Arlene Clavell

Probably the question I've been asked the most in my lifetime is "how did you get the name “Skip”". I've always told people my legal name is Richard, but my "real" name is Skip. As a child, it was “Skipper”. As I finished elementary school and started jr. high, I shortened it to just “Skip”. I always hated being teased about my name in elementary school – with popular products like Skippy Peanut Butter and Skippy Dog Food on the market, I got called lots of names. I thought about going back to “Richard” or “Rich” or “Rick”, but my sisters said that was gross. Somewhere along the line, about the time I turned 12 I had a teacher – can’t remember if it was at school or somewhere else – who called me Skip. I remember she was cool, and made my name sound cool when she said it – at least I thought so. So that’s how I came to settle on “Skip”. But all that doesn’t answer the real question – Where did the name “Skipper” come from? The story I was always told throughout my childhood was that my first baby outfit that I wore home from the hospital had little sail boats on it (I still have that outfit) and so I was the “Skipper” of the ship. And that’s where the name came from. That was the story I knew my whole life, until just before mom died. When she was sick, we were talking one day and I asked her about my name and told the story of the outfit with the sail boats on it. She said, “That’s not how you got that name.” Then she told me how before I was born she was working at an elementary school as a secretary. There was a little boy in the school named Skipper. She said he was a cute little boy and she liked the name, so she named me that. Not as interesting as the story about the sail boats or about mom wanting to name me Peter, but oh well.

When mom and dad were first married, they lived in a 4-plex in Salt Lake City, and the other couples living there became life-long friends. One of those couples was Ruben – called “Pappy” - and Bee Clements. Bee and Pappy met on an hospital ship in WWII. Pappy had been injured in the war, and Bee was his nurse. Pappy was a machine gunner in the war in Europe fighting Germany. One day, he and three others had their machine gun set up in a cement bunker, shooting through a window. The Germans were fighting back with mortars. Pappy heard the first mortar hit behind them, and then the second hit in front of them. The third mortar came through the window. The blast killed his companions and left Pappy severely injured – losing his right leg. Back in those days, the best medical option for a person missing a leg was to wear a wooden leg. As I remember, it was without a knee joint and more like wearing a log than the prosthetics we have today. I learned about his wooden leg when he dared me to hit him! I still remember that! Pappy and Bee were active in the Church and served in many capacities. So what calling do you give a man who has only one leg? Scout Master – of course! Pappy was very active and enthusiastic in scouting, eventually earning a Silver Beaver award. His “disability” never held him back. He took the boys on all of the same camps, hikes, and high-adventure activities as any good scout leader would. For the hikes, he removed the wooden leg and would strap on crutches. Nothing held him back as he lead those boys – figuratively and literally. Tom Brokaw referred to people who served in WWII as “the greatest generation”. When I hear that term, I always think of Pappy. When others in his situation would expect understanding and accommodations, he made no excuses and went to work. I've learn from his example the difference between “winners” and “losers”. Losers make excuses. Losers look for reasons to be underprivileged and entitled to a hand-out. Losers expect to be given success out of a misguided sense of “fairness”. Winners win. They win not because they have special privileges or advantage. They win because they won't accept losing. Winners win because they will not be losers. Pappy was a winner.

I have a great love for old movies. Growing up, my parents would take all of us kids to the Avalon movie theater in Salt Lake. They showed only the classics – movies that mom and dad grew up with. I remember these movies as something we really looked forward to doing. And the movies were great! Sargent York, Bridge On The River Kwai, Hallelujah Trail, Yankee Doodle Dandy. The list goes on and on. I could tell even as a child that these movies were better than the more modern movies. There was something about the golden age of Hollywood that would never be again. The actors then were true movie stars – Spencer Tracy, James Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, Kathrine Hepburn, Cary Grant. You just can't make them like that any more. I remember on our trip back east when I was a teenager, we went to an old, grand movie theater in Columbus Ohio to see the Alexander Graham Bell Story with Don Ameche. The movie was good, and the theater was spectacular with all the ornate decorations, velvet curtains, chandeliers, etc. They had a huge, old fashioned theater organ and a guy came out to play it before the movie. He put on an amazing show! I remember also going with dad to see silent comedies. Buster Keaton was my favorite, we also saw Charlie Chaplain, Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello – all of the greats. We would sit in the theater together and laugh and laugh. I've tried to pass my love for these movies to my kids – and so Brittany also has a love for some of these same movies. When we lived in Nevada, it was back in the days when in order to watch a movie at home, you had to rent a VCR and a movie from a rental place. One day we were in our local movie rental store when I thought it would be fun to get one of the old classics. I found Yankee Doodle Dandy with James Cagney and remembered it from when I was a kid. I showed it to Brittany and she said, “but it's in black-and-white!” I told her not to worry about that. Well, we watched the show and it instantly became one of her all-time favorites. The guy who owned the store was a classic movie nut like me, so we shared ideas a few times and he actually ordered some movies for me! The Avalon isn't there anymore. It wasn't a big theater, or the nicest theater, but it was a place where an appreciation for classic performances was born. It's been several decades now since I last saw a movie there, but I can still remember how it looked – the seats, the curtains, the flickering light of the projector, and the wonderful classic movies that I still enjoy today.

When I returned home from my mission, I acquired another sister. Maria Guadalupe Domingez – nickname Tochi. She was never legally adopted, but mom and dad never let legalities get in the way of making people part of our family. Tochi is from Argentina. She came to BYU on a sponsorship from her sister, but things didn’t work out and she found herself needing some help. Her friend Reiko Ise (another un-adopted sister – I’ll have to include that story in my missionary section…) suggested she meet mom and dad and see if they would help. They did, and that’s when Tochi moved in with us. Tochi is very energetic and has a very outgoing personality. She’s not afraid to do things and not afraid to make mistakes when learning new things. She’s fun to be around and a bit comical – sometimes in ways she doesn’t intend. That made for a very entertaining situation that, of course, dad and I could not pass up. We still love to tease her. The best teasing when she first moved in was with her accent. Her English was very good, but she was still learning some things and would mix up words once in a while. One time she was home alone and answered the phone. The caller asked for mom. Tochi explained that she wasn’t at home and asked, “would you like me to give her a massage?”! Another time mom asked Tochi what she would like to do – if there was anything she wanted to see in the area. She said she would like to go to Temple Square and see “the Mormon Tabernacle Queer”. Mom said, “the what?”. I couldn’t resist. I replied, “you know, mom. Short, bald guy that runs around Temple Square!

Most of my childhood memories are of fishing trips with the family. Dad loves fishing, and we still go to Scofield Reservoir - his favorite fishing spot. When we were young, Dad would take us fishing quite often at his favorite fishing spot, Scofield reservoir. I remember one particular occasion when we had been fishing most of the day from our usual spot on the east side of the lake. The fishing had been lousy. Hardly even a bite. All of us kids were tired of fishing and wanted to go home. So we loaded up the car and started to leave. Dad always has trouble leaving when he wants to fish. I think he said we were leaving just to appease us when really he just wanted to try another spot. He stopped along the channel just down from the dam. It was a very steep trail that led from the roadway down to the bank. The bank itself was nothing more than a few large rocks and maybe some dirt to stand on. The water was very deep there, and Dad thought it might be a good spot. We wanted nothing to do with it. Mom sat with us kids in the old Rambler station wagon while Dad fished down below. It wasn’t long before we could take no more and really wanted to leave. Problem was Dad started catching fish – and there’s no stopping him when the fish are biting. But we were motivated too. One at a time, my sisters and I would go down the steep trail to where he was fishing and steal a piece of fishing gear and take it back to the car. We took his tackle box first, then his extra pole, the stringer of fish, and finally the bait. But Dad was still catching. He finally was down to just a little piece of marshmallow on one of the two hooks on his line. He figured it was worth a try and cast out. Sure enough he got a strike and jerked his pole back to set the hook. But this time when he got the fish in to the shore, the hook wasn’t in fish’s mouth. The hook with no bait was embedded into the fish’s side. Apparently, the fish had gone after the piece of bait on the upper hook. When Dad jerked the pole back, he snagged it in the side with the lower hook. That was the time the fishing was so good, Dad was catching without bait.

Another memory of those fishing trips was sleeping in the tent on the beach at Scofield. We had one of those old, heavy canvas tents that slept the whole family. Mom would make out all the beds, side-by-side, from one end of the tent to the other. We were all packed into that tent so tightly that it seemed really like one big bed. We called it our “family group sheets.” One trip, Paula had invited her boyfriend, Rod (whom she later married) to go with us. When it came time to retire, mom made Rod’s bed right next to Paula! I guess she thought it would be rude to separate them or something. Pour guy hardly slept the whole night, scrunched to the opposite side of his bed afraid of accidentally touching Paula! The reason we called our tent-bed “family group sheets” comes from a story that happened to a friend in our ward in Midvale. There used to be a small JC Penny store on Main Street where this friend worked. This was back in the days when JC Penny also sold LDS-specific items. One day a customer looking for the genealogy supplies got a little lost in the bedding section of the store. She stopped a clerk (who was not a member of the church) and asked where the family group sheets were located. Later this clerk came to our friend and said, “I knew you Mormons were weird, but I didn’t think you all slept together!”

Dad told the story of the time he and mom were on a boat, fishing. Dad hooked into a big fish and was fighting to get it in. He told Mom to get the net, but the net was nowhere to be found. Dad was yelling at her to find it, frantic that this fish would get away before he could get it into the boat. When he finally got it up to the side of the boat where they could see it, he knew it was the biggest fish he’d ever seen. Mom still couldn’t find the net, so she did the only thing she could think of. She grabbed the camera and leaned over the boat and took a picture. Just then the fish jumped off the line and disappeared below the water. To this day, Dad says he doesn’t know how big that fish was - but the picture weighs five pounds!