After graduation, Steve said he didn’t want to go to college but that he did want to go on a mission and for this was thankful. He didn’t want to go to BYU and I knew that like Joan in her first year, he wasn’t ready, so I didn’t urge him to stay. He’d always talked about a mission for him, but I never pressured him about going. I knew it would be a miracle if he got into the Y, even in those days when it was much easier than now. He said he wanted to go to California and live with Marilyn and Chris, who were living there then. And so he did and he worked in the mail room at an oil company to save money for his mission.
All the time I thought that maybe some day Steve would realize what he had put me through a bad time in his teenage years, but I really didn’t count too heavily on it…not because he was Steve, but because so often that doesn’t happen…ever. But, he had been gone only a few months to California when I got a wonderful letter (which I still have) in which he hit the nail on the head about his actions and said he was sorry and he really felt bad about the whole thing. A few months later, he said he wanted to go on a mission. He knew that I wanted very much for him to go, but I also knew that it wasn’t something I wanted forced on him, so I always let him know that it was his decision to make.
While in California, Steve met Cheryl Startup and they started to date the year he was there.
He was called to the Northeastern States, which now has been divided into two or three more missions. I went to California to Wilshire Ward to his Farewell. This was the ward that Marilyn, Chris and Steve were living in now, and he was leaving from that ward.
But I’m going to leave his story now because I’m way ahead of myself and will go back to 1958 or thereabouts.