Milen James Housley

Life story of Milen Housley Milen was born 15 May 1938 in Preston, Franklin, Idaho, United States, at his Grandmother Margorie Johnson’s home. He lived his early years on the farm East of Richmond, Utah with his parents Milen Glen Housley and Fern Johnson Housley. His siblings are: Margie, two years older than Milen. Then Clinton came after Milen, then Ned, Robert and the twins, Faye and Fern. His nickname was ‘Pab’ which was given to him by his Uncle Waldon Housley, who lived next door to them in Richmond. As a baby, he liked his Pablum cereal and would spread it all over himself and his highchair. So Uncle Wal called him ‘Pab’. It stuck. He was known as Pab by all his immediate family; his cousins and many close friends, all his life. The Glen and Fern Housley family lived South of Lewiston, Utah at the old Benjamin Housley house, at first. It was located just South of town on that main road, about a mile out. His father, Glen, worked in the CCC camps (Civilian Conservation Corps) building roads, putting up fences in the mountains of Northern Utah and Southern Idaho and Wyoming. I think he worked for the CCC camps before and possibly right after his marriage. According to Glenn Hiibner, Glen was in the CCC with Wayne Hiibner who served in Odgen Canyon and in Riverdale, Utah building a rock something. Also went to California for a while. Don’t know if Glen was right with him all that time. Then they moved to Pocatello, Idaho, to work for the railroad. Milen remembered their walk-up apartment in Pocatello near the train station with no place to play. Glen and his brother Waldon, worked for the Union Pacific Railroad - don’t know what he did. Waldon’s kids think that they were greasing the engines in the railroad yard. But it was not for very long. Then Glen and Fern bought the South half of the Benjamin Housley farm from Glen’s father, Benjamin. There was about 170 acres farmland and 300 acres pasture up in the mountains. The original Ben Housley house stood about 1/4 mile East from the main road (2000 East) that still runs up toward the High Creek area. (Across the creek North of Blain Housley’s home.) Uncle Waldon Housley bought the North half of that farm. Aunt Clare and Uncle Denzil Talbot bought the next farm to the South from someone else. It was not part of the original Ben Housley farm. The two brothers and brother-in-law worked together running those three farms. Glen put a house on their property that was once an Amalgamated Sugar Factory home, moved from Lewiston, Utah, where the Sugar Factory was located. Aunt Clare, his sister, said that the home was purchased from Ariel Rawlins and that Ariel had bought it from the sugar factory in Lewiston. That house is still the core of our house there at 11432 N 2000 E, Richmond, Utah. Glen worked for the Sugar Factory in Lewiston, Utah at one time. He worked a lot of jobs around the valley, supplementing the farm income, which was scarce at times. He worked for Del Monte during the green bean, peas and corn seasons. There were two Del Monte factories in the valley, one in Smithfield and one in Franklin, Idaho. Fern and the boys did a lot of the farm work for him at those times. He and Fern were hard workers and taught their children to be the same. Milen told about helping around the farm, milking cows by hand, plowing and planting fields and helping his mother around the house, garden and fruit trees. Fern put up fruits and vegetables and meats in jars and Milen helped do that. They put up the things that they grew on the farm for their winter consumption. They had cows, pigs, chicken, turkeys and rabbits that they used for their milk and meat. They also had horses that were used to pull the plows and run the derrick course to stack loose hay. They always planted a large garden. The family had a milk route. They drove from farm to farm in the Cove and Richmond area with their flatbed truck, picking up cans of milk to take to the Sego Milk Factory on the West side of Richmond. When Glen was working elsewhere, Fern would drive and the boys would load the milk that the farmers had stored in the 10 gallon milk cans. They would haul them to the factory, empty them, wash them with a steam hose, there at the factory, and take the cans back to the farmers. They did this every morning all week long. The farmers had coolers to store their milk from their night milkings. They moved the loose hay, forked by hand, onto wagons pulled by horses; then later by tractor. They used a derrick rig powered by a horse and later by a tractor, to stack the lose hay from the wagon, in the years before they got a baler. They then forked the hay by hand to feed the animals in the winter. They moved rocks off the fields by hand, stacking them on the edges of the fields. Milen said the fields grew rocks because they had to move some off every year. All the children helped with all the work on the farm, as they became old enough. They worked very hard and long hours. Every spring they mended the pasture fences before putting the cattle out for the summer. They walked the fence and mended it and replaced posts as needed. While he was growing up they were mostly juniper posts taken from their pasture area. After we were married, he helped his father replace some of the juniper posts with steel one. When we purchased the farm, we replaced a lot more of them with steel posts. For his schooling, he attended Park Elementary School in Richmond, Lewiston Junior High in Lewiston, and North Cache High School in Richmond. School was difficult for him. He struggled and really did not like it much. But he loved the other students and was always surrounded by friends. He always got along well with his teachers, as well. When Milen was about in the 5th grade he got Rheumatic Fever. That is Strep infection of the heart muscles. His cousin Larry also got it. He was bedridden for about 6 weeks. He had to lay flat all that time. He took 16 full-sized aspirin per day. He embroidered blocks for a quilt and on dish towels. His mother read to him a lot. He had to lay his head down on a can in the tub, with his knees over another can. He had to be lifted to and from his bed to the couch or tub, etc. It really made him lose a lot of his schooling that year. When the twins were born, when Milen was 15 years old, he helped his mother feed them, change them, etc. He loved the babies. He loved all his family very much and was always very close to all of them, including the aunts, uncles and cousins. He had learning disabilities that effected his reading ability. When he looked at a printed page, the words would jump around and (as he put it) “The words would wash off the page down onto the floor.” He would follow them and try to read them. The words flipped over, also (‘saw’ became ‘was’). He also had an auditory discrimination problem. When the teacher said that two words like ‘Did’ and ‘Tat’ they sounded just the same to him (The ‘t’ and ‘d’ were the same sound to his ears). The other consonants that sound the same are f &v, p&b, s&z, k&g. These consonants are the pairs of voiced and unvoiced sounds. The vowels also sounded the same to him. The short sound of ‘a’ ‘e’ and ‘i’ sounded the same. He could not hear the difference when people said them. So needless to say, he struggled through his schooling years, feeling stupid. I taught him how to read after we were married. He worked very hard to learn, struggling with the sounds. (Thus my interest in Special Education later on.) He hated school, except gym and Ag Education. He had a great coach who encouraged him to wrestle. Coach Whitman, Janet May’s father. He did well as a wrestler. His coach said he was built like a Brick Outhouse. Short and wide and powerful. He was able to get through school ok and got his diploma. He got a trophy for being the best Agriculture student. He took first place for judging pigs at a state FFA competition. But he was glad to put those school years behind him and never looked back. While in his teens he worked for Judd Erickson, and for Howard Anderson (the elder Howard, not Iris’s husband). Milking cows and farming in general. He was a very hard worker and he always loved to work. His main friends were his brothers and sisters and cousins who lived near, plus Lew Lamb, Margie’s boyfriend. Also his fellow wrestlers. Lew took Milen with him and they had a blast traveling around, fishing and hunting, etc. and generally getting into the same kinds of trouble most young men did at that time. When he graduated, he and Larry Housley, his first cousin who was raised next door, went to Odgen, Utah and got jobs for the Southern Pacific Railroad, on the Bridge and Building gang. He said the shovel was one of their main tools, but they were considered carpenters. They lived in the ‘outfit’ and traveled from Ogden, Utah to Reno, Nevada and back, doing whatever job they had for them along the way. The ‘outfit’ was a railroad car fit up as living quarters for the men. They had a cook to feed them in the kitchen-dining room car and beds to sleep in - in another boxcar, nothing fancy. They had wood/coal burning stoves to heat the outfit and also to cook on. Milen said he was always cold in the winter. The types of jobs they did were routine mending of defects in bridges, or tunnels along the tracks and building new ones when needed. Also, they built and remodeled buildings along the route. There were other ‘gangs’ who built and repaired the train tracks. They had to help clean up the tracks when a train wrecked. The trains would be moved out of the way, then all the ‘gangs’ pitched in to repair the tracks and bridges etc. to get the train moving quickly. When they could, they bulldozed the wreck out of the way and the crews had to help clean up that mess. The most important thing was to get the trains moving again, quickly. I remember one wreck that the cars were filled with wine grapes, every color imaginable. At that time I had the stomach flu. Milen brought home about 4 bushels of grapes every night for about 4 nights. We bought 2 quart bottles and everyone on the gang put grape juice up ‘til we looked like grape juice. All colors and kinds of wine grapes. I couldn’t face grape juice for quite a while after that. Milen would work all day and then help me put up the grapes at night. Then I and the other wives would work on them while the men worked the next day. We were stationed at Ryndon, Nevada at that time. In the fall of 1956 the ‘outfit’ parked in Wells, Nevada and he and Larry came to the Wells LDS church Mutual on Tuesday nights. There he met his future wife, Mary Jene Taylor, (me). We dated, usually double dated with Larry and Lorna, my sister. We went to the movies, either in Wells or over in Elko. We went to all the dances at the school and to ball games, etc. We ate out a lot, usually hamburgers and shakes. (The ‘You Betcha Burger’ was 3 layers of meat and cheese, and was one of Milen’s favorites). We drove around on all the roads, highways and out-of-the-way roads in Elko County. We went swimming in some of the springs and lakes in the area. We had dances at the house, with Mother and the kids and (occasionally) Dad dancing with us. And we went to all the church activities together in Wells and Elko, (where the Stake center was located.) The ‘outfit’ moved all over Northern Nevada that winter from Reno to Wells. Some of the Tuesday nights the storms were terrible, but the boys would come to Mutual, (Young Men and Women), anyway. Then we would spend the evenings together; and they would drive back to go to work the next morning, sometimes getting there just an hour before work on Wednesday morning. Then on the weekends they would usually ride the train, (free - because they worked for the company), to Ogden, Utah and either have a parent or sibling pick them up there, or hitchhike over to Richmond. They spent a lot of hours just traveling around Northern Nevada and Utah during that winter. Sometimes they would drive a car back and forth between their ‘outfit’ and Richmond, Utah. Sometimes they would take Lorna and me with them. On one of those trips in March, Milen and his dad went to Logan and bought our wedding rings. We had picked them out earlier. His dad got a farmer’s discount on things. Then Milen took me into the his parent’s kitchen (the same home we lived in, in Richmond, on the farm). There he placed the ring on my finger and dragged me back into the living room so he could show the ring off to his parents and siblings. Not too romantic. But we had a lot of very romantic times. We were married 12 June, 1957 in the Logan, Utah Temple. It was a double wedding with Lorna and Larry. Mom did not want to come into Richmond twice that summer and convinced Lorna to change her date from August to June. Back in ‘those days’ it was a big thing for my folks to travel so far; but Milen and Larry did a lot of traveling to be with us. My folks could not go through the temple with us when we got married, because they had not gone to the temple yet. Milen’s and Larry’s folks and family were there in force, however. We went to the temple for the first time in the early morning of June 12, 1957. Then we were sealed that same morning. We went back to Richmond and the family had a huge, reunion like, meal on the Richmond park for us. The Housley and Johnson families; Grandma Johnson and aunts and uncles and cousins from both sides were there. Then we had a reception in the Old Richmond Stake center, (that we lost in the earthquake years later). I pulled out of the reception line early and we left. The people were coming, and coming and coming! (I was bombed and selfish and juvenile.) Don’t think Fern ever forgave me for that. And I don’t blame her. We got our car from Champ Webb’s garage where we hid it to keep it from getting messed up. But they had painted it with shaving cream anyway. (It always had ‘Just Married’ on it, where it was faded by the shaving cream.) Lew Lamb and Leslie Erickson and some others chased us as far as Smithfield, trying to (I thought) run us off the road. It was raining hard. Lew was in front of us and Leslie behind. Milen said, “Lew thinks more of his newer car than I do mine,” and rammed the back of it. They left us alone, then. We drove around through Beaver Dam to Brigham City where we spent the night. Then the next day we went to Margie and Lew’s home in West Jordan. We spent the day at Lagoon with them, then came on over to Richmond and got our trailer. It was packed with our presents and some food Fern supplied for us. The next day we pulled it to Nevada. He was working East of Reno on the desert at that time. We were stationed up and down the line from Reno to Ogden for about 3 years. We pulled our little trailer back and forth from job to job. He was stationed out in the middle of the desert some of the time. We lived in between Lovelock and Winnemucca on the Black Rock Desert. In Winnemucca for a while. Near Battle Mountain, in Fallon. On the Western side of the Great Salt Lake near Lake Town. (A barren waste land area.) During this time Larry and Lorna were parked near us with their trailer that had a bathroom. Ours did not. Lorna and I visited a lot while the men were working. We were excruciating happy. Those were magic times. Our first child, Tresa was born March 27, 1958, (all 6 lbs. 5 oz or her), while we were living in the trailer, moving around Northern Nevada. But she was born in Logan, Utah where my doctor, Dr Noble (whose office was in Richmond), was available. We stayed at Fern and Glen’s home for a few days before going back out to the trailer. Milen stayed there with me and took me home. Then in the Fall of 1958, we moved out of the trailer into a company house at Ryndon, Nevada. Milen’s gang was working in the tunnels there, replacing wooden beams with cement. It was a very dirty job because of all the many years of the soot from the engines from those old trains. They would take out the beams one at a time and pour cement to form new beams to hold the tunnel up. When the trains came through, (they did slow down), the workmen would step away from the tracks as far as they could and wait until they got through, then go back to work. They were supposed to go out of the tunnel every time, but that was too time consuming. Milen had some very good friends on that crew. By that time Larry had moved on to become a brakeman, so Milen and I were ‘on our own’. His fellow workers called him ‘Bishop’ because he was the only Mormon on his crew. The railroad house was a wooden framed duplex. Sylvia and Gordo Demaline were our neighbors, and good friends, in the duplex. We had a fenced-in yard and grass. It was really a relief to get out of that tiny trailer and have a bathroom! (We sold it to Selar Markham, Milen’s cousin, for a camp trailer.) Vondella was born in Elko, Nevada, October 25 1959, (5 lbs - 4 oz), while we were stationed at Ryndon. Milen loved the children. He helped with them, whatever their needs were, and played with them constantly while he was home. We never went anywhere without them if we could possible have them with us. We had Grandma Taylor and Grandma Johnson with us for a visit while we were in that house. That was a rare treat to see those two elderly ladies love each other and visit all night long. (It seemed) Milen would go fishing with some of the other railroad employees. Arky (his nickname. He was from Arkansas.) was one of them. They would catch catfish and put them in a tub of water after catching them. They had to keep them alive until time to clean them. They were treacherous to clean. The spires on their fins were sharp as razors. They used pliers to handle them. The country around where we lived was full of deer, and elk. And there were an abundance of fishing lakes and streams - chuck full of delicious fish. We went deer hunting every year, also. Usually getting two deer, his and mine. Sometimes we hunted with Dad around Wells area, but usually we went up alone, just the two of us. We went to church in Elko. He went 85 miles one way to do his home teaching to one of his families. There was a lot of miles between some of those ranches. He always got 100% of his teaching done every month, as did most of the home teachers and visiting teachers in our ward. We spent a lot of time in the car traveling to our church functions. When we had stake conferences in Elko, they were in 2 sessions, morning and afternoon on the same day instead of a Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Both sessions were for the whole family. This allowed the members to come into town and stay all day without going back home. (Because of the distances.) We would have a luncheon between the sessions. Every other conference we would have beef or lamb. Two of your stake presidency were huge beef and sheep men. So they would donate the meat. President Sorensen and President Petersen. President Sorensen was a big sheep rancher South of Wells and President Petersen was the cattle rancher North of Elko. The rest of the meal was pot luck, brought by all of us. Milen was always busy helping with all of the dinner arrangements. The Elko stake and the Elko ward were in the same building, the only LDS building in Elko at the time. Milen was totally involved with the ward where ever we lived. He loved the church and the ward and stake members. While in the Elko Ward, Milen was in the Elder’s quorum presidency. Then he was the Elder’s President. He always took every job that they asked him to do, even though he said he felt inadequate to do them because of his poor reading skills. He depended on the spirit to guide him whatever he was doing. He had a firm testimony of the gospel, never missing a meeting unless he was very sick. He really enjoyed the church meetings. We always paid a full tithing, one of the many things he had to teach me to do, because my family was not very active in the church, prior to my marriage. The Elder’s quorum had a Halloween ***** alley one year and they set it all up in the church. Something that isn’t allowed anymore, I don’t think. But he helped set that up and worked one of the rooms. He work with many people in the ward, helping reactivate some and just loving them all. We had many friends due to his involvement. I was staying at home a lot, but we did activities with our little family and others with their young families. I also taught primary while in Elko. He had his old seminary books that he brought from Richmond. We studied them together right after we were married. I would read them to him and we’d discuss them. I never had Seminary (they started having it in Wells the year after I was married) so I was fascinated with them and he had never studied them much because he could not read them very well himself. A mutually beneficial project. He would then explain to me what he had learned in Seminary. He had a terrific memory for details. He didn’t use notes when he spoke in church or taught classes. But he spent hours studying prior to those times. In 1960 they moved his Southern Pacific Railroad gang into Ogden, Utah. We lived in a duplex on 27th and Keisel Ave in Ogden. Rodney was born April 29, 1961 while we lived in that house. Then later that year, 1961, we purchased our home at 1237 Liberty Ave in Ogden. Can’t remember what we paid for it, but our payment was $75 a month. Becky and Blain were born while we were living there. Milen did a lot of work on the home and yard while we were there. He was always remodeling and gardening. He loved to be outdoors, missing the farm work. We had a large garden and fruit trees behind our home. The lot went deep to the center of the block. He seemed to enjoy working the soil and enjoying the produce from it. He also helped me when I was preserving fruits and vegetables. He had learned how to do this while helping his mother and taught me a lot of what he knew. While we lived on Liberty Ave, Milen was in the Elder’s presidency again, then he was Secretary for the Young Men’s Mutual. He really enjoyed the young people of the ward and they seemed to love him in return. We went to Mutual activities together, involving our small children, as well. I taught primary again while in Ogden. Becky was born 4 June, 1963, (6 lbs 3oz) in Ogden. And Blain was born 25 Feb, 1965, (clocking in at 5lbs 10 oz), while we were still living in that home. We had many great family experiences while there. Again, Lorna and Larry were also stationed in Ogden, so our families did a lot of things together. Milen loved the babies! He would play with them, sit and hold them for hours just holding their little hands or throwing them in the air and catching them. Tickling, teasing and playing. He loved it! He also helped feed them, care for them, even change their diapers and cleaned up throw-up at night. He helped wash those diapers, too. He was a very devoted and loving father. He delighted in every new thing the children learned and was actively involved with the teaching of them. Milen was still working on the Bridge and Building gang for Southern Pacific Railroad during those years in Ogden. They would take the gang out to the jobs in trucks or on a railroad car. He worked on the wooden trestle that the train traveled over out on the Great Salt Lake. They took boats out to get out under the trestle to work. He also did many jobs around the railroad yards there in Ogden. One time there was a plane crash in the Great Salt Lake and they used Milen’s crew and the Railroad’s boats to help pick things up from that wreck. The water was very rough and windy that day, and that rough, heavy salt water made it hard to handle a boat in. But they were able to pick up a lot of debris from that wreck and haul it off the lake. Tresa started Kindergarten while we were there in Ogden. She went to the Gramercy School. There was a little girl murdered in the park near where Tresa walked to school in the winter of 1964-65. It really frightened us. I always walked with her the two blocks East to school, but it still scared us. A lot of the other mothers on our block walked with us. Then they started sending the crew out farther and farther, staying out all week and coming home on weekends. Milen hated being away from the family at night. We also hated having him gone at night. So he started looking for other work. At that time, Margie and Lew were living in Grace, Idaho, where Lew was working for the Grace School District as a wrestling coach and Biology teacher. He told Milen of a job in Soda Springs, north of Grace. In the spring of 1965, Milen got work up there and we walked away from our home in Odgen and moved up. The economy was not good in Odgen. We didn’t think we could sell the home and did not want to try to rent it out, so we allowed the bank to take it back. He worked for Monsanto, North of Soda Springs, Idaho, as a carpenter building and repairing the plant in 1965-1966. We lived in a rented home about 3 blocks North of Margie and Lew in Grace, Idaho. We got our milk from them, as Lew had a cow. He was in the Elder’s presidency with Larry Stevens while we lived there. I taught in Sunday School and primary again. We had good friends in the area. All three of our girls were in Midget Marchers. We enjoyed the people of Grace. We got to know Margie and Lew better. Milen and Lew were close and he really enjoyed being around Margie. They lived in a different ward. He did a lot of fishing in the streams and lakes in the area, while we lived there. It seemed like wherever we lived, he had his ‘fishing buddies’. But when they did not go with Milen, I and the kids did. Then he worked for the El Paso Products company building the plant Northeast of Monsanto (Northeast of Soda Springs, Idaho. It was later purchased by Simplot). Then he went to work in that plant. He did not like that kind of factory work. His job was an operator; he pushed buttons and kept the belts running the product across. The plant made phosphoric acid and other products from rocks that were brought in and crushed. It was dirty and smelly, plus his hours changed to a different hourly schedule every two weeks. He had to sleep at weird times. I had to keep the kids quiet so he could get sleep. He never felt rested and had to miss church some Sundays. So he started looking for work again. While in Grace he also took flying lessons in a small Piper Cub plane owned by Lew and some other friends. He never soloed. But he did very well and seemed to enjoy it. (Couldn’t get him to go to the Cache Airport and finish the lessons to solo out. He lost interest when we moved away from Lew.) One of our friends walked into the propeller of the plane when getting out of it one day. It cut off one hand and hit her in the face. She also lost one eye and was cut up pretty badly. The plane was shut off but the propeller had not stopped and she walked forward into it, not seeing it because of the speed of the propeller. At about that same time as Milen was feeling dissatisfied with his work in Soda Springs, his parents bought a home in downtown Richmond and moved from the farm. Glen was working out at Thiokol as a janitor. Ned and Jeri moved into the home. Glen and Fern still ran the farm land with the help of all their sons. Then Fern and Glen decided to sell the farm. They had a meeting and the only one interested in buying it was Milen. So we bought the ‘family headache’ and moved onto the farm. Milen loved it! He loved being home in Richmond, but he also loved the land and working it. Milen got a job building the Romney Stadium at Utah State University that houses the Merlin Olsen Field. It was completed in 1968. (The first game was played Sept 14, 1968, in which USU beat New Mexico State 28-12.) He worked for Ace Raymond Construction Company while building it. He had a great boss and learned a lot of new skills. They built the forms, then poured the cement. They also built the concession area, etc. The whole thing. The Architect was Cannon & Mullen. It cost $3 Million to build ($20 Million in today’s money). After finishing building the Stadium, Milen was able to procure the job as a carpenter for Utah State University. He went right to work for them when the stadium was finished in 1968. That is where he worked the rest of his career years. At first he was a carpenter. Then he became an assistant foreman of the carpenter crew. He loved working with those people and loved working at that location. It gave him a lot of pride to see the jobs finished so well. He was a great carpenter. He really cared about the things that he made. He loved learning the new skills he needed for just about every job. The crew remodeled offices, classrooms and buildings all over campus. He did a lot of cabinetry. They also poured cement. He said he thought that he helped remodel some of those areas a dozen times. A new professor would move in and they would have to remodel for him/her. The new construction of new buildings, from the ground up, were done by outside contractors. He took a medical retirement in about 1997. The university paid into his retirement so he could retire with full benefits in 1999, after 30 years of labor. He also made some furniture type things, for the University and for us, such as my China Hutch and Curio Cabinet. A cradle for Tresa’s first baby, Jeanie. Della and Becky’s Cedar chests. Sewing machine cabinet and bookcases for me, his parents and others. He made picture frames and cut out earrings with his jigsaw. He made anything I wanted, if he could. He had the boys help him with his projects. He loved working with his kids. He spoiled me! I would draw things out, we would measure them together, then he would build them. I would help sand and put the finish on them. We enjoyed those hours together out in his shed or in the USU shop, working on things for Christmas, etc. His crew did a lot for ‘Secret Santa of Cache Valley’ every year in Logan. They built toys, etc. and donated them for children whose parents could not afford Christmas. He built the little rocking horse for us during that time. He remodeled our Richmond home, which was the home he was raised in, until he finally said “If you knock out any more walls, the whole thing will come tumbling down!” He built the large shed behind the house for tools, for working on farm equipment, and a carpenter shop. He built the hay shed. He helped build homes for Ned, Robert, Faye and Clinton (both houses). He built TV stand for his mother and book shelves for her and for Robert and Cheri. He was always over somewhere lending a hand where ever he was needed. He and his brothers worked the land together. He also helped where he could when Rod and Blain built their homes. Of course, Blain and Rod and his brothers Robert and Ned were working with Milen on most of his projects, especially the large ones. Once in a while Clinton would help, too. He would stop almost every night while coming home from work, to see how his folks were doing and pitch in when needed. His mother really did depend on him; he was her best helper when it came to fixing up around her place. He really cared about how his folks got along. He loved going to the kids’ school activities, while they were growing up, especially the wrestling matches. He would scream suggestions very loudly (and really thought the boys could hear him!) But he was very proud of his girls and their activities, too. But more than anything else, he enjoyed working with the family. He really enjoyed riding the tractor around the field plowing or whatever was needed. Spent a lot of time fixing machinery around the farm. He did not have many hobbies. Work was his hobby; seeing a project come to fruition, then seeing how others reacted to his projects. He usually had a “Family Home Evening Project” planned for us each week. It was hard to work in any spiritual time, because his ‘projects’ would take most of the evening. He really did enjoy fishing and went with Scott Goodwin and the other men he worked with. They would go up on the lakes in Idaho for a couple of days at a time. He had a fishing boat that he enjoyed very much; trolling around the lakes for fish. But he always wanted to catch them fast! Didn’t have much patience to just float around and enjoy the time on the lake. I teased him that he didn’t want to ‘Fish’ he just wanted to ‘Catch’. He shared his life with his siblings and parents all of the time. He was very family oriented. They all meant the world to him. An activity was not complete until he could share with and get their reactions. Also the kids’ joys and achievements were not complete in his eyes until they were shared with his family. He would love taking out pictures and share with a sibling, a cousin, or a parent. He always wanted me taking pictures so he could share our activities with them. He enjoyed our travels at least one more time when we got home. In about 1977 we went on a trip to Montana. We visited the old mining ghost town, Virginia City. We also visited the headwaters of the Missouri River. We stayed one night along that main highway going East and West in Montana. Then we came South into Red Lodge, Montana. We were in a shop buying souvenirs for the kids and he went down with a heart attack. He sat down on a bench, then passed out. They came from just across the alleyway and took him over to a heart doctor’s office that happened to be right there! They stabilized him, then transferred him to the hospital. I told the hospital we needed the local LDS ward’s information. I called the bishop and he and the Elder’s President came and gave Milen a blessing. They kept him there for about a week. The bishop and his wife took me into their home while he was in the hospital. Then they allowed me to take him home, if he would not sit up. I drove him over the Bear Tooth Pass. It is a very windy, narrow and steep road. It felt like you could fall a thousand feet down off the road! Anyway, we drove to Margie’s in Afton, Wyoming, stayed overnight, then came on home. When the doctors in Salt Lake scoped his heart, about a week later, there was no damage from the heart attack. I started calling him my ‘miracle baby’. He had many problems with his back through the years, spending a lot of time with his chiropractors. He also had a Dr. Adams in Salt Lake tell him that he could not help him with an operation. So he lived with back pain a lot. He spent time every day doing back exercises. One day he and his brothers and the boys were taking cattle to the pasture, following them on foot. He went down in the field behind our house. Like someone had hit him in the back of his head, he later recalled. They helped him back to the house and we called Uncle Cal, who came and helped give him a blessing. Then we transported him to the hospital in Logan. He had suffered with an aneurysm in the back of his head. They transported him to Ogden to the McKay-Dee hospital. His doctor was Dr. Church, a neurologist. They tried everything to find the aneurysm site to operate on it, but could not. His symptoms went away after a couple of weeks, and the doctor told him, “You have a new lease on life. Go home and enjoy it.” (Again my ‘miracle baby’. ) While in Richmond he was a home teacher all the time. He enjoyed his families very much and they all adored him. He would do things that they needed around their homes and never missed going teaching. One sister needed her gliding rocker fixed, so he did it for her. Then she said, “But, I must pay you.” So Milen told her to paint a picture for him. Three days later she called him to come and pick it up. It still hangs in our home in Richmond. A beautiful rendition of a cabin/mountain scene. Looks professional! (16 X 20 inches) He built a frame for it. He built frames for everyone. He was the Teachers’ Priesthood teacher and counselor to the Elder’s quorum. He was put in the bishopric with Bruce Traveller, bishop, Milen first counselor and Dan Jessop second counselor. While he was in this position, his brother Ned was put in as a counselor in the Elder’s Quorum presidency. It was fun to see them get closer and work together in the church activities during that time. But then the Elder’s president slept around and Ned became very disillusioned again, as the president was exed. This was a big blow to Milen. He loved his family so much. Then he got Lymphoma cancer. His sister Margie died of cancer in April 1993. He found out he had cancer during the same week that they buried her. Those were difficult years for him. He had it for over 10 years. He fought it with everything the doctors wanted to do to him. They told him at the onset that they had never cured the striated non-Hodgkins Lymphona like he had, but they would try. So he let them try. I think he knew that he was helping people in the future. They can cure that cancer now. But he was sure sick during those treatments. He also had problems with his nerves that escalated because they couldn’t get his medications to work correctly for him. That required therapy sessions and hospital visits to regulate the meds, etc. The depression he suffered with was harder for the family to deal with than the cancer. Many emotional injuries come when a loved one is struggling with being manic depressive like he was. During this time, I wanted a puppy. He went along with it to appease me. He was always doing that for me, whatever the problems were. We found a poodle at an orphaned puppy place in Logan. He came running over to us from the bunch he was playing with. I picked him up and it was love at first sight for me. Milen was still a little bit iffy about him. I handed him to Milen and there was an instant bond between them. He really became Milen’s pup from that moment on. I was going to name him Amadeus after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, (naughty little boy). But Milen immediately named him TooMuch because he said we paid too much for him. It stuck. That dog and Milen were together every waking moment. Milen sat down - TooMuch was on his lap. Milen went somewhere -TooMuch tagged behind him. He was a great comfort for both of us. When we separated during the time when Milen’s nerves were so bad, TooMuch spent his nights with me and his days with Milen. Milen would meet me at the crossroads by Pepperidge farm morning and afternoon, on my way to and from work in Preston, to make the transfer. TooMuch really missed Milen when he died, went around to all the chairs and bed, etc looking for him. When we took the motor home out the first time after his death TooMuch jumped up in Milen’s chair looking for him. I miss him too. He had many Doctor visits during those years, in Salt Lake, Ogden and Logan. He spent much time in a series of hospitals, too, for both the cancer and the depression. In all three cities. So we spent a lot of time on the road between them. During those trips we had many hours to visit. Cemented our relationship. He got a medical retirement from USU. During those couple of years, USU still payed toward a full retirement for him. So he got a full retirement when he reached retirement age. The college gave him the same send off they did all his fellow workers. They treated him royally. I was so glad because his job and those fellow workers were a major part of his life. I continued to work for a while after he got his medical retirement. Then in 2001, he asked me to retire early so I could be home with him. I’m glad I did. We took some trips during those years. We went to North Dakota to the Black Hills. We went to Alaska, Hawaii and Mexico. He was not feeling well during all of the trips, but he didn’t feel good at home, either. And he really wanted to go. And he really enjoyed showing the pictures and experiencing the trips again while visiting with his family afterwards. Through the years we had other dogs, besides TooMuch, but they were outside dogs. Milen enjoyed them all. People would come along our road and dump off cats and dogs and rabbits and chickens, etc. We took them all in. One little dog, a chihuahua, ran behind the plow when he was plowing, I thought he would run over the silly dog, but he stayed just out of reach and came home with a face full of dirt. He did not feel good enough to remodel the home the last time, the fall of 2003, so we got Clinton and his son, Darren, to do the work. Milen enjoyed just watching them work. They built on a new wash/sewing room upstairs, so I would not need to go downstairs to do that. Also they built a small shed for the motor home. “ the toybox” that winter. Then on 10 January 2004, he left us to join his parents, sister and his Heavenly Father. He went to the bathroom early in the morning. I helped him in there, (he was a bit wobbly). Then he came into the front room. I tried to help him into his comfy chair, but he said, ‘No, I want to just stretch out here on the carpet’. He laid down on his stomach, a position he liked to get in on the floor. Then I went in and put on my painting clothes to paint the new sewing room. When I came out I noticed his nose piece had fallen out (he was on oxygen). When I tried to put it back in for him, I realized he was gone. It was a quiet, peaceful time. I just sat down for a few minutes, called the kids, then called his nurse. She told me to call the mortuary, that she would be right over. She came right over, about 20 minutes later. The mortician came right over, too. As did the kids. I felt at peace, I think I was carried by angels all day. He was truly a great man to have spent my life with. He taught me to be a better Christian, have a better testimony of the Gospel. He taught me to go to church every Sunday because the week was not complete without the worship time. He taught me about joy and peace and gave me total security. He supported me in everything I wanted to accomplish in this life; my years of schooling, my profession as a teacher, my hobbies, no matter how messy or time consuming they were. He supported every activity I had to do. Was there for me all the way. He took care of the house and kids and even baked bread when I was doing my student teaching in Soda Springs and was gone days at a time. He was my sweetheart and I miss him like fury! Maybe he left me early in my life so I could also learn to live without total support and become stronger. I tease him sometimes and tell him he had better be building me a grand mansion up there!