LuRee’s Memories of her Grandparents and Parents: Recorded spring 2013 and transcribed by Linda Kay Tolman Smith
My name is LuRee Tolman Van Wagenen and I was born April 7, 1934. My parents were Bion Tolman and Lucille Morgan Tolman. My parents lived in Brigham City when I was born, but it was General Conference time in April and mother was due with her second baby in June so my mother thought it would be a good idea if she went to visit her mother in Logan while my dad was gone to conference and to a meeting that he had with an agricultural man. So mother went to Logan and while she was there she went into labor. It was a difficult time for her because it was such an early delivery. They even announced my father’s name over the pulpit at General Conference and told him that he was needed at home. I was a preemie baby and they put me in this box with a hot water bottle in the bottom to keep me warm. I was fed with an eye dropper. When it was finally safe to take me home from the hospital, my Grandmother Morgan had me go to her place where she could help while my mother recuperated. Also my Aunt Mary helped out. They put my box on the oven door that they pulled down to keep me warm. They used handkerchiefs for diapers for me and they took extra care of me. I had an older sister, who was just crazy about me, Janice. She was two years older than I was. She was born July 1, 1932.
I want to say something about the Morgans. I loved to go to Grandma Morgans because she treated us so well. She always had homemade bread and it smelled so good when you went into her apartment and then we would put jam or honey on it. There was a white stool in her home that we loved to go round and round on. Another thing we liked to do at Teeny Grandma’s house ( we called her teeny because she was teeny), when we grew a little bit older with another sister that came after me, Carol Ann, we would go to the bookcase, that had a glass over it and we would push the glass up and could get the books out. We pretended the bookcase was an apartment building and we would cut up figures from Grandma’s Sunday paper like Sluggo and Fritzy, Dagwood and Blonde and other cartoon figures and we would pretend that they lived in the apartment building. We had such fun!
I loved to hear the grown-ups talk and so I always had a listening ear as to what was going on at Grandma’s. Her family came from Wales and she always had visitors and would treat them so well. Welch people would come there to visit the temple and they knew that they had a place to stay and would be well fed. They were all so loving and giving to each other. My mother also told me that on several occasions they had an Indian man that would come and have Sunday dinner with them and to my mother it seemed to be no trouble at all for her mother to have this company come and to feed them. I never got to meet Grandfather Morgan because he passed away of a stroke when my mother was 16 or 17 years old and she was broken hearted. She was very close to her father. A lot of the time they would just discuss things that had to do with my mother’s school work. He loved to talk to her about Shakespeare and he would read Shakespeare to her at night. He was the first postmaster of Logan. He and Teeny Grandma were school teachers in Samaria, Idaho. That is where they lived when they were school teachers. Then he gave that up and they moved to Logan. His family was from Wales also. After he died, Teeny Grandma lived in that apartment, really a duplex near the temple and she was a temple ordinance worker for many years. She used to visit us in our home at Wasatch Circle, but after we moved to our brand new home on Kenton Drive, she came to live with us. My parents gave up their bedroom upstairs and slept downstairs so she could have her own room. We loved to go into her room and watch her brush her hair. She would take out the ball on the back of her head and brush it out and put it in a braid at night and then in the morning she would brush it out again and put it back into a bob. We always liked to talk with her. She was a very gracious person. She did a lot of crocheting. She would crochet her granddaughters baby jackets and hats and booties. Even the ward members would come and look at her crocheting and they always chose something to give one of their grandchildren. At first she wasn’t going to take any money for it, but then she decided that she would and the reason was that she wanted to pay tithing on her work and make sure that she was a full tithe payer. She lived with us for about 12 or 13 years before going to a care home nearby at age 96, where she actually lived to be 101 years old.
One thing that I remember about Grandma Morgan’s apt. was that when a cousin came like Karl D. Hess we would go around the back of the apartment and if the cellar doors were open. Then we would go in there and that is where she had her sewing machine and washing machine and all of her canning. We would play like it was a spook alley and you didn’t want to get caught. So we would run around and try to not get caught and sometimes run up the steps that went into the hall of the house where the front door was and it was like a circus. Finally one of the adults would stop us because we would have made a little too much noise. Grandma’s apartment was a duplex and so she didn’t want us making that much noise. The apartment was across the street from the hospital where I was born. One of the other experiences I remember concerned the ditch that ran in front of her house. We loved to throw something in the ditch even just a dandelion and we would run down as it ran in the water and fall on our bellies to catch it as it came by. But sadly enough one time we had brand new sun suits and we were so thrilled with them and had been told not to go in the streets because the road had just been tarred. But Carol Ann didn’t listen and she went out into the street running after something in the ditch and she slipped and fell. Janice and I knew how upset our mother would be so we tried to help her by sneaking her to the bathroom and washing the tar off. Of course there was no way we were going to be able to wash off the tar and so she finally had to face the music with her mother and mother was not too pleased with the whole thing.
There was another thing we loved to do when we were at Grandma’s. If they sent us down to the drugstore that was at the bottom of the hill, it was called Skanky’s store. They would usually give us a little bit of money to spend on ourselves after we purchased what we had been sent to buy. And we thought that was so great to be able to choose something for ourselves.
Her apartment was close to the Logan Temple and she worked in the Logan Temple for many years after her husband passed away.
My Tolman Grandparents and their line came from England and came to Massachusetts in 1630. His people were timber people and farmers. My Dad was born in Murtaugh, Idaho and he loved to do the farming and was expected to do the farming. They lived in a big old two story home and there was a porch that they had beds on, a sleeping porch. They had sheep. It was really a sheep ranch and they had some experiences with other ranchers who were cattle ranchers and didn’t really like the sheep, but they worked it all out. Daddy would swim in the canal in between work.
Grandma Tolman was a very talented woman and had a piano and a big china doll that sat by the legs of the piano. In her window ledge she had a glass black panther and we loved to look at that. But we knew that we had to be under control there because she didn’t stand for any fooling around.
They eventually moved to Logan because they wanted to be closer to the temple and were ordinance workers there so we could visit them and Grandma Morgan when we went to Logan. Grandma Tolman was a very good cook and you could always count on a very good meal. But she was very strict and did not want you eating anything before the meal. But we could surely look forward to big round sugar cookies that she made. She also had her mother, Grandma Bates living with them at one point. I remember that Grandma Tolman would say, “now don’t you eat anything before our dinner,” and then Grandma Bates would motion to us from her bedroom doorway on the main floor to come over to her and she had in her pocket a beautiful handkerchief and these mints that she would sneak and give to us. Then she would whisper for us not to tell. In this home of theirs in Logan they rented out rooms to students going to the AC (Agricultural College). And my Dad’s mother told him that he was to go to the Agricultural College and was not to be a farmer because he had a very keen mind. He was disappointed at first because he wanted the farm, but we were fortunate that he went in that direction because he did have such a good mind and got a master’s degree at the A.C. and used his good mind our whole life both in his profession and in his gospel studies. He also created beautiful iris.
In this house in Logan, the upstairs was always rented out, but the downstairs had a big round table and a brass bed. One day we were doing tricks on that brass bed and I thought I could do tricks on the end of the bed like I was on a tricky bar. I stuck my head through so I could get a better hold on the bars. Then someone came down to tell us it was time to go up for dinner, but I tried to get back through the bars and couldn’t get my head back through. Everyone tried to help me and even Grandpa Tolman came down and tried to help me get my head out of those bars and my Dad tried to help as well, but finally Grandpa Tolman had to get a saw and cut the bars of that nice bed in order for me to get my head out. I could tell that no one was very pleased with what I had done
Grandpa Tolman was a very, very hard worker. He and his wife had a home in Murtaugh, Idaho. He was a farmer and a rancher. He was a good, righteous man and a patriarch for years. He would come down to our house at conference time from Idaho and would help our Dad out in the garden.
My own Father loved working on the farm and learned to be a hard worker as well. He loved the soil, but since his mother wanted him to go to college, he went to the Agricultural College in Logan. He met our Mother in Logan and he was a little bit of a country hick, you might say. But he loved raising things especially flowers and worked tirelessly. He raised big dahlias, and then petunias, and then he went from that to iris and that was his love. He would hybridize iris and he became famous for his iris. People from all over the valley would want a start from his iris. There were even people who had pictures of his iris in their home. Alf had a brother that went to visit friends in the south and there on their wall was a picture of Bion Tolman’s iris. There was a lady in one of my wards whose mother had a picture of Bion Tolman’s iris on her wall. People in the ward where I presently reside have wanted starts from his iris. He took his iris to shows and won many ribbons for his iris and sometimes won queen of the show. Dad’s favorite one was a dark, dark almost black iris.
He became a government researcher dealing with sugar beets. I remember going to his government office and meeting the Staviskies from Russia who worked there and Myron Stout who ended up being a good friend to our family. The thing we liked about that government office was that it was a hot house with plants on either side of the aisle and we liked running down the aisle with that fine spray going that would get us wet too, but Daddy didn’t like us running in there and he told us never to do that again.
Eventually Daddy ended up at Utah Idaho Sugar Company. He was the Supt. over agriculture and then vice president of agriculture. He spent much of his time visiting farmers and checking on their crops of sugar beets and he got to know the farmers well in all parts of Utah and Idaho and even in Washington State. He was also called by the Church to help them choose choice pieces of land for Church farms. He was in charge of the Church farm in Canyon Rim area and when I was young he was in charge of the Victory Garden in Bonneville stake. He served on the Church General Welfare Board and met every conference in the tabernacle for their semi-annual meeting.
My father had many good traits especially being a hard worker. He worked so hard that he would come sit down and fall asleep sitting up. He was nice enough to help me with my math sometimes especially algebra and after I had my test at school and I passed it with a “B” I saw him and said, “Well we passed it.” He also put up with all the animals we had. He brought home white experimental mice and made a wheel for them so that they could go round and round. He made a cage for our squirrel that we had caught and we also had cats and a duck that happened to be mine called Joann and he was patient with that duck and made an area for it in the backyard. We also had gold fish and if our gold fish went belly up and die, he would buy us some new fish and we thought that was great. But he wasn’t so patient with the chickens. Being a farm boy, he would kill them and we had to pluck out all the feathers and we hated the smell and didn’t want to eat another chicken again. Also my father’s knowledge of the gospel was amazing. He was a collector of church books. He and Mark E Peterson would go on a Sunday after Sacrament meeting and go over to Brother Lundwall’s home and talk about books and would try to get as many first editions as they possibly could. We all benefited from his knowledge of church subjects. If we had a question he could just reach up in his big church library and pull down a book and read you the answer to your question.
Other good things that I remember about my Father concerns his thoughtfulness when he went on trips usually to St. George. He would bring us back something and our favorite was these big paper dolls that we loved. When he was home sometimes he would play rough with us since he didn’t have any boys and he would play giant with us and try to catch our legs as we would go round and round his body until it sometimes got out of hand and then mother would have to say, “That’s enough.” Another thing he would do is take me down to this neighbor’s field once a year when they would have a big cook out. We would take hot dogs on a big stick and roast them down there and it seemed like those hot dogs tasted so good and I loved that time with my Father.
We thought our Dad could fix anything! He was just wonderful that way. Once Carol Ann got mad at me when we were playing with our Betsy Wetsy dolls and she threw my doll to the ground and it fell to the ground and when I picked it up the eyes had fallen back in her head and I was heartbroken. I took her upstairs and my Dad took that doll and fix her and I thought he was marvelous.
But one trait that wasn’t so positive was that he wasn’t too patient with the grandkids when they would come and eat his candy and throw the wrappers all over the place. That was upsetting to him. If they ran through his garden or stepped on his flowers he would raise his voice and say, “for cryin’ out loud!” Sometimes it made the kids a little afraid of him. But we all loved to hear him sing. I loved to go with him to ward choir practice from the time I was twelve years old and loved to sing from then on so I appreciated his love of music. He told me of a story when he was a young boy. His mother was the chorister of the ward and she usually had special numbers for the sacrament meeting. On one occasion the special number didn’t show up and so his mother called him up and told him, “I want you to stand here and sing this song.” And so right from when he was little he was taught to sing and so he got his love for music from his mother who was very talented musically. He also had a sister who could play the piano by ear without any music.
My Dad was compassionate and very concerned about people who were out of a job or on hard times. He gave money to several of his own kin who needed help. He even let cousins come live with us until they could get themselves back up and going again. There was also a woman in the ward who was struggling. Her home was in disarray and Dad will go and help her and even my mother would go over and help clean her place. They couldn’t get anyone else in the ward to want to go into her place and help but my parents went and help her until she was on her feet again. Dad and Mother would support each other and worked with the inactives to help them get to the temple. Every Sunday they would have a group over to their home and Dad would give a lesson in the gospel and Mother would serve refreshments. They helped many people in their stake get to the temple. When my Ruth was born with her condition, Dad would come after the surgery she had and he would put her in a wheel chair and wheel her all around and was such a good support to me and such a good grandpa. Another way he showed his compassion was that if we got a sore throat, he would get a long swab and dip it into a solution and paint our throats with it and we hated it, but he just wanted us all to be well.
Daddy had a time when he was not well. He had very bad bleeding ulcers and the ward was ask to fast for him. He was lying in bed which was not like him at all. It made me scared because that was not like him. Later he had to be operated on for those ulcers and have all but a fourth of his stomach removed which was a very new operation for that time. I was in high school at this time and when I came to visit him he looked so terrible with all those tubes in him that I ended up fainting and had to be taken to the hallway and pretty soon out came Carol Ann, who had fainted as well. We kept the hospital pretty busy that day and mother had to call a neighbor to come and get us because she didn’t want us to have to catch the bus home.
One early memory I have of my dad was at Christmas time. He made pinoche, which we loved, but as the years went by he started adding things to the pinoche and we thought that it would taste terrible with what he added but somehow it all got eaten and it tasted good. Also I will never forget Christmas time with him in the kitchen getting those pine nuts laid out and putting them in the oven. He roasted those pine nuts and the smell was so good. We enjoyed them so much. We always had a lovely Sunday dinner and my Dad would see that the meat was cooked just so and then he would carve the meat and make the most delicious gravy. He was known for his delicious gravy and I don’t know that anyone in the family ever topped his skill in making gravy. When it came to grandkids, he loved to put them on his crossed legs and jiggle that leg up and down and sing “Old Dan Tucker.” He had a smile on his face and the grandkids seemed to be tickled.
Now when it came to his girls, he didn’t have any boys, he liked to tease us. Carol and I shared a bedroom and he would come in and shake us awake and then dangle the most hideous spiders and we would just scream and pull the covers over our head. He would get a big kick out of that.
When I think about my Mother, I think of her as “chief cook and bottle washer” so to say. My Father was gone a lot both when he worked at the experimental station and later at Utah Idaho Sugar Company so she had to handle nearly everything. She took care of all of us. There were three girls for several years and then finally our new baby sister, Sally who was so cute and wanted to do everything and then a few years later we got two little surprises when our youngest two sisters, Linda Kay and Kristie were born just fourteen months apart. So she had six girls to take care of and she took care of our physical needs and our mental needs, and six girls could be quite emotional, and she took care of all the bills. Spiritually she had to present a good example with all of her church callings and then when our teeny grandma came to live with us, she had that responsibility as well. She also helped us with our homework. Mother was good to me because I didn’t like to read. I read each word and it took so long that I got discouraged, but she would help me with my homework and essays and she always came through for me so I was spoiled in that way.
My mother was a good Grandma babysitter and all of her grandchildren loved to play games with her. She taught them all how to play the card game 7 Up and they all enjoyed her so much. We all loved her special treats. On Sundays or special holidays she would make her homemade divinity. It was so delicious that she was ask by her ward to make it for the “Festival of Trees” and it was so popular there that many wanted her recipe. The reason it was different than most people was because she used dark karo syrup instead of light karo and she would beat it with a fork for a very long time to get it creamy. She also made puffed rice balls and we loved them and liked to help her form them into balls. They always seemed to disappear very quickly and were so fun to munch on.
One thing I enjoyed doing was going into Mother’s bedroom at the top of the stairs. Daddy had built that bedroom over the garage. I loved to go into her room when she was in there seated at her dressing table and watch her put on her perfume that I just loved to smell. Mother was not a woman who wore a lot of make-up, but I thought she looked and smelled like an angel
Mother did not know how to drive. Daddy did not believe in woman drivers and so she was not taught how to drive. So we all had to catch the bus if we wanted to go somewhere. One of our favorite places to go with her was downtown at Auerbauchs or Keeleys for a sandwich. One of the saleswoman knew mother so well and she was always watching out for sales for mother so she could get what she needed, especially for Carol Ann. We loved to go at Christmas and look at the dolls that they had so we could tell Santa what we wanted for Christmas.
Speaking of Christmas I remember a day when Mother had been shopping in town for our Christmas presents. She had to take the bus home with all her packages. She always tried to get the earlier bus home but then had to transfer buses and this one night she hadn’t come home and it was getting very late and it was a bad, bad snow storm. We were worried about her and by the time she got up the street to our circle having taken shelter at one of the houses on the way, she was frozen. When we saw her we knew what an ordeal she had been through so Janice made her a cup of hot chocolate and we rubbed her hands over and over because she was so frozen. It had taken her over an hour to just get up the street. She was willing to sacrifice to get me something that she had special ordered for Christmas – a marionette puppet. I was so thrilled that Christmas, but years later I realized what a sacrifice she had made that night.
Mother was also my Mutual teacher when I was about fourteen years old. She and Sister Jensen were co-teachers together and mother planned an early breakfast for the girls that was so much fun. She also helped not only her own girls with their Sunday talks, but any girl in the ward. For one Treasure of Truth night at Mutual my Mother made up this poem for me. It is so beautiful and inclusive with all of the things a mother wishes a daughter to have and become. Then there was another poem that she made up that had to do with my Aunt Mary’s ring that she wore. I admired that ring so much and Aunt Mary gave up that ring for me and Mother made up a poem about it. I loved my Aunt Mary and she lived up the street from us at one time and we all had our turn going there.
My mother was a very sensitive person when it came to helping people as well. By profession she was a teacher. She taught young children before she got married, but then stayed home when she got married with her children until her mother came to live with us and Kristie and Linda were both in school. Then she went back to teaching because the school district was so in need of kindergarten teachers. The parents all wanted their child to be in her class because she was so good and could really help children who were having problems. In fact, my own daughter went with her grandma to her class for a period of time while she was staying with them because of the health problems of our Steven. She taught school for about fifteen years.
When my Mother was very ill just a few months before she died, we were all called to come to her bedside in the hospital. We each took a turn sitting with her. She had had a fall in the bathroom and she just didn’t get well. One night when I was there sitting in the rocking chair by her bedside, she was kind of wrestling around in her bed and I could hear her and she kept saying, “why not? Why not?” She was talking with someone and I could feel that there was another presence there. I think she was asking why it was not time to go yet. I felt a tingling all over and it gave me the feeling that if we needed to see or talk to someone on the other side, that we could be given that opportunity.
Visit FamilySearch to learn more about LuRee Tolman, Bion Tolman, Lucille Morgan, Mary Margaret Clarkson, Phoebe Emerett Bates, and Judson Isaac Tolman. Also visit the Thomas Tolman Family Organization to find out how you can get more involved in family history.