Sugar City

1973 began with a surprise change. There was a Social Worker job opening in Rexburg, so Garry went up to interview and got the job! He started working with Fred Scoresby in January, while we finished out the school year in Murtaugh.

We moved into our home in June on Fremont Avenue in Sugar City. Nancy and Evan Meyers had owned it as a rental property, so when their renters moved out, we bought it for $21,000.

(Kim, Craig, Cindy, and Pam in Sugar City)

(Nada, Pam, and Cindy in Sugar City)

As soon as we moved in, Craig was baptized in the Rexburg Tabernacle. He had waited two months so he could be baptized in the same place I was baptized 30 years before. I thought I would get to stay home that school year, but Hazel Hendricks was in a severe car accident in August, so the district asked me to take over her first grade class at Central Elementary. Garry and Cindy played 'Kindergarten', as she scored too high to get in the summer program. Kim was in Junior High, Pam was in 6th grade, Craig was in 3rd grade, and Cindy was 6-years-old.

In October, Garry took Pam and Craig to see the Prophet Harold B. Lee. He passed away in December and Spencer W. Kimball was sustained as prophet. The following year, Hazel Hendricks recovered and came back to Central Elementary, so I got a job in the Madison District teaching first grade at Washington Elementary in Rexburg. This was the very school where I did my student teaching 14 years prior. I felt bad not being in the same school as my kids, but after three years the long awaited call finally came, and I was offered a job at the elementary back in Sugar City. I was thrilled!

In 1975 I had a hysterectomy operation and was recovering most of the summer. Then in July, Kim was working for Garry's brother, Milo, on the farm in Driggs and fell off the tractor and broke his arm. He had to have plates put in his arm, so we were back in the hospital for another operation. By August we were both mending, so our family went to Southern Utah and swam every day in the St. George motel swimming pool. It was so good to get away after a summer of illness.

(Garry, Craig, Pam, Kim, and Cindy in St. George 1975)