Living at Jerry Ann's home was very comfortable for me. The lifestyle was rather liberal there during those times. Many happy evenings were spent playing cards and drinking Spinada wine. The conversations were lively, and there was much laughter. I still smoked lightly during these times, having picked up the habit at Fort Devens, at my advanced army training, and continuing this habit off and on until the present. Jerry Ann asked me about this once, and I lied, saying that the other workers smoked around me, and that's why I smelled of tobacco. She told me that it didn't make any difference to her if I did smoke, and that she was just wondering. Later, I learned things about her that made me realize that she didn't make such judgements about people back then, largely because of some things she had done herself in her own life, and that I really could have revealed my true self to her. But I held back, anyway. Years later, Jerry Ann would change in certain lifestyle ways and not be so forgiving and accepting, at least with me because of some serious mistakes I would make in the next few years, but I wish now that I could have been more honest with her when I had the chance.
The person I became the closest to during these first several months after my return from the army was Jerry Ann's son, and my nephew, David. David was quite the little rebel. He had a curiosity that wouldn't quit and a mind that was interested in everything under the sun. He took a quick liking to me, and we spent several years in very close companionship. Through my teenage years, through my mission, and even after all four years of army, I still had not quite grown up. I was somehow emotionally stuck in my own adolescence and couldn't give up those feelings and desires that come with that age. I still liked roller skating, floating down rivers on inner tubes, running around in parks, playing tag, swimming, playing on playground equipment (especially the swings), sleeping out on the lawn in the back yard, and all those other things that make the younger years so exciting and care free. In David I saw possibly my last "best" friend of my own youth, and I made the best of it. When I was with him, I was just like him. He liked this a lot, himself, because in me he also saw himself, except in a much bigger person -- one that could drive him around and go places and do fun things. Even after I moved back to Provo we spent many weekends together. These were great years for me because of David, years filled with good times and good feelings that I will think about very often in my old age when I have little more to do than sit and reminisce. Later on there would develop a distance between us, first of all because of the naturally different directions our lives would take, but, still later on, because of his mother's reaction to a broken confidentiality and subsequent rejection of me in her belief that my influence on David was ultimately bad and had caused problems in his adult life. I never really believed this to be true, nor did David ever give me any indication that he felt this way either. Nevertheless, David would thus disappear from my life, and as much as this has always saddened me, I have always carried a special place in my heart for him. I know that this place will always be there until the day I die.
During this time I also met the girl who would become my first wife. She was living in the girls' apartment building and was also assigned to the "student family" I had been assigned to and was "fathered" by Jocke. How he became the head of this student family, and how these "families" came to be in the first place, I no longer remember, but our family had a lot of good times together. Susanne was from Pennsylvania, of German descent, blond, and very pretty. I fell for her almost immediately, though we didn't start dating for some time after we first met. Nevertheless, it took only from the beginning of the school year until wintertime for me to ask her to marry me. At 28 years old, I was feeling the pressure to get on with this part of my life, and I didn't waste much time getting around to this question. We traveled back to Pennsylvania to spend Christmas at her house, giving me an opportunity to meet her family and learn how and where she had grown up. It was a wonderful trip, and the time passed all too quickly. Christmas Eve, when everyone else was asleep, Susanne and I went down to the Christmas tree. We turned the tree lights on, and there in hushed whispers I gave her the engagement ring. It was now official. We were to be married. By this time my church leaders felt that I was "worthy" to enter the LDS temple, probably because none of them had a clue about my past wanderings from the religion, so we planned a temple wedding. This, of course, made my parents deliriously happy, as well as myself. I felt that I was definitely back on the road to full belief in the religion, and a life full of joy and bliss.
Christmas passed, and it was back to school. Classes went a little easier for me that spring, because studies were intermixed with marriage plans, which included a May wedding at the Salt Lake Temple. As soon as school ended (probably my best year in all my college years) Susanne went home to gather up her things and prepare for her permanent move to Provo. In the meantime, I sought out, found, and rented a small apartment in the south part of Provo. When Susanne returned, we were married on May 20, 1973. The wedding itself was filled with much happiness and excitement, and our beginning marriage looked very promising. Less that two weeks later, however, I began to feel something was not quite right in the marriage, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was that felt so unsettling. But I set aside these uncomforting thoughts, thinking all would come out okay as time passed.
During this same time I accepted a second church calling. I was to be an organist, first of all as a substitute for the LDS ward I was living in, and then as the organist for the stake in that area. This calling set up another chain of events that I will never forget that culminated in a very memorable highpoint of my life. Leading up to one of our stake conferences the stake music director and the stake organist, myself, were asked to put together a large massed choir to perform at this conference. We were urged to try and get as many youth as possible involved with this choir, to give them the experience of singing in a large group. We agreed to try, and we started talking about the best ways to accomplish this. The choir director was not terribly fond of young people, and she told me she wouldn't mind failing to get any youth involved. I disagreed with her, however, saying that I thought we should try our best to do as we were asked. She told me to go ahead and do what I could if I felt that way. So I went to the bishop of ward and asked him if I could try and get at least the priesthood quorems into this choir. I asked him also, if I were successful, would he find funds in the budget to throw a party of some sort for them when it was over. He agreed, and told me to go for it. I asked him to accompany me into all three quorums to ask them. We went in to each one, and I first told them what we were trying to do and asked them to raise their hands if they would volunteer to be a part of this. Not one hand went up. Then I asked them if they would volunteer if we threw a roller skating party or something like that for all who participated. Then all hands went up. I then told them to invite the girls in their respective age groups, telling them also that it would result in one big blowout party at the end. From then on the choir seats were filled every rehearsal after that, mostly with the youth of the stake, and the rehearsals and the performances on the conference day were enjoyed by all, especially the closing number.
Our last anthem was "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and knowing the immense power this piece can carry, we tried our best to learn and perform it to the best of our ability. I spent much time working out the organ registration to compliment this great piece of music. The conference was held in the Provo Tabernacle, and the pipe organ there was the largest in the area and fully capable of musically adding to and supporting such a powerful piece. Performance time came, and the choir was doing an exceptional job. As we neared the end of the song, something happened that had never happened in any of the performances. I suddenly had the strong urge to push the Crescendo pedal to its full position. (The Crescendo pedal, by pushing on it, begins to open up ranks of pipes, starting with the softest ones, then more and more, until, at full depression, brings the instrument to full volume.) The organ, followed instinctively by the choir itself, increased in volume and power to the point that the roof itself began to literally shake. When the music suddenly came to an end, at the greatest climax of the piece, we were all left spellbound. I looked at the choir director. Her whole body was trembling and tears were streaming down her face. The choir was also visibly shaken. The young people's eyes were as large as silver dollars. I looked out into the audience as I heard sobs coming from that direction, and many were wiping their eyes in that solemn silence. We all just froze for what seemed like minutes. Finally, the man giving the benediction slowly rose from his seat, walked to the pulpit, cleared his throat, and trembled through his closing prayer. Afterwards, many people came up to the choir director and told her that they had heard angels in heaven singing down through the roof of the tabernacle, joining in with the choir in the closing moments of that piece. It was so tremendously moving, and I will never forget it.
A week or two later the bishop humorously accused me of being really sneaky about the way I handled getting the young people into the stake choir. "I never realized you were going to bribe the kids with the party I promised," he said to me. "But it worked, and now I have to make my promise good." He did make his promise good, and the party was a huge success. Later, just before I took my family and moved to Salt Lake City, he would tell me some very nice things about how I had taken the boys in the ward under my wings and had helped them have a very positive scouting experience. He advised me to try and have a lot of children, because I had a real knack for relating to them and making them feel important and worthwhile in their lives. This bishop was the last LDS bishop I truly admired and respected, as a bishop, in my life, and I will never forget him, nor his son Frank, nor the other boys in the troop that I became very close to during this time, John, Richard and his brother Brad, Keith, Vincent, and several others.
The scout troop itself was a very active one. We had outdoor activities nearly every week, including at least two camp outs every month. I led six boys from the troop, adding my nephew David, into the Primitive Area in northeastern Utah, going in at the Duschene drainage and starting the week in the Granddaddy Lake area. It was a wonderful eight days filled with many experiences that I will never forget. The troop also went to a registered scout camp, Maple Dell, and while there I'm sure we made camp history in one respect. Half of the boys in my group were such hard core campers that they hated the regimentation of the camp, and since the scoutmaster himself felt the same way (after all, I had already had four years of army life), I packed this group up and hiked them out of the camp on the second day, and we spent the rest of the week doing our own thing, returning only at the end of the week for the closing ceremonies. I doubt I have laughed harder and had more fun than I did during those "rebel" days at Camp Maple Dell.
As far as school went, I slowly began to revert back to my normal attitude. I would ultimately come close to, but not quite graduating in Secondary Education. I would not complete two classes that were required, not only for my teaching certificate but also for the bachelors degree. The year preceding my expected graduation I student taught several months at Dixon Junior High School, where my father was teaching, under a program called SEP (I have forgotten what that stands for). I would teach German, and substitute in English, Utah History, and Mathematics. I hated all of it immensely except for my dad's math classes, which I taught when my dad became ill for a couple of weeks. During this year I became very discouraged, not only with the teaching but with my marriage as well, and I started to consider options apart from my college pursuits to try and support my now three-member family. Our first child, Heather, had been born on June 18, 1974, and, though not an extremely happy one, we were now a real family. I was now a father, and this lifted my spirits greatly, in spite of everything else that was not going well in my life.
By the spring of 1975 I realized that my college aspirations were not going to be fulfilled, and that I would have to look for another direction to go in my life. My dad's cousin, Belmont, one of the owners of Marian Apartments and the District Manager of the Prudential Insurance Company in Salt Lake, suggested that I go to work for him. I thought this over, talked with Susanne, and then decided to try this line of work. Becoming an insurance agent and having to talk with other people about their insurance concerns, in short, becoming a salesman, was not really my idea of what I wanted to do. But not knowing anymore what I wanted to do, I felt that I should at least give this a try. So I said my sad goodbys to my scouts and Provo, we packed up our things, and we made the very difficult move to Salt Lake City, where I would spend the rest of my life.
We eventually moved into a less expensive apartment not far from where we were living. It was here that my life really began to fall apart. I began to feel that I was not suited at all for sales work, work that required that I spend many evenings away from home, trying to convince strangers to sign the insurance papers that would result in commissions and the only way to boost my earnings from my daytime "debit" work -- collecting premiums from clients by actually going to their homes for the monthly payments on their insurance policies. I started to become discouraged, knowing that the only way I was going to be able to make a decent living would be to have hardly any time at home with my family. Money resources began to dwindle, and our refrigerator showed less and less food in it. This increasing difficulty, coupled with some personal issues I was dealing with regarding some past relationships, and my return to the use of drugs to escape as much of it as I could, all combined and started to cause me very much stress and emotional panic. In my job I began to rob Peter to pay Paul, Peter being the funds from my debit collections, and Paul being our refrigerator, and before long, I realized that I would not be able to pay Peter back as I had planned in the beginning. In the spring of 1975, everything came to a head, and I had reached the breaking point. One early morning I found myself in my old blue station wagon, traveling northwards into Idaho and possibly points beyond. I was running away from everything, including my own family. I had written a sorrowful note to Susanne and had left it on the kitchen table, apologizing for cowardly running away. I had left a note on my desk at work, explaining what I had done. I hated myself for doing what I was doing, but I could not help myself. I was running away, and I had planned on never coming back. I cannot bring myself to talk about this terrible time in my life in any detail. I literally cringe when I think about this. I cannot handle the thought that I actually fell so low in my life that I could not face anyone I knew. I didn't have the courage to kill myself, and yet I wished that God would simply strike me dead and be done with it. I heard someone say later that everyone, at some point, hits their rock bottom in life. I had just hit mine.
I passed by Pocatello, struggling with myself over whether or not I should stop and talk with my long-time friend Paloma, who lived there. But I couldn't even face her, in spite of knowing that she would accept me in because of our long-standing friendship. I traveled on past Pocatello, falling into a deep confusion, totally indecisive about what to do or where to go. I somehow ended up in a place called Palisades and found a trailhead into the mountains. I stopped the car, packed up the provisions I had so carefully picked out and bought using checks that had no money to back them with, and headed up into the mountains. I truly felt that I would not return to the car ever again. I hiked and hiked into the Targhee National Forest. After a long while I came across a vacant mountain cabin. I went in, found that it had not been inhabited for awhile, and decided to stay there over night. I no longer recall exactly what was going on in my mind during this time, but I suspect that my thoughts were so gloomy and terrible that they have been blotted out to avoid the return of such depressing feelings. I do remember that upon waking the next morning, I found myself snowed in and utterly alone in this silent, white world. I stayed in this cabin for two or three days, sleeping most of the time, and, when awake, wondering who would finally find me, dead and frozen. Then, finally, the sun came out, and, within hours it seemed, the snow was gone, and the ground was dry. I walked outside and looked at my surroundings. As I turned my eyes up toward the tops of the mountains, the ground started to sway back and forth, and unintelligible voices started whispering in my ears. The voices grew louder and louder, and the mountains started bending all out of shape. I realized that I was losing my mind, and I began to ask God to either take my life there and then, or settle things down so I could think straight. I'm not sure what happened then, but later I found myself hiking back down the mountain toward the car.
The next thing I remember was lying in the back of the car, coming out of a deep sleep as a result of my exhaustion. I started up the car, with thoughts in my mind about possibly using the exhaust from the car to end my life. I knew I would need a hose to do this, so I traveled back to Palisades to look for one. There was a little store there that I went into, and I starting looking for one. I then realized I hadn't eaten for several days, and I started looking also for food items that I might be able to buy with the little money I had left. I don't know what I bought to eat, but I did find a used book, without a cover, which cost only about ten cents, that I bought along with the other things. I went back to the car, and drove back to the trailhead. Not knowing what I was going to do next, I settled back with this book and started to read it. I have since forgotten what this book was, but reading it caused my mind to settle back and start to reassess my present condition. Later, I turned on the radio, and I started listening to a Christian broadcast. I would later find out that this particular program was from a preacher who was the son of Herbert Armstrong of the World Wide Church of God. Since so many years have passed since this time, I do not remember why this program impacted me so much, but I now look upon this event as a miracle in my life, not because of the program itself, but as God speaking to me personally through first the book and then the radio broadcast as His instruments. My mind was turned to the thoughts of my beautiful daughter Heather, and the thought of never seeing her again forcibly struck me as being worse that death itself. Because of these thoughts of her, thoughts that I truly believe were instilled into my mind by God Himself, I was literally called back from the brink of committing suicide, and I somehow made the decision to go back and face what I had run away from -- that is, if anyone wanted me back. I sat for hours and composed the most soul wrenching letter I have ever written, drove back to Palisades, bought a stamp, pasted it on the letter, and then sat for at least an hour in front of a mailbox before I drummed up enough courage to drop the letter into the slot. Then, I drove back to the trailhead parking lot, parked the car, crawled into the back, and entered into a very deep sleep. I do not know how long I slept. It must have been a few days. But my next remembrance was the sound of a car coming up the road. I raised my head and looked. It was my parents, coming to get me. The rest of this story is much too difficult to retell, so I will relegate the details of the story to the private memories that have stored it.
I returned home to Susanne, and to the daughter that literally brought me back from the edge of death itself. Susanne greeted me rather coldly, which was understandable, and from that very moment, I somehow knew that my time with her was limited. I knew inside of me that she would never fully accept me back. In any case, I tried to set things right and make up for the serious errors in judgement I had made. I found work at Wasatch Bowling Lanes as the head mechanic for the automatic pinsetter machines. For the next four and a half years this would be my new home. A year and a half later my son Ryan would be born. Less than a year after his birth, I would separate from Susanne and become divorced. Nevertheless, at the bowling alley I would make friends and find a life that would change me forever and give me the needed self-confidence that would carry me through the rest of my life. Susanne would reject me, and would thereby miss the transformation of the person she grew to dislike so much, into the very person that she probably would have ultimately accepted and respected, had she stuck with me during the most trying times of my life.
Go back or go to I Become Who I Was Destined To Be.
