By David G. Vial, Grandson
(Based on tape recorded interviews conducted with Lillian DeLand June 20 and July 26, 1997, and on materials written by Lillian DeLand in The Grandparent Book, January 22, 1985.)
I was born November 11, 1908, in McDonald County, Missouri, Township 21, Range 31. There were no hospitals near us, so I was born in my home. My given name was Winifred Lillian Griffith. My sister Pat had picked the name Lillian, and when I started to school she registered me as Lillian, because she didn’t like the name Winifred. At home they called me Winnie, until I started school, and then everyone called me Lillian after that.
My father’s people were from Scotland and Ireland; some say Wales. I do not know when they came to this country. Mother’s grandmother, Elizabeth Inman, was from Germany. The Spence family came from England.
My earliest recollections of childhood are of wading in Little Sugar Creek, which ran through our farm. I was probably two years old, but I would be with a gang of kids, my brothers and sisters. There were eleven of us, and there were big ones and little ones, and the big ones took care of the little ones. That’s the way it was in our family. I learned to swim in Little Sugar Creek; all of us did. We lived in the country, and the nearest neighbor was about a half a mile away. I didn’t have a lot of friends that would come and play, it was mainly just my family.
I don’t remember much about my father, as he died when I was seven years old. Mainly remember things that I’ve been told. I do remember that he was very strict. I can’t remember ever being spanked by him, though. When the babies were born, just two or three days old, if it was winter time, with snow on the ground, he’d take them out and stick their feet in the snow. He said that started their circulation, and they’d never get sick with a cold. I don’t know if it worked or not, but that’s what he’d do with the babies. My father smoked a pipe, and when any of the children had an earache, he would blow smoke in their ears.
I can remember when my father died, and I remember the neighbors coming in and they dressed him and stayed all night. They used the living room. They had the casket in there. I can remember peeking around the door to see what was going on. I can remember how he looked in the casket. I remember feeling sad, although I don’t think I fully realized what it was all about. I remember the older boys holding us up so we could see our dad in the casket. My brother Jim wasn’t there when father died. He was in El Paso, Texas, living with Aunt Daisy and working. My sister, Pat, was the only member of the family who was able to attend the funeral.
When I was a girl, I had a wonderful relationship with my mother. We did what mother said, and what she said was law. I don’t think I gave my mother any problems. Once my mother went on a vacation by herself on the train. She went to visit my sister, Anna, in Magna, Utah. Mother went there, and then went to California to visit my brother Jim. I was seventeen years old at the time, and I took over the house and my brother Alvin ran the farm while she was gone. I can remember seeing her come back. She came on the mail car, which came within a quarter mile of our house, and so she walked from there. I can remember looking down the road and seeing her, and I thought, “Oh, I couldn’t love anybody more than I do her,” because I really had job there. I was canning fruit and everything. And here mother came, walking home, and I thought, “Oh, she’s the sweetest mother that ever lived.” As an adult, I was still very close to my mother. I didn’t write to her like I should have. I just wish that I had.
My mother was able to manage things, and she was very resourceful. When we were small, there were no stores with clothes to buy. Mother made all of our clothes. She bought fabric at the store, and would sell eggs and cream to pay for the fabric, along with school clothes and shoes. Once the girls were sixteen or seventeen, they also began sewing. Mother had two sewing machines. Watching my older sisters and my mother is how I learned to sew. Mother also taught all of us how to cook and she was the best cook ever.
Mother always had to be right in the middle of everything, telling the boys how to do it and what to do. One day I came home from school, when I was about ten years old. My mother was in bed, and I went in there. Her face was nearly black, all around her eyes and nose. She had been helping load the sheep that they were taking to market, and this old ram decided that he wasn’t going to go. He turned around and jumped and butted my mother right in the face, and it broke her nose. I was afraid she was going to die. It scared me death.
I remember a little neighbor boy that got bit by a mad dog with hydrophobia (rabies). Mother helped to take care of him, and she said that he had spasms and convulsions. They would roll him in a feather mattress when he started to have one of these. The boy died shortly afterwards.
I remember that it scared my mother so bad that she always watched for stray dogs after that. If a stray dog came on our place anywhere, she would get us all in the house. We’d have to stay in until the dog was gone. It was a scary thing for us all, and we were scared to death of any dog we saw coming down the road.
My mother and father were not the type to ever really hug their children much. I can remember sitting on mother’s lap, but I don’t think there was time for a lot of other affection. Mother used to read to us. She had a fifth grade education, but she could read anything that you would put in front of her. She was a very smart woman. She used to read sports magazines, and she liked the jokes in the back of those. She also used to read the newspaper from front to back.
Mother was short, with a medium build. Her hair was black as coal, and when she was younger, it was medium long. She’d do it up on the back of her head, and she used to do a lot of quilting. She’d sit down to quilt, and my sister Marguerite and I would part her hair in the middle. Marguerite would take one side, and I’d take the other. We’d comb and comb. I can remember doing that, while she’d quilt.
I had whooping cough when I was two years old. I had pneumonia when I was four, and then again when I was twelve. My sisters were afraid that I was going to die, and mother took care of me night and day. She left my side only once, and that was to deliver a neighbor’s baby.
My mother died August 18, 1959, at the age of 86. She was home, at Jane, and she had company. Her cousins had come to visit her. They didn’t have indoor plumbing in the home. She had to go, so she went outside. This was after dark. Instead of someone going with her, they didn’t even know she was going. She went outside and fell and couldn’t. get up. She screamed, or yelled, or something, and they went out and found her laying by the side of the house. They brought her in. Of course, they didn’t know what was wrong with her. They didn’t know she had broken her hip, and so they didn’t do anything that night. They just put her to bed, and I guess they were up with her all night. The next morning, they took her to Neosho, to the nearest hospital. The doctor there said he didn’t have the know-how, but he examined her and said her hip was broken. They took her to Kansas City in an ambulance, which is where my sister Mary lived. They took her to the hospital there. They operated on her and put a steel ball in her hip, just like they did me. Mary called me and told me what had happened, and I went. I think she lived two weeks after that, and then she died. It was strange; they didn’t seem to know exactly what she died of. She was 86 years old, and maybe ‘it was just too much for her to go through. Before this happened, she’d go up to Mary’s every so often, and stay for a while. But she wasn’t happy there. She told Mary one day, “I’m going home if I have to walk every step of the way.” That was my mother.
There were eleven children in my family. The oldest was Cassandra Patience, who went by Pat. Pat was a small person. She was small, but she was mighty. She ruled the family, more or less, after she grew up a little bit. She was a school teacher, and she would come home during the summer. She was sixteen years older than me. The other children minded Pat just as they would our mother. We did what Pat said. Mother did too, a lot. She looked to her for advice and help, because Pat was the one that made money, and she helped pay taxes and that sort of thing. I loved her like she was my mother. On my dad’s death bed, he called her in to his room and he told her to see that all the children got an education. And she did as far as she possibly could.
The second child was James Augustus. He was a happy, go lucky guy. He was the handsome one in the whole family, a good looking guy. He was tall, and he was in the Army, in the First World War. He would come home with his uniform, and he was the big guy. He went by Gus until he left home, then he went by Jim. He went to barber school and became a barber. While he was in the army, he met a girl in Salt Lake when he was stationed there at Fort Douglas. They were married after the war, and had four children. They lived in Los Angeles, and we were close to his family.
The third child was John Newton. John was a little guy, and he was always a little bit jealous of Jim, because Jim was outgoing. He knew everybody and everybody knew him, and John was quiet. But he took responsibility. Jim left home and went to barber school, but John stayed home and ran the farm. As an adult, John stayed around Jane, Missouri and worked as a carpenter, building houses. John always wanted to go to Africa, or Aferkee, as he called it, to hunt big game. He had some big rifles. He was married, and they had five children.
The fourth child was Annie Alice. Anna was sickly, and mother didn’t expect much of her. She’s the one that sewed our clothes and stayed in the house and worked in the house. She didn’t go out and work on the farm like the rest of us. Because of her illness, she was sent to Utah when she was older, and that is where she met her husband.
The fifth child was Mary Elizabeth. She was the one that wanted to get away. She wanted to go places and do things, and she did. She liked adventure. She left home quite early and taught school for three years, and then she got married to Henry Barnes. They lived in Kansas City and had one child, a daughter named Barbara.
The sixth child was Mildred Cleo. She was a stinker. She would fight the boys or anyone that didn’t please her. She had red hair and a fiery temper. My mother had quite a bit of trouble with her. She was never mean to me, though, as she was quite a bit older than me. She looked after the little ones; they all did. Mildred left home and became a school teacher. She taught out in the hills, in the Ozark Mountains. They had built a school house there, about four miles from us, and she was their first teacher. She had all these little children, and some big ones, who had never been to school in their lives. These people lived way back in the hills. There was one young fellow who came to school, and they started going together, and they married. They lived there in the hills, and had six children. They eventually moved away from there and followed their children to California.
The seventh child was William Alvin. He was most like my dad, and was named after him. He took responsibilities early in life, and graduated from high school. Alvin stayed home and ran the farm as an adult, and married a good woman named Zola.
The eighth child was Thomas Rowe. He was two years older than I was, and we didn’t get along.
He would hit me if I didn’t do what he said or didn’t do what he wanted. He would just let me have it. I never cared for him too much. I won’t say I didn’t love him. We love our brothers and sisters, but I wasn’t real close to him. He left home when he was seventeen and went to California. Jim had gone to California during that time, and Rowe went to visit him, and then he joined the Marines. He made a career of the Marine Corps. He was married, and he and his wife had two children, a boy and a girl. He went by Rowe until he left home, and then he went by Tom. Tom is still alive, and just turned ninety years old last December sixth. He is in a home in Boulder, Colorado and. doesn’t know anyone now.
I was the ninth child. The tenth child was Claris Marguerite. She was a sweet, pretty little girl. She was just younger than me, and we played together and always got along just fine. We played with our dolls together. She married a good man and moved to Kansas. Her husband worked on the roads, and they had three children and a good life. She died very young when she was just 42 years old.
The eleventh child was Clifford Chester. He went by Chester. He was the baby brother, and he was spoiled rotten. He was about 18 months old when my father passed away, and my mother was still nursing him. My mother got the measles also and lost her milk. He wouldn’t eat anything, and Pat came home to take care of us, as she had already had the measles. She had a time with him. He and I still write to each other, and I hear from him all the time. He now lives in Kansas. As for my brothers and sisters that I may have been the closest to, I was very close to Anna while I was growing up. After I left home, I lived with Mary in Kansas City for a year and worked there before heading to California. I was also very close to Pat, as were all of the children. We all loved her like a mother. She. was the glue that held the family together.
When I was growing up, we played with dolls. We could take an old board and draw a face on it and dress it and that would be our doll. We had real dolls, too, and we’d have a whole playhouse full of dolls that we’d made. We liked to do things for ourselves.
I attended school at White Rock School, in Jane, Missouri. The school was a mile and a half from home, and we walked there and back every day. School started at nine o’clock in the morning. The school was a two room school house. The first through fourth grades were in one room, and then fifth through eighth grades in the other room. The school only went as high as eighth grade. Beyond that, you would have to go to Pineville for high school. That was six miles away. When I went to high school, my brother and I rode a buggy to Pineville each day. I graduated from Pineville High School on May 7, 1927.
I was a fair student. My favorite subject was ancient history. I loved to study that. My best friend in school was Ruthie Land. We were about the same age. When she was fourteen, she got tuberculosis and died. That was really sad for me.
Jane, Missouri, the town closest to us, was a very small town. There were probably only twelve people that lived right in the town. There was a store and post office and the church. There were no other businesses then. After cars came, then there was a garage there. There were several hundred people that lived around the community on farms.
When I was about five years old, we had an experience with gypsies. We had heard stories when we were growing up, about how the gypsies took little children, and we were all scared of them. Our house was off the highway, about a quarter of a mile. We didn’t have a lot of traffic. At that time, there weren’t very many cars, and there was very little travel on our road. We could see people from our home when they turned off the highway and could see if they were coming to our place. One day, we saw this covered wagon coming in, and mother said, “They’re gypsies.”
Somebody had notified her that there were gypsies in the neighborhood. They turned on our road, and they came down and went in to the creek bottoms, on our property. They pitched their camp down there. Mother said, “Now, I want you children to leave them alone, entirely. Don’t go down there, don’t bother them. Just leave them right alone.” That night, as soon as it got dark, we saw these people come up to our house. One went in the hen house, and one went in the barn. Mother said, “Just leave them alone. Let them take what they want. Just don’t bother them.” My older brother John was a hothead, and here he was with his gun. He was going to shoot the guy. And mother said, “Put that gun away! Don’t you dare use that gun.” And the guy went in the smoke house and took some meat. We had cured meat in there. They went in the barn and took feed for their horses. Then they went back, and they spent the night down there on our property. While they were there, Mildred held me, because I was scared. That night, we heard music, and it sounded like they were dancing. The next morning they packed up and left. As soon as they left, we all went down there to see what the camp was like and see if they had left anything. There was an old horse down there, an old skinny horse that they had left. Mother said, “That horse couldn’t make it any longer, so they just left it there to die.” She told John to go get her some feed, and she fed the horse. Then she told John to go to the house and get the gun. So John got the gun and brought it to her. Mother then told all of us to go to the house. We did, and pretty soon we heard a “bang,” and mother had shot that horse to put it out of its misery. She said it never would have gotten up, and so instead of having it suffer, she shot it. We lived such a quiet life that this was a big adventure for us. Things like this just didn’t happen.
Chores were a big part of our lives on the farm. I milked many, many cows, starting when I was about eight years old. We’d get up and milk the cows each morning before we went to school, and then milk them again when we got home from school. My mother had a cream separator that separated the milk from the cream, and she sold the cream to make some money. I also worked out on the farm. The girls, though, didn’t do a lot of the heavy work out on the farm. I do remember driving the team of horses and the wagon while my brothers gathered the corn. I was no more than eight or ten years old. It was just expected that everyone on the farm would work.
On our farm, we grew acres and acres of wheat. We also grew corn. We had some pasture also for the cattle. We always had sheep, and they ran in the hills. The boys would go on horses and herd the sheep back when it came time for shearing. We would sell some of the wheat each year, and they would take it to the mill and get some money for it and trade some of it for flour. They would bring sacks of flour home and some money also. We didn’t thresh the wheat ourselves. The wheat threshers would come through the country, and it was a big day when they came. Mother would have to get up at four o’clock in the morning to begin cooking for the threshers, as you had to feed them. She’d make pies and fried chicken. There were maybe a dozen men. All of the things she cooked came off the farm. The berries and apples for the pies came off the farm. The wheat for the bread was raised on the farm. We also used to sell some of our corn and store the rest for the animals. We had corn cribs full of corn. We had a large garden at our home. We grew lots of cabbage – rows and rows of it, and we’d make sauerkraut for the winter because it would store well. Mother would take cabbage in the fall and wrap it in newspapers and put it down in the cellar. Then we’d have cabbage for a long, long time. We grew some okra also, but not too much because my mother didn’t like it. I’ve always liked okra though.
We had cows, sheep, horses, chicken, and pigs on the farm. We also had a pet goat who came in the house one time and jumped on the bed. After that, he was banished to the far pasture. Any time one of our pets died, we held a funeral for it.
Each fall we’d butcher maybe four pigs. We’d have hams hanging in the smoke house and all summer long we’d have meat. Mother would take the hams down after they were done smoking and put them in barrels. She’d have salt in the bottom of the barrels, and she’d put in a ham, and then more salt, then another ham. Sometimes they got a little salty, and she’d have to soak them in water to get some of the salt out before we could eat them.
In our home, we didn’t have electricity. That came after I left. The electric company ran poles through our property, and then the lines came down to our house. The first time I came back home on vacation after I had left, mother had electricity. She was excited, but it was a little hard for her to get used to. She had a refrigerator, and the house was all wired. We didn’t have indoor plumbing in our home, either. We had a privy, or outhouse, outside.
We kept our house warm and did our cooking with a wood stove. We had a big house. My mother’s bedroom was originally a log cabin, and then they added on to it and put an upstairs on it. We had two large rooms upstairs, and the boys had one room and the girls had the other one, the big girls. The little children slept in my mother’s bedroom. That was the warmest room, and the fireplace was in that room. It stayed very warm because of the thick log walls.
The summers were very hot and humid on the farm. We’d go down and take a dip in the creek to cool off in the summers. This was not a small creek. It was actually almost as big as the Rogue River. There were big holes to swim and fish in. There were lots of fish in the creek. All my brothers used to catch fish which we ate. The creek used to flood almost every spring. It would get up to within about six or eight feet of the road. It would be from that bank all across the bottom lands. It would flood a lot of our land. We didn’t mind, though, because it brought the silt in, and it made the soil better. It would uproot trees, and then my brothers would go down in the summer and saw up the trees to use for fire wood.
I recall one tornado when I was at home. Mother took us down in to the storm cellar. Mother could read the weather like the weather man, and she knew a tornado was coming. When this tornado came, it flattened all the trees in our apple orchard. We used to eat big, Jonathan apples; they were so wonderful. They were all trees that Uncle Milo had planted. After the storm, there were only about four or five trees left in the orchard, and we were all broken hearted.
We had two cellars on the farm. The storm cellar was just a few steps from the kitchen door, and mother stored her milk there. It was very cool down there. The other cellar was up, and across the chicken yard. It was more of a rustic cellar, not nice like the other one. That’s where she kept her bottled fruit and potatoes and things she stored in the winter time. That’s also where the copperhead snakes would get in. Whenever we went in to that cellar, we would have to watch every step that we took. If we saw a copperhead, or heard one, or thought we did, we’d yell for our mother. She kept a hoe and a pick and a shovel right there, and she would come flying to the cellar. She’d go down in there and kill the snake herself. Every time she killed a snake it made her sick to her stomach, and she’d come out of the cellar and vomit. Maybe it was from the nerves.
When I was about ten years old, I was bitten by a copperhead snake. I was in the corn crib getting feed for the cows, and it bit me right on my middle finger on my left hand. My arm swelled up huge, clear up to my shoulder. I was scared to death, and I thought that I was going to die. My mother didn’t believe much in doctors and didn’t take me to one. Instead, she doctored me herself. This sounds strange, but she stayed up all night. She dropped drops of kerosene right where the snake had bitten me on my finger. She did this, one drop at a time, all night long. I guess it worked, because I lived.
The only relative that we had nearby that we ever saw was my mother’s cousin who ran the post office in Jane. Her name was Edna Mars. She was close to our family and never married. When we went to school, it was about four blocks from the school to the post office, and so we’d go there each day on the way home from school and pick up our mail. Edna would tell us if we got anything, like, “Jenny got a letter from Daisy today.” Daisy was mother’s sister. Her real name was Martha Elizabeth. Her husband was a railroad man, and they lived in El Paso, Texas. They had a lot of money. Aunt Daisy was very frugal and saved her money. She would come to visit us every summer and could ride the trains with a pass because of her husband. When she was going to come, she’d notify us by mail. It was twelve miles from our home to the train station where she’d come in which was in Lanagan, Missouri. The boys would go to meet her with the wagon, and she would bring trunks with her. She had two daughters, Mary and Marguerite, who used to come with her when they were younger. I can remember her combing their hair. They had beautiful, long hair, and she used to make them come in every day at a certain time. Then she’d comb their hair. If they didn’t sit still, she’d whack them with the brush. She was really a character.
Aunt Daisy was only four or five years old when her parents, my grandparents on my mother’s side, passed away. Aunt Daisy was raised by relatives. When she was sixteen, she came and lived with my mother; and they were very close. Before she came to live with my mother, she was living with a cousin, Edna Mars, who ran the post office, and she had to work awfully hard. Uncle Milo came home one day and said, “Jenny, go get your sister. They’re working her too hard. Go get her and bring her here.” And so she did, and she lived with mother for quite a while.
When she would come to visit, she would bring two trunks, one of which would be full of clothes to be made over. We learned to make over things better than we did to make them from scratch. When you make something over, you take a dress that’s too big and then cut it down and re-sew it for a smaller size.
After my father’s death, in 1916, my mother and the big boys took care of the farm, mostly my brother John. From that point on, Pat and Aunt Daisy helped take care of my mother financially. I can remember my mother saying, “I don’t know what we’re going to do. We need so and so.” And someone would go to the store, and so many times, I can’t even tell you, there would be a letter from Aunt Daisy with a ten dollar bill in it. A ten dollar bill then went as far as fifty now, I suppose. Taxes were the big thing each year that we really needed money for. I can remember a number of $80 as what I believe the tax bill was. They fluctuated a little each year, but that was a lot of money. Mother would try to sell eggs and cream each year, but mostly she knew that Pat or Aunt Daisy would come to her rescue each year.
When my father died, I don’t think my mother really ever had time to grieve. I think she was so busy and had so much on her mind, that she didn’t really ever have time to grieve. It happened in February, and there was bad weather and snow. We were all just recuperating from the measles.
One summer a tomato canning factory came to Jane. I worked in the cannery all summer to earn money for the family. They grew a lot of tomatoes there in Jane. The work wasn’t any harder than what I was used to. They would scald the tomatoes, and my job was to rub off the peels.
Sundays in our home were a special day. We observed the Sabbath, and my dad didn’t allow the boys to fish or hunt on Sunday. We attended church as a family on Sundays, at the Southern Baptist Church. There were only two churches in Jane, one being the Southern Baptist. The year that Alvin was born (1904), my father cut logs off the place and hauled them to the saw mill, and got lumber, and built the church.
The preacher would come home with us almost every Sunday for dinner. Mother would get up real early every Sunday and make pies and fix dinner. He was a traveling minister, and he would travel from one place to the other. He stayed with the members of the church. He would only stay for dinner, and then he’d be on his way.
Each summer mother and us girls would walk three or four miles in to the hills to pick huckleberries. They were like blueberries, and mother knew where the patches were. We’d take our lunch with us. Mother would make us a special treat for our lunches. She would take a big biscuit, and then fry an egg and put on top, and then slice an onion and put that on top of the egg, and that would be what we’d eat for lunch. I still like to eat those. Onions kept real well in our cellar. Each Fourth of July, Aunt Daisy would be there, as she was visiting us for the summer. In one of her trunks, she would bring fireworks for us. She’d have flares and sparklers and other things that we’d use. We’d just have a big time on the Fourth of July.
On Christmas, Aunt Daisy always sent us a great big package. Mother wouldn’t let us open it until Christmas day. She had a hutch, and in the top was her bookcase, where she kept all of Uncle Milo’s books. In the bottom was where she kept her bedding and stuff, and that’s where she would keep that big box from Aunt Daisy. We always got new stockings, long stockings. Everyone got new stockings from Aunt Daisy. That was something we knew we were going to get.
Uncle Milo was a good, kind person, and an educated man. He had gone to college, and he had, for that time, a good education. He had a bookcase that went all the way to the ceiling, and it was filled with all kinds of books. He had everything you could think of.
The only big city I ever visited when I was small was Anderson, Missouri for a Fourth of July celebration. They had merry-go-rounds, and all kinds of things. Mother took us all in the wagon, and that was the first time I ever saw a colored person. I can remember my mother sent Marguerite over to get John, who was talking with a group of men, as it was time to eat. Marguerite was about four years old at the time. She went over to the group and saw someone she thought was John, and it was a colored man. When he looked down at her, she turned and ran back to mother just as fast as she could. It was the first time we had ever seen a colored person.
The next big city I saw was Poteau, Oklahoma. Pat and I went on the train. It was pretty good sized, although it would be considered a little town now. It was about the size of Grants Pass. That was also the first time that I ever rode on a train. I was about ten years old, and we went to visit relatives in Oklahoma. My father’s Uncle Jimmy (James A Griffith), who had changed his last name to Griffin, was mayor of this town where we went, and we visited him there. I don’t know why he changed his name.
Our main source of transportation when I was growing up, other than walking, was a horse and buggy and a wagon. Our family never had a car while I was growing up. I learned to drive a car after I was married.
I left home for the first time when I was sixteen. I went with Pat to school in Durant, Oklahoma, for one of my high school years. Pat was going to the teachers’ college there. In this college, they had a school for the relatives or children of the college students, and that’s where I attended. They used those students for the college students to do their student teaching. It was a wonderful school. I can remember some of the teachers there, and I learned more there than I learned anywhere else in my life. I was just at this school for one year, and then I returned home and finished high school in Pineville.
I had several boyfriends. In Jane, they were more just acquaintances. I didn’t go steady with anyone, though. I also knew a lot of boys in Pineville.
After I graduated from high school, I went to Kansas City, Missouri, where I lived with my sister Mary. I got a job at Sears & Roebuck for a year, in the catalog department, where we kept track of the addresses for all the people that received catalogs. It was an office job.
After a year in Kansas City, I left for California. My sister, Anna, was moving to Los Angeles from Utah where she had been living with her husband. Anna’s husband had gotten a job in California as a pattern maker. She wrote to me and sent me money to come on the bus from Kansas City. What a bus ride that was! I’ll never forget that. We got to Denver, Colorado, and something happened to the bus. We couldn’t go any further, so they had to put us up in a hotel overnight. I was scared to death. I was by myself in this hotel room, and I remember above the door there was a transit, or small window, and it was open. I remember putting one chair on top of another, climbing up on the top chair, and closing that thing because I was scared somebody would climb in. I was eighteen years old at the time and had never gone anywhere like that before.
My sister Anna and her husband knew George DeLand and that’s how we met. Anna had a friend, Mabel, who lived in Salt Lake. Anna’s husband was already in California, and Anna was staying with Mabel until I got there so we could go on the train together to Los Angeles. Anna knew George and had also known his first wife, Dora, who had passed away. The day before we left to go to Los Angeles, someone took us out to Magna to visit George. He wasn’t home, but we visited with his mother. His mother told George about the visit and gave him the address where we were staying in Salt Lake. George came there to visit, and I was the only one home at the time. I answered the door, and he introduced himself and asked me for a date to go to Saltaire the next night to go dancing. I didn’t know how to dance very well because Baptists didn’t dance. The next morning, after our date, Anna and I left on the train for California. George then came to California two weeks later, and two weeks after that we were married. I knew all about Dora and her death and about his children. I married him for the little boy, Ronnie, as I knew that he needed a mother. I had been brought up with a whole house full of children, so I really wasn’t concerned about marrying someone with kids.
It seems fast now, but at the time it didn’t seem unusual at all that we were married that quickly. During the week, we went to Los Angeles and got our marriage license. On Saturday neither one of us had to work, so we went to Long Beach to get married. We were married on July 28, 1928. I was 19 years old, and George was 24. We rode the trolley car to Long Beach, and George saw on cop on the street and asked him where we could get married. He told us we’d better not be in a hurry because you had to wait three days after you get your marriage license. George told him we had already waited. He told us that two blocks down the street there was a minister, so we walked down there and got married at a minister’s home next door to the church. I wore a pretty orchid dress my sister Mary had made for me before I left Kansas City. George wore a light brown suit and a straw hat with a polka-dot band. Our honeymoon was just a Saturday night and Sunday in Long Beach. We both had to be back at work on Monday.
After we were married, Anna wrote to mother and told her I had gotten married. Mother thought that was all right because she didn’t approve of me running around the country at that age. She was glad. Anna had told her about George, as she had known him for several years.
After we were married, we then had three children of our own. Richard LeRoy Deland was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, May 16, 1929. We had gone back to Salt Lake from California to visit. Arlene Lillian Deland was born in Phoenix. Arizona, May 26, 1934. We were there because it was during the Depression, and things were really rough. We were looking for work and were staying with George’s sister, Martha, and her family. DeOnne was born in Lynwood, California October 7, 1948.
We bought our first home in Lynwood, California on 4011 Josephine Street. It was a lovely little home, and that was the same home we lived in the whole time we were in California, for 23 year.
Google image of 4011 Josephine Street 2012
I’ve voted for a number of presidents during my life, including President Roosevelt. I saw President Roosevelt once, in 1931, when he was campaigning for the presidency. He was in a parade on Figueroa Street in Los Angeles. I remember the day he died. It was a sad, sad day. I then voted for Harry Truman. I didn’t vote for Dwight Eisenhower, as I was a strict Democrat. I voted for John F. Kennedy; he was a Democrat. I never did vote for Richard Nixon. I wouldn’t have voted for him if he would have been the only one. I voted for Hubert Humphrey in 1968. I always voted for Democrats, and I was a Democrat because my mother was. She would have died before she would have voted Republican, and always voted straight Democratic ticket. Most all Missourians were Democrats, and my father was also.
During World War II, George was an Air Raid Warden. The sirens would come on, and they had to go outand make sure there were no lights on. Dick stayed home with Arlene and I, and Ronnie would take his bike and go with George. We had to ration lots of things during the war; sugar, gasoline, shoes. We always had plenty during the war, though. The rationing didn’t bother us too much, and we didn’t suffer.
I was baptized in to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on May 12, 1933, after I was married. George had attended the Baptist Church with me, and so I asked him to take me to the Mormon Church which he did. We had neighbors who were stake missionaries, and they taught me. I can’t remember their names after all these years; they lived in the green courts, by us. I wanted to hear the missionary discussions in part because my sister, Anna, was so against it. As I began hearing the discussions, though, everything just seemed right to me and made sense. Anna had a book called “Mormon Secrets Revealed.” and she would tell me things about the church. Then I would ask George. Anna’s husband found the book, and he burned it. George would get really mad about all the things she was telling me. George didn’t like the church that Anna attended which was the Holy Roller Church.
After my baptism, Anna wrote my mother and told her that I had been baptized and that I was “lost” now. Anna was very upset about this. My mother’s reaction was that she became very upset with Anna, for her attitude. My mother was pleased with my decision to be baptized. On her trip to California, when I was seventeen, she had learned a lot about the Mormon Church and was very impressed. She later said to me, “If I wasn’t a Baptist, I’d be a Mormon.” None of my other brothers or sisters were upset about my becoming a Mormon. Where we grew up, we had never heard of the Mormon Church. Luckily, this didn’t affect my relationship with Anna, and we were still close, even after my baptism. My testimony when I first joined the church was based on many things, but the main one was having a living prophet. That was one of the main things that I felt was right. That had a big impact on me. I didn’t have any bad habits that I had to change to join the church. None of my family used alcohol. My dad smoked a pipe and grew his own tobacco.
I’ve been very concerned about changes I’ve seen in the world during my lifetime. Drugs and the way people live and the things they do are troubling to me. Over my life, the things that have given me the most happiness and satisfaction have been my children. They’ve been such good kids and have never given us any trouble. I think I’ve been a pretty good mother, and I believe that’s my greatest accomplishment in life.
My faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and in prayer have helped me pull through in times of trouble. My dear husband has also helped me through all of these times.
My wish for my grandchildren is that you will live the gospel to the best of your ability, that you will be honorable citizens in the best country in the world. You boys honor your priesthood and you girls honor your husband’s priesthood and walk beside him in righteousness. Bring your children up in the gospel, teaching and encouraging them in righteousness. Always remember that I love you. Some of you great grandchildren I will not see in this life, as you will come along after I’m gone, but I still love you. You are a part of me.
Lillian G. DeLand
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