The Frost Home in Unity

        After renting here for three years we managed to buy the place and started fixing it up. There was a rickety lean-to on the west which we tore down and made a pretty good porch on the front. It helped a lot for we were really crowded for more room. We finally got electricity. They had to build a line to us from the south. That first night every room in the house was lit up. In a few more years we were able to build three small rooms.

        Our wonderful family helped a great deal in paying for the home which we did several years before the contract was up. We did all our beet thinning, hoeing and topping for a long time. the hay and all that we possibly could do. We harvested our own beets and potatoes by hiring them hauled.

The Frost beet thinning crew. Front row: Myron, Gerald, Kathryn and Kitty,Middle row: Irma, Marian and Lorna. Back row: Thelma, Eunice, Ira and Celia with wind blown hair.Vyla was good at chopping heads with a camera The crew at work

        We tired raising most everything. We had turkeys, ducks. chickens, hogs, sheep, cows, and a goat but finally ended up with just cows and chickens. We built a good hen house with a garage and shop on the east end of it. Later we built a dairy barn and sold grade "A" milk.

        We had some sheep at one time. After shearing them we sent the wool away to have it made into quilt batts. I made lots of quilts to try to keep the family warm in this old cold house. Do any of you kids remember? We had hooks in the ceiling and strings down to the quilt frames. After they went to school down would come the quilt and I would work on it till they came home and it would go up again.

        I made overcoats and other clothing for the children. The underwear was all made from flour sacks. I love the memory of those days, they were happy days.

        I love flowers and especially my Iris hobby. At one time I had about two hundred different kinds. I'm not a very good housekeeper; there are many other things I rather do than keep house. I've done about everything on the farm.

        I cultivated beets and potatoes many times with a baby on my lap. I loved to see the hay fall as the knife hit it, and loved the smell of the new mown hay and grain. One time I was mowing along with the team and the seat broke off and let me down right on that old hard mower seat. I think I broke my tail bone. For a long time I couldn't sit without putting my foot under me to hold me up. It still bothers me some (1978), especially if I sit on a hard surface .

        The other day I heard something on TV or somewhere that reminded me of what we had to do to bathe Saturday night both when I was a child and when I had a family. It might be interesting to someone someday. We would put the old copper boiler on the cook stove to heat the water and bring in the old round wash tub, hang a blanket up for privacy, start with the youngest child and everyone took their turn according to age. The water would be warmed up each time after all the kids were cleaned up it would be mom and dad's turn.

Vyla and Kathryn getting in the car.

        We had to pump, pack, and heat the wash water on the stove and wash on a board. Finally the fall before Lorna was born we got a Maytag washer with a gas motor. Oh! What a luxury. Sometimes I would have trouble starting it and would have to call Ira in from the field. After we got electricity we had an eclectic motor on it and I wore that old washer completely out.

        During the depression of the 1930s we had a hard time making ends meet. Butterfat was only worth 10 cents a pound, eggs 10 cents per dozen. We would take a five gallon can of cream and a few eggs to town once a week get a sack of coal, a sack of flour (it took a sack a week), what groceries we could, and enough gas to get home to church and back to town again. We paid a full tithing and always managed to get what we needed. No one went hungry or cold.

        One winter we didn't have money to get a license for the car. We had to go down the canal bank and stay on the back roads to get to town. There was a place we called the half way place where we stopped going and coming to fill the radiator.

        I'm thankful for these experiences, it helps us to realize what our parents and grandparents went through in the early days of the church and when they pioneered this country, and crossed the plains to Utah. I'm so very thankful for my heritage and my wonderful forefathers who embraced the gospel that I might have it.

The Frost Family in 1940 Back: Celia, Myron, Eunice, and Thelma. Middle: Marion, Lorna, Ira, Vyla, and Irma. Front: Gerald and Kathryn.

Vyla on the back porch with Myron's rifle.

        During the winter of 1940-41 Eunice was working at Rogers Bros. (the potato mill). I also took a job at the mill one or two winters. Eunice and I only saw each other at shift change. One of my sisters made a joke when I started there, that after all these years, Vyla was working!

        On Sunday morning December 7, 1941. Japan declared war on us. By then the family were starting to leave one by one. As the children graduated from High School they began to go on their own. In August of 1941, Eunice went to Salt Lake City to attend the L.D.S. Business Collage. We took her down and it was very hard to leave her but she was in good hands with a missionary we knew in Moscow, Elder George Wood, and his family. I bawled all the way home. After a few months of collage she took a position with the Beneficial Life Insurance Company where she worked until she was called on a mission from 1945 to 1947 to the Western States Mission with headquarters in Denver, Colorado. After her mission Eunice enrolled at B.Y.U. where she met her future husband, William Earl Read, Jr. They were married June 2, 1948 in the Idaho Falls Temple.

Myron, home on leave

        Thelma likewise went to L.D.S. Business Collage and was later employed by a radio tube plant during World War II. There she met a lovely girl, LaZaun Jackson, who introduced Thelma to her brother, Jay, while he was on leave from the Navy in 1943. They were soon engaged and were married July 20, 1944 in the Logan Temple. We had never seen Jay till we met him at the temple but had correspond with him. We were impressed with him and loved him since.

        Myron wanted to do something for his country during World War II. He enlisted in the Navy on November 18, 1943. He took the place of a man with a family. His basic training was received at Farragut, Idaho. Due to illness and other things happening to him he was unable to continue on with the fellows he started with and was assigned to the ill fated U.S.S. Spence DD-512 a destroyer he loved. A great tragedy came to us December 18, 1944 when the Spence and two other destroyers were caught in a terrible typhoon off the shores of Luzon and sank. There were only a few survivors of the many men on those three ships. Our son made the supreme sacrifice for his country.

The Frost Family - January 1944. Back: Lorna, Celia, Myron, Eunice, and Thelma. Front: Marian, Gerald, Ira, Irma, Vyla, and Kathryn.

        The last time he was home, July 19, 1944 he told his girlfriend, Helen Wixom, that he was not afraid to die, that he lived right and I'm sure he had. He said he had never tasted tea, coffee, liquor, or tobacco. We took him to the bus and then headed for Logan to see Thelma married. After the war was over and the fellows were coming home. We wrote to some of them. One who lived in Clover near Buhl, Idaho came to see us. He said he had been in the Navy for eleven years and that was the worst storm he had ever seen. Another boy who knew Myron came, he spoke highly of Myron and said he was a peace maker among the fellows. On Tuesday May 8, 1945. at 8:00 President Truman declared V-E Day in Europe. (August 14^th was V-J Day and the war was over.)

Vyla and Ira on their 25th anniversary 1945

        Celia was married December 4, 1945, our anniversary, at our home in Unity to Ray Dudley. Bishop Sidney Larsen married them. They had two lovely children, Melody and Tim. They separated and she later married Gordon Buttars on September 22, 1954 and they had three Gordy, Cindee, and Connie. They were also married at our home by Bishop Morris Baker. They too, also separated.

        Lorna married Kenneth Turner on October 16, 1947 in the Idaho Falls Temple.

        Ira and I have been active in the church wherever we lived. Genealogical work has been my main interest but have worked in some other capacities also. On April 18, 1951 I was set apart by President Newel P Baker as a Stake Missionary. Ira had already been called and set apart December 17, 1950. We labored together, mostly with the Navajo Indian farm workers until December 30, 1952.

        One year I was second counselor in Relief Society to Sister Afton Baker in the Unity Ward from December 1956 to 1957. I have been a Relief Society visiting teacher in every ward that I have lived in. Era director for several years and again at the present time. Ira had been in the Sunday School superintendency in two different wards. He has been Aaronic Priesthood committeeman and ward teacher. Together we have done temple ordinances for a great number of people.

        June 9, 1950 Irma married Don Lindsay in the Salt Lake Temple. The same year, on the 28^th of November, Marion married Douglas Harper in the Idaho Falls Temple.

Ira, Vyla, and Grandma Dayley with Gayle, Judy,Tim, Darla, and Melody

        In the summer after Irma and Don were married they came and took care of things at home while we took a trip to southern Utah, Ira's home state. We had a good Studebaker car. We took Marian, Gerald, and Kathryn and went to Antimony, Tropic, Bryce Canyon, St George, and through Zion National Park. We slept under the stars part of the time. We visited Uncle Marion and Aunt Lizzy Frost at Tropic and Uncle Ivan Frost in Greenville. We spent the night with him and then took him to Richfield to see his doctor. I was driving through the mountains when a young deer jumped down on to the road. I hit it and killed it. Gerald wanted to take it with us. We reported it at our next stop.

        All our children are now married, the last two the same day. There was sure an empty spot in our house then. Gerald and Verlee, Kathryn and Richard were married June 3, 1953 in the Idaho Falls Temple. All the members of our family and their husbands were in the temple except Celia, she remained outside with the children.

        My travels were limited. My first train ride as a small girl was a trip to Boise, Idaho with my brother Myrl to come home with my father who had been working in the Legislature there. After my marriage I went by train to Moscow, Idaho.

        My first trip to Salt Lake was when Kathryn was a baby. I went with Pearl and Bert when they took Russell to the Children's Hospital. I left Kathryn with Mother, Daisy, and Nina. I stayed with Opal and Lott Hancock, some old friends. They took me around and I enjoyed the trip.