Bess
Mother's
Day 1946 and the anniversary of my wife's being taken away are close together,
so were they a year ago. Memories come,
and I can't help myself, and for some days, a week or more, I have felt
depressed. I have felt sad. I can't be reconciled to her being taken; I
don't understand. She had prepared
herself throughout her whole life to be a help to women and was now just
beginning to realize her ambition. Why
should she be taken before she could do the work she has worked so hard and so
long to be able to do?
I will find
my thoughts related to her. I am doing
things to please her, for her approval.
Unconsciously I have her in mind when I do this or that or when I plan
or think of doing anything. My life
became tied up with her in her aims and ambitions. I hoped for her success. I was always in sympathy with the things she
was doing.
Last Friday
I attended the dance to take charge of the meeting at intermission because no
one else could do it, but I didn't dance.
Usually I can't resist the music.
It wasn't hard at all that night.
It was just a year since she went to the hospital. I didn't know she was so sick and in such a
serious condition. I couldn't realize
she was so soon to leave me.
When she
took down so sick at Maevonne's, I went up and took care of the children for
her. I should have gone the next day and
the next and the next. I should have
kept her from trying to work at all. She
didn't ask it, and I didn't know. I had
my work to do here at home but should have arranged to spend all the time
unnecessary here, with her up there. As
ever in her life she kept at it when she should have rested for several days
until Maevonne came home from the hospital.
When she came home weak and sick she tried to do things, even clean
house. I had to insist she shouldn't do
it. She went uptown to do some errands
and attend to some business and walked several blocks, quite a lot of walking. She never should have done it. She went to the Capitol, then a number of
places downtown, including Bailey's where she bought a couple of apple trees
and brought them home. She always wanted
to plant more trees. Even if she didn't
enjoy the fruit of them others could.
They sold her two dead trees. I
planted them, but there was no sign of life in them, and they never grew.
My wife usually took good care of herself by resting
whenever she felt under par, but this time she seemed not to do as she was wont
to do.
When I
attended "Mother's Day" program in Sunday School today, my thoughts
were of Mother's Day last year, a tragedy too, and of other Mother's Days in
years gone by. Many of them she was not
present. She was away from home teaching
school to help keep Matt on a mission, or in college, or to get finances to
further her own program, or even to help others whom she considered in need
more than she. What we miss in
life! If we only knew sometimes, we
might plan or do otherwise. So many
times what we do proves not to be worth the price. We miss so much at times we cannot regain or
make up for, and our memories are of regret.
We sacrifice, and it is later proved we have lacked wisdom sufficient to
have justified the efforts we made.
It looked
as if the time had come when we could begin to live more for each other and
with each other. The winter of 1944-45
my wife undertook the tremendous task of offering a course in obstetrics. She thought to have the women come to our
home at first, but finding that couldn't work, she prepared the lessons and
taught by correspondence having personal contact whenever they came to Salt
Lake. This was a big undertaking. Each lesson took a week to prepare. She was up early every morning and worked
hard and long to prepare her text (lessons).
These were typewritten (by someone she hired usually) sent to the
students and their papers corrected. She
outlined a wonderful course of lessons.
I believe no other woman in the State could have done so thorough and
comprehensive a job, and very few doctors (men) could have done as well.
Bess read
everything on the subject of obstetrics she could get her hands on. She read more than 99% of the physicians in
the state, and read the books in Spanish, French, and German as well as
English.
In addition
to doing this immense work, she made three trips away from home for long
periods of time. She went to Paris,
Idaho for 5 weeks or more and took care of Fern when her baby was born and did
all her housework to spare her as long as possible. Fern had inflammatory rheumatism just at the
time she graduated from the normal school (course), and we wouldn't let her
teach. She isn't too well or strong and
must be careful. This was in the autumn.
My wife
wasn't home long from this trip before she went to Panguitch to help Mirl, as
Mirl is not too well either. After a
three week's stay, Mirl and family took her on to Leeds where she spent a week
or more with her Mother, the last time they were to see each other. Coming home about holiday time, she stayed
during the session of the legislature. I
was extremely busy. So was she, but we
went to quite a number of shows together, and she enjoyed them so much. She also went with me to several banquets and
other entertainments. We enjoyed them together. This was the first time she was home during
the regular sessions of the Legislature that I have attended as a member,
except a special session that came in late May and June.
She wrote a
bill which I presented for her and fought for.
I secured its passage through the House, and the next day it was killed
by some lobbyists during the night. The
bill aimed at restricting and regulating unnecessary cesarean operations by
crooked and unscrupulous doctors. And they
did the lobbying or paid for it. I was
so taken by surprise I couldn't put up the defense strong enough. I wasn't quick witted enough to expose to the
members what had been done. This was an
effort to prevent women innocently to be imposed upon by unscrupulous
physicians and others (including mother-in-law and husband, in the case of a
niece of my wife's). This brought the
matter so forcibly to my wife's attention.
Her sister's daughter, Jarma, was tricked and forced to undergo a
cesarian against her consent and in opposition to her will and good judgment,
not even being remitted to consent (without even consulting) and of her folks
or relatives. In fact she wasn't even
told about it until she was strapped down on the table. Her mother-in-law and husband didn't want
many (or any more) children, and no one knows what else they did to her at the
time. It was a crime, nothing less, and
they get by with it.
Just two
days after the legislature adjourned, my wife went to South Dakota to take care
of our daughter, Winifred, when her baby came.
She stayed two weeks and was called home to take care of Maevonne's children
while she was in the hospital. The
journey home was long and hard. The
buses were over-crowded, and for a large part of the way, she didn't even have
a seat in the bus. She came home tired
but went immediately to Maevonne's to take care of the home. Louis had stayed home one day. It was here she took sick. She thought she had made a stew of some
tainted meat that had been in the refrigerator some time, and got Ptomaine
poisoning. Whatever it was that caused
it, it was very severe, and I am afraid it proved fatal because my wife tried
to work when she should have rested. Yet
there are other strange things about it.
I had noticed she had appeared worn and tired for a year or more. She wasn't as spry and full of life as she
was wont to be. She walked more slowly
and tired more easily. I know she had
over-worked, especially when she was attending the medical school. They mistreated her there, were so dishonest,
crooked and unscrupulously determined not to let her graduate. She received the rawest deal and the most
dishonorable treatment ever accorded a student at any school, and this in spite
of the fact that she was already three times a graduate of the University, and
I graduated there three times, and all six of our children are alumni of the
school.
This
uncalled-for indescribably dishonest and unfair treatment hurt her. She never got over it. I believe it did more than anything else, or
than all other things combined to break her down. It shattered her faith in doctors and in
humanity beyond repair. It stole from
her the goal she had worked for all her life since she was a girl - yes since
before she was fourteen. It crushed her
life, and she and what she could have done for women were sacrificed to the
greed, unscrupulous dishonesty, the lying bickerings of quarreling bickering,
curious jealousies of little, indescribably little, men supposed to be
honorable physicians. They were too
small, puny, and puerile to have anyone honestly differ with them in any
particular, but posed themselves as all wise, omniscient and above
question. Yet they quarreled among
themselves and differed in petty ways like a lot of grade school kids. Someday I shall try to write up what little I
can remember of the raw deal handed out to my wife and the inexcusibly devilish
treatment they accorded her. I surely
wish I had written it at the time when I could remember the names of these
disreputable creatures and the details of the infamous things they did.
Two things
that stand out are the fact that they made her read a certain book text, that
should have been done in Jan. or Feb. just before the final exams of the spring
quarter. They required it of no other
student. She had already taken the
course, passed it, but didn't have quite as much credit as they now
required. Neither did some of the
others. It was deliberately required of
her at a time when it would do her most harm in hindering her preparation for
final exams. She did it successfully.
Another
dastardly thing was...they refused to give her her report card and credits in
June or July when the others got theirs, but gave them to her eight months
later when they had studiously agreed among themselves to fail her in just
enough subjects so she couldn't register at the University again. It evidently took them eight months to get
enough of the teachers to so purjure themselves as to mark her a failure in
their classes, when they knew they lied, so as to get the required number to
kick her out of school. This will be
mighty hard to explain especially as she was one of the most capable,
brilliant, independent, and self-directing students that ever entered the
University. No other student, man or
woman, has made a better record and accomplished more under as great
difficulties, many of which were deliberately imposed upon her by members of
the teaching force at the school.
Besides all of this, she accomplished since we were married more than
anyone else I knew of or know of. And
all this while doing her own housework, taking care of her six children,
helping to see them all through college, one of them through a mission, most of
the money for which she earned and sent him.
She also saw her brother through a mission by teaching part of the time. She bought his automobile, and then sold it
to me so he really was paid twice for it.
Then of late years she went away from home to teach to get the money for
these purposes and also for her own use in going to school.
During the
depression following 1929 to the second World War, it was hard for her to get
work teaching at home, and it was impossible for me. No teachers over 50 years old were hired
except they were already in the system, except in out of the way schools hard
to fill.
When I went
on my first mission, we had saved up several hundred dollars each, and I had a
few hundred coming in from real estate sales.
It so happened that I had sufficient to keep me on a mission, and she
spent her money attending school and for the children (all six of them under fifteen). She attended the University the year I
left. The next year she took all the
family clear to Kanab in southern Utah and taught under very hard living
conditions--house, lack of furniture and things to do with. The people generally were kind to her and
helped her quite a lot. When I came home
she was going to the University again, and I was broke and out of a job from
about Thanksgiving when I arrived home until the next February when I went to
Hinckley to take the principalship of the grade schools, Mr. Judd, the
principal, having died.
It took a
woman with a real purpose in life, an iron will, and an ability to do things
under next to insurmountable difficulties to do the work she did in the case I
have mentioned, and also at other times, too, which I may describe at another
time. Our letters and other things may
give some details on these things.
TOM
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