Home Again!
"When I returned home off my mission I flew into Reno International Airport and my parents met me there and then we drove 2 miles east of hi way 50 to Fallon, Nevada and I was released by a Stake President whom I had never met. Then we got back in the car I travelled another hour to a town called Gabbs, Nevada. My dad had been unemployed for 13 months while I was serving my mission and got a job in Gabbs, he was the quality control manager at the mine there. Gabbs is a mining town of about 800 people and the only reason why it is there is because of this mine. I can’t even remember what they mine. (Magnesium) anyway my dad had gotten this job and it had been very, very hard for my mom to finally say, “Yes, I will be willing to leave Cashe Valley”. She had loved living there; it was close to some of her family and some of dad’s family. She loved living there where the church was nice and strong and she loved her job at Utah State. She worked in the basement of old main. She just really, really enjoyed it. She was good at it, she was really good at it. My mom is an amazing secretary, she can type 120 words a minute with 3 mistakes or something like that, she is very organized and very methodical, and very personable, and she really, really enjoyed her job there. They had been praying about a job for my dad and praying about it and finally one morning she said, “OK fine, I’ll do it, I will leave Cashe Valley”, and the job came through in Gabbs."
"My dad had moved out there, it was kind of interesting; they had some housing for him to stay in until the family got there. And so the very first Sunday that he was there, he had gotten up, they had just a small branch of the church there that was meeting in a rented building. He had got up and gotten dressed in his Sunday pants and shirt, he didn’t have his shoes and socks on yet and his tie on – he was sitting there reading his scriptures and all of a sudden he had the thought, “I better put my shoes and socks on and I’d better put my tie on. So he did, and just a few minutes later a knock came at the door and there was a member of the stake presidency to say hi to him and call him to be a counselor in the branch presidency. They knew he was coming; nobody had ever met him before. But the young man that had been called, as the branch president felt inspired that this man that was moving in that they knew was LDS, was going to be his counselor. It was a very inspired decision on Brother Wilkenson’s part, my dad had been a counselor in district presidencies before and always active in the church and he’s a wonderful person to have as a counselor. “You might want to think of this”, “hum, have you thought about this?”, and, “That’s a great job you’re doing there,’ and, “wow that was good”. So my dad was the first counselor in the branch presidency when I arrived home from my mission."
"Like I said, Gabbs was a very small town, the mine was the main employer there, there were very few other options. They had a very small school there K through 12. My sister spent three years there and graduated from Gabbs High School, her graduating class was just 12. Just a very, very small, small town. It was hard to be there. I got home the end of September, I could have left a week later and started up at Utah State, but I kind of felt like I’d been gone for a year and a half and I needed a little time to visit my family and also I didn’t have any money, my parents obviously didn’t have any money either. I decided to go back to school in January and see what work I could find."
"The only thing that was available to me for work was to babysit for ladies who were going to be going into Reno to do big shopping. There were some ladies who would go once a month, a couple of them would go together. You would go to grocery stores with big coolers so that anything frozen could be put in the coolers or anything you needed to keep refrigerated because you’d be shopping in Fallon for foodstuff. But to do any shopping as far as clothes or shoes or household stuff you would go into Reno and it was three hours away. So I was able to earn some money that way. And that was good. It was difficult being there in Gabbs, because here I’d been on a mission where I was busy, busy all the time 16 to 18 hours a day and to suddenly come to where there was nothing. That was extremely difficult. My mom had a hard adjustment to being there in Gabbs, Nevada."
"Like I said because my dad was the quality control manager and that was the only big employer in town, and it would be a conflict of interest for her to be working at the mine. She kept herself very busy. My mom’s not the kind of person to sit around. She was teaching early morning Seminary in our home and all the high school kids would just get up and wander over to our house in the morning and come to Seminary. My sister would wander from the back room out to the front room. They had a wood burning stove there and that’s how they heated the house. Didn’t have any other heat in it so that’s how they heated the house. My dad would get up and get that fire going so it would be nice and toasty warm for the kids during the winter and they would come out for Seminary."
"A nice little branch of the church there, some very nice people, good strong members and they were trying to help the branch grow. It was obvious after we left why my dad needed to be in that small town. Because of my dad’s position in the company, when it came time, the branch had been growing, and when it got to the point, they were ready for a phase one chapel. He was able to, with his position in the company to go the company and petition for buying a piece of land. The mine owned all the land, and all the houses were just rented. You lived there, you didn’t own your house because it was all owned by the company. The church will not put a chapel on land that they do not own. So the company had to sell the piece of land that they wanted to the church. So my dad with this position was able to go to the company and petition to buy this piece of land, and this is what he was able to do for a whopping one dollar. But when the deal closed and the church got the deed - my dad was able to get the deal to go through, the church got the deed for the land and my dad was laid off almost within two weeks of that happening." Shirley and Jay knew they were instruments in the hands of the Lord to help out that branch in Gabbs, Nevada with a chapel. They felt they had been lead and guided there.
By the time her family left Nevada she was already at Utah State. "After being there in Gabbs for 3 months that I was there, I’d earned enough money and it was time to go back to Utah State. I had some grants lined up and I was all registered for school. I remember driving up, my mom and dad had this pick-up truck. My dad had a shell on the back of the truck, then my dad had built a shelf in the truck so they could stuff stored underneath and stuff stored on top of the shelf, so they packed all of my stuff in there and there was room at the back of the truck for 4 of their kids. There was myself, there was Kevin, there was Suzanne, and there was Randall, Craig wasn’t home from his mission yet. We sat there in the back and we didn’t have any heat but we bundled up and actually my dad had tried to divert some of the air from the cab back there to us and then we just bundled up in blankets everything and that’s where we sat. We didn’t have a way of communicating back and forth, but every few hours he would stop and come back and check on us, we were doing just fine, we were reading books and playing games and talking as we did the 7 or 8 hour drive to Utah State."
"Getting back to Utah State, I had gotten one of my brothers - Keith – who was still living in Logan, and one of his girlfriends had helped me line up some housing there at Utah State. I was living on Darwin Avenue which is right behind the institute building just off campus but right up at the top of the hill, old main hill. I was able to move in there with five other girls and it was great! I loved being back at Utah State, I loved and got along well with the roommates – most of them. I immediately jumped back into being a music education major. I retook that semester or quarter of theory that I had taken right before I left, to kind of get me back into it again, it was a different group of kids now because all of kids I’d been with- were moving on and had graduated or getting their graduation. We ended up with 20 or 30 kids in theory class each year and that’s kind of the group you move through school with, it’s a three-year class that you take for theory. I loved being back at Utah State, I was doing work study again in the music department, -- they had another girl that had been taking care of the library and the secretary and library and the music. At the end of that year she had finished up so I was able to move back into my position that I’d had before. That was my happy place to be. I would get up in the morning and I would walk over to the music department. Once in awhile I would leave the building to go to other classes, but most of my classes were there in the music department , I would work there, I would eat my lunch over there, play there, and leave at the end of the day to go home."
"My parents were trying to figure out where they were going to move next, my dad has a brother who lives in Tempe, Arizona actually he lives in Glendale which is northwest of Phoenix. After a lot of prayer, a lot of fasting, and figuring out where they should go; my dad felt he should go down there. So my mom and dad moved down there several months before the end of the school year, they left my sister Suzanne up there, living with a nice family, so that she could finish up the school year and graduate from there. It was actually a good situation schooling wise for my sister Suzanne because of the fact that she was the Homecoming Queen, she was a cheerleader, she was on the basketball team, she was on the volleyball team, everybody did everything being such a small school. In fact the volleyball team won the state championship in their division. It would have been a horrible school for me because I was all about the band, the orchestra, and the choir, and you have that at the big school I was in."
"My dad had moved out there, it was kind of interesting; they had some housing for him to stay in until the family got there. And so the very first Sunday that he was there, he had gotten up, they had just a small branch of the church there that was meeting in a rented building. He had got up and gotten dressed in his Sunday pants and shirt, he didn’t have his shoes and socks on yet and his tie on – he was sitting there reading his scriptures and all of a sudden he had the thought, “I better put my shoes and socks on and I’d better put my tie on. So he did, and just a few minutes later a knock came at the door and there was a member of the stake presidency to say hi to him and call him to be a counselor in the branch presidency. They knew he was coming; nobody had ever met him before. But the young man that had been called, as the branch president felt inspired that this man that was moving in that they knew was LDS, was going to be his counselor. It was a very inspired decision on Brother Wilkenson’s part, my dad had been a counselor in district presidencies before and always active in the church and he’s a wonderful person to have as a counselor. “You might want to think of this”, “hum, have you thought about this?”, and, “That’s a great job you’re doing there,’ and, “wow that was good”. So my dad was the first counselor in the branch presidency when I arrived home from my mission."
"Like I said, Gabbs was a very small town, the mine was the main employer there, there were very few other options. They had a very small school there K through 12. My sister spent three years there and graduated from Gabbs High School, her graduating class was just 12. Just a very, very small, small town. It was hard to be there. I got home the end of September, I could have left a week later and started up at Utah State, but I kind of felt like I’d been gone for a year and a half and I needed a little time to visit my family and also I didn’t have any money, my parents obviously didn’t have any money either. I decided to go back to school in January and see what work I could find."
"The only thing that was available to me for work was to babysit for ladies who were going to be going into Reno to do big shopping. There were some ladies who would go once a month, a couple of them would go together. You would go to grocery stores with big coolers so that anything frozen could be put in the coolers or anything you needed to keep refrigerated because you’d be shopping in Fallon for foodstuff. But to do any shopping as far as clothes or shoes or household stuff you would go into Reno and it was three hours away. So I was able to earn some money that way. And that was good. It was difficult being there in Gabbs, because here I’d been on a mission where I was busy, busy all the time 16 to 18 hours a day and to suddenly come to where there was nothing. That was extremely difficult. My mom had a hard adjustment to being there in Gabbs, Nevada."
"Like I said because my dad was the quality control manager and that was the only big employer in town, and it would be a conflict of interest for her to be working at the mine. She kept herself very busy. My mom’s not the kind of person to sit around. She was teaching early morning Seminary in our home and all the high school kids would just get up and wander over to our house in the morning and come to Seminary. My sister would wander from the back room out to the front room. They had a wood burning stove there and that’s how they heated the house. Didn’t have any other heat in it so that’s how they heated the house. My dad would get up and get that fire going so it would be nice and toasty warm for the kids during the winter and they would come out for Seminary."
"A nice little branch of the church there, some very nice people, good strong members and they were trying to help the branch grow. It was obvious after we left why my dad needed to be in that small town. Because of my dad’s position in the company, when it came time, the branch had been growing, and when it got to the point, they were ready for a phase one chapel. He was able to, with his position in the company to go the company and petition for buying a piece of land. The mine owned all the land, and all the houses were just rented. You lived there, you didn’t own your house because it was all owned by the company. The church will not put a chapel on land that they do not own. So the company had to sell the piece of land that they wanted to the church. So my dad with this position was able to go to the company and petition to buy this piece of land, and this is what he was able to do for a whopping one dollar. But when the deal closed and the church got the deed - my dad was able to get the deal to go through, the church got the deed for the land and my dad was laid off almost within two weeks of that happening." Shirley and Jay knew they were instruments in the hands of the Lord to help out that branch in Gabbs, Nevada with a chapel. They felt they had been lead and guided there.
By the time her family left Nevada she was already at Utah State. "After being there in Gabbs for 3 months that I was there, I’d earned enough money and it was time to go back to Utah State. I had some grants lined up and I was all registered for school. I remember driving up, my mom and dad had this pick-up truck. My dad had a shell on the back of the truck, then my dad had built a shelf in the truck so they could stuff stored underneath and stuff stored on top of the shelf, so they packed all of my stuff in there and there was room at the back of the truck for 4 of their kids. There was myself, there was Kevin, there was Suzanne, and there was Randall, Craig wasn’t home from his mission yet. We sat there in the back and we didn’t have any heat but we bundled up and actually my dad had tried to divert some of the air from the cab back there to us and then we just bundled up in blankets everything and that’s where we sat. We didn’t have a way of communicating back and forth, but every few hours he would stop and come back and check on us, we were doing just fine, we were reading books and playing games and talking as we did the 7 or 8 hour drive to Utah State."
"Getting back to Utah State, I had gotten one of my brothers - Keith – who was still living in Logan, and one of his girlfriends had helped me line up some housing there at Utah State. I was living on Darwin Avenue which is right behind the institute building just off campus but right up at the top of the hill, old main hill. I was able to move in there with five other girls and it was great! I loved being back at Utah State, I loved and got along well with the roommates – most of them. I immediately jumped back into being a music education major. I retook that semester or quarter of theory that I had taken right before I left, to kind of get me back into it again, it was a different group of kids now because all of kids I’d been with- were moving on and had graduated or getting their graduation. We ended up with 20 or 30 kids in theory class each year and that’s kind of the group you move through school with, it’s a three-year class that you take for theory. I loved being back at Utah State, I was doing work study again in the music department, -- they had another girl that had been taking care of the library and the secretary and library and the music. At the end of that year she had finished up so I was able to move back into my position that I’d had before. That was my happy place to be. I would get up in the morning and I would walk over to the music department. Once in awhile I would leave the building to go to other classes, but most of my classes were there in the music department , I would work there, I would eat my lunch over there, play there, and leave at the end of the day to go home."
"My parents were trying to figure out where they were going to move next, my dad has a brother who lives in Tempe, Arizona actually he lives in Glendale which is northwest of Phoenix. After a lot of prayer, a lot of fasting, and figuring out where they should go; my dad felt he should go down there. So my mom and dad moved down there several months before the end of the school year, they left my sister Suzanne up there, living with a nice family, so that she could finish up the school year and graduate from there. It was actually a good situation schooling wise for my sister Suzanne because of the fact that she was the Homecoming Queen, she was a cheerleader, she was on the basketball team, she was on the volleyball team, everybody did everything being such a small school. In fact the volleyball team won the state championship in their division. It would have been a horrible school for me because I was all about the band, the orchestra, and the choir, and you have that at the big school I was in."
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