Beyond Salt Lake City

First, before I begin our journey beyond SLC, let me clear up a couple of questions. We left Lodi in the fall of 1961 (right after Halloween) and moved to Salt Lake City. This was an interesting move, because I was pregnant with Debi and a moving company took all of our belongings and we drove a big International Harvester "jeep", pulling our little Simca (foreign car). We stayed in a motel for 3 days while w looked for a rental. We found a cute little house on 3020 South, and so began our sojourn in SLC.

With that cleared up, now it is 1966 and time to say good-bye to the home we loved for 5+ years. We were very lucky and sold our house for $25,000, which gave us a little money to travel back to Illinois. We had to store most of our furniture in my folks garage in Santa Monica (that was a trip to remember). The Harvey's, who lived around the corner from us in SLC, took our piano. She was happy to have one in the house to play.

So, the first of September, we were off across country to Champaign/Urbana, Illinois, where Gerry would be furiously working on his Doctorate Degree in Clay Mineralogy. These were anxious days and both of us were at the same time anxious and excited! We traveled through country that I had never seen before. We went through Colorado, Missouri, across the Mississippi River into Illinois, then north to Champaign. Our first year was spent in Student Housing. We lived for a year in a 2-bedroom apartment that held 3 children in one bedroom and Gerry and I and JerriAnne in the second bedroom. These were hard times, fun times, learning times and learning-to-go-without times. In retrospect, they were probably 3 of the best years of our lives!

The first year, while Gerry worked as a Student-Assistant (to help pay the bills), I took in baby sitting. Then, I got a job on campus in the Traffic Control department, as a stenographer for a very busy PhD Candidate. It was a fun job. I got to set up a library for him for all of his publications. That was challenging for me, because I didn't know a thing about setting up a library. Mostly, I just typed up catalog cards. Oh, what I would have given for a computer system way back then. Non-existent!

Gerry was learning a lot, too. He quickly mapped out his dissertation project and set to work on it right away. He also had to take French and German and translate scientific publications in his field from French and German to English. He did a great job and we had some wonderful discussions on how really similar some things are in all languages.

We had so many wonderful experiences while we lived in the mid-west. We took all of the kids (including my little sister, Patty) on a trip to the east coast through many of the Church History sights there. We saw Kirtland, Ohio; Niagara Falls; Palmyra: the Hill Cumorah; Vermont and Joseph Smith's Birthplace; the beach on the coast of Maine; Plymouth Rock; New York City and all of the exciting sites there; Washington, DC; and other sites. We did all of this in 2 1/2 weeks pulling a pop-up trailer/tent. We camped all the way and loved every mile of the trip. The kids came home with many memories. (At least the older ones did.)

We traveled south to Alabama to visit Gerry's brother, George in Huntsville. We went to Kentucky and saw where they held the Kentucky Derby. It is beautiful country. We stopped to see friends from college on the way and had another wonderful trip.

On a trip home for the summer, we went through Nauvoo and saw all of the sights there. I remember the jail at Carthage, a huge hole in the ground where the Temple used to be, the homes, shops and streets where our pioneer Saints lived. JerriAnne and I made a trip back to Nauvoo in 2004 and it is so different. Where there was a hole in the ground, there now stands a beautifully re-built Temple. We loved walking from our motel at night to the Temple grounds and could see lightning bugs lighting up the lawns everywhere.

All too soon (not soon enough for Gerry), we finished what we had come to Illinois to accomplish -- Gerry received his PhD in Clay Mineralogy after a lot of hard work and sleepless nights -- and we packed up our two cars (the old Ford Station Wagon, and my new Ford Mustang), pulled a U-Haul trailer behind the Station Wagon, and headed to California.

Come along for the ride, next time...