Lewis

by

Rooting out Racism

Salt Lake Temple, Revelations 14:6, And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,

This is an insightful article that came out with the Spring 2021 Clark Memorandum. I found myself enlightened by the introspection suggested. Enough that I was moved and want to share it with others. The author is Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye, Senior Lecturer, University of Auckland, and Historian, Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Recently President Russell M. Nelson has called on the Latter-day Saints “to lead out in abandoning attitudes and actions of prejudice” and has pleaded with us “to promote respect for all of God’s children.” Additionally, President Dallin H. Oaks has challenged us to “root out racism.” These directives make some things very clear: We are part of the problem. We wouldn’t have to abandon “attitudes and actions of prejudice” if we didn’t have them already. And uprooting will be a long, hard project. I offer three perspectives I hope my fellow Church members will find helpful. First, the problem of racism is a social reality that affects all human beings. Second, the restored gospel provides us with tools and frameworks for dealing with racism: confess and forsake and turn weaknesses to strengths through humility. Third, we all need to ask the Lord, “What lack I yet?” How do we get to work?

1. We All Have Blind Spots

As an Asian American growing up in diverse Southern California, I rarely felt the sting of racism. Now that I live in Utah, I notice racism much more frequently. Some of my friends and family have experienced ugly, malicious barbs, but the racism I most frequently encounter in Utah is in the form of condescension. White people compliment me on my English. In other words, when they see me, they assume I am foreign and I don’t belong. Then they hear me, and they are surprised. Then they decide to tell me about this surprise: “Oh, you speak English very well!” They don’t say, “I hate Asians,” but their words say, “I consider people who look like me to be ‘normal’ and expect people who look like you to be ‘different than normal.’”

One BYU student, whose family emigrated from Uruguay and who, along with all of her siblings, has fair skin and blue eyes, reported that, in their new Utah ward, someone came up to her parents and said, “Oh, look, the Lamanite curse is already coming off from her! You must be blessed!” Sometimes the racism is about as explicit as it gets, like the swastika and racial slurs that appeared recently on a fence along the bike path my children ride to school.

Biologically speaking, racial categorizations have no basis in objective reality. They are figments of the human imagination and are an example of our weakness for sweeping generalities. Humans beings share 99.9 percent of their DNA with each other. Skin color, eye color, and hair texture and color are a pinch of that tiny 0.1 percent of difference that people arbitrarily use to make consequential guesses about each other’s hearts, minds, capacity, safety, and so on. We might as well link judgments about intelligence to people’s earlobe shape or language-learning ability to toe circumference. Yet over and over again, in every place, many people treading the same crooked ways for centuries creates ruts so deep and so wide it is hard for them to imagine other paths. As President Oaks has said, “Racism is probably the most familiar source of prejudice today, and we are all called to repent of that.” “All” means you and me. I have become increasingly aware of the perpetual need to work hard to not be inadvertently unkind as I have lived in places such as the United States, Germany, the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and New Zealand. No one is immune to prejudice because no one can spend their life becoming embedded within every place and human circumstance in this wide world.

When I moved to New Zealand to take an academic position at the University of Auckland, I had some rough patches in my interactions with students and fellow professors. I discovered that the cultural traits Americans see in themselves of being friendly and optimistic can come off to New Zealanders as shallow and transactional, especially when the American (me) isn’t listening carefully to others around them. I remember sitting in my office when a Māori professor told me, kindly but candidly, how I had completely ignored his expertise and failed to acquire the level of cultural competence necessary for a university event I was planning. I remember thinking, “What do you mean I’m disrespecting people from marginalized groups? I’m Brown! I’m a woman!” Because of my past experiences receiving racism and ethnocentrism, I thought I was “exempt” from perpetuating them. But I was wrong.

Rooting out racism is a process of becoming aware of our blind spots and our great power to cause harm to others, especially to others on the margins. Unfortunately, unlike a pack of manufactured Toyotas and Fords on a highway, human blind spots are unique and change depending on who is around us. In the worst-case scenario, our cars are so big and heavy and fast that we don’t even notice when we knock small cars or pedestrians off the road.

Where are your blind spots? If you don’t know, you haven’t been looking.

2. The Racism in Our Past and Present Need Not Be in Our Future

Latter-day Saint theology explains that we came to mortal life, with its hardship and temptation, in order to learn and grow. Making mistakes and repenting is part of the plan. We have to be careful: a sin like racism is toxic enough to kill us spiritually. In the past, we have been affected by this illness. But if we heal from it, we can become stronger.

When I was experiencing cancer recurrence for a second time, some friends put me in touch with Dr. Mark Lewis. Even though he had never met me before, Dr. Lewis was kind enough to call to discuss my treatment. In the first few seconds of the call, he mentioned that he, too, was a cancer patient. He said, “I just had a scan the other day, and I’m waiting for the results.” In that moment, my confidence in Dr. Lewis took a giant leap.

No matter how knowledgeable, a doctor who has not had cancer cannot understand what it is like to feel in your body the pain, the shortness of breath, the needles and tubes and powerful medications, what it is like to walk past the open door of death on your way to the kitchen. Discovering Dr. Lewis was a cancer patient made me instantly trust him.

On a spiritual level, it is also true that some of the greatest healers are those who have known illness. Kylie Nielson Turley’s study of the Book of Alma points out that we have tended to see Alma’s story as the familiar tale of a rebellious teenager who eventually mellows out. However, the term “Alma the Younger” actually never appears in the Book of Mormon text. This label, along with some other things, has led us to believe he was young and rebellious. But Turley’s study shows it is actually probable that he was a mature adult, perhaps even in his 40s or 50s, when he repented and was born again. Alma may have been a full-fledged bad guy. But he became converted and began calling people to repentance. Because he had personally experienced the corrosive effects of sin, he had powerful authority to call others to repent.

This gives new meaning to Alma’s teaching about Christ: that He would

go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people. . . . [A]nd he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy,
according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people.

According to this passage, Christ inhabited our infirmities in order to understand how to heal us. It wasn’t enough for Jesus to stop up others’ wounds and lift others’ sorrows. It was necessary for Him to feel wounds in His own flesh, to experience despair and injustice and life gone horribly wrong.

In summary, patients make trustworthy doctors. Repented sinners make compelling prophets. The experience of mortal weakness is what turned the popular rabbi Jesus into the Savior of all. We believe suffering from mistakes in mortality is necessary for growth and for becoming as God is.

Our imperfections on this issue of racism and prejudice are clear to anyone who studies Latter-day Saint history. The Church’s essay on race and the priesthood states:

In 1852, President Brigham Young publicly announced that men of black African descent could no longer be ordained to the priesthood. . . . Over time, Church leaders and members advanced many theories to explain the priesthood and temple restrictions. None of these explanations is accepted today as the official doctrine of the Church.

These “theories” and “explanations” by Latter-day Saint leaders and members included the idea that all Black people were descended from Cain and inherited the curse God placed upon him in the Book of Genesis; the teaching that interracial marriage was sinful, akin to letting a “wicked virus” into your system; and the notion that Black people were less valiant in the premortal life. Some who promulgated these theories also made other painful claims that Black people were “uncouth, uncomely, . . . wild,” and inferior to White people.

These statements, which sound so ugly to us today, reflect to a great extent the social and cultural assumptions with which these Latter-day Saint leaders were raised in 19th and 20th-century America. Comparable statements to those of Church leaders in the past were made by the great American president Abraham Lincoln and many others. In the
same year that Bruce R. McConkie first published Mormon Doctrine, a popular book containing numerous theories and explanations, the Virginia couple Mildred and Richard Loving were arrested (and eventually sentenced to one year in prison) because their marriage violated a law banning interracial marriage in that state. At the time, similar laws existed in 24 other states, including Utah. No one is immune to culture. We must have empathy for those whom the passage of time turns into moral strangers, because someday, surely, those people will be us.

But significantly, as historian Paul Reeve has pointed out, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries there were people, including Latter-day Saints, who had done the intellectual and spiritual work to see beyond the evils of their day and cultivate knowledge of other people’s humanity and divinity. Over the course of his tenure as president of the Church, Joseph Smith evolved from supporting the enslavement of Black people based on Biblical passages about
Canaan—a common Biblical interpretation of the day—to asking how the United States could claim “that all men are created equal” while “two or three millions of people are held as slaves for life, because the spirit in them is covered with a darker skin than ours.” During his presidency, Black men such as Elijah Able and Walker Lewis were ordained to the priesthood as elders and represented the Church as missionaries. In Nauvoo, Joseph and Emma developed a close relationship with Jane Manning, a Black Latter-day Saint. Jane lived and worked in their home, and at one point Joseph and Emma invited Jane to be eternally sealed to their family through adoption. Jane’s own words reflect her esteem for the Prophet, which must have in some part reflected his esteem for her. “I did know the Prophet Joseph,” she
later testified. “He was the finest man I ever saw on earth.”

In the early 1850s, the apostle Orson Pratt opposed legalizing slavery in Utah and supported Black voting rights. “[T]o bind the African because he is different from us in color,” he said, “[is] enough to cause the angels in heaven to blush.”19 In May 1968, a month after the death of Martin Luther King Jr. sparked racial tensions around the United States, Hugh B. Brown of the First Presidency taught BYU students, “[A]void those who preach evil doctrines of racism. . . . Acquire tolerance and compassion for others and for those of a different political persuasion or race or religion.”

This gives us hope that we are not trapped in our cultures and times. It is possible to overcome the moral and cultural blinders of the societies in which we live. We will never escape them completely, but we can see more clearly.

Acknowledging the Latter-day Saints’ past racism is painful because it feels so wrong and because it did such harm. But, as laid out in Doctrine and Covenants 58:43, acknowledging wrongdoing is the first, essential step to leaving it behind: first, confess; then, forsake.

In this spirit, the Church’s essay on race and the priesthood declares:


Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or hat it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.

Our current Church leaders have taken increasingly bolder steps to lead out against racism. In 2018 they hosted the “Be One” celebration commemorating the 1978 end of the priesthood and temple ban and honoring the contributions of Black Latter-day Saint pioneers. In June 2020, President Nelson joined the national conversation on race in the wake of George Floyd’s death. He coauthored a joint op-ed with Derrick Johnson, Leon Russell, and the Reverend Amos Brown, three leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), calling for “government, business, and educational leaders at every level to review processes, laws, and organizational attitudes regarding racism and root them out once and for all.” This attention to “processes, laws, and organizational attitudes” called attention to the need for structural change.

In early October 2020, numerous speakers in general conference—including President Nelson, President Oaks, Sister Sharon Eubank, Elder Gerrit W. Gong, Elder Quentin L. Cook, and Elder Dale G. Renlund—condemned racism and presented the Latter-day Saints with a vision for a diverse, multiracial, multinational Church.

Finally, two weeks later in a BYU devotional, President Oaks delivered a comprehensive address on combating racism. Reiterating President Nelson’s recent charge to the Latter-day Saints to abandon “attitudes and actions of prejudice,” he said, “[W]e condemn racism by any group toward any other group worldwide,” and urged, “Now, with prophetic clarification, let us all heed our prophet’s call to repent, to change, and to improve.”

In asking us “to repent, to change, and to improve,” to “root out racism,” and to “clear away the bad as fast as the good can grow,” our current leaders are sending us a strong message: get rid of the bad stuff (i.e., do the work of anti-racism) and get on with the good stuff (i.e., work to establish Zion around the world).

Our leaders have made it clear that we each need to repent. Saying, “We are all good! No need for repentance here!” is disrespecting the Savior’s offer of atoning grace. We cannot “be saved in ignorance.” But if we humble ourselves and seek Christ’s help in moving forward, the errors and lack of knowledge in our past can turn to wisdom. Our stumbling because of racism in the past can be converted into eagerness to lead out in the future. Like Dr. Lewis, Alma, and Christ Himself, our memory of sickness can become a capacity to heal.

3. What Lack I Yet?

Here some might be thinking, “But I’m not racist. I don’t hate anyone.” It is a common misconception that racism means hate. Hate, along with fear, is a common symptom of racism, just like a cough or a sore throat is a symptom of covid-19. But hate is not all of what racism is.

At its core, racism is ignorance. It was ignorance that prompted those “You speak English so well!” people to say something to me—a stranger with brown eyes and dark skin—that they would not say to a stranger with blue eyes and light skin. It was ignorance that led Latter-day Saints in the past to find facile, speculative explanations for the priesthood and temple ban, like the “fence-sitters in the pre-existence” theory. The handy thing about this explanation was that it required no change in Church members’ existing worldview. The problem was that it also required ignoring Christ’s basic teachings, the second Article of Faith, the historical precedent set by Joseph Smith, and the fundamental implications of the phrase “children of God.”

Looking back at history, we wonder: How could a Latter-day Saint bishop like Abraham O. Smoot have enslaved Tom, a member of the Sugar House Ward over which he presided in Salt Lake City in the 1850s? How could the people of the United States in 1942 have approved of depriving my American-born grandparents Charles Inouye and Bessie Murakami of their civil rights, their property, and their livelihoods and imprisoning them behind barbed wire at Heart Mountain, Wyoming? In the UK, in Germany, in China, in Rwanda, in South Africa—throughout history, over and over again—we see people failing to see each other as fully human like themselves.

The frightening thing is that in all of these examples in the past, good-hearted people who strove to be morally upstanding were unaware of their stunning, reprehensible ignorance. How can we know we are not making the same mistakes?

On the score of racism, at least, history teaches us plenty of ways to avoid ignorance, if we are willing to put in the work. History can be our friend. If we study how ignorance looked in the past, we can better identify it in the present. If we can understand its potential to wound others and poison the worldviews of well-meaning people, we, as disciples of Christ, can develop the capacity and authority to heal.

Overcoming ignorance is not a simple matter of reading five blog posts and three conference talks and having a conversation with a Brown friend. We need to strive to know as God knows, see as God sees. Seeking learning that will show us the heart and mind of God involves hard work, radical humility, and perpetual self-improvement. But we believe in work, humility, and improvement. It is part of the plan.

If you do not have personal experience with how it feels to be regularly disrespected because of your skin color or how it feels to be constantly dismissed because you are a cultural minority, or if you don’t have peers outside your racial and cultural demographic, I humbly suggest you may lack wisdom.

I certainly know I do. Like me, you may need to ask for God’s help in filling this critical gap in your spiritual education. We, as Latter-day Saints around the world, have made sacred covenants to be one people, “bear[ing] one another’s burdens” and “mourn[ing] with those that mourn.” How can we keep these covenants if we ignore the burdens others bear or if we dismiss others’ mourning and deny that they have reason to grieve?

In a recent blog post, James C. Jones, a Black Latter-day Saint, explained that going out of our way for those “few” who are marginalized in society was what Jesus taught us to do. He wrote, “I’d like to go to church one day knowing that the people I worship Christ with—the same Christ who left the ninety-nine to find the one—won’t say ‘all sheep matter’ when I go to find the one.”

The fundamental equality of all before God the Creator dictates that Latter-day Saints do not dismiss others’ experiences of racism simply because we have not lived through these experiences ourselves. Jones also wrote:

Our very church is founded on the lived experience, revelatory as it is, of Joseph Smith. To devalue the lived experience of others is to desecrate the body-temple in which we all, prophet and prostitute alike, move about and understand this earthly life.

It is no sin to be born in a place where everyone looks the same, nor to be born into a culture in which certain assumptions about whole groups of people are taken for granted. But once we have grown to adulthood and come into the fold of God, which encompasses seven and a half billion sheep—all precious—we must put away the self-centered assumption that my view is always the best, my experience is universal, and it is only a problem if it is happening to me as one more childish thing.

If only I had joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Bald Generation X Asian Women Historians Raised in Orange County California, USA! How daunting is Christ’s charge in the great intercessory prayer, when He said that those who truly follow Him and testify of His divinity are those who will “be one” with each other! How daunting is the baptismal covenant given at the waters of Mormon to follow Christ! This covenant language wasn’t “we will bear the burdens
of people in our neighborhood only” or “we will only bear burdens we, too, have personally experienced.”

Most people don’t think of it this way, but the most lasting outcome of successful missionary work is not having more
people in the pews but inheriting more of the world’s thorniest problems. Missionary work is not about “claiming more people for our club” but about wiggling our shoulders into more yokes to pull many heavy loads.

The story of the young man in the gospels of Matthew and Mark is instructive. When the lifelong righteous, commandment-keeping, wealthy young man asked Jesus, “[W]hat good thing shall I do . . . ?” and “[W]hat lack I yet?” he was probably thinking Jesus would suggest another pious practice to slot into his “I’m-a-good-person” crown. Instead the Lord told him to give away all of his privilege. He asked the young man to seek parity with strangers at the very bottom rung of society. And the young man—who stood in front of the bona fide, miracle-working, in-the-flesh Jesus and in that instant received the Savior’s love—found he couldn’t do it. He didn’t want to do it.

The moral of the story is clear: no matter how awesome we think we are, the main question is still “What lack I yet?” (The more common question “What do they lack?” is beyond the scope of our agency.) Would we who yearn to see the Savior’s face be willing to literally stand before Him and hear Him say, “Come, follow me,” if it meant giving away our homes, our cars, our children’s college tuition fund, our dinner, our running water, our toothbrushes, and our family’s safety and becoming one with the poorest of the world’s poor? This is a troubling question. I am ashamed to say that I am not sure what I would do. But Jesus’s call to action is clear: even people who have eagerly kept the commandments all their lives may be holding something back. If we truly want to follow Him, we will dare ask, “What lack I yet?” and expect a difficult answer.

In the October 2020 general conference, Michelle D. Craig, first counselor in the Young Women General Presidency, cited the parable of the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan (a classic blind spot story) and called on us to ask God for help overcoming our limited vision. She said: “Ask to see others as He does—as His true sons and daughters with infinite and divine potential. Then act by loving, serving, and affirming their worth and potential as prompted.”

In sum, we should stop thinking, “Racism is hate, and I don’t hate anyone, so I can sit this one out.” Instead, we should ask, “What lack I yet?” To root out racism, we must go beyond simply avoiding racial slurs or ignorantly repeating discredited theories and explanations. We must proactively seek opportunities to understand how our sisters and brothers have experienced racism and how we can start doing some things differently.

4. What Can We Actually Do?

The day after President Oaks called us to repent and do more to root out racism, I tried to think of something concrete that I could do immediately. I decided to find images of the Savior that do not depict Him with White, European features. Clearly, Jesus was a Middle Easterner; He looked like someone from the Middle East. He was a person of color. Over centuries, as Christianity spread to Europe, many European artists painted Jesus—quite understandably, as
artists in Ethiopia and Japan and New Zealand and all places have done—as someone from their part of the world. They wanted to imagine a Savior who did not look like a foreigner (especially since for centuries many people from Europe feared and hated people from the Middle East). From a practical standpoint, the painters could only find local European models. One image I love, of Christ and the rich young man, was painted by German artist Heinrich Hofmann and has this European character.

In the globalized world of the 21st century, it is not difficult to imagine Jesus in His actual historical and geographic context. Now that I understand that the real Jesus looked like a Middle Eastern person, why would I want only images of Jesus as a White person of European descent? Therefore, the day after President Oaks’s talk, I went to Deseret Book
and found an abundance of scenes of Jesus in the Bible and the Book of Mormon painted by Jorge Cocco Santángelo, a Latter-day Saint painter whose geometric, slightly abstract style depicts Christ without a specific set of “racial” features. Together, my family members picked out one of these beautiful images to display in our home. I subsequently came across a beautiful image of Christ and the rich young man painted by a Chinese artist in the first half of the 20th century and had it mounted on canvas. Now I am always on the lookout for other diverse ways artists
have depicted the Savior of the world.

Here are some additional tips, developed in consultation with some fellow Latter-day Saints who have experienced racism in a Church setting.

5. Stop.

Please stop repeating harmful theories and explanations for the priesthood and temple ban that the Church has disavowed. If you are not sure what the Church’s current positions are, read the 2013 essay on race and the priesthood carefully; watch the First Presidency’s 2018 “Be One” celebration and pay attention to the history presented. Don’t invent new theories and explanations.

Please stop denying the racism of people in your family tree or national history who expressed racial supremacist views or enslaved others. Racism is a common historical detail, like the pattern of a bonnet or the construction of a wagon wheel. Whitewashing over this aspect of ancestors’ lives is refusing to accept them unless they conform to 21st-century expectations. I am sure all of these ancestors are now watching from the spirit world, having progressed beyond their mortal myopia, and rejoicing as their descendants use hindsight to avoid the same serious mistakes they made.

One beautiful example of “redeeming the dead” is the current work of Christopher Jones, a professor at BYU, to recover
the history of Tom, the Black member of the Sugar House Ward in the 1850s. Tom was enslaved and brought to Utah by Hayden Thomas Church. Later, Church sold Tom to Abraham O. Smoot, Tom’s Bishop. Church is Jones’s ancestor. How better to participate in our ancestors’ salvation than to work on their behalf to repair broken things?

Please stop asking the question “Where are you from?” to people you have just met. Racial minorities get asked this question all the time by total strangers who are trying to figure out their ethnic and racial background because it seems so “different” and “unusual.” Know that if you ask this question right off the bat of someone from a racial minority group, you are presenting yourself as someone who is fixated on that person’s body as opposed to their character, experience, sense of humor, and so on. If you are curious about this question and get to know someone well, eventually they will tell you on their own.

6. Start.

Please start looking for the sin of racism in your life with the same eagle eyes you use to look out for pornography, violations of religious freedom, emergency preparedness situations, and other problems Church leaders have called to our attention. Apply the skill set you have already developed to spot problematic images, defend civil rights, and educate yourself about complex, largescale problems.

Please start speaking up without hesitation when someone uses racist, prejudiced, or ignorant speech, whether or not someone who will be personally hurt by this speech is in the room. Martin Luther King Jr. memorably pointed out the harm done by “the appalling silence of the good people.” In the case of racial slurs, of course, you would respond as with any foul and unacceptable language. To prepare for encountering racism in more general conversations, you can practice some ready responses ahead of time. For example:

“Whoa!”
“That’s not funny.”
“What point were you trying to make by saying that?”
“Tell me what you mean by that?”
“What I heard you say was _.”

Please start educating yourself about the experiences and viewpoints of people who are from a racial, ethnic, national, or class “group” with which you have little personal understanding. You can ask people to recommend resources that have been helpful to them or to their friends. The other day, for instance, I saw Isabel Wilkerson’s prizewinning books The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste on the shelves of Deseret Book. The digital Gospel Library on the Church’s
website and app also has many resources.

Recently I heard the compelling interpretation that fasting is a form of collective mourning. By a little suffering and want in our bodies, we unite ourselves with those who experience suffering and want. By refusing self-satisfaction, we open ourselves to the experiences of those who do not have enough. As Jesus invited the rich young man to do, by giving away some of our power and security, we become closer to His people and therefore closer to Him.

Collective mourning is the work that lies ahead of us as Latter-day Saints as we seek to be one people—not just once a month but in everyday life. Perhaps in our daily study, or in a new five-minute “children of God” lesson segment of family home evening, we can grapple with the challenge of finding unity in diversity. For one great starting resource,
see the rapidly expanding Global Histories page in the Church History section of the Gospel Library, which relates the stories of Latter-day Saints all over the world.

When we seek new light and knowledge, God will give liberally. May we heed our leaders’ calls to find unity with Saints around the world—not by expecting everyone “out there” to change their cultures to be like us but by realizing every one of us has a culture that is different from Christ’s “gospel culture” and that we are all shaped by assumptions
indigenous to the neighborhood, county, and country in which we live. From Damascus to Draper, not one of us is “normal.” We are all deeply “ethnic,” with our own blind spots. We must all ask the Lord, “What lack I yet?” and step out to build the bridges of Zion.

This is a tall order, but this audacious, all-inclusive ambition to unite the whole human family in the present and in the past is what sets the Latter-day Saints apart. As we seek to honor our covenants, God will bear us up and make us equal to this task, I testify, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

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Astoria, Oregon

On 7 August 2020, the Ross Clan arrived at Astoria, Oregon. We had driven from Forks, Washington, and was headed to Seaside, Oregon. We wanted to make a stop at the Astoria Column and we had children who needed a bathroom break.

Astoria-Megler Bridge and the Columbia River

As you can see from this photo, we were too late on the potty break.

James waiting for a diaper change. Yes, the puddle under him is his too. Notice how wet his pants are?
James after his diaper change and the still damp bench from where he was seated earlier.

Can you see the look in his eye? “Dad, are you really going to take a picture of me and my remnant wet spot on the bench?”

Here is a shot of the Astoria Column, which was closed by the time we arrived. We have been here twice now and failed to get here while it was open.

Astoria Column with our Nissan Quest.

Last, a photo I took looking to the north. Imagine the awe of Lewis and Clark?

View of Youngs River from Astoria Column.
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Orwell’s 1984 and Today

United States Capitol

There have been many things on my mind lately. Watching the ongoing bickering in the District of Columbia for the past 20 years I often think of 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451. The Trump world often made me thing of 1984 with the inability to rely on truth and the often shifting positions from day to day. The Democrats declare the need for truth, for which I agree. The Republicans declare the need for unity, again, I agree. Both are doing it for limited self-serving purposes though. While I am not that old, I long for the America I recall learning about in school and wonder if she will ever reappear. I weary of our rewriting history, not of addition or giving more context, but contriving it into something it is not. I love Thomas Jefferson and find great frustration in our undermining his phenomenal influence that continues to today. We are now seeing it also in the religious side with Brigham Young. Based upon those musings, I read this Imprimis talk and found it reiterating my thoughts of the past years in words. I could not help but share.

The following is adapted from a speech delivered by Larry Arnn at a Hillsdale College reception in Rogers, Arkansas, on November 17, 2020.

“On September 17, Constitution Day, I chaired a panel organized by the White House. It was an extraordinary thing. The panel’s purpose was to identify what has gone wrong in the teaching of American history and to lay forth a plan for recovering the truth. It took place in the National Archives—we were sitting in front of the originals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—a very beautiful place. When we were done, President Trump came and gave a speech about the beauty of the American Founding and the importance of teaching American history to the preservation of freedom. 

“This remarkable event reminded me of an essay by a teacher of mine, Harry Jaffa, called “On the Necessity of a Scholarship of the Politics of Freedom.” Its point was that a certain kind of scholarship is needed to support the principles of a nation such as ours. America is the most deliberate nation in history—it was built for reasons that are stated in the legal documents that form its founding. The reasons are given in abstract and universal terms, and without good scholarship they can be turned astray. I was reminded of that essay because this event was the greatest exhibition in my experience of the combination of the scholarship and the politics of freedom. 

“The panel was part of an initiative of President Trump, mostly ignored by the media, to counter the New York Times’ 1619 Project. The 1619 Project promotes the teaching that slavery, not freedom, is the defining fact of American history. President Trump’s 1776 Commission aims to restore truth and honesty to the teaching of American history. It is an initiative we must work tirelessly to carry on, regardless of whether we have a president in the White House who is on our side in the fight. 

“We must carry on the fight because our country is at stake. Indeed, in a larger sense, civilization itself is at stake, because the forces arrayed against the scholarship and the politics of freedom today have more radical aims than just destroying America. 

***

“I taught a course this fall semester on totalitarian novels. We read four of them: George Orwell’s 1984, Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength. 

“The totalitarian novel is a relatively new genre. In fact, the word “totalitarian” did not exist before the 20th century. The older word for the worst possible form of government is “tyranny”—a word Aristotle defined as the rule of one person, or of a small group of people, in their own interests and according to their will. Totalitarianism was unknown to Aristotle, because it is a form of government that only became possible after the emergence of modern science and technology.

“The old word “science” comes from a Latin word meaning “to know.” The new word “technology” comes from a Greek word meaning “to make.” The transition from traditional to modern science means that we are not so much seeking to know when we study nature as seeking to make things—and ultimately, to remake nature itself. That spirit of remaking nature—including human nature—greatly emboldens both human beings and governments. Imbued with that spirit, and employing the tools of modern science, totalitarianism is a form of government that reaches farther than tyranny and attempts to control the totality of things. 

“In the beginning of his history of the Persian War, Herodotus recounts that in Persia it was considered illegal even to think about something that was illegal to do—in other words, the law sought to control people’s thoughts. Herodotus makes plain that the Persians were not able to do this. We today are able to get closer through the use of modern technology. In Orwell’s 1984, there are telescreens everywhere, as well as hidden cameras and microphones. Nearly everything you do is watched and heard. It even emerges that the watchers have become expert at reading people’s faces. The organization that oversees all this is called the Thought Police. 

“If it sounds far-fetched, look at China today: there are cameras everywhere watching the people, and everything they do on the Internet is monitored. Algorithms are run and experiments are underway to assign each individual a social score. If you don’t act or think in the politically correct way, things happen to you—you lose the ability to travel, for instance, or you lose your job. It’s a very comprehensive system. And by the way, you can also look at how big tech companies here in the U.S. are tracking people’s movements and activities to the extent that they are often able to know in advance what people will be doing. Even more alarming, these companies are increasingly able and willing to use the information they compile to manipulate people’s thoughts and decisions.

“The protagonist of 1984 is a man named Winston Smith. He works for the state, and his job is to rewrite history. He sits at a table with a telescreen in front of him that watches everything he does. To one side is something called a memory hole—when Winston puts things in it, he assumes they are burned and lost forever. Tasks are delivered to him in cylinders through a pneumatic tube. The task might involve something big, like a change in what country the state is at war with: when the enemy changes, all references to the previous war with a different enemy need to be expunged. Or the task might be something small: if an individual falls out of favor with the state, photographs of him being honored need to be altered or erased altogether from the records. Winston’s job is to fix every book, periodical, newspaper, etc. that reveals or refers to what used to be the truth, in order that it conform to the new truth. 

“One man, of course, can’t do this alone. There’s a film based on 1984 starring John Hurt as Winston Smith. In the film they depict the room where he works, and there are people in cubicles like his as far as the eye can see. There would have to be millions of workers involved in constantly re-writing the past. One of the chief questions raised by the book is, what makes this worth the effort? Why does the regime do it?

“Winston’s awareness of this endless, mighty effort to alter reality makes him cynical and disaffected. He comes to see that he knows nothing of the past, of real history: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified,” he says at one point, “every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. . . . Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” Does any of this sound familiar?

“In his disaffection, Winston commits two unlawful acts: he begins writing in a diary and he begins meeting a woman in secret, outside the sanction of the state. The family is important to the state, because the state needs babies. But the women are raised by the state in a way that they are not to enjoy relations with their husbands. And the children—as in China today, and as it was in the Soviet Union—are indoctrinated and taught to spy and inform on their parents. Parents love their children but live in terror of them all the time. Think of the control that comes from that—and the misery.

“There are three stratums in the society of 1984. There is the Inner Party, whose members hold all the power. There is the Outer Party, to which Winston belongs, whose members work for—and are watched and controlled by—the Inner Party. And there are the proles, who live and do the blue collar work in a relatively unregulated area. Winston ventures out into that area from time to time. He finds a little shop there where he buys things. And it is in a room upstairs from this shop where he and Julia, the woman he falls in love with, set up a kind of household as if they are married. They create something like a private world in that room, although it is a world with limitations—they can’t even think about having children, for instance, because if they did, they would be discovered and killed. 

“In the end, it turns out that the shopkeeper, who had seemed to be a kindly old man, is in fact a member of the Thought Police. Winston and Julia’s room contained a hidden telescreen all along, so everything they have said and done has been observed. In fact, it emerges that the Thought Police have known that Winston has been having deviant thoughts for twelve years and have been watching him carefully. When the couple are arrested, they have made pledges that they will never betray each other. They know the authorities will be able to make them say whatever they want them to say—but in their hearts, they pledge, they will be true to their love. It is a promise that neither is finally able to keep. 

“After months of torture, Winston thinks that what awaits him is a bullet in the back of the head, the preferred method of execution of both the Nazis and the Soviet Communists. In Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, the protagonist walks down a basement hallway after confessing to crimes that he didn’t commit, and without any ceremony he is shot in the back of the head—eradicated as if he were vermin. Winston doesn’t get off so easy. He will instead undergo an education, or more accurately a re-education. His final stages of torture are depicted as a kind of totalitarian seminar. The seminar is conducted by a man named O’Brien, who is portrayed marvelously in the film by Richard Burton. As he alternately raises and lowers the level of Winston’s pain, O’Brien leads him to knowledge regarding the full meaning of the totalitarian regime.

“As the first essential step of his education, Winston has to learn doublethink—a way of thinking that defies the law of contradiction. In Aristotle, the law of contradiction is the basis of all reasoning, the means of making sense of the world. It is the law that says that X and Y cannot be true at the same time if they’re mutually exclusive. For instance, if A is taller than B and B is taller than C, C cannot be taller than A. The law of contradiction means things like that.

“In our time, the law of contradiction would mean that a governor, say, could not simultaneously hold that the COVID pandemic renders church services too dangerous to allow, and also that massive protest marches are fine. It would preclude a man from declaring himself a woman, or a woman declaring herself a man, as if one’s sex is simply a matter of what one wills it to be—and it would preclude others from viewing such claims as anything other than preposterous.

“The law of contradiction also means that we can’t change the past. What we can know of the truth all resides in the past, because the present is fleeting and confusing and tomorrow has yet to come. The past, on the other hand, is complete. Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas go so far as to say that changing the past—making what has been not to have been—is denied even to God. Because if something both happened and didn’t happen, no human understanding is possible. And God created us with the capacity for understanding.

“That’s the law of contradiction, which the art of doublethink denies and violates. Doublethink is manifest in the fact that the state ministry in which Winston is tortured is called the Ministry of Love. It is manifest in the three slogans displayed on the state’s Ministry of Truth: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” And as we have seen, the regime in 1984 exists precisely to repeal the past. If the past can be changed, anything can be changed—man can surpass even the power of God. But still, to what end?

“”Why do you think you are being tortured? O’Brien asks Winston. The Party is not trying to improve you, he says—the Party cares nothing about you. Winston is brought to see that he is where he is simply as the subject of the state’s power. Understanding having been rendered meaningless, the only competence that has meaning is power. 

““Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution,” O’Brien says.

“”We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. . . . There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. . . . All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.

“Nature is ultimately unchangeable, of course, and humans are not God. Totalitarianism will never win in the end—but it can win long enough to destroy a civilization. That is what is ultimately at stake in the fight we are in. We can see today the totalitarian impulse among powerful forces in our politics and culture. We can see it in the rise and imposition of doublethink, and we can see it in the increasing attempt to rewrite our history.

***

““An informed patriotism is what we want,” Ronald Reagan said toward the end of his Farewell Address as president in January 1989. “Are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?” 

“Then he issued a warning.

“Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn’t get these things from your family you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-sixties.

“But now, we’re about to enter the [1990s], and some things have changed. Younger parents aren’t sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. . . . We’ve got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It’s fragile; it needs protection.

“So, we’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important—why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant. You know, four years ago on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late father, who’d fought on Omaha Beach. . . . [S]he said, “we will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.” Well, let’s help her keep her word. If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. 

“American schoolchildren today learn two things about Thomas Jefferson: that he wrote the Declaration of Independence and that he was a slaveholder. This is a stunted and dishonest teaching about Jefferson. 

“What do our schoolchildren not learn? They don’t learn what Jefferson wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just,” he wrote in that book regarding the contest between the master and the slave. “The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.” If schoolchildren learned that, they would see that Jefferson was a complicated man, like most of us. 

“They don’t learn that when our nation first expanded, it was into the Northwest Territory, and that slavery was forbidden in that territory. They don’t learn that the land in that territory was ceded to the federal government from Virginia, or that it was on the motion of Thomas Jefferson that the condition of the gift was that slavery in that land be eternally forbidden. If schoolchildren learned that, they would come to see Jefferson as a human being who inherited things and did things himself that were terrible, but who regretted those things and fought against them. And they would learn, by the way, that on the scale of human achievement, Jefferson ranks very high. There’s just no question about that, if for no other reason than that he was a prime agent in founding the first republic dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 

“The astounding thing, after all, is not that some of our Founders were slaveholders. There was a lot of slavery back then, as there had been for all of recorded time. The astounding thing—the miracle, even, one might say—is that these slaveholders founded a republic based on principles designed to abnegate slavery. 

“To present young people with a full and honest account of our nation’s history is to invest them with the spirit of freedom. It is to teach them something more than why our country deserves their love, although that is a good in itself. It is to teach them that the people in the past, even the great ones, were human and had to struggle. And by teaching them that, we prepare them to struggle with the problems and evils in and around them. Teaching them instead that the past was simply wicked and that now they are able to see so perfectly the right, we do them a disservice and fit them to be slavish, incapable of developing sympathy for others or undergoing trials on their own.

“Depriving the young of the spirit of freedom will deprive us all of our country. It could deprive us, finally, of our humanity itself. This cannot be allowed to continue. It must be stopped. 

by

79’ers at Albion

Photo of the 79’ers at Albion on 1 September 1926

Cleo Gallegos, Mayor of Heyburn, had this photograph in her office one day earlier this year.  She snagged it for a day or two for me to see it.  I snapped a couple of photographs of it.  I have tried researching it or determining some of the individuals and I fear they may be too far in the past for me to try and get it independently.  Unless someone has a list of individuals in the photo, it is just good for conversation.  I don’t have a clue of a single individual included here.  But this organization was a new piece to southern Idaho history I was unaware.

The 79’ers first meeting was held 28 September 1921 in Burley, Idaho.  73 pioneers from Cassia, Twin Falls, Jerome, Minidoka, Gooding, and Lincoln Counties signed the roster as qualifying members.  In order to qualify, you had to arrive in Southern Idaho before 1880.

Between 1921 and 1924, meetings were held in Burley or Twin Falls.  After 1924, the annual meetings were held in Albion.  Hence the photo above dated 1 September 1926, this would have been the annual meeting.

In 1941 a special reunion was held where over 200 people attended.  Judge Alfred Budge and Idaho Governor Chase Clark were made honorary members.

Not much history after that is available online.

Cassia County was created in 1879 and originally I thought that was what the group was referring to.  However, membership was permitted from Minidoka, Jerome, and Lincoln Counties which territories were never part of Cassia County.  I am still unclear why 1879 or 1880 was a year to commemorate in southern Idaho.

I also found Hyrum Smith Lewis (1868 – 1955) served for 26 years as President of the 79’ers.  He is buried in Declo.

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Kindergarten, Kiddie Kollege, Paul, Idaho

Back row (l-r): Sandra Berg, Danny Wright, Jim Cueva, Jared Fairchild, Bobie Jones, Erin Zemke, Jodie Larson, Hazel Patterson, Keri Jo King, Judy Moller; Middle row: Marshall Neilson, Deanne Williams, Bayden Neilson, Brandon Rogers, Logan Schenk, Desirae Paoli, Charlyn Maughan, Charlyn Robertson, Robyn Olson; Front row: Jacob Timmons, Benjamin Wilcher, Jesse Jensen, Michael Jurgensmeier, Paul Ross, Jedediah Lewis.

 

I mentioned this before, Bobie (Jones) Story let me scan some of our common school pictures.  All mine were lost in a flood of our basement. I am happy to have copies again.  (I am still missing Ms. Suhr for 3rd grade and Mr. Mendenhall for 6th grade.  If you have a copy, please let me scan!)

This is our Kindergarten class picture from the Kiddie Kollege, Paul, Idaho.  This was the 1984 – 1985 school year.

The Kiddie Kollege building is still there, northwest corner of N Main Street and W Idaho Street in Paul.  It was converted to a laundromat for quite a few years, now being repurposed into some other building.

Normally I organize photos with married names and dates.  Since all are still alive (as far as I know), I will forgo any of the dates.  I have added the married last name for the ones I know.  If you have corrections, please let me know.

Mrs. Sandra Berg

Mrs. Judy Moller

Jim Cueva

Jared Fairchild

Jesse Jensen

Bobie Jones married Story

Michael Jurgensmeier

Keri Jo King

Jodie Larson married Brunson

Jedediah Lewis

Charlyn Maughan (not on the class list but I am pretty sure I recognize her in the photo, an extra girl, missing a boy)

Bayden Neilson

Marshall Neilson

Robyn Olson married Powell

Hazel Patterson

Desirae Paoli

Charlyn Robertson married Darrington

Brandon Rogers

Paul Ross

Logan Schenk

Scott Spaulding (apparently in the picture, but I don’t have an unnamed boy)

Jacob Timmons

Benjamin Wilcher

Deanne Williams married Kennett

Danny Wright

Erin Zemke married McKindree

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Jacob Friedrich Wanner

I received this history a few years ago.  I will provide it as it is written (only minor edits).  I have written before regarding Fred’s parents Johann George (John George) Wanner and Anna Maria Schmid.

Back(l-r): Eva, Carma, Bert Wanner; Front: Lyman, Fred, Eva, Stanley Wanner

“(This History is written by Jacob’s daughter – Eva June Wanner Lewis – with the information sent in by Brother Fred, and Sister Mary Ann, and  her own sweet memories as well as information from Histories of Brothers and Sisters.)

“Jacob Friedrich Wanner was born January 14, 1881, in Gruenkraut, Germany, the 7th child of Johann Georg Wanner and Anna Maria Schmid.  They had a large family consisting of five boys and five girls.  They were quite poor so Grandfather went to work as a road overseer.  This left the farm work to Grandmother and the children.  They used the milk cows to do the farm work and then would milk them morning and night.  They also got wood from the forest for fuel.

Back(l-r): Mary, Christina, George, Pauline; Front: Anna, Fred, Louisa, Wilhelmina, Gottlop, John Wanner

“It rained a lot in Germany so the out buildings were connected to the house.  One time Grandma went downstairs to get some fruit.  She reached over and touched something hairy – she thought it was the devil!  It was a cow that had wandered down from the barn.

“Dad didn’t talk much about his life as a child but he did say he got a drum for Christmas and then it would disappear about New Year’s Day and he would get it for Christmas again the next year.  He may have been joking.

“The family belonged to the Lutheran Church and was very religious.

“In the summer of 1890 the Lord sent a man along the street in Gruenkraut where Grandpa worked.  He was a missionary from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  He talked to Grandpa a long time and showed him the Book of Mormon.  He spoke in German.  When it came dinner time Grandpa took the missionary home and said,  “We’ll see Mother.”  From that day the missionaries stayed in their home and the family was soon converted.  They joined the church in 1891.

“Uncle George was baptized in July 1891 and went to America with one of the missionaries, Brother Terrell from Providence, Utah.  Brother Terrell helped him find a job to provide for himself.  He got a job with Fred Nuffer in Glendale.  Grandfather and Grandmother and the three oldest girls were baptized in October 1891.  Louise and Pauline were baptized in June 1894, Gottlob in June 1895 and Wilhelmina in August 1896.  Dad was baptized in Preston or Franklin, Idaho, on June 7, 1894, by Lars C. Larsen and confirmed a member of the church by Austin I. Merrill on June 7, 1894.  He was ordained an Elder by George C. Parkinson on September 27, 1903, and was married by Thos Morgan on September 30, 1903, at the Logan Temple.

“The family left Germany to come to America so they could worship the way the pleased.  It was a long, uncomfortable trip.  They took the train to the Rhine River and then boarded a boat and traveled up the Rhine, a journey of about 3 or 4 days.  Then another train took them to the North Sea where a ship sailed them to Amsterdam, Holland, and then on to England.  At Liverpool they boarded a ship and were on the ocean for 13 days.  Dad was 12 years old when they crossed the ocean and told us of the rough sea.  He had to hang on to his bunk with both hands to keep from being thrown to the floor.  He said he sure got sick of eggs.

“They arrived in New York and stayed there for 2 days.  Then they went to Chicago for a day and a night.  They then rode a train straight through to Franklin, Idaho, which took six days.  They arrived the 18th day of June, 1893.

“Uncle George and Fred Nuffer (the man he worked for) met them with a buggy and wagon and took them to Fred Nuffer’s place in Cub River.  They stayed for a while with the Nuffers and purchased a farm from John Nuffer in Glendale.

Gpa Wanner

“When Grandpa and Grandma moved to Whitney they sold the farm to Dad.  I don’t know if Dad or Grandpa build the sandstone house.  It had a kitchen, two bedrooms and a pantry.  It had a hand pump that pumped water from a spring.  Mary Ann and some of the children were born there.

“Dad met and married a lovely young girl, Mary Elizabeth Carter on September 30, 1903, in the Logan Temple.  They lived in Whitney, Idaho, until they bought the farm.  They worked hard to improve their farm and many times she helped him in the fields.  They built a three bedroom brick house that stood for many years until fire destroyed it years later.  Dad had a Delco generator in the garage so we had our own electricity.

Fred and Mary Elizabeth Wanner

“They had a lovely family, five girls and three boys:  Laverna C., Fredrick D., Lorin C., Florence E., Joseph J., Erma C., Mary Ann and Grace C.

“IN 1923 – Elizabeth died leaving seven children.  The youngest was almost 2 years old.  Laverna got married so that left Erma and MaryAnn to take care of the baby.  Erma would go to school one day and MaryAnn the next.  It was hard.  They tried to leave her with Aunt Ethel Barrington in Riverdale, but she got so lonely and cried all day so they went and got her.  Then Dad hired Eva Christensen to come and work as a housekeeper.  As time went on Dad and Eva (my mother) fell in love and was married June 26, 1925, in the Logan Temple. They had five children:  Carma C., L. Bertus, Eva June, Lyman G., and Stanley C.  We had a happy family life and dad always saw to it that we went to church and did what we were suppose to do.  He went when he could.  He always paid his tithing and other offerings.  He was honest in all his dealings.

Fred and Mary with (l-r) Laverna, Fred, Lorin.

“Dad was the first one in Glendale to buy a car.  We children were used to horses so we would say,  “Gid up, Gid up” when we got in the car.  About this time Dad was struck by lightening but was not harmed.

“Dad owned or had a share in the thrashing machine.  They would go around to all the farmers in Glendale and thrash the grain.  Then we would fix a big meal for all the men.   It was a real fun time for the children but a lot of work for the adults.  Dad worked as an oiler or on the thresher and had part of his finger taken off.  When we were little he told us a fox bit it off!

“Dad was a good farmer.  He took pride in all his work.  He raised hay, barley and wheat.  He always had 10 or 12 dairy cows.  He also had horses, pigs and chickens.  For many years we separated the cream from the milk in the old separator.  Then Dad took the cream to Preston to sell it along with the eggs.  In later years we had the milk truck come and pick up the milk so we didn’t use the separator anymore.  He also bought a grain chopper and prepared his own feed for the animals.  We had a big raspberry patch and used to sell raspberries for 8 quarts for a dollar.  Dad always had a big garden and a big potato patch.  He had a root cellar to keep potatoes, carrots, squash and apples over the winter.

“In the early 1930’s Dad bought silver foxes.  He built a high fence so they couldn’t get out.  He took great pride in his fox furs.  They were always excellent quality!  I remember watching him cure the furs and he took great care to make sure they were done right.  Dad always kept his barnyard as well as the rest of the farm in good repair and very neat.  His fences were always mended.

“Dad always took time out of his farm work to go to Franklin to celebrate Idaho Day on the 15th of June.  We would take a big picnic lunch and spend the day.  We rode the carnival rides and had a good time.  He always took us kids to Downata to go swimming when we finished first crop of hay.

“Dad liked a good joke… I remember how he would laugh.  He loved the radio and his favorite programs were Gang Busters, The Old Ranger and of course the news!  We all had to be quiet when the news came on.

“Dad was very active and was always working except on Sunday – there was never any work done on Sunday except chores.  He loved the Sunday paper.  He always bought the Denver Post.  It was a real shock to us when he had his heart attack because he was so active.  It happened one day when he was working in the barn.  We were all frightened and I called the neighbors to help us get him to the house.

“After that he had to be very careful so he sold the farm and moved to Preston.  They lived just down the street from MaryAnn.  He seemed to miss the farm and would putter around the yard.

“He died at the age of 74 on August 25, 1955.  He was buried in the Preston Cemetery.

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Irwin Jonas Honored

Irwin Jonas Newspaper Article

This newspaper article regarding the funeral of Irwin Jonas was just shared with me.  I have wrote of Irwin’s life previously.  Family history is an ongoing endeavor with little nuggets appearing from time to time!

I don’t know which newspaper this article was published.  I do know that Irwin died 11 July 1944 in Saint-Lo, Normandy, France.  He was actually buried 6 February 1948 in Richmond, Cache, Utah, almost four years later.  But this article sounds like a memorial service held within weeks or months afterward, and not with Irwin’s body actually present.  It is my understanding he was buried for a time in France, then brought home years later.  I cannot imagine having to deal with this as his parent, widow, or family member.

“Memorial services will be held Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. in the Richmond South ward chapel for Sgt. Irwin Jonas who was killed in France on July 11.  Bishop E. M. Hicken will preside and Commander Neal Hillyard of the American Legion Post 33 will conduct the services.

“The program has been arranged as follows: Advance of colors; selection, The Lord’s Prayer, by the ladies’ chorus; invocation, Hyrum Hansen; solo, My Task, C. I. Stoddard; poem composed by Leona Carson and dedicated to the son of Sgt. Jonas will be read by Bishop E. M. Hicken; talk, Scoutmaster A. J. Mendenhall, Jr.; duet, Resignation, Florence and Rebecca Lewis; talk, O. L. Ballam; violin solo, J. W. Pulsipher; talk, William Jonas of Salt Lake City; and Lt. Commander G. Ellis Doty; selection, the Flag Without a Stain, Ladiers’ chorus; retiring of colors, taps, and benediction, J. W. Stoddard.

Isn’t it amazing where our society is now found?  Due to the sacrifice of people like Irwin, we have the right to fight over what we can see and how we can treat each other?  Without that freedom protected Irwin, we might all be dead, speaking another language, or without the rights of speech or equal protection.  Rather than defend those rights and use them, we would rather trample the symbol of them.  But that too is protected speech.  But let us be careful that we actually use the right so much that we divide and undermine and actually lose it in doing so.

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History of Idaho: John Nuffer

Back l-r: Austin, Willard, Luther, Louis, Herman; Middle l-r: Myron, John, Florance, Edwin, Louisa, Agnes; Front l-r: Karl, Athene Nuffer

From “History of Idaho” and found in Volume III starting page 1197.  “A Narrative Account of Its Historical Progress, Its People and Its Principal Interests”  This book is by Hiram T. French, M.S.  The book also says it is Illustrated and published by The Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago and New York, 1914.

I found this book while at Utah State University originally.  I knew the history was inside but did not copy it then.  I finally returned a few years ago, found the book in the new library, and made a copy.  But at least I had it.  I found it just recently on Google Books.  This is John Nuffer, half-brother of my Regina Nuffer Wanner, not her father as some have previously indicated.  John went by John, his father John Christoph, went by Christoph and Christopher.  I have kept the spelling of the article.  You can also read his autobiography too.

“A quarter century’s residence at Preston constitutes Mr. John Nuffer one of the old timers of this vicinity.  The mere fact of long residence, however, is somewhat of an empty distinction without works accompanying such residence.  In the case of Mr. Nuffer there can be found ample evidence both of long residence and accomplishments in the realm of practical affairs and in good citizenship.  Mr. Nuffer in early life was a graduate of one of Germany’s foremost schools of architecture.  All his life he has been a builder and contractor and in Preston in particular probably much the greater part of the higher class public and residential buildings has been done under his supervision, or through his business organization.

“Mr. Nuffer was born in Wuertemberg, Germany, December 4, 1862.  He is a son of Christopher and Agnes Barbara (Spring) Nuffer.  The father, who was a wine grower in the old country, came to America in 1882, first settling at Logan, Utah, but a year later came to Oneida county, Idaho, where as one of the early settlers he took up land and was a homesteader and farmer until his death in 1908.  He was born in 1835.  The mother, who was born in Germany in 1838, died there in 1865.  Of two children, John is the older, while his brother Fred is also a resident of Preston.

“The grade schools of Germany were the source of Mr. Nuffer’s education up to his fourteenth year.  At that customary age, when the German youths take up an education for practical life, he entered the Royal Architectural College at Stuttgart, where he was a student for four terms, and on leaving school as a budding young architect, he followed his profession in his native country for four years, up to the time of the removal of his father to America, when he became a resident of the western county.  Mr. Nuffer has been largely engaged in contract work since coming to Idaho, and during the past ten years has had a large business of his own as an architect and builder.  A complete list of his work at Preston and vicinity would be too long, buth some of the more prominent structures should be mentioned.  They include the Oneida Stake Academy, consisting of two buildings; the Western [should be Weston] Tabernacle; the Preston Opera House; the McCammon public school, the grade public school: Fairview, Mapleton and Whitney public schools; the Tabernacle at Grace; the high school at Grace; the Latter Day Saints church in the First Ward; and most of the business blocks as well as many of the larger and more attractive residence structures in Preston.  Mr. Nuffer is a director and secretary-treasurer of the Cub River and Worm Creek Canal Company.

“His part in civic affairs has been hardly less important than in business.  For four years, or two terms, he served as justice of the peace of Preston; one term as village trustee, and was clerk of the village board for one term.  His politics is Democratic.  He is a high priest in the Church of the Latter Day Saints, and served a two years’ mission for the church in Germany.

“In November, 1885, at Logan, Utah, Mr. Nuffer married Miss Louise Zollinger, a daughter of Ferd and Louise (Meyer) Zollinger.  Her father died December 16, 1912, and her mother is living in Providence, Utah.  Her parents were pioneers of Utah in 1862, having crossed the plains to the then territory.

“The marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Nuffer has been blessed with a large family of eleven children, who are named as follows: Luther Jacob born at Providence in 1886, is a resident of Preston and is married and has two children; Willard John, born at Preston in 1888, is a graduate of Idaho State University in the law department and is a young lawyer at Downey, Idaho; Louis Ferd, born at Preston in 1889, is a school teacher in Preston; Herman Christ, born at Preston in 1891, is a student of civil engineering in the University of Moscow; Austin Eckart, born at Preston in 1893, is a high school student; Carl Joseph, born in 1895, died in 1904; Agnes Louise, born at Preston in 1898, is a schoolgirl; Myron David, born in 1900; Florence Myrtel, born in 1902, and Edwin Joseph, born in 1904, are all attending school; and Athene Barbara, born in 1907.

“As a successful man and long business builder in this section of Idaho, Mr. Nuffer has a very high opinion of the state and forecasts its taking place among the first of American states.  He has had a career of substantial self-advancement and practically all the propserity he has won due to his own labor.

“His fondness for home life has precluded any association without outside organizations except the church in which he has had a prominent part.

That ends the history from The History of Idaho.  I thought I would provide some additional details on the family.

John was born in Neuffen, Württemberg, Germany.

Louise was born in Providence, Cache, Utah.

Luther Jacob was born 21 June 1885 in Providence and died 27 January 1952 in Oak Grove, Clackmas, Oregon.  He married Rosa Morf and later Mary Crockett.

Willard John was born 19 January 1888 in Preston and died 27 January 1948 in San Bernardino County, California.  I am not aware that he ever married.

Louis Ferdinand was born 20 September 1889 in Glendale, Oneida (now Franklin), Idaho and died 19 August 1966 in Canby, Clackmas, Oregon.  He married Ruby May Jensen.

Herman Christopher was born 12 October 1891 in Preston and died 23 August 1940.  He married Virginia Pryde Simmons.

Austin Eckhert was born 6 August 1893 in Preston and died 2 March 1944 in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California.

Karl Aron was born 6 September 1895 in Preston and died 7 February 1905 in Preston.

Karl Nuffer

Agnes Louise was born 11 May 1898 in Preston and died 28 June 1983 in Downey, Bannock, Idaho.  She married Raymond Hurst.

Myron David was born 21 July 1900 in Preston and died 24 November 1976 in Logan.  He married Camille Cole.

Florence Myrtle was born 19 October 1902 in Preston and died 23 March 1994 in Soda Springs, Caribou, Idaho.  She married Heber Wilford Christensen.

Edwin Joseph was born 25 August 1904 in Preston and died 21 June 1996 in Ogden, Weber, Utah.  He married Jennie Arrella Smart.

Athlene Barbara was born 21 November 1907 in Preston and died 23 November 1991 in Preston.  She married Adrian Biggs Hampton.