I snagged this Mothers Day cards from the kids to Amanda. Pretty sweet. Sharing here for Amanda’s birthday.
Amanda’s Mothers Day Cards
Hygiene and Sanitation by Egbert
On the 15th I wrote about my Grandfather’s 100th Birthday (Norwood Jonas) and noting it with a newspaper article found in a textbook that belonged to his parents. This is that book. This was a textbook for my Great Grandfather at Brigham Young College in Logan, Utah.
Joseph Nelson Jonas graduated from Brigham Young College on 3 June 1915. That is 109 years ago tomorrow. Here is a copy of his Diploma. I have written about his history previously. I have also written about his time at BYC previously too.
The textbook is also interesting. It appears Hygiene and Sanitation written by Seneca Egbert has some serious staying power. I found this history of Mr. Egbert.
Dr. Seneca Egbert (1863-1939) and Nancy Egbert
“Dr. Egbert was a physician. He graduated from Princeton University in 1884 and received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1888. Before graduating, Dr. Egbert had been a demonstrator of hygiene in the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania. While in this position, he worked with Professor Samuel G. Dixon to establish the first Laboratory of Hygiene in the University, and was made lecturer on hygiene for 1890-1891. In 1892 the Drexel Institute of Philadelphia hired Dr. Egbert for a similar position. In 1893 he was elected Professor of Hygiene and Sanitation in the Medico-Chirurgical College of Philadelphia, appointed Vice-Dean of the same college in 1897, and elected Dean in 1898. Once the Medico-Chirurgical College merged with the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Seneca became a professor of hygiene. He was president of the Radnor Township Board of Health and he was esteemed as a public health authority.
“In 1897 Seneca Egbert and his wife, Nancy Bredin Egbert, bought part of the old Towne family farm. The home, now owned by Fred French, is located on Blueberry Lane.
“Dr. Egbert was widely published. His book, Manual of Hygiene and Sanitation (seven editions), appeared first in 1898, as did his Home Sanitation, a Manual for Housekeepers. In 1919 Personal Hygiene for Nurses was published. He also wrote numerous articles for medical journals, maintained an impressive lecture schedule, and was a history buff who strongly advocated for the creation and maintenance of historic sites. He was not hesitant about venturing his opinion openly, and on at least two occasions made suggestions to Philadelphia politicians which received limited consideration. Dr. Egbert “was an advocate for ‘pure air, pure milk, and pure water.’ He felt that if people in the United States had these ingredients the average span of life would be increased by seven and one-half years.” He pursued this philosophy in an article, “Pure Water for Philadelphia,” which proposed damming the Mullica River and its feeder streams at the head of the tide to form a reservoir all the way to Atsion, NJ, and then pump to a reservoir on the western side to flow towards the Cooper River and another reservoir, thence to be pumped under the Delaware in order to relieve the poor water quality in Philadelphia . It would have pumped a relatively small quantity, 450,000,000 gallons of water per year, to start. The potential value of his plan was not recognized, either then or, to judge from a 2011 Web comment, now.
“On another issue, the City of Philadelphia proposed clearing all buildings from three city blocks. In response to a request for ideas on how to use this space, Dr. Egbert suggested allocating some of the land to the federal government, some to the state and some to the city of Philadelphia. On a strip of land extending down the center of the whole space, Dr. Egbert suggested constructing thirteen buildings representing the thirteen original colonies, and calling the area Independence Square. Each building would house the contributions made by that state towards the forming of our Union. “The idea was considered ludicrous in design and in scope. Dr. Egbert was a physician, not an architect.”
“Despite his critics, Seneca Egbert was doggedly determined to maintain the quality of life for Americans. For example, he embraced the newest form of transportation, bicycling, and “saw cycling as a remedy for dyspepsia, torpid liver, incipient consumption, nervous exhaustion , rheumatism, and melancholia.”
“A portrait of Dr. Egbert was painted for the University of Pennsylvania by Nancy Egbert’s brother, Rae Sloan Bredin (1870-1937). Mr. Bredin was a member of the New Hope group of American impressionists and several of his paintings are owned by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mr. Bredin was co-founder of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and the New York School of Fine Arts. His portrait of Dr. Egbert hangs now in the home of Dr. David Egbert Sparks, Dr. and Mrs. Egbert’s grandson, who is a genealogist and retired head of libraries at Notre Dame.
“Like Dr. Thomas Montgomery Lightfoot, Dr. Egbert was a lecturer in the winter lecture series held during the years 1887-1895 sponsored by the Academy of Natural Sciences. Dr. Egbert’s lecture was titled, “The Prevention of Disease and the Preservation of Health.”
“Nelson’s own Parke Struthers wrote in A History of Nelson that like Dr. Egbert’s good friend Dr. Thomas Montgomery Lightfoot, Seneca Egbert “met his fellow Nelsonians on an equal footing, a trait in human relations reserved for only the Great.” Mr. Struthers also states that the Egberts were “gracious, active in town affairs, and interested in the people of Nelson.” With their friends Dr. Lightfoot and his wife, Dr. and Mrs. Egbert served on the committee to make arrangements for the celebration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the first settlement of Nelson 1767-1917.
Here is the writing inside the book:
Joseph N. Jonas 1915
394 So. 1st East
Logan, UT
Jonas Joseph
Richmond, Utah
1915
Here is the writing on the second page of the book:
Joseph N. Jonas
B.Y.C.
Logan, Ut.
394 So. 1 E.
Herrington, or Park
Stearn, Hot air, or Water
1 degree expands 1/491 of its val
relationship of insects to disease, Herrington
Hygiene of the school. h medical inspection.
282-387
Historical Crossing of Paths
This is one of those times where there are not words.
On May 10, my father-in-law, Bryan Hemsley, sent me a photo of this card. He simply stated, “Paul, found this Christmas card going through my mom’s papers. I was wondering if this was your dad or grandpa?”
I looked at it and recognized the names as my father, his first wife, and my half-siblings.
Why in the world would my Dad and family have sent a Christmas card to Dee and Shanna Hemsley?
Dad, Vicki, Scott, Jeff, and Becky lived in Plain City for the 1960s, Becky was born in 1969. The family then moved to Brigham City for a few years but moved to Randolph about 1973. Amanda’s grandparents and father lived in Willard during this time.
I asked Dad about it. He has no memory of the Hemsleys. I asked Scott and Jeff and the similar aged children in the Hemsley family, Shayne and Dwight. They also had no memories of the Hemsleys.
I asked Shanna about it, she knew of Dad as a classmate of Ernest, her brother, but had no memory of Milo from before 1956 when she married and moved away until they met again at our wedding reception in 2005.
One of those little mysteries we will not likely ever know in this life. But further proof that we just never know who we are interacting with on a day to day basis.
Layton & Taylorsville Temple Open Houses
Before I talk about the Layton and Taylorsville Temples, I thought I better throw in another temple visit we made since I last updated. While on Spring Break this year, we made a stop in Vernal, Utah. While there, we scheduled and attended the Vernal Utah Temple with the kids. Glad we stopped to make another memory at another House of the Lord.
Since the kids have a goal to attend the temple every month this year, we did also make it in April to the Twin Falls Temple. In May, while going to Utah for the open houses, we made sure to stop off and fulfill the monthly goal. May took us to Ogden Utah Temple.
Later that evening, we attended the open house of the Layton Utah Temple with Amanda’s parents. Beautiful.
We look forward to attending the temple after it is dedicated.
The next day we attended the open house for the Taylorsville Utah Temple, again with Amanda’s parents. We were also excited to run into the Brad and Rachel Hales family as well as Sarah Sanderson!
It has been a crazy year for temple attendance and temple open houses. We have attended quite a few and quite a few are coming up for open houses. Wow, should be fun. It is exciting that the Kingdom and Church of God on the earth is in such a position to build so many beautiful houses to the Lord. We are blessed to attend the open houses and hopefully return some day to participate in holy ordinances there.
When I was interviewed for my first temple recommend in 1998, President Gene Hansen indicated he had a goal since he was first endowed to attend the temple every single month. He challenged me to do the same. As long as I have held a recommend, or I had permission to attend, I have attended the temple every single month since 1998. That meant a full day off of work in Missouri as it was a 4 hour drive one way from Branson, Missouri, to St. Louis, Missouri. Or from Richmond, Virginia, to Washington, D.C., that was a 4-5 hour drive and we often would go up and spend the night and return home on Saturday or Sunday depending on the circumstances.
Many open houses are upcoming, including Deseret Peak Utah; Casper Wyoming; Grand Junction Colorado; Elko Nevada; Syracuse Utah; Burley Idaho; Lindon Utah; Ephraim Utah; Smithfield Utah; Montpelier Idaho; Heber Valley Utah; Teton River Idaho; Salt Lake City Utah; Provo Rock Canyon Utah; Cody Wyoming; Lethbridge Alberta; Lehi Utah; and West Jordan Utah. Hopefully we can make some of the more exotic ones, particularly Birmingham England; Edinburgh Scotland; Honolulu Hawaii; and Vancouver British Columbia. We will see what our future holds.
Wilburn Norwood Jonas 100th Birthday!
I thought it would be appropriate to commemorate the 100th birthday of my Grandpa, Wilburn Norwood Jonas. He went by Norwood his whole life, or Nor to those closest.
Grandpa was born 15 May 1924 in Lewiston, Cache, Utah to Lillian Coley and Joseph Nelson Jonas. The fourth child of eight to his parents. He married Colleen Mary Andra 27 September 1946 in Elko, Elko, Nevada. Three children were born to him and Colleen; Douglas in 1952, Sandra in 1954, and Jackie in 1960. He died 14 March 1975 in Burley, Cassia, Idaho and was buried 19 March 1975 in Richmond, Cache, Utah.
I was trying to think of a way to commemorate Grandpa. As linked above, I have written of him before. This week, I went through an old book I have that belong to Norwood’s dad, Joseph. Inside were some newspaper clippings and notes. One linked to Grandpa. I share it to show that research is ongoing and can be found anywhere! Just takes a little luck, heaven’s guidance, and you will stumble on them. I will wrote more on the book and other clippings inside later.
Park School was in Richmond. It was only razed in the past few years. Grandpa went to North Cache High School, although he did not graduate. This clipping also has Irwin written in to it. Which tells me he was missed or it is the wrong Jonas boy that was listed. Although, I do have a class picture of Irwin and Norwood together, so I am not clear if that tips it one way or the other.
“Name Graduates of Park School
“The Richmond Park School commencement exercises will be held in the Benson Stake tabernacle Thursday, at 8 p. m.
“The program follows: Processional; Invocation, Bishop J. M. Godfrey; salutation, Garr Christensen; music, school orchestra; talks, Norma Kaye Funk, Margaret Merrill; music, class; class history, Joyce Larson; presentation of class gift, Oral L. Ballam Jr.; awarding of prizes and the presentation of the class. Principal G. G. Merrill; awarding of certificates, Levi H. Allen; class song, class; adjournment to the community building for dancing; benediction, S. W. Allen.
“The list of graduates are: Ivan Anderson, Oral Ballam, LaMarr Carlson, Archie Carver, Garr Christensen, Don Hansen, Warren Hamp, [Irwin written in, referring to Irwin Jonas], Norwood Jonas, Robert Johnson, Glenn Mortensen, Junior Peterborg, Darrell Smith, Gail Spackman, Alvin Spackman, Allen Spackman, James Scott, Boyd Tripp, Olive Biggs, Dorma Anderson, Joy Erickson, Norma Kaye Funk, Bernice Frandsen, Ruth Hutchison, Nadine Johnson, Eva Kershaw, Virginia Kirstofferson, Elaine Lewis, Anna May Lawrence, Joyce Larson, Margaret Merrill, Dorothy Nielsen, Beth Rich, Afton Sorensen, Lyle Wilding.
Here is the class picture with many of these same names. It also includes Irwin and Norwood. I have written about it previously.
Starrh’s Ferry Precinct Committeeman Campaign
We moved into our new home in September 2022. The move from Fairmont Street to 200 South Road was only a little over a mile. It changed quite a few things. We changed elementary schools, we changed routes to work, we changed Wards, we changed Stakes, and we changed Precincts. We were in the Burley 4 Precinct and now are located, oddly, in the Starrh’s Ferry Precinct.
Starrh’s Ferry is a large Precinct, named after the historical ferry across the river. Here is the language from the historical marker:
“In 1880, George Starrh, a Snake River placer miner, started a ferry across Snake River one mile north of here.
“From 1880-2, freighters hauling supplies for a mining rush to Wood River used Starrh’s ferry (powered by river current when stiff winds were not blowing too hard), and local traffic lasted until Milner reservoir flooded out summer operations after 1904. But a small town with a post office (1909-12) remained there for more than a decade. During that time, nearby bridges replaced Starrh’s ferry.
Late last year the current Precinct Committeeman lost her husband and had some of her own health issues. In conversation she had indicated she did not think she would run again and I said I would be happy to run for the position so she did not have to worry. She was very gracious. Just weeks before the registration period she sounded like she might be planning to run again and suggested she let me know if she was going to do it. A few days before, she let me know she would not be running again. I had heard maybe another lady, Melissa Brown, would be running but nothing was confirmed and the current Committeeman didn’t say anything about another candidate. I threw my hat in the race on the first day for Candidate filing. That same day, Ms. Brown also filed for the same seat. The race was now on.
Before running, I also learned that Gem State Conservatives was building a coalition across the state to help committeeman run in contested races that were considered more mainstream Republican. The basic idea was that various individuals would assist candidates to help ‘right the Republican ship’ from the ‘conservative’ contingent of the party. A wide variety of aids would be made available from access to online registries to the covering of the costs for signs and postcards. There would be total autonomy on which resources we wanted to use, if any. Various meetings would be set up in order to help train on how to navigate the campaign website and even putting together a slogan. Also was the option of networking across the state to learn from other committeeman candidates. These all turned out to be very valuable resources. The meetings also helped provide encouragement in the topsy turvy emotions of a race.
I had assisted with various campaigns throughout the years, from U.S. Senator down to a city Mayor. The basic idea is always the same, connect with the voter. As I downloaded all the registered voters of my Precinct, I realized I already knew or had interacted with about 70% of them in some fashion over the past decade. When I started, the Starrh’s Ferry Precinct had 729 registered voters in roughly 396 households. Some of those are duplicates as married couples living with their parents, or college children, and more, are really not a separate household. There were 358 separate mailing addresses. The work started.
You can see the signs above. They are free to all candidates, but are generic and all basically the same. I was not in love with my short name in such a small fashion. You cannot cuss free signs though. I did my first mailer very early in the season as part of the Presidential Caucus. The Idaho Republican Party was kind enough to provide the Caucus jpeg. It brought about a dozen texts asking for more information. I dare say the flyer was effective as the Starrh’s Ferry Precinct was the best attended of the Precincts that caucused at Burley High School’s King Fine Arts Center.
The next stage was texting or calling every single person on the registered voter list. That turned out to be somewhat of a nightmare. My phone did not like texting over 700 people in two days in April. I did not want to use an auto-dialer. If someone wanted to reach out to me, I hoped they would do so. But then I could also avoid potential federal law on auto-dialers and all the disclosures that sometimes can get problematic. Just me, raw Paul Ross.
That drummed up another dozen conversations. Very helpful. Started quite a few conversations. Interesting how many people responded “STOP” but then were surprised and chatty when they realized a real person was sending out the text messages. A hurdle for me is that I still have my (801) prefix on my phone. Various said they don’t live in Utah. But it also helped cull the herd as many indicated they had moved, no longer lived in Idaho, and various other things. After a series of chats or text chains, a number of people were asking for more.
Now it was time to put up signs. The signs arrived near the end of April. I had my strategic war map of the precinct and where would be the best sites for signs. Gem State Conservatives provided 25 signs. Of course the signs on corners never get much attention. Nothing more than weeds. But well selected sites, with property owners taking ownership of the signs, is best. That conjures up conversations between neighbors, discussions about issues, and questions for candidates to find out their stances. That was less than a sign per square mile in Starrh’s Ferry! I had to be very strategic on which stretches and which houses. Most were very complimentary and willing to help. It was just taking the time to go and visit each site and get the signs up. Hopefully in a way that an Idaho wind wouldn’t remove it. We did have some crazy winds for many days. I did have to replace the stands on more than a dozen signs, more than half of the total signs.
Then the voting started. That is when people started doing some homework and reaching out to friends and family. The first week of voting I lost at least an hour a day from work in responding to texts and addressing questions. It is always nice when the majority of the precinct is already familiar with, knowledgeable of, or circumstantially aware of both the candidates. Discussion and contrasting seems to be easily done and people do it on their own after asking their own questions. I really did not have to present myself, usually just answering questions. I was also surprised by how many of the questions really did not have to deal with my precinct race, but rather the contested Sheriff race (between Jarrod Thompson and Travis Worthington) and the Legislative District 27B race (between Clay Handy and Pat Fields). By giving insight and answers to both of those races, and even the U.S. Representative race (between Mike Simpson, Scott Cleveland, and Sean Higgins), the answers I provided gave them the information they also felt they needed for the Precinct race.
We still have a week of early voting to go and then the election on May 21st. Here are some flyers I have seen for people. Steve Taggart, a friend of mine in Idaho Falls, is running for a Precinct in Bonneville County.
Here is the one for my opponent.
Since I already felt I have connected and did not need to do as much cold-call introductions, I kept mine to the more generic postcard.
There is the profile that is listed for Gem State Conservatives. Here is my biography:
Hi! I’m running for Republican Precinct Committeeman to represent Starrh’s Ferry on the County Rep. Committee. I have helped build and sustain our County party since 2014, serving as Chairman since 2022. I am involved in the community as an attorney, helping bring a public charter school, and more. I am asking for your vote on May 21. Contact me at paulnjross@hotmail.com
I guess we will see how things actually turn out on the 21st. But this week almost a dozen people texted or called to let me know that they voted early. The thought that they wanted to let me know makes me think it was for me (if they are in my Precinct). I voted on the first day early voting opened.
This week I will text everyone in my precinct again to encourage them to remember to vote, either early or on May 21st.
There are so many stories I want to share from discussions, but those will have to be in my journal and not in the public forum of my blog.
Your May vote could change path of state GOP
Upcoming vote vital for control of state GOP
Sagacity 