30 Years

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My Dear Martinez Ward(s) Seminary Friends:

Well this past year I’ve done some research and was able to bring many of us together for the first time in about 30 years. One of the things I’ve been asked is what I’ve been doing with my life these many years. So I’ll try to put 30 years into a nutshell. Many of you lost track of me in October 1972 when I was drafted into the US Army. Harold Waters and some friends threw me a surprise birthday/drafted party in the old Arch Street chapel. I served my two years mostly in Fort Carson, Colorado. My family moved from 766 Palm Avenue to Hurricane, Utah late in 1974. So I lived in a little house in Clyde with Harold for a while, then moved into a barn in Dixon, California for a year. I was a cattle hand on the Lane & Sons Ranch. From there I moved to Provo to attend BYU with my sister Valerie. I was there on the GI bill for 4 years in the Zoology program. While there I became very proficient in the martial arts as I studied under the 3 X national champion of Taiwan. I also enjoyed badminton and lots of lovely co-eds. I was engaged to a woman from Canada, but the net result of this was only to be declared a national nuisance in the Cayman Islands. (Another story) I later courted and married Ruth Ann Allan of Spanish Fork in the Manti temple. She’s a schoolteacher and we had 4 wonderful children together. My career took a rocky start as I dropped out of school when our first child was born. We moved back to Martinez for a year while I was working in pest control and again associated myself with the Alexander Lindsay Jr. Museum in Walnut Creek. I was recalled to Utah by my former martial arts instructor to become one of the 7 founding officers of SunRider: a multi-level herbal foods company. This company is now a fortune 500 company located out of southern California. I did not relocate to California with them, but instead took an entry-level position with a struggling new networking company called Novell. I was employee #107 with them and had a tiger by the tail. I held on and experienced fantastic professional growth with this fast growing computer networking company. I was able to quadruple my salary in the first 8 years and worked my up to the position of Business Analyst there. I took up writing there and had several articles published by McGraw-Hill. I also became a Certified NetWare Engineer and earned my BS in Business at night school while at Novell. During these years we bought 2 homes in Springville, Utah and reared our 4 children. I was only semi active in the church most of these years. I think I was too concerned with my growing career and my many hobbies. These included: sailing, caving, fishing, reptile and tropical fish collecting/breeding, 4WD “Jeep”ing and motorcycle touring. After 17 years Ruth called it quits and divorced me. This has sprung into one of the greatest blessings of my life. I had not been the kind of husband and father I’d always wanted to be and now I had the chance to stand on my own and figure out what The Lord wanted me to do. I think I’d thought that I could just get into heaven on Ruth’s coat-tails. We’ve been divorced almost 10 years now and I’ve experienced many wonderful and humbling things that have strengthened me in ways not even imagined before. During these past 10 years I stumbled thru a couple of rebound marriages and my career has suffered lots of ups and downs. But I know I’ve become a much better person. I’d not trade the lessons of these past few years for anything. I’ve been unemployed or underemployed for many of these years. I’ve done contract work for IBM & Microsoft, folded noodles for Stouffers, and successfully returned to the herbal foods industry after a 17-year absence to work at a VP level as Plant Manager with 187 employees. While there I built a $3.5 million production and warehouse facility that doubled my production facilities. My success felt really good, but was short lived. The company was owned by two sisters: who began fighting over it. The courts stepped in and appointed a new president for 2 years who laid off the senior management his first week. Two weeks after losing my golden job there I was climbing in Provo Canyon and fell. I suffered a broken back and concussion. I worked past the pain to regain my walking and talking in a short time, but found myself in a recession with the rest of the country. My children are: Michelle (25) a radiology tech & new mother, Daniel (23) back from a mission to Scotland & in school, Wendy (21) married & working in a high class salon, bought a home in town and Jessica (16) who’s very accomplished in music, 4.0 GPA in school and is getting sociable with boys fast. Today I’m working as a business consultant and I'm active in the church and in the single adult program. I’m in the choir and I dance a lot. I’ve just really gotten into family history. My mother died in August of 1991 and I’ve missed her. Well so much for my life. Please write and tell me how you’ve spent many of your years, or skip the past and let me know how and what you are up to today. I’d like to hear from you in any case. And as always if you know of other of our Seminary friends that I’ve not got in touch with, please forward this web address to them or let me know their contact information.

Paul (Still Crazy after all these years)

A little slice of my testimony:

I was sitting in church Sunday and looked around me. I did not bear my testimony of what I felt but came home and wrote it up. Click Here to see what I wrote.

Journal excerpts from 33 years ago:

26 Jan 1973 (Fri.)
Up 0515. Pushed & shoved myself into stiff starched cooks type whites today. They are starched so much the pockets and limbs seem glued shut. Finish "Meat ID" class with test today. I'm 90% possible score wise. Mail today - 2 letters from Phyllis, 1 postcard from home! By all indications she had not yet received my tape to them yet. Her letters to me were postmarked 23rd & 24th; I mailed the tape with 16-cent stamp on the 18th. Mom & Valerie in Vegas on way home from Utah. They have Grandma with them to bring home. Copperhead ate she says. Phyllis is going to be in the dance festival this year! Loan Watermelon $9 today. He will give me $12 on Thu to pay back the $9.50 he owes me. $2.50 interest in a week. I've got $1 to last me till payday now. Rainy day. Visit #2 library again tonite. 10 cents to call Bro. Ousbye. There was a girl in a tiny swimsuit dancing in a way that got me sort of hot & bothered at the Patton Club (beer hall by the #2 library). Everybody (not me!) stuffed dollar bills into the bottom front (very low-cut). Tips pay better than Army. I almost missed my bus watching it all. Very slinky. I'll avoid this club in future days. Bed 2400.

27 Jan 1973 (Sat.) ***
Sleep till noon. Miss breakfast. To baptism with Bro. Ousebye, then had dinner at his home.. shoes off. We went to a M-Men & Gleaners square dance. I had fun dancing with everyone. Kevin Emery & I squeeze into a car full of New Albany girls after the dance, they drop us off downtown. He buy me 7 small hamburgers (White Castle?), onion rings and a malt. We look over many used car lots & talk. Many whores ask us if we want a "date". He bought nuts, chips, apple juice and a room at the YMCA. He fell asleep at 0310. I ate most of the snacks then fell asleep on a blanket on the floor. Played cards with myself. This guy (18) is very lose with his money. He's LDS (weak) in BCT E-10-5. OK guy. Bro. Ousbuy lent me one of his shirts for the dance. I found 6 cents and a pen today. LOVE MY PHYLLIS. The WAR is OVER, prisoners coming home & draft is shut down! There will be more wars to fight, but I'm glad for this pause. I hope my friends not need to fight. LOVE GOD.

28 Jan 1973 (Sun.)
Phyllis is 18 today! Time Fly. Up 0845. We go to bus station; he gave me $5 for a cab to cross the river into New Albany, Indiana for church there. Missed Priesthood. He took the 1000 bus back to the fort; he has a formation at 1300. A fast-talking bum got 60 cents from me at the station. The cab driver stopped the meter at $3 because he had trouble finding the church. He was glad I was going to church. I tipped him $1. I still have my $1 still unspent. SS at New Albany. Got a ride into Louisville after then walked many miles before getting a ride into the fort. Buy 2 11-cent stamps... still using the last of that $5! Rainy & cold day. I missed all 3 meals today! Missed Sacrament meeting: too late. Visit the main PX - not impressed. Very tired. Got a Louisville Stake directory. This weekend really lifted my spirits. Someone stole a pair of my boots! That brought me down a bit - to bed at 2000. Matt 6:34.

29 January 1973 (Mon.)
Fire guard 2400-0200. Snow on the ground, all white. Up 0500. Slipped on ice and fell. We cooked today: this is small quantity week… fried eggs & bacon. I missed the afternoon class to test on a 5-ton truck for military license. Got 98%, and will get the license tomorrow. Only 5 of us passed this simple test. Letter from Valerie, Grandma, and Mom... still no indication that they got my tape. The 2 pythons are with France. Mailed letter to Phyllis. GI party. Then I spent my $1 to see "Poseidon Adventure", a very good movie about a capsized ocean liner. Looked thru my photo album & realized how very blessed I am. My sister Michelle is with God, waiting for me. I know that! Some very wonderful people love me, and I've had a good life. So much to be thankful for. Grandpa will see my sister sooner than I will be able to express all my love for him. Bed at 2230. I feel so very good all over. Very good night. I love my Savior - and I know it!

Here is a short story I wrote about my school days:

(I wrote this down during my lunch break... more entertaining than simple journal entries: you could do the same - capturing life one little story at a time.)

Why Daddy does not speak French.

My grandmother was French-Swiss and I was the best French student at John Muir Elementary in the 6th grade. I was given a key-shaped pin with a little Effile Tower on it in the Awards Assembly. However in Jr. High I fell in love with my French teacher, a lovely young woman. In Junior High a young man’s skills at expressing feelings of love are not fully developed. I asked her how to say all these long, romantic phrases… but if she got the hint she never let on. So one morning before class began we were having our usual rubber band shooting war (there were a few boys with paper routes). She came in and demanded that the shooting stop and confiscated the rubber bands she could find around the room. I had a little pile at my desk (being a popular target guy), and I tossed them out the 2nd floor window onto a little empty flower ledge for retrieval after class. She saw this (and not to be outfoxed) climbed out onto the ledge thru the window to collect my stash. Well to express my great love for her I promptly closed & locked the window behind her and began kissing the glass. This did not win her heart.

Later I determined that she had a thing for the burly Spanish teacher next door, to whom she took me after I finally let her back into the room. In those days teachers & the Principal had paddles they used. I remember the Principal has several holes drilled into his paddle and a little whistle embedded into one of the larger holes… this created a high whistle as the paddle made it’s way to your fanny from his hand held back and away like a pro golfer making a killer swing. It was kind of like the sounds of enemy mortar rounds whistling thru the air toward you before they exploded. And that is what those swats felt like. The Spanish teacher used a wide, thick strap of leather that snapped your bum like a wet towel in the shower room, but a lot harder. I took my licks like a man, hardly even whimpering. I remember thinking that sometimes love is a painful thing.

Since all this did not deter my ardent advances toward the lovely French teacher I was quietly transferred to a woodshop class, thus ending my French instruction in the public school system. To this day I still love French & working with wood.

On the subject of Junior High pain, I’d like to explain 2 (of the many) scars on my legs. I was in a history class and standing in line to sharpen my pencil. The guy in front of me was sharpening two pencils and could never get the point just right. I asked him to hurry up. Boys that age need very little provocation to get a bit violent. When he finally had needle points on both of his pencils he turned and slammed them both into the outside of my mid-thighs. I returned an upper cut punch to his diaphragm followed by my best imitation karate chop to the back of the neck. The teacher only saw my reaction, not the initial assault and promptly broke a wooden ruler over my shoulder to stop the ‘fight’ which by this time was truly over as the boy was rolled into a fecal position on the floor, and feeling very sorry for attacking me. The little blue dots of the graphite pencil points are still lodged in my legs.

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