This history has been staring me in the face here by my typewriter for months now and for some reason I couldn’t quite bring myself to sit down and get at it. But, decided I had to so the other day I went through all my Christmas letters, and thank goodness I have saved them because the highlights of my life for fourteen years are in them, with a few missing for some reason, and also, for many months now I have been making an extra copy of my family letter, so between the two I think I can pick up the pieces and get going. Also, in going through a box from the attic (I’m trying to get all my boxes of keepsakes and this and that sorted while the weather is bad. I came across a large journal I started keeping from one of our student leadership conferences at BYU. I read it through and it was very interesting to me, but as I read it I felt it wouldn’t be very interesting to anyone else, but I may go through it to see if there was something worth adding to this history.
I can remember so much about my life but for some reason am having a hard time to pinpoint it in time, but I must do the best I can.
At the moment, I’ll bring us up to date on the state of the world, which isn’t very good. We are in the middle of a recession that has been threatening to widen into a real depression, and I wouldn’t want anyone to go through what those of us old enough to have been in it went through in the ’30’s. The report just came out however that unemployment is up slightly, and there are other factors that seem to be leading to an upswing in our economy and I surely hope so. Ronald Reagan is rather going through what President Hoover did when the depression hit. He got blamed for the whole thing even though he really had almost nothing to do with it. Reagan keeps saying that he is the victim of what the Democrats did the past few years. At the moment his credibility and popularity is down, but I believe that he is trying to do his best to bring the country out of it. He hasn’t said yet whether he will run for another term, and I wouldn’t object to it except that he is getting rather old for another four years in office which would see him not too far under 80. But, his health seems to be excellent and he is vigorous.
His recession seems to be quite general throughout the world, and I guess the Third World Countries are suffering worse than usual. OPEC had a meeting last week and it ended with everyone going their separate ways in confusion, which means that gasoline may go down in price. In fact, it is already down. Today I bought gas for $1.09 which is better than the $136.9 it was some time back.
Prices in general haven’t come down much but all the stores are holding large sales which do bring the cost down some. I try never to buy anything unless I buy it on sale.
When I went to California this Christmas, I had decided to talk to the troops there about moving back to California. Donna is very vociferous in saying I should move back. Steve has been the one who has said ever since I retired from BYU that I should move back because my grandchildren were growing up and I wasn’t around them, but this time he said he would like to see me move back, but he wanted me to be sure it was what I wanted to do. He reminded me that if I were to move there and wanted to do community work as I am here, I would be working with a bunch of old, smoking, drinking women and not the kind I work with here. There are also many other considerations. I could not afford a home there like I have here, and I have put down roots, have tickets to the new stadium for football, can always get tickets for basketball, and my lifetime activity card on campus lets me into everything either…. (Marilyn: her page ended here and I didn’t find a second page, but found another partial page for later that year.)
October 24, 1983, Monday
I’m, at Linda’s taking care of the children while she and Rich are in London (and Rich in Europe). I came a week ago Saturday morning and on this trip there have been a series of traumas that aren’t of much consequence once they are over, so I’ll just briefly recount them. To go back, I now have three grandsons either in the MTC, or as with Todd, on a mission. Doug will leave in two days for the New York, N.Y. Mission, and Keith Cope just entered the mission home a few days ago to go to the Texas, Dallas Mission. Todd left for his mission in April to the Idaho, Boise mission. He is at his third place now, Pocatello and is a senior companion and trainer. We are really proud of him because he has had learning disabilities and we even wondered for some time if he could go on a mission, but he is doing wonderfully and he is there because he had a great desire to go.
Most of this year’s activities of any note will be in my Christmas letter. and all the news of the Europe trip are in my diary, so I think I’ll go back and begin right at the beginning
October 26, 1983
I had worked in the MIA most of my adult life and loved it more than any of the other organizations. I always thought that the Primary and Relief Society were good, but they really were quite insignificant when it came to ’Mutual.’ I had been writing plays and producing them in the Church for some time and finally they asked me to bring one to Salt Lake for June Conference.
Today October 26, 1983, I have spent my writing time re-organizing my history so far. I see that from about 1964 on, I have saved the Christmas letters I have written and I can rewrite the main event into this history as I rewrite the main events into this history as I rewrite it. Also, I have all my copies of letters to my children separated. I will need to go through them and pick out the items that are worthwhile to go here, and since I am so inclined to write too much detail I will try and hone them down and only put in what will be significant in my life.
I see I said above I would recount the traumas of the trip and briefly they are that I almost missed the plane in California, and got lost after that. (Mother got to the end of the page and I couldn’t find the rest.