My Parents
When my parents married, they were pretty young. My mother
was seventeen soon to be eighteen, and my father was nineteen, soon to turn
twenty. At that time men were not of
legal age until twenty-one, but women were considered adults at eighteen. They
had to get permission from their parents to marry. I think that may have been
difficult for them, but they never said that it was a problem.
They both lived through World War II and the challenges that
it brought. There was not an Air Force at the time; my father was in the Army
Air Corps. He flew the P-38 Lightning. He flew his missions out of France and
Germany as the Allies moved east. He was in Germany after the war was over in
that theater and helped the people who had been treated poorly in the towns. Many
were refugees from the concentration camps that the Germans had, and the people
were in need of food, clothes, and shelter.
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Leonard Smith Stubbs and Rose Carolyn Higgins Stubbs |
I am grateful to my parents who were willing to help all
they could. After the war my mother had many different relatives live with us
at different times. I will mention just a few; Dick and Pattie, the children of
Mom’s brother; Donna, the daughter of her step-sister; Aunt Elvie Branstetter,
Mom’s great-aunt; Cindy, a child left for Mom to babysit for a few hours (her
father didn’t show up again for two years); her step-sister, Vivian; her
mother-in-law Afton; her sister-in-law Mary; and JoAnn, a girl that she was
babysitting that her father couldn’t care for. She always was helping one
person or another. There was a man who lived across the street that she checked
on daily. He became a friend of mine and took me prospecting. His name was Herbert
Frits. He gave me his car when I left for BYU, after I was married.
My father was called to be the bishop of our ward and was
always bring people to our home who needed a good meal and a place to stay for
short periods of time. He was an electrician and wired half of the ward members’
homes. He also had a side business with Frosty Traasdahl, a close friend. I
don’t know anyone that worked as hard as my father did. My mother always
supported him in his jobs and activities that he was involved in.
My mother was a strict loving woman who would put up with no-nonsense. She had many friends and was involved in helping them. My father was
a giant of a man. In physical size he was short and thin, but quite muscular. I
don’t know of anything that he couldn’t do or fix. They were always faithful to
each other. Their lives were not free from stress and some arguments, but they
were always there and together. I felt that they loved me and cared what I was
doing. I noticed that some of my friends’ parents were either getting a divorce
or had already separated many years earlier. I always knew that my parents
would be there for me.
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