked me down. I ran to Grandpa and he told me to take a piece of rebar (heavy metal) and whack her across the nose if she did it again. I returned to the corral and armed myself but made a strategic error – when she cam at me I used al my little-boy strength to whack her on the head but actually hit the place where her horns would have been.
Apparently, (well, I’m actually sure) cows don’t have much feeling up there on the top if the head. So she knocked me down again and I jumped up and ran away. Being the “teaching” kind of Grandpa, I was encouraged again to go in but be sure to strike her on the nose if she attacked (I had no illusions that she would not). It DIDN’T work. She knocked me over once again and Grandpa had to leap (and that was an interesting experience to watch) the fence and take after her with his shovel. He smacked her so hard that she actually staggered and retreated.
A couple of years later we inherited that same cow and whenever I went out to milk her, she was very docile. I think she remembered what happened and didn’t want a replay. But she did get me a few times (well, maybe more than a few) with her tail and put her foot in the bucket just as I was finishing the milking – but she never went after me again.
Rex R & Ionia Claire Whitmer As I Remember Them By Rex R Whitmer Jr.
Rex R Whitmer Sr. was born on 28 December 1910 in Alpine, Apache County, Arizona. He was the fifth son of Angus Van Meter Whitmer and Sara Jane Judd. He was also their first child born in Alpine. Grandma Whitmer’s father had moved to Alpine, and Grandpa went to visit several times. He was originally from the mountainous region of West Virginia, and claimed that the area caught his eye since it reminded him of home. The “R” in Rex’s name was only an initial having no name or meaning to it.
Grandpa never talked too much about himself. Much of what I am putting on paper here, I learned from other sources. Some of the things I remember growing up with him as my dad were things that a little boy notices in his father whom he loves dearly.
I remember walking with him when he was wearing Levis and hearing his legs brushing against each other making a swishing noise. I remember trying to understand as he explained to me about the moon, the sun and the earth. Some how, I came away with the idea that the earth was a huge ball and we all were inside it. Not really illogical, since our little valley was surrounded by high mountains on all sides.
I always knew he loved to sing and he always was singing, either Church Hymns or country music. He played a harmonica and could make it talk. He loved to play the “Orange Blossom Special” and other special effect tunes. He was a bit bashful about performing in front of people, but one Family Reunion in Alpine, his brothers and sisters talked him into singing a county song for them. He sang with three other boys in a quartet when he was a teen ager. They often performed at various wards in their stake.
When he was some where in his pre teens, he got a spring loaded gun that would shoot small rocks and so forth. He put Matches in it and shot into the barn and burned his Dad’s barn down. It was often mentioned at reunions. When he was young, one of his uncles cut and shaved his head for summer.
He claims to have always had straight blonde hair before that, but when it grew back in, it was wavy and black. How I envied that black hair. I hoped that mine would turn black like his, but it never did. I went from cotton top to brown some time in junior high. Dad went to grade school in a one room school house in Alpine and graduated there. Then he went to St.
Johns to board and go to high school. He took several jobs to pay for his room and board after school. One time he worked for Levi Udall cleaning his offices. Levi offered to let him read law for him, (there were no law schools in those days and this was the way you trained to be a lawyer.) but Dad was always a bit over sensitive of being in public, so he turned him down. Another job was sweeping out a movie theater every night. He and another boy had this job together. The other boy smoked and talked Dad into trying it. I was eighteen and away at college when he finally broke the habit.
W hen Dad was in his senior year, his Dad needed him home, so he came home to help out. That was the end of his formal education, but he always wanted to be an auto mechanic, so he purchased a set of books that he was going to use to learn the trade. He often referred to them, but more often to other men who were more skilled than he was. When I turned sixteen and wanted get my driver’s license, he told me that I couldn’t until I could pull an engine down and put it back together again. I was in my seventeenth year before he let me tear down a Willy’s four cylinder motor and overhaul it so I could get my license and become legal. (I had begun driving at fourteen.)
Dad didn’t enjoy reading. He could read, but from some of my own children having reading problems, I believe that he most likely had dyslexia. One of my early memories was listening to Mother read him Ranch Romance stories through the wall of our bedroom. He also had problems with spelling at times.
Speaking of hair, Dad was the hairiest person I’ve ever known. He had a heavy pelt on his chest and belly, but he was just as hairy on his back. Without his clothes on he resembled a gorilla! Lewis and I used to wrestle with him and one thing we always tried to do was to get a good handful of that hair.
Dad had a heavy beard too, and didn’t like to shave himself. When he was working away on road jobs, he wouldn’t shave until he came home, then he would get Mother to shave him. He liked single edge razors and didn’t like double edged ones. When Shick injector razors came out, he switched to them. Mother would give him the full treatment. A good hot cloth put over his face for a time to soften the beard then a brush with shaving cream lather. She had a small pan of hot water to rinse the razor in to clean it and I was always envious of the little bits of stubble floating on the water. Then would come the after shave and the talc.
I don’t know how old I was when Dad took me with him on my first father and son’s camp out; at least it was the first one I remember. My cousin Roy and I were about the same age and when we were together we were mostly together. On that night I remember Dad and some of the other dads discussing the merits of beef over pork wieners. (We had a weenie roast for supper.) I remember Dad made a point of how much more fat was dripping from the pork wieners.
One day, one of Dad’s brothers got put in jail. I don’t know why. Anyway, Dad got the job of going to Springerville or St. Johns to get him out. I had seen a few movies in my time, so I was expecting Dad to have to produce a gun and have a fight with the Sherriff. At that time, we had a Model A Ford coupe, and the front window would open from the bottom so you could have more air to cool yourself. I don’t remember one of the uncles coming home with us, so maybe Dad only went down and paid a fine or bond for whom ever it was.
Ionia Claire Stout was born in Brown County Indiana on 19 October 1915. Her mother was close to fifty when she was born and apparently there was some concern that she might be deformed or something.
Her sisters told it that after she was cleaned up and Grandpa Stout had inspected her thoroughly he wrapped her in a blanket and went to show those who had doubted that she was all there. Ten toes and fingers, two arms and legs and only one head!
She was what could be called an after thought. Her only brother was five years older than she was, and she had several nephews and nieces who were already born when she was born. One memory she has of her father is being in a storm cellar when a tornado was going through. He was holding her with one arm and had the other one through the twin handles on the storm cellar door to keep it from coming open.
For whatever reason, her parents divorced when she was three years old. She and the three next older children were given to her mother. I suppose her father had spoiled her a bit, because she says she remembers crying to go with him when they left. Grandma has told me her version of the divorce and why, but I have a pretty good idea that it reflected strictly her point of view. It only separated my mother from her father which was a void in her life.
When Mother was six, two of her sisters had married and moved to Phoenix, Arizona. They had been able to get good jobs so Grandma and the rest of the at home kids got on a train and came to Arizona. For a time, Grandma worked as a hand on various farms. Grandma, Uncle Merrill, and Mother all worked as a team. Mother liked to tell about a dairy where she worked and milked twenty cows, night and morning. On one of those jobs she jumped down from a hay loft and turned her knee and was troubled by it ever after.
When she was about twelve she took work as a mid- wife. This did not mean she helped deliver a child. In those days it was customary for new mothers to spend two weeks in bed after birthing. Mother would go and clean house and do gofer work for the mothers.
After a time, Grandma read a want ad for a housekeeper in Alpine Arizona. Lewis Terry had advertised for one and when he interviewed Grandma, said that he could use the two kids as well. They moved to Alpine. Mr. Terry became sort of a second father to Mother. After some time, Mr. Terry and Grandma Married.
Mother likes to tell that she liked to wear Levis which was still a bit uncouth. She also loved to ride. Mr. Terry bought her Levis and a thorough bred mare. Her idea of a thrill was to dare the town boys to a race. The thoroughbred could always beat the quarter horses and mustangs most of them rode.
Grandma Terry as we called Grandma Stout now, was offended by no Christian religion except for Catholics and Mormons, and according to Mother, belonged at one time or another to many of them. Mr. Terry, on the other hand, was ambivalent towards them, perhaps even favoring them. The LDS religion was THE religion in Alpine and had an active youth organization through its MIA programs which included dances and parties with the locals. Mother formed many friendships with these young people much to her mother’s disdain.
Mother had, had only one semester of high school while living in Phoenix. She wanted to learn to do office work and persuaded Mr. Terry and her Mother to allow her to go to Phoenix and attend Business College. I’m unsure of the requirements for living places at the college, but she apparently found places that offered room and board to live at while attending. Apparently one of these places was with a LDS Bishop in Mesa, Arizona.
She was already favorable toward Mormons, and had many discussions with the Bishop and his family about the Church. She wanted to join the Church, but since she was still not eighteen, she couldn’t be baptized without her parent’s consent. She however, attended meetings and gained a firm understanding of the teachings of the Church.
In the meantime, she was learning typing, shorthand, bookkeeping, good English grammar and spelling and other things associated with a secretarial, bookkeeping occupation. She finished her education but was still a bit short of her eighteenth year. She wanted to be baptized and knew it would create trouble to attempt to do it in Alpine, so she talked the Bishop into baptizing her without permission of her Mother. She was baptized actually, in the fount at the newly finished Mesa Temple.
Returning home, she began to be courted by two brothers; Harold and Rex Whitmer. Both were ardent suitors. She told me that Uncle Harold promised to kill himself if she wouldn’t have him. Uncle Harold was the eldest of the two, blonde, much taller than Rex.
Rex was short, and of a dark complexion and black headed. Harold was of a rather intense nature, and a bit short tempered. Rex was always a cut up, cute, easy going, and very easy to talk to. Both were hard working honest men though both smoked at that time. At that time smoking didn’t have the disciplines against it that is existent in the modern Church, so it wasn’t so much of a detriment. Rex was five years her senior, and Harold about seven years.
At this point in her life, Mother was a toe headed blonde. I think her hair darkened after I was born. I have seen pictures of her at this age and she definitely was white blonde. She, like Dad, liked to cut up a bit and joke and play with people. So you could see who won and who lost. It didn’t bother Uncle Harold too much. Dad and He were always the very best of friends, and about three years later Uncle Harold married His older bother Ralph’s, wife’s niece, Hessie Swab.
Mother’s favorite sister was Aunt Queenie. Dad and Mother had gotten serious for about three months when she wrote and asked Mother to come out to California and help her through her pregnancy. She had two older children, I believe, and was having some trouble with this baby. Mother took the train to California and stayed with Aunt Queenie for a couple of months, I think. Mother and Dad were ardent correspondents all during this time. In my stamp collecting days I discovered their correspondence and, well curiosity being what it is, I checked the letters out from both sides.
First off, both of them had much better penmanship than I ever did. It was also very readable, and their love was very pure and ardent. The regulations against smoking and going to the Temple had been enforced Church wide and Dad had made the commitment to quit smoking. I believe that I read every one of their letters and found nothing shameful in any of them. Of course, I took the stamps too.
The agreement was that Dad would meet Mother at the Holbrook train station and they would then go to a Justice of the Peace and be married and then go a little later to Mesa. Dad met her there, they went to the Justice and were married, but after the wedding, Dad reached under the front seat of his car and pulled out his sack of Bull Durham.
Mother’s heart sank at this, but she said nothing; and Dad offered no explanation. He tried to quit many times after that, stopping one time for three years, but it was nineteen years before he finally broke the habit for good. One time when he was in his sixties, he confessed to me that even after all those years of not smoking, when he got in a room where people were smoking, he sorely ached for a cigarette.
Dad loved to hunt and fish. He often took us fishing and when we were old enough to keep up, he took us hunting. He always bought a hunting license for Lewis and me, and often for mother. I’ll tell a funny story of mother’s attempt at killing deer later. At first we would just walk with him as he hiked through the woods, but when I was twelve he bought me a used twenty five/ thirty five saddle gun. I got a shot at a deer and hit him, but didn’t kill him. Dad put Lewis above me and he went below me as we followed the deer trail. The rifle would hold seven shells in the magazine and one in the firing chamber, a total of eight shots.
I wasn’t a bad shot so that would be more than enough. I came on the to the buck and shot once; he didn’t go down, so I panicked and started shooting until I had fired all eight shots. Dad said it sounded like a machine gun!
Examining the deer, we found that I had hit him three times not including my first shot. Likely I hit him the first time, but he was apparently leaning against a big pine tree and didn’t fall, hence my repeater shots.
On that same trip, Dad got a shot at another buck and just shot his legs out from under him. We went up to him and I held his horns while Dad cut his throat. Dad said that he had heard deer bellow many times, but the only time I ever heard one was while he was cutting that one’s throat. Dad wanted to get another deer, so he put Lewis’s tag on that one. Some of my Uncles said that Lewis shot just like his Dad. Apparently Dad had killed some others that way, but it was the only one I had ever seen that he didn’t get a kill or knock down shot the first time.
Now about Mother’s attempt. Mother couldn’t kill anything. When I was young we sold fryer chickens to tourists who came up to fish or camp. Mother would go catch the chicken, and put it in a gunny sack and send me about a mile down the road to Grandpa’s house where one of my Uncles would kill it and I’d carry it back home, where Mother would pick it and clean it. Dad had read somewhere about sticking a sharp instrument up through the roof of the chicken’s mouth and killing it that way. It was painless and was easier to pick. I mastered the art and therefore had to take no more long hikes to my Grandparents’ place.
Back to the deer. Mother had taken Dad and me and Lewis out to a place he liked to hunt, and she was to come back that evening and pick us up. As she drove back to the house, she saw a herd of deer off the side of the road. She carefully got out of the truck and walked into the woods a bit (it was and is illegal to shoot from the road.) and then fixed her rifle against a tree. That was as far as it got. She must have stood there for some time when finally a pick up door slammed behind her and scared the deer off. She turned and saw that it was a friend of theirs, Earl Nelson. “Darn you Earl, you scared my deer!” she said. Earl laughed. “That deer would have died of old age before you ever pulled the trigger. I’ve been watching you fifteen minutes now!”
Dad generally felt that a meal wasn’t complete without a meat course. When the war came and meat was rationed, he got some rabbits and began raising them. Goats weren’t rationed, but were not looked on favorably as a source of meat, but I understand we ate a bit of goat meat as well. At the beginning of the war, Dad had two boxes of thirty/thirty shells. Working at the mine, he had only one day off per year at Christmas time; but the work was shift work, and when they switched from graveyards to days it was almost a day off, so we would all bundle up in our thirty seven chevy and head for Alpine. Mother drove so Dad could sleep on the way up and then we’d go fishing or whatever. On occasions, a deer would be found and slaughtered in the woods, cut up and bagged and then we would bring the beast home in the trunk of the car. Mother would bottle the meat and we would have our meat.
At that time, most of the kids at school brought their own lunches and since meat was rationed, most had things like cheese, liver cheese, or peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. I would go over in the corner of the gym where we ate our lunches, because my sandwiches were first of all on home made bread and next because I had meat between the slices of that home made bread!
This story is not chronological. I’m writing as I think of it. When we left Alpine, it was with much sadness. Mother and Dad both felt it was like heaven there, but when Orson was born, both she and he (Orson) almost died. I don’t know why there had been no trouble with us older three, but mother was AB negative and Dad was O positive. Doctors at that time were not aware of the positive and negative factors of blood. I suspect this was the cause of the majority of hers and Orson’s problems. At one time the doctors said she needed a blood transfusion and since Dad was an O, the doctors thought that he could transfuse her. I’m not sure how she lived through that.
About that time, Uncle Harold and Aunt Hessie had a son who was eighteen months old, who picked up a bottle of Kerosene and drank from it and died. Mother had a dream and thought that the baby was her baby (Orson) and she exclaimed, “no, not my baby! Let it be me!” The baby turned and said, “No Aunt Claire, it’s my time not yours.” She didn’t know until a couple of days later that Harold and Hessie’s baby had died. I’ve always thought that it was needful for her to stay here and see to our upbringing.
None the less, the doctor felt that the altitude (over eight thousand feet) was too high for her and that if Dad wanted to keep her alive that he had best get her to a lover altitude. They sold off their stock and some other things and packed everything we could into our Model “A” coupe and headed for Phoenix. The coupe had the trunk door taken off and a wooden pick up style bed put in it. It was just after Christmas when we moved. Mother had bought Dad a new cowboy hat for either his birth day or Christmas. We had been driving along when the wind blew his hat out into the fields. Dad and I got out and chased it, but the wind kept blowing it away from us. I was quite shocked when Dad said, “Let it go, it’s just a cheap john hat anyway.” I knew that Mother had been quite proud that she had been able to save the money to purchase the hat.
In Phoenix, Dad had an uncle who managed the insane asylum, so he was able to get a night job there and a day job driving truck for a cotton gin. It was rough on him. He had quit smoking for about three years before we left Alpine, but he came home one night and pulled out his sack of Bull Durham and rolled himself a cigarette. We were living in what was basically a one room apartment. It was a large room with a stove and an ice box on one side with a dinning table. Mother and Dad had a double bed on one side and Orson and Barbara had a crib on the other side. There was a screened porch where Lewis and I slept.
I witnessed Dad rolling that cigarette and Mother’s reaction to it. “Okay,” she commanded, “if you are going to smoke, I’ll smoke too. Roll me a cigarette!” Dad laughed and said, “if you want to smoke, you’ve got to roll your own!” Mother had rolled hundreds of cigarettes for Dad when he had been smoking before, so she grabbed the bag, licked a paper and poured in the tobacco and rolled the cigarette. She then put it in her mouth and attempted smoke it, but she got quite ill from it. Dad thought it a joke and laughed. Mother never tried to smoke again.
Dad was definitely not acclimated to the heat and suffered from it through several jobs after that. They still owed a thousand dollars to the hospital where Mother and Orson had been, and they scrimped until they had paid off that bill! Then they heard that Phelps Dodge was opening the mine in Morenci. Dad went up and left us in Phoenix for three months while he worked and found us a place to live. Dad had saved five hundred dollars and was able to purchase a tar paper shack from a guy for the five hundred and sent for us to come up to Clifton where the shack was. The shack was a two by four frame with no floors in it. There was tar paper covering the frame, and chicken wire over the tar paper.
When we moved in, some one who was with us, mentioned that the shack was a hovel. I think that Dad gave Mother her most cherished compliment then when he said, “Just give Claire a week or two and this place will look like a palace.” It never looked like a palace, but they only got to keep it for a short while. It seems that the guy who sold Dad the shack had also sold it to several other men, and because Dad wasn’t the first one, we had to move out.
We moved twice after that and then found a “Company House” in Clifton. It was there that Jayne was born. Mother desperately wanted to have at least six children. The doctor had told her not to have any more for her own health’s sake, but she got herself pregnant. Dad was upset with her about it, because he feared for her life.
Jayne came and was a beautiful baby. Mother was fearful for her health and wouldn’t take her out of the house. She kept the house quite warm, but when she was three months old, she developed Pneumonia. Penicillin had been developed, but there was none being allowed for civilian use. It was all going over seas for the soldiers. Ionia Jayne Whitmer was born on 20 November 1943 and died on 3 February 1944.
Mother felt that it was her fault that she had died and was quite distraught about it. A doctor told her to get a job and get her mind off of it. Much to her children’s sorrow, she worked from that time on, until she could work no more.
We shared our home in Clifton with my Uncle Lawrence’s fiancé Evelyn Lee, and her sister Gladys for a time and with Dad’s older brother Cecil. We had great times while they were there. We had a screened porch on that a house. It was more protected than the one we had had in Phoenix, and Lewis and I slept there as well. Dad also had a cot there. The porch was on the south side of the house and shaded. Dad had to work shift work and had trouble sleeping in the heat. We finally bought a cot and he would go out there and cover himself with a wet sheet. We also had fans. Often we would put a wet cloth in back of the fan so the air would be cooler.
When I was in the fifth grade, Mom and Dad were finally able to get a “Company House” in Morenci. It sat on the side of a hill as did most houses there. The houses weren’t numbered by streets but by hills. Mother had been the “Office Manager” at the mill, but with the end of the war, the company decided to release all women employees and replace them with male workers as far as the mine was concerned. Mother was able to transfer to the General Store where she was the bookkeeper.
With the end of the war, the town began to be populated by a more gregarious people. People had days off to do things, though typically, it was two days off out of twenty eight or two days off out of fourteen. Dad was offered a job as foreman and refused it. The company also offered to set him up with a trucking business that would just service the mine, but again he turned it down. Dad was a hard worker and was well respected for his work and work habits, but he didn’t seem to like to have to supervise others. Quite a few years after all of this, the Silver Bell mine opened near Tucson and they came up and offered to make him a foreman there, and again he refused it.
Mother on the other hand, fussed about having to teach college trained people how to keep books. She took some accounts on the side for local businesses and prided herself in her honesty in their accounts. She loved to write stories and articles for various magazines. Sometimes she would tell us that she had written a story that Colliers or the Saturday Evening Post had bought, but she would always use a pen name, so that our pastimes at times was looking through various editions of the magazines trying to spot her work. After they had moved to Cochise, she began writing children’s books and novels, but about that time, Dad’s health began to fail and she was unable to complete it. Her writings included poetry, short stories to various magazines, true confession types of stories, and biographical sketches. Most of the copies of her work burned up when a shed she kept them in, in Cochise burned down.
When Dad retired, he wanted to go back to Alpine. I’m sure he thought that Mother’s condition had improved and she could be able to live up there. He had some savings and was able to afford to build a new home up there. He brought electricity into the home and had the city water piped in and moved up there.
Mother on the other hand, had some money from her writing and from the sale of a cabin she had purchased in Cherry Lodge north of Clifton and found the place in Cochise. She attempted to keep up her writing and her clients from her bookkeeping, and then Dad was calling her most weekends and asking her to come up. I don’t know how much she called the other kids about it, but I listened to her troubles for many, many nights as she recounted how she thought Dad had done her wrong by moving to Alpine. When I would advise her not to go up to Alpine so often she would just say, “I can’t do that.”
After about two years Dad finally realized that most of his family were no longer in Alpine and neither were most of the people whom he longed to associate with again. His health was not too good and he needed medical care which was not readily available there, so at last he moved down to Cochise with Mother.
In Cochise, Dad did his gardening as he never could have done it in Alpine. There was a small apple orchard on the property and he kept chickens and Mother’s burro. He would raise a calf for slaughter every year and was content and even proud of his life as it had developed. Several of their good friends from Morenci and Clifton had moved to the area and they were able to make social contact with them.
Dad was ill when I moved to Elfrida. He could still get up and move about some and did some gardening, though Mother did most of it. A doctor he was seeing had the idea that it would help him to have an artificial hip. He went to the hospital and had the hip put in. One day he walked back to the back of his property, and that was all the good that that hip ever did him. As he aged he had become depressed and we had several conversations about that. He faded in and out of knowing what was and what was going on towards the end. I gave him his last hair cut about a week before he died.
Lorna came up to help out. I had tried to talk to him a bit that night and seeing the stress he was under and that Mother was under, trying to care for his needs, I went home and had a long tearful talk with the Lord. Mother had gone some where, and left Lorna with Dad. Lorna is very matter of fact and quite level headed, but she was a little shook up when he died and no one else was there with her.
Dad died on 28 September 1987 in Cochise, Arizona. His funeral was on 1 October 1987 in the Sunsites Branch Chapel. He was buried in Alpine, Arizona on 2 October 1987. He died just three months short of his seventy seventh birthday. We purchased a tombstone that would do for both him and Mother.
Dad tried to teach me several things that I was never able to learn from him. He used to blow through his cupped hands and make a whistle that he used to communicate with us when we were in the woods. He would take my hands and cup them and blow and it would work, he would have me blow and it would work, but I could never accomplish it from the beginning. Another thing was that he could pick a chicken with no water faster than I could with it. He would take the chicken’s body and begin moving his hands and soon every feather would be gone except the wings and tail and those he pulled out quickly and independently.
Mother loved music as Dad did. She taught herself to play piano by ear and even played in church sometimes that way. When they started getting lessons for us kids, she tried to learn as well and it kind of messed up her playing by ear. She could figure figures in her head, mostly by little tricks that they had taught her in school. I could do most of them but never learned to divide on an adding machine by taking out the nines.
Our parents were proud of our musical abilities and because of this we were fairly good excepting for Orson. Barbara learned to play the piano, but wasn’t too good of a singer. She played the flute in band. Lewis played the saxophone and sang very well. I think after he went to college he learned to play the piano as well. I sang pretty well and played the clarinet and improved on both in college. I tried to learn piano, took lessons my senior year of high school from my voice teacher, but could never get them to give me lessons in college.
I moved here to Elfrida largely because my father was dying and my mother needed some one here to help her. Dad died a little more than a year after I moved here. I have not regretted having come here. Barbara moved here after divorcing Marvin and lived with Mother. Later she was able to purchase her own home and move out leaving Mother alone.
Mother went on a mission to the Peoria, Illinois Mission and served eighteen months there. Much to her sorrow they did not use her much for proselyting, but used her bookkeeping skills.
After she returned from her mission she was eventually called to work in the MesaTemple. Barbara and I were both concerned about her driving back and forth alone. She had had several small accidents in her car, but totaled it one day in Mesa. Barbara and I both tried to get her to move in with us. My children were all gone and Barbara’s were gone except for Dorothy and Spencer.
Barbara was able to convince her that she needed her to come down and live with her to take care of Dorothy and Spence while she gave piano lessons after school On Thursdays, I would go to Douglas and take her where ever she wanted to go. On those days her favorite topic of conversation was what she would do when she got a car again. Some times I would take her shopping.
Several stores have electric carts with shopping baskets and she loved to get on one of those. She was worse than a kid. I’d turn my back and she’d be gone and I’d have to look all over the store for her. She wanted desperately to get an electric chair for herself. Her doctor okayed it and she located one that she should have been able to afford, but her insurance company wouldn’t authorize it.
She had gone to Utah several times to visit Orson. She was sick and wanted desperately to go up again.
Orson had some sort of undiagnosed illness and I believe that she was certain that he was going to pass away before she did. I think Barbara and I pooled our money and bought her a ticket to Utah with the understanding that Orson would pay her way home. She was only there about three days when she became seriously ill. Orson didn’t have the money to send her home, Barbara and I had no money, but finally Jayne, Barbara’s oldest, paid her way back.
In Douglas she was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer that had spread. They told us she wouldn’t last six weeks. I believe she lasted about six and a half months, in great pain all of that time. Catherine, Barbara and I took turns sitting with her, talking to her, singing to her, telling her stories. Sometimes, other members would come in and sit with her for a time and give us some rest. We always appreciated that.
She was tired of the pain. She kept wanting to see her little dog Angel, so three days before she finally died, we took her to Barbara’s house again. The night before she died Marcie, Lewis’s daughter came in for a visit. She sang for her (she has an excellent voice) and talked to her for a time and tried to persuade her that it was time for her to quit fighting and let things happen.
The next morning, Dorothy went in to see what she wanted to eat for breakfast and found her still, with Angel curled up by her head. She died on 11 May 1999 in Douglas, AZ at the age of eighty three. Her funeral was in the Douglas Ward Chapel on 15 May 1999. She was buried the next day in Alpine, AZ. next to Dad and close to Jayne. We filled in the missing information on their tombstone. On the reverse side of the stone were listed all of their children and birth dates.
We were also at that time, able after so long a time, to purchase a tombstone for Tommy. All of our family pitched in for that as they could.
Rex's Stories
MY NAME IS REX R. WHITMER
Rex Whitmer
My name is Rex R Whitmer Jr. I w~ ~tn St. John’s, Arizona to Rex an~ l-;1, Claire Whitmer. This will be my memories in so far as I can recall of my father’s family. As I write this, I am eighty-six years of age. I believe that my memory is clear as to my association with my father’s family.
Grandpa Whitmer was usually cool by today’s description. He was levelheaded and usually didn’t get too excited about things. He was the buddy to all the grandkids. Always showing us stuff, and lenient. We fished on the lake sometimes. His father had been converted to the Church of Jesus O,rist of Latter-day Saints in West Virginia where our Whitmer’s had lived since their forefathers had come to America from Switzerland .
My Great-Grandpa Whitmer had joined the Church in West Virg inia, where he had suffered quite a bit of persecution. He had planned to go to the Salt Lake Oty, Utah area, but he received notice while on the train to go instead to what is now Central, Arizona. Grandpa grew up in that area, and when he was of the right age accepted a call to be a missionary. He was sent to what was then the Southern States Mission. He served out his mission and came home.
The story goes that he was called to speak to a congregation in Globe, Arizona, about his mission. Grandma and a girlfriend (probably Josie Merrill) decided that they would go to Globe to hear his report. I don’t recall the girlfriend’s name but when church was over, my grandmother told her friend that she was going to marry that young man. I don’t know anything about their courting, but they were of different temperaments.
My dad tells of a time when Grandma got mad at Grandpa, and took him and one of his brothers away from the house quite a bit north of it. She took a 22 rifle with her too. She kept saying, “I’m going to shoot you, Dad.” After a time, Grandpa came up, and she was threating to shoot him if he came a step closer. Grandpa just kept smooth talking her,” Now Jennie, let’s go home.” Eventually she gave him the gun and they went home. I never saw her point a gun at him, or anyone else, but she did lose it once and a while. I’m sure it’s not true all the time, but I never saw Grandpa get mad like that. They were both sweethearts as far as I was concerned.
One thing I recall about Grandma, is that I never had a birthday or Christmas that I didn’t receive a gift from her. Twelve of her children had children and most weren’t small families excepting Aunt Ethel. The gift might just be a pair of sox or some underwear or a handkerchief, but we could all expected to receive a gift of some sort from her!
She loved poetry and kept several scrapbooks full of poems she had liked and pasted to its sheets. She encouraged me to write poems and criticized them, so that my works were real poems. Later I learned to put them to music and made them songs. Grandma was pretty strict with the kids but we had fun around the big fireplace in the living room area. Grandma sat in the big rocker and used to read a book to us. Grandpa like to take a book to church to read. Grandma was always doing handiwork. She was always the boss, Grandpa wasn’t. Once my brother, Lewis and I were fighting and she made me sit on a stool in the kitchen. That’s how I learned to spell…flour, sugar, etc.
I remember that my dad got teased at every reunion for burning down the barn. We hunted for pinion nuts. When I chewed the pine gum or sap it was hard but if you chewed on it long enough it got softer. We camped and fished during the summer. Lightening often struck Alpine at 8,000 feet. One time Grandma’s best friend’s barn caught fire. She was hanging out clothes and fainted.
When the boys were growing up they smoked and some drank. Angus chewed tobacco but gave it all up eventually and went to the temple to be sealed to his family. This was before the Word of Wisdom was more seriously enforced in church.
Grandpa and Grandma retired to the Gila Valley area, a small home in Safford, Arizona. It was a one bedroom, a kitchen with a sort of veranda where she kept her potted plants in the wintertime. There was a single bathroom with a sink, shower, toilet and mirror in it. It had two doors. One into the single bedroom the other into the kitchen. There was a dining room with a very nice piece of furniture where she kept all of her dishes and silverware in it. There was a sort of alcove off of the kitchen with a cot in it. The first year I spent my summer there. That was where I slept. All the rest of the time I slept in small stucco one room building back of their house, where they kept a lot of stuff. I used to read some of the letters she kept stored there, mostly from her children.
During my first two years of college, I would come up to their house and take care of their lawn or prune their trees. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see them too much after that. Grandpa was sick while I was in the Air Force, and I took a leave and went down to see him. He needed someone to be with him at night so I spent nights with him while I was on leave. I’m glad I did. I think I spent two weeks short of a day or two with him. I had hitchhiked down, and hitchhiked back to Salt Lake City. The next day after I got there, my Mother called to tell me he had died, and wanted to know if I would be coming back for the funeral. I told her no. I had got to visit with him while he could still be him.
Uncle Don Now my Uncle Don was the only one of my uncles in my father’s family whom I didn’t know too well. His wife’s name was Conda. He had two sons, David Keith (known later in life as Dave) and Nelden and a daughter, Geraldine. They were all older than I was. I really didn’t know them all that well. Geraldine was the eldest, Keith and Nelden were in the upper class in our two-roomed school. Someone told me that they had been teasing Uncle Lawrence’s dog as being the reason his dog attacked me. They were both quite a bit older than I was. I don’t know a whole lot about either of them. I know that Nelden was in the Korean War and had been wounded. Keith became a family counselor, I believe. Uncle Don divorced Aunt Conda after all the kids were gone. She came to Morenci and stayed with us for a while. She apparently got no money off of Uncle Don, so she washed dishes in a local restaurant until she had enough money to go on her own. I don’t think we heard anything more about her. I understand that Keith and Alyce had two daughters who were both killed in a car accident coming home late from BYU when they were hit by a truck. Keith wrote quite a bit both in Church Magazines and elsewhere, generally about families. I understand he became a family counselor. Ralph was next.
Roy, I believe was his third son, Leroy Swapp Whitmer. We were close in age. Uncle Ralph seemed to be quite the industrious person. He sold the place he had purchased soon after my parents left Alpine and purchased a place in New Mexico. His farm in Alpine was larger than ours by a long ways. Roy and I were in the same grade, and went to first and second grade together. There was also a little girl whose name, I believe, was Sible Tenny. She lived in downtown Alpine. The first time I ever tasted peanut butter was in her house. Her mother offered me a sandwich after I had walked her home, and I’ve liked ever since. One day Roy and I got into an argument as to whose girlfriend she was. We had a fight about it, and the teacher took a picture of him sitting on me, indicating he won the fight. I continued to walk her home until after Christmas, when my parents left Alpine and went to Phoenix.
One reason my mother had had to stay so long in the hospital when Orson was born, was that there wasn’t enough oxygen in the air in Alpine. Also World War II had started that December. Uncle Lawrence had been in training in Panama. He was a member of the National Guard and was shipped from Panama directly to Hawaii, and didn’t come home until about six months after war was over.
Uncle Cecil was next.
His house was not too far from Grandpa’s. He built it log cabin style. He had also built a house in back of his for his kids. Charles Ray was his eldest and Edna his second, Paul was his third. Charles was very smart, very interested in science. Edna was my dream girl, and Paul was my brother’ Lewis’s best friend, I liked to go to their house before and after we moved to Morenci. When it was time to order school clothes, they would turn over the three major catalogues to their kids and allow them to choose their clothes for the next school year.
Aunt Stella was quite the diet enthusiast. They never ate white bread, and she was very careful to see that her family and anyone else whom ate with them, were fed with most nutritiously. I liked to watch her eat her breakfast. “Two fresh eggs, broken and swallowed raw, right out of the egg shell!” My brother, Lewis’
had a best friend, the best he ever had, he was Paul, Uncle Cecil and Aunt Stella’s son. They were of an age and whenever we went to Alpine, he spent most of his time palling around with Paul. Paul caught a bad case of the flu. He had to go to the hospital in Springerville. Apparently, he was coughing up a lot of mucus. They had put a face shield on him to keep him from choking. He was about twelve at the time. He managed to get the shield off and choked to death on his mucus before they found him! Lewis grieved over him for quite a long time. Charles joined the Service and was sent to Germany. He ca me back and finished school I think and became a science teacher.
There came a guy who came through Alpine claiming to be an artist when Edna was about fifteen or sixteen. She ran off with him and they were married. After I was discharged from the Service, I had gotten a job as a carpenter’s apprentice and ran into her husband, who was a carpenter. He invited me over for dinner, but I was having trouble with my first wife, and never got around to going.
Uncle Cecil’s leg got worse so they moved to Mesa so Aunt Stella could teach school, and Uncle Cecil could see a doctor more. He used to go out and walk quite a ways trying to get it to behave. The doctors t ried several procedures, but he eventually died. I had to go down there while I was married to my first wife, and the place we had made reservations, had rented our room, so I went to Cecil’s house to see if they could put us up for the night. They put us in a nice room only it was in the basement. We slept well there but later found out that it was actually their bedroom. They had no cooling, so they had given us their bed in the basement where it was cooler!
Harold is next!
When my father, Rex, Sr., was younger he got a job delivering mail out to farms and ranches who were isolated around Alpine. It was a once or twice a week job, but later as he got work building roads he gave it to my Uncle Harold. Uncle Harold kept that job for the next fifty years and was finally given recognition for his length of service. He was a big man with all kinds of power in his hands! My brother Lewis and I used to wrestle him when were in our teens. Once he got his hands on us, we were sunk! We finally devised a method to avoid his hands, and after that he was a little more reluctant to wrestle with us. We loved him and his wife, Aunt Hesse, and spent time with them especially when we were hunting.
Sylvia, his oldest, kind of liked me and I liked Edna, our Uncle Cecil’s daughter. Uncle Harold was a good farmer! He worked his place until he died. All three of his kids who were living were girls. He’d had a son, but while he was a toddler, he managed to pick up a kerosene bottle which we all used to keep near our cook stoves to start the wood burning in them. Apparently, the bottle was nearly empty, and he managed to pick it up and drink the kerosene! They did all they could to get the kerosene out of him, then took him to the St. Johns Hospital where my mother was after the birth of my brother, Orson. She says she had a dream and saw a baby being taken by angels. She thought it was my brother, Orson, so she was begging them to take her rather than her son. She claims that the baby spoke to her and told her he wasn’t Orson. He was James Harold, her other son. The timing makes it possible, because Uncle Harold and Aunt Hesse’s baby finally died about that time!
Uncle Harold’s topic of fame is a huge elk he killed one hunting season. He’d seen them coming and climbed into a tree. His license was for a male though and all of the ones in the herd seemed to be females! After they were gone, he was sort of kicking himself, when he heard another one coming. This one had huge antlers, more than six feet from one point to the opposite one! He had driven his Jeep up there, and saw that the elk wasn’t going to fit there! He cleaned him out and cut him into three pieces! Luckily there had been a road nearby.
He had the head and horns mounted and kept them in his living room. The antlers were six feet plus between the left and right. Most of that elk, he had ground up. I had the pleasure of eating some of the meat off of him. Even ground up it was tough! Uncle Harold and Aunt Hesse apparently had another son after we quit coming home. When my Aunt Mary’s husband, Uncle Alton, died, I went to his funeral. While at the burial I met a young man, late twenties, who identified himself as my Uncle Harold’s son. Larry was born years after the other kids. As far as I knew, Uncle Harold’s only son had died from drinking Kerosene. Apparently, he’d been born after that.
Larry told me a sad story about how he’d inherited Uncle Harold’s farm. He’ married a lady who had divorced him, and in the decree she had gotten all of Uncle Harold’s farm! He’d moved to Luna, New Mexico and purchased another farm. He’d married again, but got divorced and lost his place to his ex-wife! I didn’t see him again. He had married again, this time, an older woman who had an adult daughter. His brother, Arthur, was lauded as being Alaska’s best architect!
Rex R Whitmer Sr. is next
Rex was basically the different child. In a family of blonds, he was black haired. He was the shortest one of all the children. He seemed to have the respect always of all the family. If Genevieve or Ethel were too late coming in from a date, he was elected to go find them. The boys all like to wrestle. My dad was pretty good at it. When he was a grown man with grown children he was wrestling men he worked with after work. Because he was shorter he was often challenged. It was a fun thing and apparently no one was ever hurt.
He had a bit of a temper. One time I came home from school and began telling Dad why F. D. Roosevelt wasn’t who he thought he was. It was one of the few times he got so mad at me that he could hardly speak!
He could read, but he liked other people to read to him. When I was quite young, I could hear Mother reading Ranch Romance magazine stories to him when they were in bed.
Dad liked to work on cars, but he was never really sure he was doing things right, so he had a couple of his friends whom he thought knew more about fixing cars than he did, and he’d have one of them there in most instances. He was a fanatic about caring for his vehicles. No oil stayed in the engine when the engine had gone ten thousand miles. Spark plugs had to be cleaned at that time as well. Some of our cars didn’t have starters on them, or in other cases the battery would be weak and not turn over, so either he or I would get out and put the crank in the engine. We’d give the engine a quick turn, and usually the engine would cough and begin to run. Even cars that had starters in them still had cranks in them at that time, in case the battery went dead.
We didn’t have much yard at our house in Morenci. Every year Dad would plant about three tomato vines, and boy! They were pretty and big. Mother would can (bottle) enough for a year for us and we had several neighbors to whom dad gave the rest of them.
My dad, Rex, was quite close with his two brothers, Harold and Cecil. When we’d go up to Alpine we’d spend quite a bit of the time with them while we were there. We’d borrow a one-man plow and work horse from Uncle Harold and plow our place up for whatever we were planting, corn or potatoes. One year Mother had been quite sick and in the Company Hospital in Morenci. Families who worked there got a certain amount of medical care paid for them, but one year Mother spent quite a bit of time in the hospital. Dad had raised potatoes that year so he made a deal with the hospital. We loaded up our three-quarter ton pick-up completely full of potatoes and the hospital took that for what we owed them!
I liked to sell things, and comic books in those days had different advertisers who would send the kids seeds or other things. The kid sold them to people in his or her town, and send back what the company charged him or her for whatever they sold, and then the company would send another gift. One year the company had a glow in the dark pocket watch and I wanted it. They sent it to me. My dad worked shift work, days, swing, and graveyard. He talked me into trading watches with him so he could see what time it was in the dark.
One time when Dad was working on a special job, driving a Cat, the company had bought a lot of underground mines to mine for the copper. Those mines could be as much as a mile or more in length. Besides that, there were turn offs from the main tunnel that they would follow the ore on. There was still a lot of gold, silver and mainly copper still in those mines. The company would buy the mine and then strip the ore body out. There were quite a few old mines in that area on sides of the mountains and so forth. Those miners of that day didn’t have cars or trucks so they commuted mainly by foot.
Dad’s job was to cut roads out so vehicles could travel on them. He’d cut into the trails making roads large enough for trucks to haul the ore out for refining. On the next level down below where he was working, they had a guy who was filling up the mine shafts with a front end loader. Dad had pushed dirt off the side of the hill, and this guy was grabbing the dirt to fill the mine shaft. Dad backed up in order to get a shaft on his level. They backed up where the other guy was grabbing the dirt to more easily fill the shafts. Dad had backed up, thinking that the dirt he had piled there was stable enough to hold the very large Cat! He was getting ready to push more dirt into the shaft when the back of his Cat began to drop. He didn’t have much time, but was able to get his blade up some. The Cat dropped tail end first and flipped over. Dad had managed to raise the blade up a bit, but the Cat flipped over and Dad was in the cab. He was able to move the blade up while all of this was happening to prevent the cab from crushing him. The Cat was upside down on the side of the hill, his boss and several others who’d seen it all were sure he was dead. Dad had been able to move the blade up enough so that most of the weight of the huge piece of equipment didn’t crush him! Most of those who had seen it happen, couldn’t believe Dad was alive. It did cause his diaphragm to burst, and he suffered from that until the day he died, but he managed to live quite a few years after the accident. He drew a pension from that time, until the day he died because of the accident!
In Morenci, most everyone worked for the company. There was a movie theater, a bowling alley, a couple of bars, the company grocery store, a hotel, a post office, a newspaper stand that also sold soft drinks and sodas. For a town of our size, we had a really great high school. The grades first through sixth, were older buildings, but were well maintained.
Aunt Geneva was next in line, her actual name was Genevieve.
I think most of us called her Geneva. She and her sister, Aunt Ethel, were very close. Both were very beautiful young ladies! I was never certain which one was dominant of the pair. In their teens, both were quite popular with the local boys. They had set times to be home by, and when they overstayed that time, it was my dad who was delegated to go find them and bring them home. It was always hard for me as a boy to differentiate between r e two of them.
Aunt Geneva married Uncle Reeves Edwin Fitzhugh. I don’t believe that Aunt Ethel ever actually married. I seem to remember a Pringle who was with her for about ten years. I do recall that he had an airplane they flew around in. She may have married another man towards the end of her life. Aunt Ethel apparently was
quite well off. When Aunt Ethel realized that death was eminent, she approached my mother about handling her money for her when she died. My mother refused telling her to find a member of the family for that job. I believe she finally got my Aunt Mary to take care of it.
My Aunt Geneva had one son, and both Mother & Aunt Geneva seemed to be his mother at times. The son died quite young I believe. I did at one time have contact with his wife, but I personally was moving and lost contact with her.
When I was about nine, I went to Silver City, New Mexico and spent the summer with her. Grandmother Whitmer was also there. It was during World War II and I was given a job of using a dust mop with magnets in it to sweep out her beauty shop most evenings. The mop picked up bobby pins and other metal things that had fallen to the floor. There were two theaters in Silver City at that time. They changed movies about three times a week. I’d go to a matinee altering between the two every day except Sunday.
When I was a senior in high school and planning to go to college, Aunt Ethel invited me to come to Silver City and attend their local college there. My parents and I went over to check things out there. Her house was very, very ritzy! Uncle Bill had a hardware store and managed a bus depot, and she had several beauty shops. They would find work for me. I turned it down, not because of the work, but because the house was too ritzy and they both drank and smoked-I would really have liked to stay because Uncle Bill had his own plane. As an Air Scout, I had taken some lessons, but not enough air time to qualify for a license.
Afton Verle Whitmer is next.
I likely know him best of all because he worked for Phelps Dodge in the same town as my dad. I often baby sat wih his children when he and Aunt Lenora would be going somewhere. My mother began working again after her last child had died, and I being the oldest in my family was entrusted with caring for my younger brothers and sister. It seemed I couldn’t have friends over to the house, while my siblings could and did! I often begged my mother to quit working and stay home with us kids, but she always thought we needed the extra money.
We only had four kids while Uncle Afton had five or six, and they were just as well off as we were! In fact my Aunt Lenora belonged to a couple of civic groups. Both Dad and Uncle Afton had some animals that they kept in the area designated by the company. My dad usually had a couple of horses and some rabbits and sometimes chickens and pigs he kept there as well as a calf which we raised for beef. Uncle Afton generally just had a few chickens.
My dad always had at least one horse, so our outgo was larger than Afton’s. I don’t know how it was established, but Uncle Afton alway stook Lewis, my younger brother, with him when he was doing jobs so they could watch us, and Uncle Lawrence took me. Personality wise, they were both equal. They would let us hold the reins when we were hauling things or plowing or leveling the ground! Mother would usually have a treat for all of us when we got back to the house. Lewis was two years younger than me, so Uncle Afton couldn’t take him as often as Uncle Lawrence took me. Uncle Afton went with Uncle Don in 1940 when he went back up to Washington to visit his wife’s family. While there, he met my Aunt Lenora and asked her to marry him. At that age she was quite cute, but later she became a bit heavy, but she was always fun to be around! I moved back to Morenci after I remarried. They had a square dance club there that we joined. It seemed like that Uncle Afton would always grab my wife, Catherine, for a partner, and I had my Aunt Lenora. I was always amazed at how light she was on her feet!
They raised a fine family. Their youngest son joined the army with several friends, and was sent to Viet Nam. There were nine boys in that group, and every
one of them was killed within a few weeks after arriving there! I had been Scoutmaster over a group of scouts in our church group. He was a very fine and intelligent boy! Eighteen was a very young age to die! Uncle Afton had retired from the mine by that time, and when they received the government money they used it to purchase a house in Safford. They’re both dead now, but their kids are mostly still there.
Lawrence F. Whitmer was next.
He was MY Uncle. In my ages from five to seven, I went everywhere I could with him. When we were threshing grain, we hauled the grain in a huge wagon that had a seat quite high above the floor of the wagon. The grain was bundled after it was cut, and when the threshers came around we’d go out into the fields and pick up the shucked grain. The threshers would cut up the wheat or grain and send it down where someone was sacking and tying the sacks. The straw was blown out to a huge pile of the actual grain stems, maybe ten to fifteen feet high. The sacked grain would go into the barn to feed the cattle and horses who stayed in during the winter time. The straw pile would have a fence built around it, and the cattle that had been out on the range would eat it off the pile. The fence would be moved in as the pile grew smaller. A tarp would be sometimes thrown over the huge pile if it looked like it might rain or snow. In the summertime when we could get away with it, we’d build little caves in the side of it. The horses and cows both lived off of it in the wintertime, but only the horses in the summer.
The cattle were out on range! I remember one time that Uncle Lawrence had had a date with a girl who didn’t live in Alpine. He said he’d gone over to Snowflake to go to a dance with her. I had no idea where the town was with such a funny name. I asked him if she was pretty and he said that all the girls in Snowflake were pretty! One time when we were taking the reins off of one of the work horses, I went to pick up a strap that had fallen beneath the horse. Nobody told me to do it, I was just trying to be helpful. The horse didn’t like me there so he kicked me in the head. I was knocked out good! Uncle Lawrence picked me up and took me to our house about a mile away and told my mother what had happened. About that time I was coming around. You’d have thought I had died from it the way Mother carried on, she wasn’t mad at Uncle Lawrence though. She was mad at me for going under that horse when I’d been taught not to get too close to a horse’s feet!
Uncle Lawrence was a member of the National Guard and his unit had been sent to Panama for training. I didn’t know it at that time, but Uncle Lawrence had been shipped from Panama to Hawaii after the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbour! We never saw him again until quite a while after the war was over. We did write lots of letters and got some pictures back when he could make them. He was sergeant when he was sent over, and eventually made a lieutenant by the time it was over. He was sent to Japan after it was over, but because he was an officer, it was quite a while before they shipped him home!
He and my Aunt Evelyn were married a few months after he returned home. One other thing about him. He would not go to a movie depicting a war battle. When it occurred, he would get up and walk out. Movies couldn’t begin to show the horror of battle! He stayed with us for a while. Dad had been having bonds taken out of his checks after the war started. He took those bonds and split them up between Lawrence and Von. Though both of them refused them at first, eventually they took them.
Later in life after He and Evelyn were married, He moved around a bit. Mother would find articles about him or his family, and by this time I was a grown man, actually stationed in Salt Lake City. She’d get the paper and it would mention he lived in Washington county, Utah. I looked in all kinds of maps attempting to find where that was. Years later after he had died, I found out that it was actually part of St. George, Utah. I had traveled through there quite a few times on my way to Salt Lake City! Our letters sent to him while he was in the service were subject to “Victory
Mail”. They censored every letter and then took a picture of it and made it smaller by shrinking the picture. Mail was examined both ways so that a soldier wouldn’t accidently reveal his location.
Vaughn B Whitmer also known as Von, his preferred name.
By the way these middle initials mean nothing! My grandparents thought it was dignified to have a middle initial for the males. Vaughn was the youngest son in the family so he was a bit spoiled. Not that he had any more bad faults than any of his brothers and sisters. He was nine years older than I was. I can’t say a lot about him as he wasn’t much older than I was. I have virtually no memories of him at all while we lived in Alpine. He apparently was a bit wild but I don’t know that for certain.
One day, a woman came hitchhiking into Alpine demanding to know where the Whitmer Ranch was. She claimed that she had married him in Silver City, New Mexico! I believe that he was about eighteen years-old at the time. He had gone to Silver City and gotten himself drunk. I guess he got to bragging about owning the biggest ranch in Alpine, Arizona. She’d got him a bit drunker and had taken him to a Justice of Peace and had him marry her. They sent the lady on her way, I don’t know how, but she went to a law firm there in Silver City and made a complaint. Vaughn was about eighteen at this time. It was causing quite a bit of problems. Grandpa apparently hired a private detective to check out the woman. In the mean time the lady whom claimed he had married her was killed in a car accident! Vaughn went and enlisted in the Army, and after basic training they sent him to electronics school where they made a telegrapher out of him.
While he was in training he met a young lady about his age named Zelda Hale, and married her. She had come from Arkansas and her family sort of lived like what we see in the hills of Arkansas. When his training was up, he shipped out to India. In the mean time Zelda found herself pregnant, so she wrote Grandpa and Grandma for some help. He had already signed his pay over to his parents, and she had no way of supporting herself. Grandma went to where she was living and attempted to take the baby away from her. She didn’t succeed. Zelda found a job waiting in a bar and an apartment that was above the bar, and she lived there until he came home.
When the baby was born, she was sort of out of her head and said that someone had sent her a present for the baby from a department store who’s name began with an “H” & “B” so that’s what she named him, HB. Vaughn’s job in the Army was to handle the telegraph in a plane that was flying the “Burma Hump”. The planes were carrying equipment and supplies to the Chinese army who had been attacked by the Japanese. If a Japanese plane attacked them, they were supposed to open the cargo door and shoot at them with a machine gun. It never happened but a lot of men died in the process. Just before the end of the war though a Japanese plane strafed the field, and he was shot in the groin!
When he came home he and Aunt Zelda took up where they left off. She didn’t have money so she took care of herself. She could do anything. She would study it out and do it. If she didn’t know how to make a shirt, she’d just figure it out. She smoked and drank. She never joined the church. They adopted two more children. After a while Vaughn decided he wanted to come and work where Dad and Uncle Afton were, so Dad talked to his boss and they hired him. Unfortunately, he had become an alcoholic and couldn’t get to work when he was supposed ~nd he was fired about a year and a half from when he started. He went back to Indiana and got his job back in the meat plant.
One day when I was helping Grandma and Grandpa, he came visiting. Grandpa loved watching the news, but it was in the days of black and white television, and he couldn’t see too well, so Uncle Vaughn went and bought him a huge TV, and then gave him four hundred dollars besides!
After Grandpa died, Von called Grandma and asked her if he could come help her. She told him no, she had me and my sister there to help. He came anyway, and called my mother from Wilcox saying he’d taken the bus from Indianapolis, come pick him up. My mother came to me and asked me to tell him she didn’t want him to come, that he had his own family to care for. He’d been a drinker and held up a bottle of Dr. Pepper, and said, “This is all I drink now!” It hurt, but I told him that I was here now and she could take care of herself. I turned and left him, and he went back to Indianapolis. His wife, Zelda, is one of the sweetest women I know .
I remember Uncle Melvin and Aunt Fern. Uncle Melvin was in a fire in the war and had to have his hand attatched ( instead of a skin graft) to his stomach. Wonderful thing. Missing his fourth finger.
Fern lived in a duplex with them in Morenci. She was a pretty good aunt most of the time. She had several rings I thought were diamonds. She had a chest of drawers and was sorting things while Lewis and I were in the room. She was showing how pretty they were. After she left we grabbed one of the rings and took it to a jewelry store in Morenci and tried to sell it to the owner. No deal, so we took it back home. Lewis was supposed to put it in the jewelry box. That night Aunt Fern was baby sitting us. When Lewis took off his pants to take a bath, the ring came falling out of his pants. Lucky for us.
Aunt Fern was pretty cute and outward whereas Faye was timid. Fern would always tell you what she thought, no matter what. When Aunt Faye was going to marry Raymond, they went to tell Grandpa and Grandma. Grandma got so mad, chewed her out and told her to leave. She was only sixteen. They went to Phoenix and got married. She gave up the beauty college she was attending. No doubt a big regret for Aunt Faye later.
THE CHILDREN OF REX WHITMER
Lewis Leland Whitmer
Lewis was born December 13, 1936. He served in the Army for 6 years and was sent to Germany during this time. He married December 29, 1959 to Marjorie Nell Honeycutt in the Mesa Arizona Temple. They were married for 63 years. He taught junior high math. Their family moved a lot. He had 5 children: Margie, Machelle, Mary, Lewis, and Todd. Unfortunately, Lewis developed Alzheimers before he died, December 2, 2022.
Barbara Jeanette Lamoreaux
Barbara was born July 24, 1938 in Alpine, AZ. She went on a mission when she was 19 years of age to California. She was always active in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For a short time she was a governess. She always enjoyed her role as mother. She did take time to teach fourth grade in Douglas Unified School District for the past 9 years. She was 61 when she passed away. She had 8 children: Marvin, Leland, Rex, Jared, John, Claire, Marilyn, Dorothy.
Orson Arza Whitmer
Orson was born June 8, 1941 in St. Johns, AZ. He graduated from Eastern Arizona College graduating Bachelor of Science in Business and Arizona University. He was married to Leslie Porter. Some of his church positions included: Senior President of 70’s, Counselor in Bishopric, Elders Quorum President, Young Men’s President, Primary Instructor, Gospel Doctrine Instructor. He served a full time mission in the East Central Mission. He always taught his children the value of work, play and to serve others. He always opened his home assisting others in times of need. Family was very important to him including picnics, campouts, holidays, etc. His children were: Joyee, Sperry, Orson, Eric, Beckee, Reeder, Damon, and Seth, Debbee.