(Excerpts from William Odell Tolman: Patriarch, Genealogist, Teacher compiled by Loraine Tolman Pace, First Edition, 2009, pages 11-16).
1924:
I spent the next four years attending the Oakley Rural High School. When I started high school, the great desire that I had in my heart, as a freshman, was dancing with all those beautiful girls in high school, because I had been taught how to dance by my older sister Naomi who was very beautiful and very popular. While I was still in the grade school when my sister would get a date, she would say: “Yes, I would be glad to go with you if you will take my brother Willie with us.” Because she was so popular and because she was such an excellent dancer they would take me along with them just to get the date. I remember on those cold nights with snow on the ground, we would come out of the dance hall where it was warm and get in the sleigh. I would get in between my sister Naomi and her date and snuggle down in the covers. Her date had to drive and by the time we got home, I was asleep. Naomi taught me how to dance. In fact, she spent more time dancing with me than she did with her date. When I went to high school as a freshman, I knew that I could dance well enough to dance with the girls. But our family was a large family and we were very poor. In fact, we were so poor that when I asked my mother if I could have fifty cents to go to the first Friday night dance, my mother started to cry. She said, “Son, I know how much you want to go, and I would like you to go, but I don’t have any money to give you.” Then she said, “But if you will get the chickens to lay five additional dozen eggs each week, you can take the eggs to the store and tell Gerald Cranney that you want money for them, and he will give you the fifty cents you need for your dance ticket.”
I don’t know whether it was because of my faith, and I doubt that it was. It was probably because of the faith of my mother, but I had undying confidence in her faith. When mother prayed, she prayed like so many of the pioneers did that you could almost feel that the Savior was standing right by her side, that kind of faith. So I went out to the chicken coop and I sat down. I was fifteen years old. There were all the old hens upon the roost. I said, “Now I want to talk to you old sisters. If you will just produce a little more, I can get enough each week to go to the dance.” I gave them quite a sermon. This sounds fantastic, but it actually happened. I think mother kind of fudged on the eggs we used in the house a little bit too, but I got enough additional eggs to get my five dozen that first week and every week after that until I started working for the neighbors and getting enough money for my dance tickets. Those old hens produced those additional eggs for me every week. It was miraculous.
The first dance I went to with my egg money I started to ask the girls to dance with me. Because we were very poor I guess the best way to explain it was that I was looked upon as kind of poor white trash–that connotation. Other families were big and other families were poor, but the popular girls in the school wanted to dance with the popular boys. They didn’t want a little guy like me to take them around the floor. I don’t suppose they knew that I knew how to dance, but I think I was as good a dancer as anyone in that high school.
I asked the first girl and she turned me down. I asked the second girl and she turned me down and the third and the fourth and the fifth, and every girl I asked turned me down. I got on my horse, brokenhearted, and I rode home, seven miles to our home and went in and prepared to go to bed. I was so brokenhearted I was crying. My older sister was in a bedroom next to us. We only had two bedrooms for the children. All the boys slept in one and all the girls slept in the other and mother and dad slept in another. It was a log house, not very large, so I learned how to sleep three in a bed. My sister Naomi heard me crying, and she came into the room and asked me what was the matter. Through my sobs I told her the story. That night she sat on the side of the bed and she said: “Willie, I want you tonight to realize that you are very special. I want you to know that I know that you are a son of God and God loves you. You will always be special to him and you will always be special to me. I don’t want to ever hear you say, as you have done tonight, that you are no good and that you will never amount to anything.” When my sister, that I loved so much, got through with me that night, as a boy thirteen years old, I felt like I could go out and take the wicked world and lick the whole thing by myself. She really put the fire of enthusiasm in me and I never got over it.
1925:
It didn’t take me long to notice in high school that the popular boys were the ones who had lettered in athletics, football, and basketball, so I went to my Dad and said: “Dad, can I go out for football?” I was only a 9th grader, but it was a small school so they had to take almost everybody who went out on the team. Of course, I was a farm boy so I was as hard as nails. I was used to working. I wasn’t big but I was hard. My dad said: “Son, you know that you are needed at home after school and you have work to do. But if you want to go out for football and can still handle your chores when you get home and still do your school work, you can do it. I don’t have a horse I can spare for you to ride to school.” We lived seven miles from the high school and rode the bus. The bus was an old Model T truck that had been remodeled into a bus. If I had a picture of it, you would just die laughing. It was the funniest looking thing you can imagine. But it got us to and from school.
Well, I was so determined to become popular in high school and my older sister had put so much fire and enthusiasm in me, that I was willing to do anything. So after football practice I walked the seven miles home. Being the oldest of the boys, I had to do some of the heavy work. Uncle Alma was just two years younger and Uncle Marvin four years younger than I. Then I got so I could jog home and that put me home a little earlier so I could get my chores done a little sooner. Then I got so I could run part of the way. Finally, I got so I could run the seven miles. As a result of that practice, as a freshman and sophomore, in the spring of my sophomore year I took the long distance race for our school for the State of Idaho.
That year I was a tackle on the first string of the football team. Trafford Woodhouse, who went out with me, was a guard on the same team. He took his place in the line right next to me. We were a small team but we were fast because we were small. On the days when we played big schools like Twin Falls and Burley, if the field was dry, we could lick the daylights out of them. If it was wet those big bruisers would just push us all over the field. Back in those days we played whether there was six inches of snow on the ground or two inches of mud from a rainstorm. I enjoyed it and I made the team. I lettered every year for four years in high school as a member of the football team. There was no school bus at first, then it cost a dollar to ride. When the girls found out I had made the team, the first string in the football team as a freshman, then they would gather around and at the dances I never had any trouble dancing with the most popular girls in school. In her life story my sister, Armenia, said, “William, Milton Sessions, Trafford Woodhouse, Dean Cranney and some girls (Lida Martin and others) went to a show in Oakley. Bill was the youngest, but the biggest one, so he had to pay an adult ticket, while his friends got into the show for a dime.”
As I look back on those experiences, I am grateful for them for I think they helped to temper my life so that I could endure the things that I endured in the mission field and after I returned. It was a great experience for me and there were a lot of things that happened to me.
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