Children

Children

I had very special kids. I love them so much and spoiled them rotten. Darrell was born while his dad was in the service. At boot camp. I was all alone in the hospital, even the doctor wasn't there when I went into hard labor. Gordon and Ella took me to the hospital. We had been up to Kaysville that day picking peaches. Because it was time to bottle peaches and I had two bushels of peaches in Grandma's basement to bottle. When I went into labor I didn't believe it, I knelt down and prayed to Heavenly Father that it wasn't time because it was the middle of the night and I shouldn't be bothered with that kind of trouble. I was at Lorretta and Lee's house and Gordon and Ella lived on the other side of town, but Lorretta and Lee didn't have a car. So they had to call and have Gordon and Ella pick me up, it was about 2 o'clock in the morning. I got excited about it once we finally go to the hospital. I had been so afraid that they wouldn't get me to the hospital in time. I told Lorretta and Lee to call my dad, I thought maybe he'd want to come, but he never did come. Anyway, they got me in the hospital and the doctor came in and examined me and he said it's going to be several hours yet, before you have this baby. So he went home to bed and Gordon and Ella left too, so I laid there all alone in that room in utter misery thinking that I was going to die. I didn't know enough about anything of having a baby. I was the same way about everything, I didn't know what happened at all, I was such an innocent person. So when my water broke I just apologized and apologized, I thought I had wet over all the bedding and everything. When Darrell arrived he was a 9lb baby boy and he was so beautiful and I just cried all day long I was so happy. Aunt Edna, that lived in Kaysville, (Budd's mothers sister) she was pregnant too and it would be her last child. She had her baby the next day and so we got them to put us in the same room together which was very nice. In those days you were in the hospital for 14 days and you didn't get up. They brought bed pans for you to go to the bathroom in. They would come in and bathe you and everything. Very different than it is now. So we enjoyed each other for those 14 days. Budd got a leave of absence to come and he had 10 days and I was in the hospital for all of them except the last two days. But he came, he got there a few days after the baby was born. I was just so upset at that, to think that I couldn't even be out of the hospital when he came. It was just terrible to have to say good-bye to him again when he left. He would look at that baby and say, now you know when we get home I can't change messy diapers (laughter). I would say I won't expect you to. He didn't ever do it much. Once in a while when I wasn't home and he was taking care of the kids then he had to, but that was the only time he ever did it. Now you see fathers gathering up the diaper bags and taking the babies out of church to take care of them. A lot of dads would enjoy that, but not Budd, he was spoiled anyway being the baby of 12 children. He had 5 sisters, he had 6 but one died when she was just a child, that did everything. He never did any house chores or anything like that. He was working out on the farm all the time, so he just never would pick up anything. He would come home from work, after we got into our new home, I had a mirror in the entry way with a long table under it and off his tie would go and lay across that table and then he'd sit down in the first chair he'd come to and take his shoes off and there they sat. I never could make him change his idea on that. Once time I mentioned it to his mother and boy did she tear into him. He always, jokingly, if I ever got after him for things like that, he'd say, "well what do you think I got married for!"

He got to see Darrell one more time when he was leaving to go over seas. I was leaving to go stay with him, if he was stationed in the United States, I was going to go. So I had packed, it was in November so Darrell was 2 months old when I got word. So I was all packed ready to go waiting for him to tell me when to come. He called on Thanksgiving and told me he was being sent over seas and he couldn't tell me where he was going. Everything was censored in those days and he said, "My suggestion to you is to pack a bag and go see uncle Gary for a while in California." That let me know that he was going to be in California until they shipped out. So I did that. Uncle Gordon got all of the reservations for me and put me on the train. It was an overnight trip and he got me a room, he worked for the railroad, so the baby and I had our own little room the entire time. I'd go out just to get dinner and then go back to my room. I don't know if they do that now or not. But it was very nice and I enjoyed the baby so much going down there and I was so excited. He was miles away from where we were but it wasn't impossible for him to get to us, he'd take the bus. They gave him 24 hours off twice, so I saw him twice for 24 hours. It was so terrible sending him off and he just sobbed when he left. He was worse than I was and of course he didn't know where they were sending him or what he was getting into either. He was over seas for 2 years and the only reason he got to come home was that he applied to try out for Officer Candidate School. He'd worked up to Master Sargent by then, from a buck private and they told him he could have the opportunity to the OCS. He didn't tell me a thing about it until it happened and oh my gosh, that was so exciting.

As a kid Darrell was a fun loving kid and he was a dare devil. He was always heavy set, even as a child growing up. When he was in college he got thin, but he was always a big guy. He had his terrible accident when he was 15. He was good at everything. He enjoyed sports and reading. He was a really smart kid. He loved football, he would have played football if he could, but the accident happened when he was going into his Sophomore year of High School. He would go up and down the steps of the high school on his crutches and he could swing himself up four steps at a time. I just knew one day he was going to kill himself. He had near death experiences very often. What happened after he got married I don't know. He just couldn't handle the responsibility. He had three wives and he couldn't handle it. Two of his wives I love so much and are still like daughters to me. Gail and Beth. Beth wrote his wonderful obituary and I know she still loves him. He seemed better off not married and it was just too bad. A few years ago when he came home with his heart problem and had open heart surgery he just changed right back to that cute teenager that loved life. He was hardly speaking to me, I was always getting after him for what he was doing and everything. He would go through money just like it was water. I kept telling him I wasn't going to give him any more. Even when he had a job he was gambling and that was the whole problem. Once a person gets addicted to gambling it doesn't matter to them what damage they do to their family. Darrell and Beth had paid off their house and didn't owe anything on it and he borrowed money on it twice. So they had two huge debts on that house, they were so far in that they couldn't come out on top at all. The bank took it away from them, it was so sad.

Darrell was in the hospital for months when he got shot in the leg. They were out hunting pheasants. They were 15 years old, Edna's son, Brent, and Aunt Ellis' grandson and Bruce Roberts, there were four of them. Edna's daughters husband was going to take them hunting. Because they had passed off their things in scouts in hunting. They had all this training in scouts and could then go hunting, as an adult. Edna's son-in-law didn't come at the time when they told him to be there. He couldn't get off work and get home that fast (it turned out to be that way.) Anyhow, these four boys took off by themselves and went down, in Centerville, to go pheasant hunting. It was way down below the main highway, the freeway, on a Sunday afternoon, Budd was home. We were building on to the house at that time, getting the family room done. They all took off and I thought that was because Gail's husband had come and picked them up. They really took off alone. They were gone for hours. Darrell was the only one that shot a pheasant and the others didn't have any success at all. So they decided to come home, they were tired of it. They were standing around in a circle just talking about it and Bruce Roberts started to pump the shells out of his gun. And one of them went off and he was only a few feet away from Darrell and it blew his leg to pieces. It's funny, the doctor said it had to be a miracle because it blew both bones right out of his leg. It didn't touch the main vein that runs right down his leg or he would have bled to death right there. He was bleeding but the main artery wasn't shattered at all, the thing of it was his foot was just dangling. The bones were gone, completely gone. So he couldn't walk and he was a heavy boy then too. So those kids would take turns putting their hands crosswise and carrying him. One would help him get on and they would walk a little ways then they would be so tired that they would have to rest and switch places. They were about 2-3 miles down below the highway. He said that they had to get him over two fences too. Darrell didn't pass out at all and Brent said that Darrell kept saying that he wished he could just pass out. They finally got him up to the highway and they tried to stop cars and no one would stop for them. Finally one car did stop and the man told them that he would go call the police for them. So a policeman came and took them to the hospital. It was amazing that he didn't bleed to death and that they made it to the highway. They were all exhausted because he was so heavy and they were just 15 year old boys.

In all he ended up having 12 operations on that leg. They had to grind up bone and pack it in and then he'd have to wait for it to grow and start to heal and then they would do it all over again. He was out of school for a full year. We had to have a teacher come to our house and teach him. It just took months and months to get him healed. And then he had to have skin grafts after that. He was in the Hospital more than he was home through all of it.

He was late going on a mission because of all of this. He was 21 before he got on a mission. He couldn't go until it was healed. Then he got over there, Korea, and had problems. His leg got infected, we had had trouble with that too, infections getting in his wound. Years later that would put him in the hospital. Anyway while he was over there his leg got an infection in it and they put him in the hospital and fasted and prayed for him and he just healed right up. I never did know about that until one time when a missionary came home from over there and visited us. He told us that he had promised Darrell when he got home he'd go visit his family and tell them how he was doing and such. He said, "how did you feel about him being in the hospital over there?" We didn't know one thing about it! And that was months later, he had never told us.

We went up to Yellowstone a lot because Uncle Jack and Aunt Edna would go up every summer and stay all summer. They would just camp up there so we would go up and stay with them. We only had time to stay a couple days, but it was sure fun. There was a lake in Montana, when we'd go up into Canada, it was a huge lake and we'd take our camper and set up a tent too. The kids just loved to water ski there. The year after Darrell's surgery he was still on crutches and couldn't go up with us. But that trip we had the truck and the boat and were pulling and Budd had to buy 4 new tires for the truck that year. We just kept having blow outs.

Our first trip in a plane, over seas, was to Puerto Rico. We had a wonderful time.

We didn't have another baby until we got home from the war. When the war was over we had Bruce, there's about 4 years between Darrell and Bruce. When Bruce was born I had cooked fried chicken for dinner and Grandma Tingey and I had been bottling beans, string beans, that day. When I got to the hospital I was so sick to my stomach that I vomited up and the doctor said, "I can tell you had fried chicken tonight." I'll never forget that. He was a great baby and a loving child all of his life. He was a quiet baby and I didn't have problems with him. He was beautiful and he was so shy when he was a baby. As he grew I worried about him, if he was outside playing and a plane flew over he would come screaming into the house it frightened him so. He had to be with me or his dad all the time. He always carried a mans handkerchief because he cried so much because of the little things that upset him. He was so cute and sweet. His school teacher, at that time, was trying to teach the children to sight read rather than sound things out and he just didn't get that at all. He got up to the sixth grade and had real trouble with reading. Our next door neighbor was a school teacher and she would take him on Saturdays and work with him. trying to get him ready to go to Junior High School. He got so that he was doing a little better his last year in grade school. That year he had an older lady that was, I just loved her and wanted her to take him under her wing, and she said she had too many students already. But she found a gal that I didn't like at all and she got too sick to work with him. So he ended up back with the first teacher. She came to me one day and said,"he is ready." I said, "I've noticed that, I've had to buy him more books lately." I'd buy him books every time I'd go to town because he just loved them. Horse stories and stuff, you know. He is the only one of my children that will sit down and read. I think it was because of that time of having to read with so many people. It was just from not being able to make the sounds and sound out words. They dropped that program, but Bruce happened to be one of the poor souls that had to do it. I talked to the principle at the junior high school when he got in Junior High, I knew him threw his wife. One day he came over to my home, he called and said he wanted to come and talk to me about Bruce. He came over, I've never had a teacher do that in all of the lifetime of my kids, and he says you worry about him too much. He isn't a straight A student, but he's the kind of boy that is going to be successful in anything he does. He said to quit worrying about him. And he has been, I can go to him for anything. He's a sweet man, he even helped out Jessie, Tricia's mission companion. Just as soon as Tricia told him about her and her leg he wanted to help her right then. So they had her move out here with them so they could fix her leg for her. He's just that way.

I've been very lucky with my kids that way, Darrell had a very sweet heart too. One time I had given him some money to buy some marble with and he came in and told me that one of the boys didn't have any marbles so I let him have my money to buy some marbles, you've got to give me some more money so I can go and get my marbles. All my children have such good hearts.

Oh, we were happy get a little girl. I was so thrilled when she was born. Her two aunts, Aunt May and Aunt Loretta (I lived with Loretta so much of the time when Budd was in the army because she was ill and couldn't be left alone, so I would take my baby and go over there and stay with her, then I would go back to grandma's. She made a spoiled child out of Darrell. She wouldn't let him walk she would carry him everywhere and he didn't want to walk.) They just simply loved her too. They both fought over her and they both said that she looked like them. May would say she is just the image of me and Loretta would say no she is just the image of me. They sure made a fuss over her. I had such wonderful in-laws. They all treated me as if I was their own child. We moved into our new home just before she was born. Trina was really late coming and the doctor kept telling me she was ready to come, but she just wasn't coming. So he told me he had a convention in NY that he had to go and if I wanted him to deliver the baby then I needed to let him give me something so the baby would come.I said, "I don't want another doctor," so I let him give me paregoric and some other pill to start my labor. He said, "I want you to come in and see me when you take these and then go stay with Loretta because when these pills start to work the baby is going to come really fast. So Budd went to work that morning and I went to Loretta's and took the medicine and sure enough it was only about an hour later I was just in real pain. I was ready to have that baby, I called the doctor and I called Budd and Uncle Lee told Loretta to get him some sheets, he wasn't going to have a baby born on the seat in his car. I got in the car with Lee and we went and I was so close to having her that they couldn't even prepare me for the delivery. They got me into the delivery room and she came. They were wheeling me out of that room as Budd walked down the hall trying to find me. So that was my second baby that Budd wasn't there for. But Trina was so cute and such a sweet girl. Much like Bruce she was very kind and thoughtful. In fact I had one lady call me from her ward and she wanted to ask me some questions about Trina. I said, "What has she done?" She said, "She has raised a perfect family."

Although we had a terrible time with her name. Well, it was a name no one had ever heard of before. I had read a novel when we were in NY and I was expecting a baby then (Bruce, but I thought it might be a girl) and the name in the book was Katrina and the called her Trina. I thought, Trina Tingey, that is an ideal name, I had never heard it before. So after Bruce I kept that name in my mind and I told my family and Budd's family and none of them liked the name. Virginia said you could pick any name in the world and it would be better than that name. Oh my gosh, Uncle Mel was the worst and said, "yeah, they'll be calling her Latrina! You just go ahead and do it, you'll see." So we worried and worried about a name for a girl and when it came time to bless her I had picked two or three other names, one was Madeline, I thought I'd like that name so I mentioned it to Virginia and she said, "well, Trina is better than that name!" I couldn't please anyone. So when Budd picked up the baby to go name her he said so is it going to be Madaline? I said as far as I'm concerned that is just fine, I don't care. So he took her up there and blessed her as Trina.

Trina was very sweet and willing to do anything that anyone asked of her. She would not talk about her illness, you would just never know she was miserable. Oh my goodness she was just an angel when Budd was sick. She would come down and clean the house and help me. She married a guy just like her, Dave is such a sweet man. I think that is what was wrong with their children. The children have just gone and done what they pleased because their parents were so sweet and didn't punish them when they needed to. She always told me that Richard was the sweetest of the whole family, he has a very tender heart. You wouldn't think that of him until you get to know him. When she got really bad he's the one that hurried home to see if he could help her, it worried him. He was so afraid of losing his mother. He's still like that now, if he comes in and that baby is here he immediately has to have that baby (Haze?) no matter who else has got him. He'll be a good father someday. I'm truly sorry that Trina had to go and I don't know if she hadn't have gotten that toxic shock if she could have lived a normal life. I don't know. I really do feel that the Lord answered our prayers about it. When she was so bad I went in the hospital, when she had toxic shock, I would go in and sit by her side if she was awake otherwise I would lie down in the other room on a bench. All of the family helped, it was so terrible. I lived in sort of a daze, even too look back on it I couldn't see things very clearly at that time. It was so bad, the doctor told me at that time that this was a new disease we don not know what causes it we do not know what to do for it. We are trying to save lives, we've had a lot of deaths and some that live through it. He said we'll do all that we can and I said we are praying hard for her. The ward fasted and prayed for her two different times and the family was praying constantly. I kept saying to the Lord, "let her live to raise those children to where they can take over their lives for themselves." Sara was only 3 years old when Trina went to the hospital, she had her whole life ahead of her. I think that He did answer my prayers. It was Sarah's first year at college, down at Dixie, and Richard was at UVSC in Orem when Trina passed on. But they were at a point where things were going alright and I think the Lord answered my prayers and I should have asked for more. At the time all I could think was let her get those kids raised, let their other do it.

I can remember when she first got sick, she was about a year old and I would sit and rock her and then Bruce would crawl up on my lap, he had to be rocked too.

Curt was a hard, long labor. He took a long time coming because he was turned around. They had to get another doctor to help my doctor turn the baby. They had to go up in me with their hands to turn that baby. I was out of it enough  that I didn't feel it, I didn't even know at the time that there was another doctor there helping my doctor until we got the bill from him. I was so upset because I hadn't heard of this other doctor before. They just couldn't get my baby turned around. When they told me I had a beautiful baby boy I thought that isn't what I want, I want a girl. But the funniest thing is that anytime you see your baby you just fall in love. When I looked at him I was in love and he was my treasure. I was so out of it after he came, they were wheeling me down the hall and Budd was walking beside me and I can remember that but I can't remember talking to him. But Budd said I was crying and yelling, we won't ever do this again will we! He said he was ready to turn and walk the other way. Curt was a really cute little guy. We spoiled him completely and if he didn't win every game we played he'd get mad and wouldn't play anymore. I'd sit him on a chair and tell him he had to sit for 15 minutes if he was really mean when playing. One time he was out playing with some neighbor kids and he wanted to have the ball and it wasn't his turn to have the ball so I told him to come in and sit down on the chair. He came in and looked up at me and said, "I was tired anyway mom." Growing up he was always trying to beat the other kids and that is a hard thing to do. Bruce just teased him to no end and I know when Bruce went on his mission Curt was so glad. He said he was glad to see him go because he wouldn't have to put up with his teasing anymore. When it came time for Bruce to come home he said, "I'm not happy about it, you might be happy about it, but I'm not happy to see him. I don't want him to come home, he'll just start being mean to me again." I said, "no he won't, he'll be a lot different this time, he'll really be different and won't be mean to you because he's a missionary now." And that darn Bruce came in and started rubbing his fist on Curt's short hair and Curt started yelling, "See mom! See!? He hasn't changed!"

We sent Bruce on his mission to the Southern States and went to California. We went to Disneyland with Curt and Trina and stayed at Aunt Lola's house. When we went we called Margine, Lola's sister (they had a bigger home than Lola so we thought we'd stay with them.) Their son that was Bruce's age was also going on a mission and so we traded homes and stayed in their home while we were there. And they had a cat that we had to take care of (lots of laughter) and she said she never let the cat outside, and he has to have medicine every day. Well, she gave us a whole list of rules for that cat. Anyway, something was wrong with their refrigerator and so she had the top door tied shut. So if you wanted to have a cold drink with ice in it you had to untie the door. One time Budd forgot to tie it back up and it leaked all over their kitchen floor. And then Budd taking care of that cat was just a hoot! We let the cat out one time and Lola had to come over and help us find that cat. So Budd left the cleverest letter on their fridge when we left. He said, "I wish you'd do something with this refrigerator that wets it's pants all the time!" and something about the damn cat. He called it the Damn Cat. Then he remarked that they owed us like a million dollars because we didn't leave anything like that for them to put up with at our home. And because he was a doctor he could afford it. It was a fun trip.

They all grew up and are wonderful children. They all had piano lessons. I had a ruler and would touch the notes and say play that, play that and sometimes I'd get mad and say play that! And I'd tear the book with the ruler. Bruce was the worst. He didn't get very far with music. One day he was sitting at the piano and just looking around the room, he had hay fever really bad and it was always worse when he played the piano. He was looking around the room and he said, "Mom, do you know what I would do if all this room was made of Chocolate? Do you know what I would eat first?" I said, "Yes I do, now start playing it." He said, "Well, how did you know it would be the piano?"

Budd played a ukulele and a guitar. He played the harmonica, boy he could sure play the ukulele though. He sure could have gone places with music if he had had any lessons, but he was the 12th child. Grandma Tingey had nothing left to even try to teach him. All of the girls in the family could play piano and Uncle Mel plays the violin, but Budd didn't get an opportunity at all.

Darrell could play the piano, when he went on his mission he wrote and told me he was sure glad he took piano lessons because they didn't have anyone who could play over there (Korea.) Darrell could play, he wasn't really good at it because I let him quit taking lessons. He also played the harmonica. Once year I gave each of the children a piano for Christmas, but Rita had her sisters piano and didn't want one. Darrell's second wife didn't want the piano either, so when he married Beth and their kids were old enough I gave mine to them.

Trina also could play, when she passed away she was the pianist for the primary.