Russell Stewart Marriott, Sr.
April 4, 1979

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BB: So, let's start, Mr. Marriott, with when you went to grade school. Where did you go to grade school?

RSM: In Marriott. I went to grade school in Marriott, Utah. We lived on a farm which was in Marriott, Utah. It was at the bottom part, the western part of Marriott and we were about a mile and a half from the Marriott school, the grade school where we all went to school while we were growing up.

BB: How large a school was this? How many students would there be in it?

RSM: That's kind of hard for me to say. In our class we probably had about 50 students.

BB: Did the students generally walk to school, or did they ride horses? How did they get to school?

RSM: Well, most of the students walked to school. We were a little further away than most of these students and for that reason my brother and I both had a horse. We had a lot of work to do both in the morning and at night, and we didn't have time to walk back and forth. The sooner we could get home and get our work done the better, so we rode a horse most of the time.

BB: Do you remember how many rooms were in the school? Was it a one room schoolhouse or were there several rooms?

RSM: There were about four rooms in this schoolhouse.

BB: Do you remember anything unusual happening during this period when you were in grade school? Were there any unusual events that happened that would be different in your day at school?

RSM: Well, some of the things that were different about this school was that one teacher taught all the subjects. We were all about the same age. About forty or fifty students all about the same age would all be in the one room and they would teach us all English, arithmetic, and so forth and so on all together. One teacher would teach us all the subjects that we were taught.

BB: Would she divide the class up into the grade levels and she would give the rest of the room some work to do and then she would take, let's say, the students in the fifth grade level and would she speak to them for awhile while the other students worked?

RSM: No, no. You misunderstood me. We were all in the same grade level. We were all in the same grade so she taught us all. The whole room was taught the same subject and the same things, so there weren't any other things. The room didn't have to be divided in any way. We were all taught the same things, but she would take in the morning and teach, say, reading and English and then maybe in the afternoon, arithmetic and in between times they taught us songs to sing and all the different things that were taught to young people.

BB: Do you remember how many years you went to this school?

RSM: I went to this school until I was about ten (about fourteen?) years old--through I think the ninth grade.

BB: Do you remember the name of the little school?

RSM: I started to school when I was six years old. The name of the school was the Marriott Elementary School.

BB: The Marriott Elementary School. After you finished this school then did you go to a junior high school? Or just on to high school?

RSM: No, they had the junior high school all right in this school. It was all combined. The ninth and tenth grade which would be junior high school, were taught that right there in this school before we went to the senior high school.

BB: What did you have to do in the way of work before you went to school and what did you do after you went home?

RSM: Well, we had chores to do. All of the boys had certain chores and so did our sisters; there were eight in our family. The chores that I had to do were to milk three cows which we used for our family and then we had about two hundred head of sheep and maybe fifty head of cattle that we had to feed. They had to be fed morning and night. We would feed these cattle (and the sheep) in the morning before we went to school and milk the cows and then when we got home at night, we would do the same thing. There were also the barns to be cleaned out and (we) had to do that daily, generally after we got home from school. This involved quite a bit of work, and by the time we got through doing this we were quite tired.

BB: Now the animals had to be kept inside during the winter because of the harsh winters in Utah?

RSM: No, there were only certain animals that were kept inside. The animals that we used, the riding horses or the work horses that were being used to work, and the milk cows. All the other animals lived outside completely.

BB: Do you remember what your home was like at that time? What kind of house you lived in during that period of your life?

RSM: We lived in a two-story house, and this house had a parlor, kitchen, living room and one bedroom on the first floor, and three bedrooms on the second floor. There were three stoves, one in the kitchen, one in the living room and one in the parlor. Most of the time the only stoves that were heated in the winter time were the kitchen and the living room. Those were the pot belly stoves that you see, and we burned coal and wood in these stoves. That was the only heat we had for the house. The upstairs most of the time wasn't heated and when we went up to bed it was pretty cold. We would run up and jump in bed pretty fast. We had three or four quilts over us--big, thick, heavy quilts that kept us warm after we got in bed. We would get warm and getting in and out was quite a chore.

BB: Did you sleep one to a bed or were there two of you?

RSM: No, we always slept two and sometimes three. That's one way we kept warm.

BB: Did you have electricity at this time in the area?

RSM: Yes, we had electricity. I never lived in my life without electricity. My older brothers and sisters did. We had a house burn down before this house and it didn't have any electricity. When this house was built--that was when I was growing up and I was about one or two years old--this house had electricity. At first, it didn't have bathrooms in it and we had an outhouse that we used. Later on we had these things in-stalled in the house, and we had a bathroom in the house and all of the facilities in the house. That was when I was perhaps twelve years old.

BB: Twelve years old. How big was the barn? Was it a real large barn? Or did you have more than one building other than the house on the property?

RSM: We had a lot of buildings. The barn was quite a large barn. It was used for the horses and the cows to stay in plus a place to store hay, which we fed them in the wintertime. It was quite a large barn. We had several sheds which were implement sheds that we kept the different implements that we used to till the soil with and the wagons and so forth and so on. Plus the blacksmith shop that was used for a tool shed to repair the different implements that we used on the farm.

BB: Did you do any farming on this property, as well as having the animals?

RSM: We did some farming on this property from time to time. Mostly the farm was used to grow hay for the sheep and the cattle. But one time, my father, when he was in the sheep business, had a very severe winter. All thirty-five hundred head of his sheep died out on the Nevada desert because there wasn't any feed. The snow was so deep that they couldn't get any feed and every one of those sheep died. So my father took a severe loss and didn't recoup for quite a number of years and went out of the sheep business and into farming. That was when I was very young, so I worked on the farm for the first six or seven years of my life, I did farming work.

BB: What type crops did he grow?

RSM: Sugar beets were one of the main crops. And potatoes was another of the crops. We grew from time to time string beans, tomatoes, and, of course, alfalfa hay were the main crops that we grew when I was young.

BB: How did you harvest these crops? It must have taken a number of people to harvest all of the things you were growing. Did just the family work on it or did you hire people to help?

RSM: Once and a while we hired. When we were quite young and weren't able to do all the work, we had one or two hired men that would work with us. But most of the time we did the work ourselves, and all of the crops were harvested by hand. We didn't have any of the implements that harvested the hay and the grain and the different items. It was all done by hand. We had a mower that would mow the hay, and we had a digger that would dig the potatoes. But we would have to come along and pick the potatoes up and put them in sacks.

BB: Did you do the sugar beets the same way--put them in sacks?

RSM: Sugar beets were the same way. We had a digger that dug the beets out of the ground, and we'd come along on top of the beets and put them in piles. Then we'd come along with a fork and throw the beets on a wagon and haul them to the beet factory.

BB: What's the earliest job you remember doing in the field? Did you go out and help pick up the beets, or what do you remember doing at a very young age doing in the field?

RSM: The youngest job I did was just to ride on the horse with my father while he plowed the fields. I would ride the horse. It really wasn't a job. (I was) perhaps three years old, two years old. It really wasn't a job. But then the first things that we really did was probably thin beets, hoe weeds that were in the fields.

BB: About how old were you when you were doing this?

RSM: Four, five, six years old. We started out real early, even before we went to school, doing a lot of these different things.

BB: Do you remember how long you worked in the fields when you were that young? Was it, say, an hour or a half a day? How long could a young child work that way?

RSM: We would start out at seven o'clock in the morning and work until noon. Then we'd have lunch and a short rest period and then we'd go back out and work until about six o'clock in the evening.

BB: And you continued to do this all the time you were in school? RSM: No, that was just in the summertime. BB: Oh, just in the summertime.

RSM: Summertime was when we grew all the crops. In the wintertime, there was snow three or four feet deep. That's when we did the chores--taking care of the sheep and the cattle.

BB: Tell me about after you left the elementary school there in Marriott.

RSM: Maybe I ought to tell you just a couple other things about the elementary school.

BB: Okay.

RSM: I liked sports. I played baseball and basketball and I was lucky to have a horse because, in order to play these sports, I would have to stay after school to practice or play the league games. That would keep me for an hour and a half to two hours after school. On top of that I'd have to go home and do all my chores, so I was lucky I had a horse to ride so I could get back and forth in a hurry. This playing baseball kind of helped me out later on when I got a little older, when I went on my mission. I played baseball, and this is where I learned to play baseball and also basketball.

BB: Did you play for the school as a team? Did the school have a particular team and you were one of the members or did all of the boys play?

RSM: Well, the boys that were qualified boys would play on the team and we would play other schools in the area. There's one other incident that happened that's quite interesting. When I was about nine years old, I got pneumonia. I got the pneumonia in the first part of November. In those days they didn't have anything to help you, any type of medicine to help you with the exception of cough medicine. That's about the only thing they had to give you and maybe some aspirin. I stayed in bed from November through the middle of May. I stayed in bed with a temperature of about 101½0 and 1020 all winter. I missed my school completely. They didn't bring books home for me to study. I don't know why, but the teacher didn't ever send any books home for me to study. I did some studying but very little while I was in bed. When May arrived and I was able to get out of bed and the temperature had left me and the pneumonia was going away, my father needed someone out at the sheep herd to help trail the sheep in from the winter range to the spring lambing ground. So instead of sending me to school for about a month and a half or a month that was left in school, he sends me on out to the sheep herd.

BB: You were outside then?

RSM: It was real good for me. I was so worried about going out to the sheep herd because I was afraid I would get pneumonia again, and be back in bed again. I was real worried about it.

BB: How old were you at this time? RSM: About nine years old.

BB: Nine years old. So you missed that complete year of school.

RSM: I missed mostly all that whole year of school. When I did go back to school for about a week at the end of the school, my teacher gave me an arithmetic book and passed me right on into the next grade and told me to study this arithmetic book that summer. Well, I tried to study it, but I didn't understand it enough to study it, and I didn't get much help from my brothers and sisters. We were all very independent, and they didn't attempt to help me very much along that line. So I didn't learn a certain part of my arithmetic that year. One of the things was my fractions. I never learned my fractions and I moved right along up to high school not knowing my fractions. I started to take algebra and that was pretty difficult.

BB: I imagine it was very difficult.

RSM: I had to really go back and learn my fractions because I hadn't learned enough to take algebra.

BB: Was there anyone else in your family that had pneumonia when you did or had it in that same winter? Were you the only one in the family?

RSM: I was the only one that had pneumonia. They had colds and got sick, but none of them had the pneumonia that I know of.

BB: Do you remember anything else that happened in this period of your life from about five or six years old until you were nine? Events that were most unusual for your family?

RSM: Well, there was one other thing that I neglected to tell you here. My brother at this time, when I was going to the grade school, my brother Bill and two of my sisters were going to a combined high school and college which was at Weber College. We had a horse and buggy at this time. We had previously had an automobile. The automobile was just coming into use, and we had had one, but at this time was when my father had lost so much money in the sheep business that we had to give up the automobile and go back to the horse and buggy for about two years. At this time my brother and two sisters had to get back and forth to Weber College which was about three and a half or four miles away. I used to drive them about two-thirds of the way to school in the morning in the horse and buggy and then I would come back to our home and get on my horse and ride to school. This was quite a chore because we had to start out quite early in the morning to get them to school. They wouldn't ride all the way to school in the horse and buggy because they felt a little bit embarrassed riding to school in the horse and buggy. So they would walk the last half a mile or three-quarters of a mile.

BB: How did they get home then?

RSM: Then I would go out and pick them up after school.

BB: After you got out of school, you would go back and pick them up.

RSM: Yes and bring them back home again. I did that for one year that I remember.

BB: Well, after you left the elementary school and went up into the upper grades, what was your next school like?

RSM: Well, I went to a high school which was Weber County High. It was right near Twelfth Street and Washington Avenue, which was straight east from where we lived about one and a half miles, almost two miles. We were picked up by a bus that took us to high school. I had to work real hard in high school because I had lost so much schooling when I was going to grade school. I didn't have the background that I needed for high school really, but the teachers in those days would never hold you back. They would pass you right on into the next grade regardless of whether you had earned it or not. So I got into high school and had to work pretty hard because I didn't have the background that I should have.

BB: And you didn't get any help from your brothers and sisters?

RSM: No help from my brothers and sisters. They figured they'd helped them-selves. So we all helped ourselves and that was about it.

BB: Tell me what you remember about your father during this period of time. Can you describe him to me?

RSM: Well, my father was about 6'1" and he weighed all the way from 200 to 220 pounds. He was a little heavier than I am and maybe an inch shorter than I am. He was quite a sturdy man--strong, very strong. During the early part of his life, he worked as a laborer and had developed strength and know how to do all the things that he had to do later on in life.

BB: Was he a man who had a good sense of humor or was he very stern and strict?

RSM: No, he wasn't too stern and strict. He was very carefree, and he treated the children very, very good. He didn't believe in whipping us. He would talk to us once and a while but I remember getting only one switch in my whole life when I was under his direction.

BB: Did he ever sit down and talk to you about problems that you might have had sometime, like in school or with friends or some problem in your life? Was he very good at talking with you?

RSM: One of the things that he did do was to talk to us once and awhile about problems, about things that we needed to do. And then he would leave us on our own, he wouldn't force us to do anything. He wouldn't say, "Now you do this and you do that." He would tell us what was necessary to do and left us on our own to go ahead and do it. We felt much more responsibility being brought up that way. We felt more on our own, and we felt we had to do these things because they were for our benefit and not for his. So many children are brought up forced into doing things and they do them because their dad and mother wants them to do them and I sometimes think that's wrong. I think that if you bring your children up to feel the responsibility of doing it themselves that they will learn more and they will take the responsibility and accomplish things much better. And I think that my father did this very well. My mother was just the opposite.

BB: What was your mother like?

RSM: Mother wasn't strict really, but she lectured to us continually.

BB: What did she look like? In appearance, what did she look like?

RSM: My mother was a nice built lady. She wasn't heavy. She had a good physique--about five foot ten and a very nice looking person, very pleasant, and liked by nearly everyone. She wasn't a derogatory person in any way, and she was always very pleasant and likable.

BB: Was she a good cook?

RSM: No, not entirely. She only knew how to cook certain things--just the necessities of life. She knew how to cook one type of cake--raisin cake, and that was about the only type of pastries and things that we ever got. My sisters, later on when they went to school, learned all these things in school and came back, and it was so wonderful when we saw our sisters start baking and make some of the pastries and things.

BB: Did your mother work out in the fields with you or did she stay mostly in the house doing her work?

RSM: Mother did her work mostly, I do remember her working a few times in the field when we were pushed to get something done, but she had so much work to do raising the family and cooking for all of us. Many times I would see her out chopping wood and getting coal and wood for the fires. I saw her do that many, many times. She was a hard worker--worked from daylight to dark.

BB: Did you have many other relatives that lived around you? Did you know your grandparents?

RSM: We had a lot of relatives (tape ends)

BB: ...Utah area. Were any of these your grandparents?

RSM: No, my grandfather and grandmother had died when I was young. I never remember them. My older brothers and sisters did but I never did.

BB: Had they lived in that area in the years before, or had they come from somewhere else?

RSM: Yes. My grandfather had settled Marriott Settlement. That was the job given to him by the prophet of the church, to go to Ogden, Utah and settle this place west of Ogden and that was what he did.

BB: Did you ever know your mother's mother and father? Where were they from?

RSM: They were from the same area. Both my grandparents had large families, the Morrises and the Marriotts, both had large families. It's quite an interesting thing that our cousins were most of them double cousins because the Morrises married the Marriotts, and the Marriotts married the Morrises. And we had ever so many double cousins.

BB: What did you do for entertainment in the evenings when the family would get together?

RSM: We had very little entertainment.

BB: Everybody was just so tired after they got through working.

RSM: After we got through working we were so tired that we just would have our dinner and get a few lessons--and that was very seldom because we were so tired. We'd just go right on to bed.

BB: And Sundays you went to church?

RSM: On Sundays we went to church. That was the day that we didn't do much work except the necessities that we had to do. We did sometimes visit with our cousins and that was about the most that we ever did in the way of pleasure. It was quite a pleasure to go to church because we would see our friends and cousins and so forth and so on.

BB: Tell me what the church looked like there. Was it a one story building? Was it log, or was it white? How large a building was it?

RSM: It was a brick building. It had a place where you could seat about a 250, 300 congregation. Then there was room in the back for classrooms where we used to hold our Sunday schools. All of the congregations divided up into classes, and classes were held in the back. Over the back, there was a recreation room. In this recreation room, they used to hold dances and picnics and socials in this particular area.

BB: So then most of socializing when you were growing up was in the church? RSM: The church mainly.

BB: Do you remember any of the most enjoyable events that you went to in the church when you were in elementary school and high school? Did they have fairs or any particular dances or parties that you went to?

RSM: When I got older of course we had a dance every Friday night and we used to go to the dance and this was enjoyable. But other than that they didn't have too many socials except on some holidays. One of the things that we did look forward to every year was the reunion. We had a Marriott reunion, and the Marriott family was quite large, and they came from all of the different counties. They had spread out in different parts of Utah, and they would all congregate there, and we would have a huge gathering there in the Marriott church and hold our reunion. Have a picnic and dance and socials all day long.

BB: All day long. Were you a pretty good dancer? Did you enjoy dancing?

RSM: I learned how to dance, which the young people today didn't learn how like we did because we started to dance very young. It's something that the Mormon church do--teach their young people to dance and we learned very young and I learned how to dance and knew how to dance quite well. In fact, I get a compliment once and awhile.

BB: Do you get a compliment? What kind of music did you like to dance to? Do you remember? Was it music of the day or was it some special kind of music what we refer to maybe as western music, country music or was it popular type music?

RSM: Well, we did have some southern music, and we did dance what you call the Virginia Reel. We danced that quite a bit when I was young. The music was mainly the music of day. It's hard for me right now to relate a lot of these old tunes. "Bye, Bye, Blackbird", some of these tunes are very (old)..."Singing' in the Rain", some of these real old tunes it's hard to remember them; they're so old.

BB: Tell me about the time you were in high school and the sports you were involved in when you got to high school.

RSM: When I got to high school I had a little problem with sports. I was very good in playing basketball, and when I went to high school I was automatically put on the basketball team. But I had a real problem because I didn't ride a horse to high school. I rode the bus, and the
bus went to school at a certain time, and it went home right after school, and they practiced their football and their basketball after school. I was accepted on both the football team and the basketball team but could not participate on either one of them because I had no way to get home. I had to go home when the bus went home.

BB: When the bus went home. So you missed out in being in sports.

RSM: I missed out in high school. When I got to college I participated in it. But we had sports in our church. Our church had what we called an MIA basketball team, and also a softball team--a baseball team. Even while I was in high school we played for the MIA. Each one of the churches around through the counties had a league, and there could have been at least ten of our churches that we played to see who was the winner of that division. We had a very good basketball team, and most of the time we won our division.

BB: What position did you play on the baseball team?

RSM: On the baseball team, I played pitcher, first base, and left field. BB: And left field. Were you a pretty good pitcher?

RSM: I was fair. I was left handed and sometimes a left handed pitcher be-came a little difficult for some of these people to hit. And for that reason I pitched a little bit.

BB: How about in basketball? What position did you like there?

RSM: In basketball I played guard. That was my standard position; although, I was a running guard. I was one of the high scoring basketball players because I was a running guard and also participated as a forward in making baskets.

BB: Do you still enjoy watching basketball?

RSM: Yes.

BB: Do you enjoy all sports or do you have some favorites?

RSM: I guess I like basketball probably better than any of them.

BB: Do you get to go to many of them in the Washington area--many of the games?

RSM: Yes. I have season tickets to the University of Maryland, and my wife and I see all the games at the University of Maryland.

BB: Good. So you are still active in watching the sport. What else do you remember about high school? Was it just math that you had trouble with in high school--just the fractions--or do you think you were a pretty good student over all during your high school years?

RSM: I was just a fair student. I got by, I got C's and B's probably, I don't remember many A's. I think a lot of this had to do with my background--being out of school so much. My father would take us out of school frequently to do different things and we did lose a lot of school. While I was in high school, my father broke his leg, which was the first part of April. He was laid up for nearly two months with his leg, so he immediately pulled me out of school. I had to go out with the sheep to take on some of the responsibility for him, so I missed two and a half months of school that year. One of the things I did to make it up...They gave me all of my credits but English. I didn't get my credit in English. But I was taking Spanish at the time and my Spanish teacher gave me a lot of work to do and I worked on it all summer long and he says, "Now when you get done, you come down to see me,"--down in Plain City where he lived--and he said, "I'll go over this work and if it's suitable I'll see to it that you get your credit." Well, I got all of my credits, I think, but English, and that one I didn't get. When I went on to college I had to take bonehead English.

BB: What year did you graduate from high school? Do you remember what year it was?

RSM: I graduated when I was seventeen years old. We were a little later than some of the students are now. They graduate when they're sixteen and seventeen, and even younger than that. They never pushed us through school in the country. That was about as fast as they could push us because the country boys and girls had so much work to do, that they didn't get the opportunity to work on their lessons at home and things that the others did.

BB: Did you have any girlfriends when you were in high school? Did you en-joy dating any or were you so busy with working at home that you really didn't date too much?

RSM: In my last year in high school I dated a little. I was a little on the bashful side, and it took me a little while until I got up into college to kind of get next to girls.

BB: When you did date this last part of high school, what did you do on the dates then?

RSM: Well, we would to to the school dances. And after the school dances, we would just go home. That was about it.

BB: Did you have any choice as to which college you went to or was it just sort of set that you would go from the high school that you were in and that you would go to Weber College? Did you have a choice to go to one of several colleges?

RSM: No, I didn't have much of a choice because I couldn't live away from home. I had to go to Weber College because I could live at home and there wouldn't be the problem of the expenses of staying away from home.

BB: Did your father believe that all of his children should go to college or was it some individual choice of each child?

RSM: No. My mother and my father both, especially my mother, drummed it in-to us children from when we were real young that we all had to go to college and had to get a good education. That was one of the things they really believed in, even though they didn't have college educations. My father didn't even have a high school education. He went back and finished his high school when he was thirty years old. He did that in order to get the certain fundamentals that he needed to do certain things that he wanted to do.

BB: So they were very interested in education? RSM: Yes. Very interested.

BB: Was there much reading in the family or did you have time to do much reading?

RSM: Yes. We did quite a bit of reading. I guess we did more of that than anything else because there wasn't any TV in those days. About the only thing we had was a Victrola. And we used to play music on the Victrola, (as) it was called in those days.

BB: Where did you get your books? Was there a library in town where you would get your books to read, or would you get them from the school library?

RSM: The school had a small library, and we would get books from that. We would buy certain books for our birthday or Christmas, and we got books in that way. Of course, they were passed down through the family and the older children would read them and then pass them down through the family.

BB: So you did prize books? You did take care of them when you got them? You didn't draw pictures in them or something. You knew when you got a book that it would be passed on through the family. Tell me about Weber College now, what your first impressions were when you got to college. Was it like you were continuing high school or what did you think about when you got to college as far as liking it, or it being different from high school.

RSM: Well, of course, our friends moved right along with us and I knew a lot of the people at college because they had come right along with me in the same grade and everything and we knew a lot of the students. I enjoyed Weber College quite a bit, it was a way of getting an education. By this time, we had moved to the city.

BB: Your father wasn't farming any longer?

RSM: My father had given up the sheep business and we had moved to Ogden. He had sort of retired and we moved to Ogden. So going to Weber College, I could walk which was a little bit less than a mile. I walked to school every day back and forth.

BB: What were you active in outside of just going to classes. Did you join any of the sports at Weber College?

RSM: Yes, I played basketball, on the Weber College team and I also played football.

BB: Did you play at, were you at Weber College two years? Was it a two year junior college?

RSM: Junior college. I was there two years.

BB: So were you on the football team two years and the basketball team two years?

RSM: I was on the football team for two years. But the basketball team, I was still on the M.I.A. team and my friends, when I went to Weber College and got on the basketball team at college, they were so put out, that I only played a small part of the season and went back to play with my M.I.A. team. We actually had one of the top teams in the city and the M.I.A. teams were recognized even more than the Weber College team.

BB: What subjects were you taking in college, what were you majoring in? Was it business courses, or what do you remember about the courses you took when you were in college?

RSM: When I went up to Weber I took just mainly a general course. The first two years you take just a general course. That's the way they taught
in those days. And then later on I stayed with business and went to the higher education.

BB: Did you have any idea at that point in your life what you wanted to do as your life's work?

RSM: I had no idea.

BB: You didn't have any dreams or goals of anything particularly in mind?

RSM: I had no idea what I was going to do. I was only interested in getting an education. I didn't know what I was qualified for. They didn't seem to help you as much in those days as they should have done.

BB: Not much counseling? RSM: Not too much.

BB: What was the year you started to college? Do you remember what year that was?

RSM: I was eighteen years old when I started to Weber.

BB: Do you remember any events that happened to the family at that time? Were there any important things during those couple of years that happened to you or to the family? Or was it just a regular time for you in your life?

RSM: Well, as I remember, my father died when I was at Weber College. BB: Whad did he pass away from? Was he ill, the flu or what?

RSM: No, he was just ill for a very short time--for two or three days. I don't know the name of it, but it's called hardening of the arteries. A blood vessel broke and he was dead within two days.

BB: And that did happen while you were in college?

RSM: That happened while I was going to Weber College in my last year.

BB: In your last year. When did you meet Phyllis?

RSM: I met Phyllis after I went on to the University of Utah. BB: Oh, you did. You didn't meet her at Weber College?

RSM: I didn't meet her at Weber College. She was years younger than I was. She went to Weber College after I did, and I never met her at Weber College.

BB: Did you go on your mission for the church after you finished your two years at Weber College?

RSM: No, I went one more year to the University of Utah.

BB: How did you decide to go on to the University of Utah? Was it just some-thing that your family wanted you to do to go on to your third year of college?

RSM: It was the thing to do. The Mormon people were people that believed in education and most of the young people went to college if they could afford it. They taught us to go to school and to get all the education we could so we looked forward to going to college. There was no decision really made at all; we just went to college because it was the thing to do
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BB: You went one year, then, to the University of Utah, before you went on your mission?

RSM: Before I went on my mission.

BB: Did you decide to go on your mission, or does the church decide when you should go on your mission?

RSM: The church calls you to go on a mission.

BB: Tell me about your mission. Where did you go, and what did you do?

RSM: When I was first called, I was going to the University, and I was enjoying University very much. I had quite a few girlfriends. And in the latter part of the first year, at the University of Utah, I met Phyllis, and I had only known her a few months before I went on my mission. But, my Bishop decided that it was the time for me to go on my mission, so he called me to go. I really didn't want to go then. I had another year to go to college, and I didn't want to go until I finished college, but he said no, that that was the time I should go. So I left school and went on my mission.

BB: And where was it to?

RSM: I went to England. I spent two years in England.

BB: How did you get over to England? Did you ride the train to New York and then take a boat to England?

RSM: I got on a train and went to New York, and went over on the U.S. Steamship. The United States Steamship.

BB: Was that your first train trip, for that length, going from your home to New York? Had you ever been on a long train trip before?

RSM: No, I hadn't. That was probably the longest.

BB: Do you remember what your impressions were about how different the rest of the country was, as you looked out the window of the train, as you were going to New York? Were you surprised at the different sights you saw out the window of the train?

RSM: Yes. Everything was very new to us. We had read books, and we had heard things of the east, and different parts of the country. We knew a lot about it, but had never seen it. And New York City was so much different from Utah. Salt Lake City at that time was quite a nice city, but New York City was very much different. We only stayed there about one day, maybe two days, to see New York before we went right straight over to England.

BB: Do you remember what you thought about New York City? Was it big? Were the buildings taller than you thought, or was it dirtier?

RSM: Yes. I'm pretty sure we went up in the Empire State building. That was one of the buildings that was built at that time and we went up to the top of the Empire State building and saw that. And we walked around on the streets and one of the things that I was amazed, some of the people were so antagonistic towards one another. And they were hollering at each other harsh words and swearing, and finally they both went into a fist fight, and they had quite a fight. One of them knocked the other one on top of the front of a car and cut his head and they were bleeding. This was something we didn't see much of in our part of the country. Oh, there were scraps and things like that but never so violently as the thing that I saw there at this particular time.

BB: So you realized that these people were very different from the kind that you had grown up with in Utah?

RSM: Yes.

BB: Then you got on the boat to go to England and you had never been on a boat before that crosses as large and expansive as the ocean. What did you think about that?

RSM: It was quite an experience. One of the things that we noticed was the food on the boat, They have such luxurious food. Some of the food I'd never eaten before. We didn't eat much fish out in Utah. We had salmon maybe, and that was about the only fish we ever ate. We had some oysters in cans called oyster stew and we loved that. That was about the only fish we ever had growing up, except some fish that were caught in the streams. We used to catch trout in the streams, and that we ate. But there were so many items on the menus that we didn't even like be-cause we hadn't been used to eating them.

BB: Did you get seasick on the trip? Did the boat bother you? RSM: Not going over; I did coming back. BB: So the weather was not rough going over?

RSM: The weather wasn't rough going over. We had a very enjoyable trip going over.

BB: Where did you land in England?

RSM: We landed at Southampton, England.

BB: And then where did you go to from there?

RSM: Then we traveled by train from there to London.

BB: What was your first impression of these English people who spoke with a very British accent?

RSM: They were peculiar to me at that time, but I love the English people. They were a very fine people, a very generous people. Very courteous and they'd do anything for you. If you run on to an English person on the street, and asked him a question, he might walk a half a block to show you where the place was you were looking for. They were very courteous people, and a very fine people and very nice people--generous. Around London it was a little different atmosphere, but in the other parts of England where I went, there were very nice people and I enjoyed living with them.

BB: Did you like their food over there? It is a little different than what you were used to eating in Utah.

RSM: Not exactly, we learned to like it. There were a few things that we liked. They ate a lot of roast beef, and we liked that because we were used to that. They had different puddings that we liked; we were used to that. One of the items that I loved was trifle. We used to eat that a lot, and I loved that because it was a delicious desert. They didn't have a lot of the deserts that we had. They didn't have ice cream and things like that--things that we had in America. I learned to like fish and chips. On the streets there would be little small places like our hamburger stores where they would sell fish and chips. They would put them in a newspaper, french fries and the fish in a little newspaper rolled up and you could take them in your hand and walk along the street eating fish and chips. The fish was a flounder, generally, and it was very delicious. I learned to like it.

BB: Did you learn to drink tea when you were over there? Hot tea?

RSM: No.

BB: You never did become a tea sipper?

RSM: No.