How I got to know Dad!

March 10, 2011: Amy said that Joe (son) was wondering how Dad and I got together. Well we will go back to the beginning. I had just finished my four years at BYU (Brigham Young University). I was taking one more summer semester of just fun classes: Flower arranging, Tap Dancing, and a religion class. In my tap dancing class, for the final we were to do a tap dance with a partner for the whole class. I was fortunate enough to have Johnny Whitaker for my dance partner. He is a famous movie star. He played Buffy in family Affair. This was a series in my youth days. He also played Huck in Huckleberry Finn. He is the one with the kinky curly red-blond hair. Well he was a little older then I and we danced together like we knew what we were doing. Was kind of fun. Was my moment with fame.

 I worked upstairs of the BYU Bookstore in the Book department for the last year I was there. I remember Dan Heap came to BYU to interview teachers to come to St. Johns to teach school. I was contacted by the administration of Education Department to come for an interview. I looked up St. Johns, Arizona on the map, could not find it for the longest time. Finally I found this tiny little dot. That was St. Johns. I decided then and there that I was not going to St. Johns to teach. It was way too tiny for me and I was not married yet. I wanted to stay in Utah and find my husband first.

 That was not the plan Father in Heaven had though. I went to the interview for the practice of it all. I was a very nervous interviewee. I walked into the small room; Dan Heap was standing there waiting for me to come in. I came in and shook his hand. The spirit was extremely strong in that room. I do not remember what was said or what I said, but I did know that I was going to St. Johns. That fact was very clear to me as we interviewed. When we finished with whatever we were talking about, I just said that I was interested in coming to St. Johns to teach. Bishop Dan Heap told me that he thought that I should come to St. Johns first to see the place before I made a final decision. He was a little nervous about me coming here because I was single and he knew that the availability of young men was next to nil. He was afraid that I would not be happy with St. Johns and not stay very long.

 So I took the rest of the money that I had left and came to St. Johns. He was right. St. Johns when you did not know anyone was very homely looking, not very many trees. I love trees and green, two things of which St. Johns was not plentiful in. But I could not turn from what I knew I had to do. When the spirit directs you listen and do. So I spent three days, this was what was required of me. I was given a low teacher discount at the Elm Motel of $12.00 a night from Gwen Udall. She later became one of my visiting teachers when I moved here. After the three days were up, I came to Bishop Dan Heap who was the Superintendent at the time and asked if I could sign my contract. I did and went back to BYU to finish up my summer semester.

 In August of 1978 I moved all my belongings to St. Johns. Mom and dad helped me. Dad was used to driving all day and night, until he saw me do something very scary. I was following them in my new car that Mrs. Harshman had bought for me when I graduated from BYU. It was getting very late and we had been driving for many hours. I was extremely tired. Dad had just passed a vehicle up, so I just did the same with out being aware of another vehicle coming in the other lane. I passed, the other vehicle drove over to side as far as he could safely do and the one that I was passing went to the other side as far as he could, and I drove down through the middle. I never blinked an eye. My dad viewed this from his rear view mirror and decided it was time to stop and have a nap. I could make the trip a lot better after the nap.

 We made it to St. Johns safely and dad said the same thing about the town. He couldn’t believe his little girl was going to live in this place. But he didn’t have a say and so he left me there. I found this cutest little house that was just big enough for one person. I rented the Carry Starleys house next door to Ruth and Dale Davis across the street from the old Pioneer Elementary School. I then went to work on fixing up my classroom. It had not been used for some time and was in bad need of some repairs. I did them all myself. I patched up big holes in the walls, painted the walls, and made some pretty blue checkered gingham curtains for the windows. As long as I was busy I did not feel too lonely.

 I absolutely loved teaching the third grade. I loved my class. They loved me. But as time went by I soon found that the people of St. Johns were right, there were no available young men around. They all went away to other cities to find their mates. I was beginning to get a little depressed. I wasn’t sure why Heavenly Father wanted me to come to St. Johns. Surely it could not be only to teach these wonderful children that I dearly loved. But it seemed like that was the reason. I prayed for answers. For a while I just went day to day doing my job and loving it of course, but nothing seemed to be coming my way. There was one date that I had. Mrs. Young, one of my fellow teachers put me up to a date with some guy from Salt River. We had a nice time and good food, but he was not LDS, and of course that is my first and number one character trait that was a must. So more time had gone by and I got lonelier and lonelier.

 Gwen Richey owned the house that I was living in at the time. She was Carry Starleys daughter. Her mother had passed away a short time before I came to St. Johns. She knew a young man named Joe Mangum that lived right across the street from her. She had always loved Joe and thought about him often to get to know me. Everyone thought that I was, quote from them, “a pretty young thing”. She kept trying to get Joe to come over to see me and talk to me. He tried a few times to come and see me, but was just too shy to get to my door. He would drive his yellow ford pickup up and down my road and then go home. I never knew this till after I had a chance to get to know him. This came about because I would often go next door to Ruth Davis’ house to watch her decorate cakes. She would make the prettiest roses. I would watch and watch, but could never seem to make a rose like her. She made our wedding cake. Daisies were my flowers for the reception so she put daisies all over the cake. It was beautiful.

 Well I was over to her house for quite some time watching her and visiting with her. It was time to go home so I went, but to my dismay I had locked my house keys inside the house. I could not get in, so I went back to Ruth’s’ house to call sister Richey. That is when she sent Joe over with the key to let me into my house. He had no choice but to do as Gwen wanted him to do. He let me in and came in as well. He sat to talk to me. I guess talk to me. He was there for about two hours and said about two words. In two hours since I had to do all the talking, he knew everything about me practically. He decided he liked me and was not going to miss out. He asked me to a football game of which I had to take tickets first before I could go and sit with him. He became more and more comfortable with me as time went by. The only problem was I was not interested in him.

 There were three reasons: first He had long hair that did not appeal to me. I always like a clean cut look (Missionary Look). He also did not go to church or did not seem to be very active. Then he was not a returned missionary. I had always thought that I would marry a returned missionary. These things really bothered me. I kept praying him away. He did not go away. He kept buying me things that he thought that I wanted. He bought me a fish tank and accessories for my classroom. It was frustrating. It seemed the more I was praying him away, the more he kept coming back. I didn’t know what to think. So I got to thinking that I was not really listening to what the Lord wanted to me to do. So I decided to change my approach to my prayers.

 I then decided to ask the Lord what I was to do with this situation. My Frustration then changed to a sure thought of GIVE HIM A CHANCE. I thought Okay. So then I tried really hard to see him in a different way and really get to know him. I found out that he had long hair because His sister Vickie usually cut his hair and she was away to school. He said that I could cut his hair if I wanted to. I had exactly ½ hour of a mini lesson in a BYU homemaking class on hair cutting. So I tried to give him a hair cut. It came out pretty good and I have been giving them to him ever since. He didn’t look so bad. I thought to myself, hummm, he’s pretty good lookin. Then I found out that he didn’t go to church because he didn’t have anyone to go with and he just does not do well by himself. He is a little shy or just does not do well around a lot of people by himself. So I told him he could go with me. And he has been going ever since with me. That left a Mission. Well if you know Joe and his uneasiness around people you would know why he didn’t go on a mission. That was a little hard for me, but I had to go on the answer I got from the Lord. So I just accepted the fact that he knew a lot about the gospel from reading the scriptures faithfully every day. I could appreciate this and let it be.

In October of 1978 he was over to my home and I had fixed him Pork Chops in cream of chicken soup cooked in the oven, this is his favorite way of having pork chops, he asked me to marry him. We have been happily married for the past 32 years. We have 5 wonderful boys (John, Willie, Robert, Joe, and Cyrus) and one beautiful girl (Patricia).