Hyrum Leroy Smith, the fifth son, the eleventh child in a family of eleven children, was born June 22, 1884 in Pleasanton, New Mexico.

I don’t know very much about that day’s happenings. I have been told that I was rather unexpected because of the age and health of my mother. My older brother, Bert, was three years old at the time of my birth and was expected to be the baby of the family, Mother’s baby. But I fooled them.

I seem to have a faint recollection of the time we left Pleasanton in 1886 and went down to the Gila River to Smithville in Arizona, nearly 100 miles to the southwest. There was only one possible road and my brother, Charles, drove one team and my sister, Sarah, drove the other. Sister Mary was the "cowboy" and she drove the cattle. Mother watched on every side for Indians but they never did put in an appearance during the whole trip. Father had gone into Mexico to find a place to make a home, but didn’t like what he found. He came back and met his family on their way to the Gila. Father stopped in Pima and liked it very well, but later found a place in Curtis, which he liked better, so we moved again. This town has been renamed Eden. This town was north of the Gila River and we had more land and room for our cattle. This was our home but later the whole family became dissatisfied. The mosquitoes were very bad and the whole family came down with chills and fever—chill one day and burn the next. This sickness got worse so another move became imminent. Moving became a habit, no one could tell how many moves this family made, so one more didn’t matter; we couldn’t suffer much longer and everyone had to drink water full of malaria and many people were sick with the same trouble.

Father made a trip to the Chiricahua Mountains and found a place large enough for a farm and plenty of room, so he moved us all out there where he took up a quarter section of land. He built us a home and put in a big fruit orchard, and there we finally settled for good. We children had no chance for an education, no church or spiritual life, nor did we enjoy community activities.

It was here in the year 1888 that I started remembering things better. It was in February that this move was made. According to what I’ve been told it took some time to get settled. Father built a one-room house under a big oak tree by the side of a little creek that carried snow water down from the mountains almost all year around. Here Father planted out a fine orchard and had a lot of garden, raised grain and hay and we started to live! We didn’t stay in this little house long until we went up the creek and father built a bigger house. This place was called Wilgus and father secured a post office for the community and he became the first postmaster. He was instrumental in getting a school established in this place and was one of the trustees for years. It was in this school that my education commenced. It was a one-room building, 16 x 20 feet with a table to put our books on and a homemade bench for us to sit on.

My first teacher was C. L. Prouty. I was a happy-go-lucky kid and usually got by with a lot of things that the other kids were not allowed to do. I remember Mr. Prouty seeing me scribbling on a newspaper that formed the interior decoration of the house and he made me stand on one foot by the wall, while brother, Bert, and the other kids laughed at me.

My next teacher was Mr. Bennett, who was a beautiful writer and he took special interest in me. He said he would make a good penman of me, but he had some trouble and had to leave, and our term was quite a short one that year.

Brannick B. Riggs was my next teacher. He got so stuck on one of his students that he persuaded her to marry him. It was then I lost my only unmarried sister.

When I was about 10 years old, my brother-in-law, Riley Plumb, lost a mare from some very good stock, and at her death, she left a small baby colt. Riley told me if I would take good care of it I could have it. So I took it and faithfully cared for it until it was old enough to eat grass. I named this little colt Dogie. I fed that tiny motherless colt milk to keep it alive. One day while it was very small, one of our old cows with long horns butted into that poor little colt and tore open its stomach, and some of its intestines came out. I was scared and I didn’t know what to do. The colt lay down and I thought it was dying. I ran to the house, got an old soft blanket, folded it around the colt’s body and pushed in its innards. I found a safety pin about 6 inches long and pinned the blanket tightly around the poor little thing. And you know, that wound healed nicely and she grew up and brought me several horses of my own. My oldest daughter, Lucile, has that great safety pin today and prizes it as a great heirloom.

After my sister, Martha, was married, I spent quite a bit of time with her as she lived on a ranch a long ways from neighbors, and Brannick had to be away so much of the time. She was lonesome, and while I was there, I went to school at a little place called Pinery. I walked two miles to get there and because we had very little to eat, I would set quail traps along my school trail. One night while I was walking down the trail on my way home from a party, I passed the traps and noticed that one trap had been sprung. I looked closer and found no trail, so I proceeded to set my trap. As I raised it up, I saw an object under it, and thinking it was a cow chip, I picked it up and dropped it quickly, for I discovered it was a sidewinder, all coiled up for the night. He gave no warning nor struck at me, so I let him go on sleeping and proceeded to set my trap.

Most of the summer I spent a lot of time hunting bird nests along Turkey Creek when I wasn’t with Martha. I was with her many times after her daughter, Mary, was born in Nov. 1897.

One summer I spent a month with my sister, Sarah, at St. David. Alice, Irene, and I, all three, had a most wonderful time playing along the canal and herding the cows in the field and in the foothills. It was that year that Sarah saw to it that I got baptized. This took place at the Dam above St. David at the San Pedro River on July 25, 1895, thanks to my sister, Sarah.

One summer I had sent to Wards for a Flobert .22 rifle, and as father often took me along to watch the wagon while he took fruit into town to peddle, I went on this particular trip. I took my rifle along and before we got to Bisbee, I shot a few rabbits and took them to town and sold them. The cottontails sold quickly, but the jacks wouldn’t sell at all, so I threw them away. But I got a few dollars out of them. I ran into a couple of boys and told them about selling rabbits. They wanted to buy my gun so they could sell rabbits also. I had paid about $2.75 for my gun and sold it to them for $3.50. I thought I had made a very good trade, but afterward I was sorry, for I could not get another as good for more than I got out of my old gun.

Once I saw a bicycle for sale in a secondhand store for $8.00. I got father to loan me the rest of the money I needed to buy it. I already had $5.00, so I bought the bike. I was so thrilled, I had to ride it everywhere I went, I had to have my hands on it all the time, and the first night I had it, I learned to ride it down the old cow trail and through the mesquites. And I was happy! This bike had only one tire on it, but I rode it just the same.

My last teacher in Wilgus was Miss Hattie Luck, an old maid and a very good teacher. I graduated from that school under her and always liked her very much. She taught me to play the organ that my father had bought for $5.00 from Mrs. Mark Moore, a neighbor, who lived several miles up the canyon. She had lost her son, a month before, he had been shot, by the Lacy boys. They were cattle rustlers. Her boy died just after arriving home.

I was getting to be a pretty good-sized boy now and beginning to think I was almost a man, but mother could see me only as a little boy. On July 4th, 1898, mother left Wilcox bound for Salt Lake City, taking me with her. She was going to put me in school in that city. She tried to get a ticket for me at half fare, but when the agent looked at me he said I was too big to go half fare. We got there just the same.

We stayed with Aunt Martha and Uncle Sam McKay for some time. We next rented a couple of small rooms at 213 E. 2^nd Street. There I enrolled in the L.D.S. Academy, being held in the old Social Hall on First Street, and I started a commercial course. While in the third ward I was ordained a deacon by Bishop Empy. After several months we ran out of money so I got a job as an elevator boy in the McCormick Building, on First Street and Main, for twenty dollars a month. I worked there for two months. I also worked on the farm belonging to M. W. Miller all winter, then we returned to Arizona.

I left mother in Wilcox about 4 a.m. and began to walk the 35 miles to my sister, Martha’s, home where I found my brother, Joe. He just happened to be there, so he drove into Wilcox and got Mother while I rested my weary feet after that long walk. My feet were very sore. It was 9:00 o’clock when I got there and it was early morning before Joe and Mother arrived.

During our absence the old home had been sold at Wilgus, so I helped move things over to St. David where father had purchased a place from Parley Sabin. In the winter of 1901-02, father gave Sam and I a hundred dollars to go to school on, so we went to Thatcher and started to the L.D.S. Academy. Emil Maeser was the Principal. I spent the winter there in school and then went back to St. David and gave father fifty two dollars which was left from the money he gave to Sam and I. The next three summers were spent working and going to school in the winters.

After settling in St. David, we joined the Ward, and I became active in the church work and was asked by our Bishop if I would accept a call to take a mission course in the school where I planned to attend. So I accepted the call and took seminary that school year. You see, my last year of school in Wilgus was never completed because a mother of some of the children got angry with the teacher and set the building on fire. And when we came the next morning there wasn’t any house to be seen anywhere, so we were all dismissed and went home with an extended vacation.

I took the seminary course and was given a companion. We did a lot of missionary work up and down the Valley and held street meetings in Thatcher and Safford. I really enjoyed this work which was done in the evening after school hours—and what a busy year in school for me.

One year I taught telegraphy in that Academy. I took a year’s course in it in Salt Lake and liked that kind of work, so I majored in it. With the help of Warren Smith, we gathered up about a dozen boys interested in telegraphy and had a very good time experimenting with many projects.

My main subject was Commercial, Bookkeeping, and Business from which I graduated, a two-year’s course under J.W. Welsh, a very brilliant instructor. That was at the end of 1903. I went to school until the spring of 1905 when I tried the County School Examination and passed. It was held in Solomonville, the County Seat.

How well I remember my first date with my sweetheart, and then my wife, the first and only girl I ever went out with in my life. I was renting a room and boarding myself at the home of Charley McRae. I had a few special friends, but decided I would try taking a girl out for an evening’s fun, so I borrowed Charley’s old gray mare and a buggy and went to a tent house where three noisy, rowdy girls lived while they went to the Academy. Of course I had seen them many times but I had paid no attention to them. O, yes, I had taken part in a school play with one of them, Laura McBride, but we didn’t pay any attention to each other. Well these girls were out gathering wood from the woodpile for the cold February night. I took the axe, and chopped up a nice pile of stove-sized wood and played the part of the "hero" and quietly whispered to Laura, asking if she would take a ride with me. She hesitated then said, "yes." We had a ride with an old mare, which "ain’t what she used to be"—so slow she wouldn’t trot, she couldn’t—she was too old. But that was the way our courtship started. I really fell for Laura. Fell hard too! I never really went out with another girl. We were sweethearts for three years before we were ready to tie the "final knot," which was done in the Salt Lake Temple.

We were to be married here at home, but we went to Union Meeting and heard President Andrew Kimball give us such a lecture on being married by a Justice of the Peace, then going to the Lord’s House, that we decided to give up the idea, and as Ephraim Larson and wife were going to Salt Lake to get their endowments, we all went together. They were our chaperones. So the day finally came for our departure.

(This section written as related by Hyrum’s wife, Laura McBride)

Hyrum bought our round trip tickets on the train. I think they were each $45. Sunday morning, we four were on our way to take the greatest trip we ever took in our lives.

Here is where we begin our story: No chance to travel the regular road to Salt Lake—it was all washed out—not a bridge left of any consequence. So we were routed around by Los Angeles. Oh, wait! When we got to Benson, Arizona, the train stopped and someone rushed on our coach hunting Hyrum. An invalid woman was being taken to the hospital in Salt Lake and had to have someone look after her all the way. Well, could Hyrum refuse to do the job? Bishop and the Ward were paying her expenses. Would Hyrum help? Of course, he would. That was quite a "honeymoon" for us. Hyrum had to walk back several coaches to her berth to see about her meals and wants three times a day. From Los Angeles, we were taken up the ocean front all the way to San Francisco, which was a two-day trip. Our train stopped in Oakland and the conductor came through the long line of passenger cars telling the passengers that the train wouldn’t be leaving for Utah until 6 o’clock that evening. It was just afternoon—a long wait—what should we do? We didn’t want to sit in our coach all that time. "Well," said Ephraim, "lets go see the sights." So Hyrum went to see about his patient’s needs and then we were all four off for a sight seeing trip.

The Bay wasn’t far from the train stop, so we got out and departed. Just a big flat boat or barge was waiting when we got there, just about ready to pull out. My, what a load of humanity! That boat was filled to its capacity. It was quite an exciting trip for us simple backwoods people.

We had to make the most of our time—what first? We climbed into a streetcar, I think going north. We looked, talked, and tried to see everything. We saw skyscrapers many stories high, beautiful homes, and we stopped in the park and saw such lovely flowers, trees, and places to sit and rest. We could have gone into and seen a grand theater, but we were afraid that we might stay too long. We watched a merry-go-round, but it made Hyrum sick, and the music was not good. We stopped at another park and got a drink of lemonade.

We were walking past a business section, when Ephraim saw a sign, "Oysters just ready—popping out of the pan." "Let’s have some, I’m hungry." So in we went. At home an oyster supper was the grandest treat. Just say oyster supper and everyone would be there. We had to try this one out. Mercy! Our plates were big and filled to the brim with oysters as big as the palm of our hand, and did we enjoy a fill up. It was one oyster supper I would never forget.

We really did enjoy our afternoon, but it went too quickly and we had to hurry to meet the boat. We got there just a few minutes before it set sail. And our train would have been gone and then what would we have done? But we made it. For the next three days, we got tired riding through snow sheds in the tops of a great range of mountains—snow so deep that that we traveled through snow sheds for hundreds of miles. The smoke from the engine was suffocating at times, but it couldn’t be helped.

We were five days on the road and were glad to see Salt Lake in the distance. Hyrum had to get his patient into the hospital. We three sat on the sidewalk with bundles on our arms waiting for him to return so we wouldn’t get lost. Passers-by looked at us in amazement. They knew we were "Country Jakes" but we soon found lodging and got settled. The Temple had just closed until after conference. Our baggage didn’t come for several days and it was a hardship on Ephraim and Lillie, as well as us. How easy it is now to go to the Temple to be married.

That was Thursday evening, and it was Tuesday morning when we got through the temple and married. Ephraim and Lillie left us and the ordeal was over. We were married at last and on our own. We rented a small apartment, two rooms across the street south of the Salt Lake Temple, where we stayed, and kept house until our time was up to leave for home. Our tickets were good for 60 days, so Hyrum got a carpenter job working for a Mr. Noal, the father of a boy Hyrum went to school with there in 1899-1900 at the University of Utah. May would come and take me to the Tabernacle, in the afternoon, and we would listen to recitals given by Evan Stephen, a great musical artist who could play the great organ in the Tabernacle. It was wonderful!

We went to "Salt Air" several evenings to dance. It was a lovely resort out in the Salt Lake—so full of salt no one could drown in it. It had a big, beautiful pavilion, and was a great resort for people all over the west.

I think Hyrum made $3., a day, on his job, so we stayed until our ticket time was about up to go home. We had plenty of money to go on but we had to return home the same way we came, a long 5-day ride again. We had heard about the great earthquake at San Francisco while we were in Salt Lake. The papers were full of the destruction there for several weeks and it worried us, as we were to stay all night in San Francisco. I don’t remember why we couldn’t stay in the coach we came in, but we had to hunt other quarters. So we left the train with our arms full of junk and the hunt began. Hyrum asked a guy if we could get lodgings across the bay and he said yes, so on the boat we got and over the Bay we went.

Oh! What a change! No houses, no streets, no sidewalks, just rubble and piles of brick here and there. The water mains had been broken, also the gas lines. We talked to a night watchman who said they had found about 700 dead bodies after the quake had subsided, and they still didn’t know how many bodies were still entombed beneath the debris and were never missed nor counted. Someone goofed when he told us there was lodging across the bay--not a single building was left standing.

(Back to Hyrum—telling his own story)

Our wedding day was April 12, 1906. John R. Windor married us. I worked at my carpenter job for about six weeks and we enjoyed our stay in Salt Lake City very much.

I had taught school for one winter in Coonville, below the Hot Springs country, before we were married. When we came back from our honeymoon, my wife and I moved to Eden where I taught the higher grades with Jennie Berrie teaching the lower grades. It was still stormy and bad weather to cross the treacherous river. I often swam my horse and buggy, risking my life. It was while teaching here that our first baby was born, a sweet little girl. We named her Cora Lucille, born January 24, 1907. We belonged to the Matthews Ward and got our mail at the Pima post office. I taught there in 1906-1907 then spent the summer in the mountains where I spent all my childhood days. I made myself a wagon, caught some of my ponies, and broke them in to pull the wagon. I came home, or to my wife’s folks, where I bought a 20-acre farm from Peter Norton and a two-roomed house from Frank McBride, which Howard McBride moved on to this land with his team pulling it. I fixed it up and that was in 1907, August, and we moved into it. It was in this town that I taught my third year of school and it was the last year. I didn’t like school teaching, so I started doing carpenter work, but that was a very gratifying year teaching school in that place. I had a good group of boys and girls and a good community to live in, so we were settled there for good, we hoped.

My 20 acres of land was covered with mesquite trees and brush with a rock hill on one side. I had no fence and no team to run the land, so I went off to work a lot of the time. I mortgaged my land and bought a wonderful team, the prettiest animals alive. My wife had to care for them while I worked in Globe and Morenci to pay for them. She loaned them to a neighbor who took them away and never brought them back. They both died on the road and it is believed they were both foundered. It was a blow to us! We lost our home after paying interest on that mortgage for 25 years. We had 10 children, 9 of them were born in this small house that I enlarged with more rooms and a porch. I built a large cellar and we were quite comfortably settled. I bought 20 acres of land up in the hills and had it all under cultivation, but it was all sold from under me and we were turned out in the street.

Now at this time in our history, our children had all grown up, and several had married. Our Lucile married Fred Herbert, who had bought the old home of Clevis Larson who had died. The house cost him $300.00 and he let us move in there where we lived for seven years for just paying the taxes. I worked in mining camps, saving enough money to build myself a nice home on the lot where the schoolhouse stood for nearly 40 years.

I bought the land and paid it down, in fact, everything that went into that house was paid for before it went onto that lot. No more debts for us, even if we had to starve. This lot was already cleared, as it was a public place. The old school house served for all public doings, but it belonged to the school district. The lot had a ball ground on it. All kinds of sports were held there, so all we had to do was put a ditch and a fence there and build. And this I did. I made a nice home of brick taken out of the Greenhalgh home down on the Greenhalgh estate. It was here I built a large three-bedroom home with great windows from which you could see out in many directions. Our front window gave a beautiful view of Old Mount Graham, the most beautiful mountain in Arizona. And I am not kidding. It is grand, so tall and blue. Everybody who comes in our valley has to marvel at the sight of that beautiful mountain.

Our house was plastered inside and out. I put on a slate roof, which will last a lifetime, and a floor made of oak, the best in the world. I planted a lovely fruit orchard. It did well for years, but finally died out. So I put it into hay and it surely did produce. We had the best place in the Gila Valley for situation and handiness—not far from church, handy to the store and post office. And the Greyhound Bus will put us on and let us off at our gate, as we live right on the great highway from coast to coast.

There is so much to tell in this short story, so much happened to this Smith family. Our dear Waldo, the first son, at the age of twelve had an accident and hurt his teeth. They ulcerated, which caused his system to be poisoned. The dentist took four of his teeth out but it was too late. He began to get bad and worse. For four years he was under the doctor’s care. In fact, we had him to seven doctors and none of them could help him. He was born September 1, 1924. I made his casket, and his mother trimmed it. He starved to death in a land of plenty. He was one of our brightest children. He was so quick at math, and seemed perfect in spelling. He wanted to live so badly, but it seemed nothing on earth could save his life, not by human hands. We fasted, held prayer circles through the priesthood and his name was put in the St. George Temple, but all in vain. It seemed the Lord wanted our son, and on my 40^th birthday our son, Waldo, passed to the other side where he has many loved ones to greet him. But we are so lonesome without him.

While we lived in our first home by the Glenbar store, I was called to act as Bishop of the Matthews Ward, a position I held for almost 4 years. (From March 17, 1929 to December 31, 1932) We started to build a new church house when our authorities from headquarters changed our minds and sent us all up to the Pima Ward. After we moved into the adobe house, James Smith, the Stake President, ordained me to a new position. I was put in President of the Stake High Priest’s Quorum. I held this position for several years. After my release, another man was put in my place, but I was not officially released. Just a careless incident, but I didn’t like it, and I think I should have been released like other people.

While we were living in the old adobe, my wife and I were called to fill a 2-year Stake Mission, which we accepted. We went out working mostly in the evenings, but did a lot of day work too. This mission was filled while James Smith was still Stake President, with Brother Harms as our Mission President. We were at the conference when we were released with a vote of thanks. We gave our closing talks and sat down. Then, President Udall, who had now been made Stake President for the second time, asked us if we would consider putting in another two years at this work. It was such a surprise, and the audience was waiting for the conference work to go on while we talked to Brother Udall. There seemed to be no time to refuse; so we said yes, and were re-sustained; and on to work we went. We had thought our missionary work was over.

The next two years passed quickly and we were always busy going to all kinds of people. We put the gospel before many people and many people were interested and asked questions, but we never baptized one. Some we labored with were baptized by later missionaries; and when this, our four years were up, we felt like we had done our share. So we settled down to try to be good Ward members. We enjoyed life and Ward work a lot of years. Our new home was so nice and everything went well, until Laura’s mother got sick. Then we had to care for her. She was helpless for the most part of nine years. We all tried to help her all we could. One night, Our Stake President drove in to see me. I was down in the orchard working and they came and talked to me about taking over the Bylas Mission. Well, here we were—just got my wife’s mother out of the hospital on my birthday. May wife was fixing up a party, and a crowd was coming to help celebrate. Everything was so stirred up that my wife and I asked the Stake President to come back tomorrow. We went ahead and had my party—and a really good time we had, too. But our minds were divided. What were we going to do? That night we really prayed for help. What could we do with Mother? We were the only ones of the children free to care for her. So we waited until morning.

When the Presidency came, June 23^rd, the next day, we told them we would try it. So they picked me up and away we went to Bylas. From then on, we were divided between home, Mother McBride, our family, and the mission. It wasn’t easy, but we did the best we could. We made many friends and were busy the whole two years. But you know we never baptized a single soul. But soon after the next missionaries came in, the Indians flocked to them to be baptized, but—they all wanted Mr. Smith to do the baptizing, and that made me feel better. I was the choice of the more than thirty Indians who came up to Pima to be baptized. We made some very good friends there, and some who weren’t so good. They were so bad to set fire to themselves if anything went wrong. And drink! Oh how some of them did drink—even mothers with tiny babies.

Now you might think we were done with missionary work, but one night we were at a banquet in Pima when the Stake Authorities came to our table asking if we would take a Sunday Mission to Bylas. We couldn’t say no, so we went and helped out with the Sunday work, funerals, and many extra jobs. Brother and Sister Hancock were caring for that mission at this time.

It seemed that wound up our missionary work for good. My wife and I have held many positions of trust in the church and are both glad for the opportunities we have had in helping the different organizations. We have had many blessings and we give the Lord all the credit for them. I just want to say here, we baptized the first Indian that was ever baptized in the town of Bylas, Arizona, an Indian town on the Reservation. Charley Moses and his whole family were the first ones. They were such good people, and we both just loved them. That made nearly nine years in missionary work for us. Did we do any good? Yes, it helped us, if no one else.

We moved into our new home Christmas Eve 1945, and there we stayed and have enjoyed ourselves. We still have three unmarried children, but they are seldom home. Ruel had gone to Overton, Nevada where he accepted a job as schoolteacher, especially over the music. Here he was put in as counselor to Bishop Shurtliff and he had other positions in the Ward.

Val followed his brother to Overton and finally went to the University at Reno, Nevada. He came out as a teacher, and got himself a wife from that place.

Margie went to Boulder City, Nevada, and married Grant Leavitt, who was leaving for the service to fight for his country overseas. So these three at home all left and married except Ruel who prefers to remain single, so he won’t have to warm baby bottles and dry diapers, so he said. Here are the names of all our children: Cora Lucile, Waldo Leroy, Elmo Dwain, Ula Vermel, Nello Rue, Varis (who died at birth), Bonnie Beth, Ruel Clyde, Margie Fern, and Val Dale Smith. All are good children and faithful Latter-day Saints. All have been through the temple and sealed to their mates for eternity. What a blessing!

In the fall of 1944 and 45, I was called, not by our Stake President to fill a mission, but by our Government officials to come back into the classroom—Oh! Poor Me!! I responded to the call and started teaching the higher grades in the town of Central, Arizona. So many of our boys were taken overseas for duty that it caused a shortage in schoolteachers, so many of the elderly taught there two years. Then they switched me over to Eden where I taught when I first started many years ago. I taught there about 6 weeks, they then told me I would have to sign up to go to summer school work, or they couldn’t use me anymore. I picked up my hat and walked out. It was getting on my nerves, and the noise of the children was more than I could take. So now, for certain, my teaching school days are over. And I was the means of a good group of fine young boys and girls preparing themselves for higher education, college. So I figured these last two years hadn’t been wasted.

My father and mother were both born and raised in England, but they never saw each other until they reached Salt Lake City. Mother loved the city, and it was hard for her to lead a frontier life as father lived and he seemed to like it. It is said she belonged to the first Salt Lake Choir.

We lived to celebrate our 50^th and 60^th wedding parties, and I wonder what the next wedding party will bring us—never can tell.

I have scarcely mentioned Lucile, Elmo, Vermel, Nello, and Bonnie, but they have all been so buy in church work. I am proud of them all being missionaries, counselors to Bishops, Presidents of organizations, Music Directors, Teachers, Ward Clerks, High Councilors, Branch Presidents, Scout Masters, and what else? I am getting along in years and I have been sick quite a lot, so the shadows are lengthening for me. So I will leave the next chapter for my children and grandchildren to "carry on’ and I will sign off.

Lovingly, Hyrum Leroy Smith

Husband of my dear children and my dear Grandchildren.

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