"About J. Willard Marriott "

I was born on a small farm at Marriott, Utah, on September 17, 1900. Soon after, I moved to the old James place next to the railroad tracks. The large canal which ran past our house was contaminated, and when I was a small boy, around three, we all got typhoid fever.

The first experience I can remember was when I was about four or five years of age. I started wandering down the road one day and kept walking and throwing rocks until I came to the lower fields, which were about a mile away. My mother began looking for me in the afternoon; she couldn't find me and thought I had been drowned in the canal. So she had the whole neighborhood dragging the canal to find me. I arrived at the lower field about five o'clock. My father ­was there plowing, and when he saw me, he immediately hitched up the horses and took me home. We arrived home about 6 o'clock and he put me in a dark closet for about two hours without any dinner, as a punishment.

We moved from this place to another little house and from there to what we thought was a grand country estate! It was down at the lower part of Marriott, Utah, and this :farm contained about 100 acres, all planted in grass. It had a big wooden fence around it and the farm owner had kept race horses there. It was an ideal place to raise race horses. At that time, Ogden had a fair ground with a racing track and the owners of race horses pastured their horses on this farm. My father developed the land into a stock raising farm. He would buy sheep and cattle in the fall, fatten them on pulp (from the sugar factory which was about 1-1/2 miles away) and on corn silage which he put up from the farm. In the winter time, after school and on Saturdays, I would haul pulp and feed sheep and cattle.

I went to school in Marriott, Utah, during my youth until the sixth grade. Then I went to the Slaterville school, which was about 1-1/2 miles northwest of our home, Upon graduating from the eighth grade, I went to Weber Academy, the L.D.S. church school in Ogden, Utah.

My father had a herd of Hereford cattle. He would run these in the range which is now known as Snowbasin, east of Ogden. We would round the cattle up in the fall, bring them out to the farm and feed them during the winter time. Before starting to feed, we would run them down on the range next to Little Mountain, on the shore of Great Salt Lake. Being the oldest son, it was my job to herd these cattle every fall until the snow got so deep that the feed could not be reached. Then we would take them to the farm and feed them for the balance of the winter.

Of course, when I was a little fellow my father had always given me the responsibility of a man. He would tell me what he wanted me to do but never tell me how to do it or send anyone along with me to show me how. It was up to me to find out for myself!

When I was fourteen, I took my first trip away from home. My father sent me with a herd of sheep to sell in San Francisco. This was the year of the World's Fair at San Francisco. I had the opportunity there of seeing the Exposition and of buying my first pair of long trousers. I rode the caboose all the way out to San Francisco. I had to get out every time the freight train stopped and poke the sheep up because they would, of course, all jam up in one end and if they weren't straightened out and put on their feet, they could have been suffocated. Then I had to jump on the train at the other end and walk all the way back on top of the freight cars to the caboose. This was quite an experience. I brought something back with me, however, from San Francisco which I remembered for seven years. It was the 7-year itch! Every year at the same time I was reminded of San Francisco!

I thought I was quite a cowboy in those days. I used to have a wooly pair of "chaps," a big hat, and wear a six shooter on each hip. I used to shoot at jackrabbits and coyotes and occasionally hit one!

When I was fifteen, my father sent me with another trainload of sheep to Omaha. At that time, there was a regulation on the railroad that no one under eighteen years of age could ride on a freight train or caboose. When I reached Cheyenne, the conductor decided I was too young, so he put me off the train and I had to go on to Omaha on a passenger train. Upon arriving in Omaha I reported to the commission agent who was supposed to tell me when our sheep were coming in but we couldn't find them anywhere. It took about three days to locate them. They had been put off back in a little town by the name of Valley, to feed. By some mistake, they had not been sent on. When they finally did get into Omaha, a new employee in the stock­yards mixed our sheep up with another herd of lambs from Texas. My father had purchased our sheep at the stockyards in Ogden and they had all mixed brands on them. I was put on the gate to separate ours from the ones they had been mixed with. So the only thing I could do was to pick out the large ones because the Texas sheep were much smaller I decided then I would never take another trip anywhere with a load of sheep. The responsibility was too great.

My high school training was broken up continuously by my either having to stay out to herd sheep or feed cattle or harvest sugar beets.

When I was twelve, I was ordained a deacon, and then a priest at fifteen. I did the usual thing that a young man does in our Church. My sister and I used to sing duets in meetings and I would do the usual chores of a deacon and teacher.

When I was fifteen my father bought his first automobile. It was a beautiful Buick! The first time we took it to church. I remember, the kids engraved their initials all over it. Then we took our first trip up to Star Valley, Wyoming, to see my father's twin sister, I was the official driver from then on to the sorrow of my parents, be­cause they thought I used the car all the time and they never knew where I was or where I had been. Of course, being only fifteen, I was not supposed to drive a car, but my father was away so much with the sheep and cattle that I was the only one left at home to drive.

We used to have a traffic officer in Ogden by the name of Peggy Reese. He would ride around in a little straw cart with a Shetland pony. Every ­time he would see me, he would take me over to the police station and tell me I shouldn't drive that car any more because I was too young!

When I was nineteen, I was sent on a mission to the Eastern States Mission. My folks said they sent me to reform me. I suppose I didn't do everything I should have done and this was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. In those days, there was no preparatory missionary course like we have today. So, a lot of our boys were sent out who could hardly read or write. I was one of them thoroughly. One young man who went with us had a cowboy hat and high-heeled boots and had lived on a sheep ranch in southern Utah. When we got him to New York, we tried to get the cowboy boots off and put some regular shoes on him, but we had a very difficult time accomplishing this. Finally he agreed to wear the regulation shoes.

I saw this young man a year after that and he was the most able speaker in the mission field. He had realized his ignorance and lack of training and had worked night and day to improve himself. The development of that young man was a testimony of the value of living one's religion, not only in helping others but in the real personal development that comes to the individual.

George W. McCune, who was President of the Eastern States Mission at that time, sent me up to Vermont to work with an ex-sheriff from Arizona, an old cowhand. He was one of those hard-boiled looking fellows with parched lips and big worn hands, and had the outward appearance of a tough hombre, but he was a man with a heart of gold. He, too, was interested in improving himself. So we used to get up at 4:30 and 5 every morning, even though the temperature was down to 40 degrees below zero, and study until time to cook our breakfast. After that, we would go out tracting; of course, not from door to door, but in department stores and in the railroad station. We would sit down by someone in the railroad station who looked as though he would be interested in what we had to offer and talk to him about Mormonism. I think in this manner we probably did more missionary tracting and had more conversations in the winter time when it was terribly cold than we did in the summer time when we could get around from house to house. Every time we rode on the train, we would never sit together but would sit by some individual in the hope that we might drum up a gospel conversation.

My first missionary experience occurred in a little Church about fifty miles north of Burlington, Vermont. We had gone there to visit a family of Saints over the weekend. We attended a. little Church and the preacher announced that there were two Mormon missionaries there and that he would hear from us right after the opening exercises. I was so frightened that I shook the songbook out of the hands of the person who was standing next to me. My speech was very short ­Brother Tanner did most of the speaking.

About two or three months later, my companion had left to attend Conference in Boston. I was all alone. A young lady, a member of' the Church, had fallen over a cliff on the banks of Lake Champlain. She was very seriously injured and the doctor said she couldn't live. Of course, the first thing the parents did was call on me, the only missionary there, to come and administer unto her. I was very humble and blessed this young lady and promised her that she would live. All her pain left her and she was practically healed from that time on.

That summer, we went out without purse or script in the hills of Vermont. The people were not very friendly; in fact, many of them were very bitter toward the Mormons. The editor of one of the newspapers in Burlington announced that the missionaries were beginning to do work in Burlington. He said that some of the leaders of the Mormon Church had come from Vermont and that was enough Mormons for Vermont! They didn't want any more.

Our first work in the country was in the beginning of spring. The first night out we met a lady who had lived at the same boarding house with us the previous winter. We were invited by her to stay with her folks that evening. That night we had one of the most memorable missionary experiences in my whole mission career. My companion had tried to convince the three ministers of the town that we should hold a meeting in their church. They refused and immediately counteracted with getting all the town's people out that night with the intention of "running the Mormons out of town." We were holding a little meeting in a hall and when we came out of the hall from 3 to 4 hundred people were waiting for us. They had buckets of rotten apples and eggs which they threw at us and completely covered us. One of the rotten apples hit me so hard on my collar (I was wearing one of those rubber collars) that it turned the collar completely around my neck. We ran down the street and a mob pursued us. Fortunately, we ran off the road and hid in some thickets. The mob passed us and circled us all night. They had guns and tin cans :for noise makers. As they went by we heard them cursing the Mormons and hollering and shouting like mad people. After they had all passed we slipped across a meadow into some pine trees intending to stay there until morning.

As we were hiding in these pine trees. we heard foot steps coming up on all sides of us. Of course, my companion had become quite angry at this sight and as one got quite close to us he said, "Well, I'll get this one anyway." So, he kicked as hard as he could kick, but instead of kicking a person. he kicked a cow under the chin! The cow bellowed and ran away. The cows had smelled the apples and had come to get something to eat.

We stayed up all night and the next morning found our way through the pine trees back to Burlington, Vermont. We had talked consider­ably before then about how wonderful it would be to die for the Gospel, but we weren't so sure about it when the mob was hot on our heels. I have thought many times afterward that we might have avoided this incident had we been a little more- tactful and used a better and less critical approach to the ministers.

Our routine as missionaries was to learn a passage of Scripture every day and to took up every word that we didn't know and use it in our daily conversation. In this way, I was able to get a fairly good vocabulary and at least was able to understand Talmage's Articles of Faith.

After a year in Vermont, I was moved to Connecticut. I worked at New Haven around Yale University, held meetings on the Public Square. Then we moved down to Stanford, Connecticut, which is about thirty miles out of New York City. I think we visited every home in that city and held many meetings. We did work in the country that summer without purse or script. I can't remember, however, of going without a meal. We had a little difficulty getting a bed but we always managed to get along somehow.

We made good friends - especially one, who was assistant to Thomas Edison. He lived on a large estate and became quite interested in us, to the extent that he would send his chauffeur into the city for us on weekends and have us brought out to visit with him.

I returned home from my mission in 1921, in time to attend Weber College. At Weber College, President Aaron W. Tracy gave me than job of running the book store, managing the Weber Herald and getting ads for the Acorn and the Herald. I was editor of the Herald that year. I was also elected the first president of the Weber College Student Body. That was the first year the college was separated from the high school.

We still lived in Marriott, Utah, at that time and I had to drive to Ogden by horse and buggy every morning; this was about a five-mile trip. In order to get any studying done, it was necessary to get up at 4 o'clock every morning (I had a little oil burner in my room) and get my lessons. My afternoons at school were all spent in working at getting ads for the school papers in taking care
of the book store.

Because of financial reverses which my father had, as a result of the fall of the beef and lamb markets in 1919 and 1920 (which bankrupted nearly every stock man in the state) it was necessary for me to earn my own spending money and to support myself and also to help other members of the family to go to school.

In the summer of 1923, 1 went with a school­mate, Edwin Nelson, to California to sell woolen goods, men=s suits and overcoats and ladies' lingerie. We went to Reno, Nevada, then up to Truckee, California, and through the big timber country to Ben, Oregon and back. We worked from six in the morning until eleven o'clock at night, showing our goods to the loggers at their mess halls and their families at home during day and night. We worked hard but we made plenty of money. My earnings for that summer were $3, 000 after paying all of my expenses.

My success that summer was outstanding that the next summer I was offered seven states for the Baron Woolen Mills as a District Supervisor. The winter of 1924, 1 went to the University of Utah.

That winter I worked for Franklin D. Richards, now head of the F. H. A. (1935), who owned the White House Caterers. He was a fraternity brother of mine and had been on a mission with me. I represented him at the University, catering for the sorority and fraternity parties. I also served at parties and banquets downtown.

During the summer of t925. I sent out 45 salesmen, young men whom I had solicited at the University for salesmen. I also trained them during the winter to sell by taking them out into the Salt Lake ­area and giving them practical experience.

In 1924, 1 went up to the Pacific Northwest with Roland Parry, another schoolmate. We sold woolens all summer to the loggers and fishermen. Roland Parry is Professor of Music at Weber College, Ogden, Utah. Edwin Nelson, my first partner, later established the Nelson Inter-Mountain Woolen Goods Company in Ogden, Utah, and made a great success of it. He died two years ago.

Roland Parry brought his ukulele along. He had been on a mission to the Islands, so being a natural musician and good singer, he did a lot of singing and entertaining with the ukulele. This is where I learned to like Hawaiian music.

When I returned from my mission I was always active in Church work. I had done a lot of speaking around the Wards in the North Weber Stake in Ogden, taught classes in Sunday School and Mutual, held various offices in the Priesthood and various auxiliary organizations.

The winter of 1924-25 I stayed out of school. My father sent me out to Nevada to stay for six months on the range with a herd of sheep. This was a rugged winter. I didn't see an American all that winter. I saw nothing but Bascos and Mexicans. The two men in the sheep wagon with me were both Bascos and spoke Spanish - very little English.

It was my job to direct the course of the herd to see which way we should go to get the best feed. It was always a problem, of course, to get water. We had to depend on snow for water or go up to the top of the mountains and melt snow and bring it down to the camp. One night a mountain lion got into our sheep and killed twenty of them. Another time we hit a poisoned spring and the water killed 200 of our sheep.

We had to drive from twenty to thirty miles in a buckboard and very often in a blinding blizzard at temperatures of zero and below to get provisions for our camp. The usual place we went for provisions was a little station called Curry, Nevada. It had two Basco hotels and a grocery store. One time I was in the grocery store getting the groceries. Suddenly, a train came around the corner and frightened my horses. They ran away and I had a terrible time catching them. When we did catch them, our wagon was broken and I had considerable difficulty getting it fixed.

I had a lot of trouble on this trip. The night before I had stayed at the Basco hotel. The Bascos all started drinking after dinner and because I didn't drink with them they got mad and almost ran me out of town. I had to leave that hotel and stay at the other one.

I finally arrived back at Ogden, Utah about the middle of May, after having been away all winter. This was a good experience, because I did a lot of reading. I read all of Emerson's essays and many books. On one occasion, I had to ride 125 miles on horseback, the length of the mountain range, south of Wendover, Utah, and back, to determine which side of the range was the best to drive our sheep. The only place I had to stay was in an occasional sheep wagon. One day I passed one at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. When darkness came I couldn't see another one, so a had to turn around and ride back five hours to get to this wagon to have a place to stay. The three herders who were in the small bed got up and cooked me something to eat. They all turned around in the bed and the four of us slept in the bed that night. This is the kind of hospitality sheepherders gave to a stranger. I would have frozen to death otherwise.

I also lost my dog that day. I had him chasing a herd of wild horses. I followed him for a couple of hours, but couldn't find him again.

For two years, between 1925 and 1927, I had at least 45 salesmen covering seven western states. Of course, I was doing some selling myself at the same time that I kept in touch with these boys. They all did very well, too--that is, most of them did very well.

After coming to Washington in the summer of 1927, I still directed and sent out these salesmen and got a commission on their sales.

I graduated from the University of Utah with an A. B. degree in the spring of 1926. In the fall of 1926, I secured a position as Secretary and Treasurer of Weber College under Aaron Tracy. I also taught classes in Theology and one in English during that winter. I also had charge of the little Theater that winter.