Dialann | Issue 14, April 2014

N EW YO RK A P R I L 2 0 1 4

REMEMBERING REVELEE

Get a notebook, a journal that will last through all time, and maybe the angels may quote from it for eternity. Begin today and write in it your goings and comings, your deepest thoughts, your achievements and your failures, your associations and your triumphs, your impressions and your testimonies.

P R E S I D E N T S P E N C E R W. K I M B A L L

NEW YORK

APRIL 2014

Our family Susan Jane Hibdon Joyce Dustin Tyler Joyce Fiona Claire Joyce Colin Everett Joyce

ISSUE 14

36 PAGES

TA B L E

of C O N T E N T S

N EW YO RK A P R I L 2 0 1 4

REMEMBERING REVELEE

on the front cover Susan’s grandmother, Revelee Lee Hibdon, in 1963 or 1965.

Dialann—Irish for “journal”—is published quarterly at New York, in January, April, July, and October.

on the BACK cover Susan’s cousin, Deborah Deegan, with Revelee Hibdon.

ISSN 2334-3230 (print) ISSN 2334-3249 (online) Published by Dustin Tyler Joyce dtjoyce.com Printed by Blurb blurb.com Sans serif text is set in Hypatia Sans.

Serif text is set in Adobe Text.

This issue was designed on a Dell Inspiron ONE2305 desktop, with 4 GB of RAM, a 1 TB hard drive, and an AMD Athlon II X2 240e processor with a speed of 2.8 GHz. The software used includes InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator in Adobe Creative Suite 5.5, as well as Google Drive. The operating system was Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

Original content is available for noncommercial use under a Creative Commons license. Some material in this issue was produced by others; material used under a Creative Commons license is identified by “CC” and the license type and version. For more info, visit dialann.org/copyright

14 14 Remembering Revelee At a springtime memorial service in Oregon, the Hibdons remembered their mother, grandmother, aunt, and matriarch in the way only the Hibdons could. + Mama Lee kills the neighbors’ hogs F RO M O U R A RCH I V ES

24 Receiving the call

17.45 PDT, 8 MAY 2007

WE BELIEVE IN CHRIST

28 Growing in the gospel

By Dustin | Dustin shares two more of the talks he gave in church as a youth. + The Church in our day N O T I F I C AT I O N S

31 January–March 2014 A new quarterly roundup of the tidbits of our lives we share on social media.

By Dustin | A journal entry from the month Dustin received his mission call reveals the mixed emotions of that 34 day—and the Spirit’s confirmation that he was going where the Lord wanted him to go.

THE JOURNAL SUSAN

dialann.org

DUSTIN

FIONA

‘Lift up the hands that hang down’

Finding our first home

The toddler that travels

In a church talk, Susan teaches that all of us can share the pure love of Christ—and we all need to feel it from others.

We found apartment 931 by chance. We made it—that wonderful little apartment—our home by choice.

Fiona imparts wisdom she’s gained on travels with Mama and Daddy.

PAGE 4

PAGE 6

PAGE 10

+ Valentine’s Day love notes from Mama

COLIN

Colin goes ‘hoteling’ for the first time A first train ride takes Colin to his first night away from home. + Colin’s baby blessing PAGE 12

M I LESTO N ES

JANUARY–MARCH 2014 JAN

JA N UA RY Mo Tu

2 Colin is born 4 Colin comes home

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s MetroCard, which New Yorkers use to pay subway and bus fares, turns 20. The MTA, which operates subways and buses in New York City as well as the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North, plans to phase the cards out by 2019 7 The low temperature in Central Park hits 4°F (–15.6°C), breaking a 118-year-old (1896) record low for 7 January in New York City—and the coldest temperature ever measured in the city in January. Wind chills were as low as –15°F (–26°C).

In fact, all 50 states, including Hawai‘i, have temperatures below freezing, and the phrase “polar vortex” enters our vocabulary 9 Dustin (32) 27 The price of a first-class stamp rises from 46 to 49 cents

F E B RUA RY 2 Colin’s baby blessing (see page 13) 6 After 22 years on the air, Jay Leno hosts The Tonight Show for the last time. Like, for reals this time 7–23 Sochi, Russia, hosts the XXII Olympic Winter Games 17–18 Family to New Haven, Connecticut—Colin’s first overnight trip (see page 12) 28 Susan and Dustin’s 6th anniversary (technically on 29 February, but that date doesn’t occur this year)

MAR

Su

1 In a ceremony at his home in Brooklyn two minutes after midnight, Bill de Blasio is sworn in as New York City’s 109th mayor

6 The Senate votes 56–26 to confirm Janet Yellen as chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Ms. Yellen is the first woman to head the United States’ central bank

FEB

2 John Travolta introduces “the wickedly talented one and only Adele Dazeem” at the 86th Academy Awards—which would be fine, except her name is actually Idina Menzel. It was an embarrassing slip-up that left viewers scratching their heads and everyone wondering once again what’s wrong with Mr. Travolta 5 Researchers announce a new discovery about Stonehenge: its stones “ring” a bit like a bell or a gong when struck, leading some to wonder whether the monument’s original purpose was to produce, as The Guardian cheekily put it, “rock music” 8 Malaysia Airlines flight 370, flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board (227 passengers and 12 crew), disappears en route; on 24 March, Malaysia’s prime minister announces that “beyond any reasonable doubt” investigators have determined that the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean south of Perth, Australia, killing all on board 10 The American Public Transportation Association reports that transit ridership in the United States is at its

2 3

Sa

4

1

1

Su

5

2

2

Mo

6

3

3

Tu

7

4

4

We

8

5

5

Th

9

6

6

Fr

10

7

7

Sa

11

8

8

Su

12

9

9

Mo

13

10

10

Tu

14

11

11

We

15

12

12

Th

16

13

13

Fr

17

14

14

16 Crimea holds a referendum on whether to join Russia; Russian troops were already occupying the peninsula, so unsurprisingly the vote was nearly unanimous in Russia’s favor.

The ongoing crisis in the region has been a major international issue, revealing in sharp relief the simmering tensions between Russia and the West

Sa

18

15

15

Su

19

16

16

Mo

20

17

17

Tu

21

18

18

We

22

19

19

Th

23

20

20

Fr

24

21

21

Sa

25

22

22

17 A minor, 4.4-magnitude earthquake shakes Los Angeles just before sunrise, notable mostly for, as the Los Angeles Times put it, ending the city’s “earthquake drought”. It was also caught on camera during KTLA’s morning newscast, which showed the anchors diving under the desk before popping back up to continue the program after the shaking stopped

Su

26

23

23

Mo

27

24

24

Tu

28

25

25

We

29

26

26

Th

30

27

27

Fr

31

28

28

MR.TINDC | 14 MARCH 2010 | CC BY-ND 2.0 HTTPS://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/MR_T_IN_DC/4444688472

2 Gilbert Arizona Temple dedicated by President Thomas S. Monson. With 85,000 square feet (7,900 square meters) of floor space, it is the largest temple constructed by the Church in 17 years

1

Th Fr Don’t leave home without it: We can get by without a cell phone, house keys, or even a wallet. But these—these are our constant companion.

M ARCH

We

highest level since large-scale suburbanization began in the 1950s, with more than 10.7 billion trips taken on buses, trains, and other modes in 2013. One-third of those trips were taken in New York and the surrounding region 12 An explosion levels two apartment buildings, at 1644 and 1646 Park Avenue on the west side of the Metro-North trestle between 116th and 117th streets, in East Harlem, Manhattan

22 A major mudslide near Oso, Washington, about 50 miles east of Seattle, covers a one-squaremile (2.6-square-kilometer) area in mud and debris and kills 43 people—the deadliest mudslide in United States history

Sa

29

Su

30

Mo

31

CO LO R KEY holidays travel birthdays events in our lives events in the Church world events

DIAL ANN APRI L 2014

3

THE JOURNAL

‘Lift up the hands that hang down’ sunday, 9 march 2014 All of us can share the pure love of Christ—and we all need to feel it from others.

This is the transcript of a talk Susan gave in the sacrament meeting of the Bushwick 1st Branch.

4

ood morning, everyone. I’ve been asked to speak today about charity and service. One of my favorite scriptures is the one about charity, the one that’s in Corinthians1 and also in Moroni,2 that says “charity is the pure love of Christ.”3 And that is the reason that we do service, because of love for those around us. But what I’ve been thinking about lately is that the service that most people need is just love itself. Really all we need is love. It’s not the physical service, the things we bring to each other, or doing somebody’s dishes—it’s just the love that we show each other.

Earlier this week at school, I was visiting a friend’s classroom and picked up one of the books that students read during their free reading time.

It’s a book I have seen many times over the years, called A Child Called ‘It’, which some of you may have read. It’s incredibly popular among high-school students, and I honestly cannot understand why.

I can never read this book because it is so sad. It’s autobiographical. It was written by a man who, when he was a little boy, was horribly, horribly abused by his mother. It eventually has a happy ending: it turns out there are three books in the series and, obviously, he grows up and he’s doing just fine now. But it’s so sad because this little boy grew up feeling like nobody loved him. And every once in a while I hear stories similar to that in the news about some awful thing that happened to somebody, whether it’s a little kid or a grownup. And every time I hear those stories, I wish I could be the one that could hold that little kid and be the one who loves that kid and let them know that there is somebody who loves them. I think that is the saddest thing in the world. There are lots of sad things in the world, but I think the saddest thing in the world is kids growing up and adults going through life feeling like nobody loves them—feeling alone and feeling unloved.

And the Savior said a few times, if you love me, feed my sheep.4 In the past week as I’ve been thinking about this talk, I’ve started to realize a little more about that. The Savior wants us to serve each other because he loves the people that we serve. And he feels sad when he sees one of those people feeling sad.

It’s not just because he’s taken all of our pains upon him. Yes, he feels sad because he feels our sadness, because he’s the Savior and he took all of our pains and sicknesses and everything upon himself in the Atonement. But he also feels his own sadness when we’re sad. It’s not just our sadness that he’s feeling; he feels sad, for himself.

I think about how sad I am about the idea of a kid who gets teased and doesn’t have any friends. Or,

G

one of my greatest fears as I was growing up, when I was in high school especially, was that someday I would grow up and I would get a job and move to some city and where I didn’t know anybody and I would be all alone. And I thought about how sad it would be to spend my birthday by myself having nobody around to tell me happy birthday. And, thankfully, that has never happened. But it does happen to some people. And I think about how sad that is. Or, when somebody’s older and they’re retired and they live alone or they live in a care facility and there’s nobody who goes to visit them. And I know that Heavenly Father does not want that to happen to his children. He doesn’t want any of us to be alone.

We’re not alone, because the Holy Ghost can always be with us. And Heavenly Father loves all of his children. But sometimes we all need a person to be there to love us. I think about my own children and how I want to make sure that they never feel sad or alone. (They’ll feel sad sometimes—everybody feels sad sometimes. Fiona tripped on the way in to church today and skinned her knee. But she’s fine now.) But the feeling of loneliness, of having no one—I hope that never happens. And that’s why it means so much to me when I see other people around us showing their love for my children, because I want them to know that they’re loved, not just by us but by other people. I think that’s how Heavenly Father feels about his children: he wants all of us to feel loved by his other children. And everyone can do that. It doesn’t really take a lot of resources to love. You don’t need money. You don’t necessarily need to have time. You don’t need a lot of education or training or anything like that. You just have to be there for somebody. “Mourn with those that mourn … and comfort those that stand in need of comfort.”5 All of us can do that. And all of us are in that position sometimes where we are the ones that are mourning or we are the ones that need to be comforted.

I have many stories, it turns out, that relate to this subject. One of them happened a long time ago. My older brother was in college. It must have been at least 20 years ago, I think. He came home at Christmastime from college and he had one of those little Game Boys, I guess. I don’t know—I was little enough that I didn’t know what it was called. But I guess it was a little Game Boy, which was kind of a big deal at the time because it was a long time ago.

And my older sister said, “Wow, where’d you get that thing?!” And he said, “Oh, well, my friend so-and-so gave it to me for Christmas.” And my sister said—it was pretty unusual that a college student would’ve been able to buy this thing for another college

SUSAN student—so my sister said, “Really?! Why did he do that? Why would he give you that present?” So my brother told this story about this guy that was pretty awkward and didn’t have a lot of social skills and a lot of people made fun of him. (You would think that, by college, people would be over making fun of each other, but apparently they were not.) So they were making fun of this guy. And I remember vividly the tone in my brother’s voice when he said, “I just would never do that.” He was friends with this guy because he just would never treat somebody that way.

It’s really very simple to show love for people, I think. It’s not as complicated as we sometimes think that it is. And sometimes with home and visiting teaching we think it has to be this big thing. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. We’re just showing love for people. We’re just letting people know that we love them. And the thing about service—like going out and helping people—is, that lets people know you care about them. There are some kinds of service where you’re sort of disconnected from the person, like a big natural disaster—the earthquake in Haiti6 or the earthquake in Japan7 or the typhoon in the Philippines8—where we can’t physically go there to help, but maybe we can donate some money to help. And, in some cases, that’s all that we can really do to show that we care about those people. But in a lot of cases we do actual things: bringing a meal to somebody who’s sick or stressed out, or helping clean somebody’s house up after Hurricane Sandy, or washing dishes for somebody—anything that you can imagine, any little thing that somebody might need.

We’re not just showing that we’re there for them to fill their physical or temporal needs—we’re not just there to take a meal, we’re not just there to clean up their house, we’re there to show that we actually care about that person, which doesn’t just fill the temporal need. It fills their emotional and social and spiritual needs by showing that we love them and by showing that Heavenly Father loves them also.

One scripture that has always stood out to me about love might not seem like a usual love scripture: it’s in Doctrine and Covenants 81:5. And it says: “Wherefore, be faithful; stand in the office which I have appointed unto you; succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees.” When I was a missionary in Germany I was walking with my companion one day in some

neighborhood that we had never been to and there was this statue. And it was interesting that my companion and I both thought of this scripture when we saw this statue. I don’t know what exactly the statue looked like—it was more a sculpture, I guess, it wasn’t any particular person.

But this person had really long arms and their hands were hanging down and their shoulders were kind of slumped and it just looked like somebody who needed help, somebody who was weak and needed to be succored, somebody who needed their hands to be lifted up and their knees to be strengthened. And that, to me, is about love, because sometimes we just feel like we can’t go on.

A similar scripture is the one in Doctrine and Covenants 45 that talks about men’s hearts failing them in the latterdays—in the last days, men’s hearts will fail them.9 To me, that means that you just feel like you can’t do it any more. You’re at the end of your rope and you can’t handle it any

that summer. But that was not my plan. I wanted to be a high-school teacher again—I wanted to have, you know, a “real” job and an actual apartment. But I didn’t think I wanted it to be in Utah. And I knew I didn’t want to go back to Texas, which is where I had been before my mission. So I was sort of applying for teaching positions all over the country, which is not the way that you normally get teaching positions. And it was scary, because, if any of you have ever worked in a school district, you might be aware: teachers don’t get hired until August usually, because everybody wants to make sure that they have their next job lined up before they officially quit their last job, and that means their last job can’t be filled until their resignation is in, and that doesn’t happen until August, or sometimes September. So it’s really, really scary because you don’t know what you’re going to be doing. And I, in this case, was going to have to move to whatever city I ended up getting a job in, but I wasn’t going to know

You just have to be there for somebody. “Mourn with those that mourn … and comfort those that stand in need of comfort.” All of us can do that.

And all of us are in that position sometimes where we are the ones that are mourning or we are the ones that need to be comforted.

more and you have nothing left. You just can’t go on. And you’re not just physically worn out where you need a nap, but you’re emotionally and spiritually worn out where you need love.

A little while after I came home from my mission, I didn’t know what to do with my life. I had already taught for three years before my mission. And then I came home and I didn’t have an apartment to live in, and I didn’t have a job, and I wasn’t in school any more, so I couldn’t take a semester to try to figure things out, because I was the teacher. I was the one who was supposed to be teaching and earning money and supporting myself. And I didn’t know where to go. I lived with my parents for a little while, just a month or two. And then I found an apartment in Provo. (Which was a weird experience; it’s the only time I’ve ever lived in Provo. It was enough for me.)

And I found a sort of temporary “filler” job that allowed me to get by in Provo for

if I had a job until two weeks before school started. So it was really, really stressful, and I felt like I was going through all of this by myself. I was scared and alone, and making big decisions all by yourself without anybody to bounce ideas off of or anything like that was really overwhelming.

I went to the temple one day, and I was sitting in the celestial room and just crying because I just didn’t know what to do. It was really nice to be in the temple because it was a feeling of relief: at least in the temple I was safe, and maybe I would just never ever leave. This lady that I had never seen before came up and she said, “You know, I thought that you might need a hug.” I’m sure it was probably fairly obvious that I might have needed a hug, because I think there were tears streaming down my cheeks. I did not look good at all. And it really wasn’t just a hug that I needed. I continued on page 30 DIAL ANN APRI L 2014

5

THE JOURNAL

Finding our first home We found apartment 931 by chance. We made it—that wonderful little apartment— our home by choice.

For more about apartment 931, including a photo gallery and an excerpt on Dorchester House from from the foremost book on Washington, D.C.’s most prominent apartment buildings, Best Addresses

by James M. Goode, visit

dialann.org 6

s Susan and I were making wedding and life-together plans in late 2007 and early 2008, a top item on the agenda was finding a place to live. I had been living in a family’s attic in Tenleytown in Northwest D.C. while Susan had been living with two roommates in Parkside, a condominium complex by the Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro station in Montgomery County, Maryland, that was nicknamed “little Provo” because of all the members of the D.C. 2nd singles ward who lived there. Clearly she wasn’t moving into an attic with me, and there was no way I was moving to the dreadfully dull Parkside, or any place outside the District of Columbia for that matter. So we started looking.

We decided that a reasonable monthly rent budget would be the sum of what we had previously been paying separately—in my case, $700 a month, and for Susan, $600, for $1,300 or so.1 At the time, that actually gave us some nice things to choose from in D.C.

One of the first places we looked was at The Envoy, a beautiful, older apartment building on 16th Street NW across from Meridian Hill Park. The neighborhood itself was lovely—I had spent time there on several of my many walking explorations of the city—and Meridian Hill Park, with its dramatic fountain and paths shaded by large, old trees, was certainly a draw. The building itself was gorgeous on the outside while, inside, the lobby was stunning.

Though the available apartment itself had been remodeled with carpeting and contemporary kitchen cabinets that dated the renovation to about 15 years prior, on the whole I thought it would be an awesome place to live—and we could actually afford it, too!

I worked just down 16th Street, so I had arrived first on that Friday evening, 25 January 2008, and got a personal tour of the building. When Susan arrived later, she liked what we saw, too, but we weren’t quite ready to commit to the first place we’d seen.

Malinda, the very friendly and very earnest leasing agent who had provided the tour, said she would hold the apartment for us even though, she whispered, she wasn’t supposed to. We thanked her and said we would be in touch.

The next morning, Saturday, 26 January, we got an early start. Susan drove us in her car, Pantone, to make the process a little faster. We started off at Waterside Towers at 6th and I streets in Southwest D.C. An email message from a leasing agent to Susan at the time describes it well:

A

We are excited that you are interested

in a new home at Waterside Towers. We have one 1 bedroom available for move in on 1-23-08 that has a fabulous water view renting for 1,300.00 to 1,400.00 per month with all utilities included. A nice feature to our apartment homes, you can enter the balcony from the living area and the bedroom. Laundry facilities are located on each floor and we use smart cards instead of coins. We are a 1/2 block from the Waterfront metro and three blocks from le’font [sic; it’s actually L’Enfant] metro.

Like the apartment at The Envoy, these were carpeted, and the kitchens, too, dated to the early 1990s. But the view from the balcony was stunning, overlooking the Washington Channel and East Potomac Park, with a clear view of the Jefferson Memorial and the buildings across the river in Arlington. The top third or so of the Washington Monument was even visible above some nearby buildings. Southwest at the time was an up-andcoming neighborhood that was rapidly changing, and it could be a cool place to live, even if urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s had stripped it of most of the historic charm that characterizes much of Washington. We said we would be in touch.

Susan had seen an ad online for an apartment building called Dorchester House. It was at 2480 16th Street NW, just up the street from The Envoy. She suggested we stop by to see what they had, so we hopped back into Susan’s car and headed there next.

Your first impression of these buildings is, of course, the lobby. While the lobby at The Envoy is visually stunning, the lobby at Dorchester House is, in its own way, impressive: it is literally the longest lobby of any apartment building in Washington.

(We later learned this was because, at the time it was built, 16th Street NW was a very fashionable place to live, and the building’s front door was put at the one corner actually touching 16th Street to secure an address on that street.) That, combined with the original art-deco details still visible in the lobby, made up for the dated orange and green carpet and peach-colored walls that were slightly reminiscent of a nightclub frozen in a 1980s heyday that had long since passed.

In the leasing office we met Tyrone, who whisked us up to the 9th floor to show us apartment 931, a recently vacated apartment at the end of a hallway equal in length to the building’s exaggerated lobby. We entered through the orange door and into a small foyer with a coat closet to the left. Beyond that,

DUSTIN a vast original parquet floor shimmered like a sea thanks to what looked like an inch or two of glossy lacquer. This huge, L-shaped space served as both living and dining area.

Walled off on the left was the small kitchen, with its original white washboard sink—the washboards were, in fact, the only counter space in the kitchen—and cabinetry. Across the living room were a single bedroom and bathroom, connected by a short hallway (if it could be called a hallway) and separated by a linen closet. The bathroom had a small, frosted window to the outside while the bedroom had two windows, one on each of the outside walls.

We were immediately drawn to the three windows at the far end of the living room. When we got there, we were almost awestruck by what we saw: a sweeping view of the nation’s capital, from the Washington Monument to Washington National Cathedral. We looked across much of the city, including Dupont Circle and Foggy Bottom, down to the Potomac River and beyond into Arlington. Looking down the river we could see National Airport, the Air Force Memorial near the Pentagon, and the recently completed Wilson Bridge, which carried the southern part of the Capital Beltway, Interstate 495, between Alexandria, Virginia, and Prince George’s County, Maryland.

Susan and I first thought that there was no way we could afford so incredible a space. Then Tyrone told us the rent: $1,425.00 a month, all utilities included.

Actually, it was entirely within our means (thanks, rent control!).

Tyrone mentioned that there was another one-bedroom apartment available in the building, and he took us down to the sixth floor to see it. It, too, was a beautiful space, with a view up 16th Street toward the three church spires that crown Meridian Hill at the intersection of 16th Street, Mount Pleasant Street, and Columbia Road (a nameless square—unusual in the nation’s capital). But we knew that if we were going to live at Dorchester House, we wanted to live in apartment 931. We returned to the leasing office and told Tyrone we would be in touch.

We had seen some great apartments and now we had a decision to make.

We decided to take a walk through the neighborhood. We walked west down Euclid Street on the north side of Dorchester House, toward the heart of Adams Morgan at Columbia Road and 18th Street. It was a brisk, breezy, sunny day.

Bedroom 14′8″ × 12′9″ 4.47m × 3.89m

CLOSET

Bath

5′3″ × 8′8″ 1.6m × 2.64m A/C LINEN CLOSET

Living room 21′6″ × 12′8″ 6.55m × 3.86m

CLOSET

A/C

CLOSET

REF

Kitchen

Dining room 13′7″ × 7′5″ 4.14m × 2.26m

CLOSET

ABOUT DORCHESTER HOUSE address 2480 16th Street NW Washington, D.C. architect Francis L. Koenig, 1941 original apartments 70 studios 291 one-bedrooms 33 two-bedrooms 394 total

Floor plan of apartment 931.

DRAWN BY DUSTIN, BASED ON DIAGRAMS ON DORCHESTER HOUSE’S CURRENT WEBSITE AND IN THE BOOK BEST ADDRESSES: A CENTURY OF WASHINGTON’S DISTINGUISHED APARTMENT HOUSES BY JAMES M. GOODE (DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: SMITHSONIAN BOOKS, 1988) MEASUREMENTS ARE APPROXIMATE

page 8 (over) A vintage advertisement for Dorchester House, published shortly before the building opened in 1941.

VIA GHOSTS OF DC GHOSTSOFDC.ORG/2012/10/10/DORCHESTER-HOUSE-AD-1941

Opened as rental in 1941 DIAL ANN APRI L 2014

7

8

When we arrived at the triangle bounded

by Euclid Street, Champlain Street, and Columbia Road—another nameless square—we looked around. We had our Brigham Young moment: we realized that this was the place. The buildings, the shops, the trees, the rowhouses lining Euclid Street, the historic First Church of Christ, Scientist, overlooking the square—we knew this was where we wanted to begin our lives together. So we marched back to the leasing office at Dorchester House and told Tyrone we’d take apartment 931.

We signed the lease at 18.00 on Wednesday, 20 February, and I moved in that Saturday, 23 February. Susan joined me, of course, on Saturday, 1 March, after our wedding in New York the day before.

We loved that apartment. In spite of limited kitchen and counter space, we made the best of it and that kitchen became the source of great dinners and desserts and food for parties. We loved having people over. Shortly after we moved in, the fourth Indiana Jones film was to be released. To gear up for it, over the course of a month we invited friends over and borrowed a projector to show the first three films on the large white wall in the dining area. During the first film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, we even had some special effects courtesy of Mother Nature: during the scene on a stormy night when Indiana Jones first goes into the chamber filled with snakes, a thunderstorm broke out over D.C., rushing wind through our apartment and slamming at least one door. The timing was perfect.

On another occasion we had Susan’s parents, her sister Ellen, and her sister Karen and her family over for dinner.

(That would pretty much be an impossible achievement in our current apartment.)

There was also the time the elders quorum in our ward was supposed to feed the missionaries, but no one stepped forward to do it. So we had all eight missionaries serving in our branch as well as a few quorum members over. (Also unachievable in our current apartment.) There was the “wine and cheese” party Susan organized, and Fiona’s first birthday party. So many memories.

We also loved the rooftop deck, which afforded a 360-degree panorama of the nation’s capital, including the Capitol dome and the treelined view straight down 16th Street to the White House. We had Harris Teeter, the grocery store I had grown up with in North Carolina, right next door (which also had a Redbox in the lobby), and

The view from apartment 931.

DUSTIN | 9.16 EDT, 27 MARCH 2009

the month we moved in D.C.’s first Target opened in the heart of Columbia Heights, a 10-minute walk away. (Our trips to Target now take around an hour one-way.) We loved walks around Meridian Hill Park and its fountain, especially after we discovered the drum circle that gathers there on Sunday afternoons.

That’s not to say apartment 931 was perfect. Its south- and west-facing position on the top floor of the building—much too high for trees to shade—meant it could get terribly hot in the summer. That got a little better our second summer in the apartment when central air conditioning was installed—but that was in the midst of a protracted legal battle between the building’s owner and tenants over the installation of that air conditioning and potential reductions in rent in exchange for tenants taking over payment for their own electricity.2 Mice were occasional houseguests.

On Thursday, 1 September 2011, our family, which by then included little Fiona, woke up in that apartment for the last time. It was virtually empty by then; our belongings were already on their way to our new home in Brooklyn. We said a bittersweet farewell to our first home. After 1,279 days3—exactly three and a half years— we closed the door to apartment 931 behind us for the last time.

But I will never forget the first night I spent in apartment 931. It was an exciting time, but it was also an anxious time. Susan and I felt confident in our decision to marry each other, but new experiences, no matter how great, can be nerve-racking. As I went to sleep on the air mattress we had put in the bedroom for my use that week, I lay thinking about everything ahead, with a mix of excitement and anxiety churning in my stomach. Just then, a nearly full moon broke through the clouds and a column of moonlight shone through the window right onto where I lay. A calm and peaceful feeling came over me, and I knew everything would be alright.

And it was. d NOTES 1. Susan and I can’t remember if these figures are entirely accurate, but they’re close.

2. For the record, we thought the central air conditioning was a much-needed improvement.

And when people pay for their own electricity, they’re likely to use less of it—a win for everyone, including the planet. And the final ruling on the rent decrease was quite favorable to tenants, especially those, like us, who chose to start paying our own electric bill as soon as possible.

3. It was 1,279 days from the day both Susan and Dustin lived there, 1 March 2008; since Dustin moved in on 23 February 2008, he lived in apartment 931 for 1,286 days.

DIAL ANN APRI L 2014

9

THE JOURNAL

The toddler that travels

M Fiona’s firsts

Fiona’s first visit to each of the states she’s been to so far States where Fiona’s has had an actual, on-the-ground visit States Fiona has passed through by plane, train, or bus * Fiona first passed through a few states before visiting them later.

For more details and to keep up with Fiona’s travels, visit her TravelTracker at

dialann.org

Fiona imparts some of the wisdom she’s gained on travels with Mama and Daddy.

10

District of Columbia 15 July 2010

Indiana 21 April 2011

Maryland 17 July 2010

Ohio 21 April 2011

Virginia 9 August 2010

Nevada 8 August 2011

West Virginia 22 September 2010

California 8 August 2011

North Carolina 25 February 2011

Delaware 19 August 2011

South Carolina 15 April 2011

New York 19 August 2011

Georgia 15 April 2011

New Jersey 11 September 2011*

Alabama 15 April 2011

Connecticut 26 October 2011

Mississippi 17 April 2011

Pennsylvania 26 May 2012*

Louisiana 18 April 2011

Utah 23 December 2012*

Tennessee 20 April 2011

Massachusetts 17 February 2013

Kentucky 21 April 2011

Vermont 18 February 2013

Illinois 21 April 2011

New Hampshire 18 Feburary 2013

y Mama and Daddy say that only two things are worth spending money on. And, they say, since there’s such a thing as libraries, that really leaves just one thing: traveling.

Mama and Daddy take me and Baby Brother places as often as they can. Sometimes it’s just a daytrip, which means it’s a trip that we take in just one day. They wake me and Baby Brother up early in the morning and we go to the train station and take a train somewhere like the beach or the farm or a small town.

Sometimes we go places that are even farther away and we have to go hoteling. Hoteling is the best. That’s when you eat pizza and drink soda and eat ice cream and watch TV. When you can go to Connecticut [see page 12], you can get a movie like Finding Nemo, and that’s my favorite one! Then we go to sleep in a big room with big, comfy beds. It’s so much fun!

This summer we’re going to go camping in Pennsylvania with Grammy and Papa. When we go camping you have to have special stuff like flashlights. We’re going to get a car to go there.

I’m so excited! I’ve never been camping before.

We’re going to stay in our own cabin. Mama and Daddy tell me it’s a little like hoteling but that we’ll have our very own little house.

Sometimes we go even farther away. When we go to Salt Lake it’s very far, so we have to take two airplanes and it’s nighttime when we actually just get there. I like being on a plane, but there’s seatbelts and I don’t know how to lift suitcases up onto airplanes. But I like sitting down and taking a rest and seeing the city above us. I don’t feel bored at all on airplanes. I have so much fun!

I really like riding in airplanes, but riding the

FIONA Highlighted portions of text are verbatim quotes from Fiona. We're a little behind—okay, a lot behind, like over a year— on our magazine right now, and Fiona didn't necessarily speak this well in April 2014. These lines were recorded 12 May 2015.

bus can be just as much fun, even if the view on the New Jersey Turnpike isn’t as nice. When we’re visiting Nana we have to go to Maryland, so we have to take the Megabus. It’s fun bumping up and down. When you go to D.C., it’s pretty far from New York. I play games like knock-knock jokes. This is my favorite: Knock knock!

[Who’s there?]

Jamaican!

[Jamaican who?]

Jamaican me crazy!

There’s also this one, which I just made up: Knock knock!

[Who’s there?]

Orange peel!

[Orange peel who?]

Orange peel glad you could collect all my fruits!

And I also get to have picnics on the Megabus and on the plane.

When I visit my cousins, they’re in Bethesda, so we take a Megabus to get there, too. They also live in Maryland! So Maryland is a state we get to go to a lot.

Mama and Daddy tell me that there are 50 states, plus a place called the District of Columbia which isn’t a state but it’s still in the United States but the people there don’t get representation in Congress. I don’t know what any of that really means, but I’ll take their word for it. Anyway, they say that their goal is for me to visit all 50 of them (plus D.C., which is where I was born, so that’s done). And I’m excited to come along for the ride. d

VA L E N TI N E ’S DAY

love notes from Mama On Valentine’s Day, Fiona and I went ice skating (see page 32 for a photo). When we got back, Susan surprised each of us with 12 little love notes, each noting something that Susan loves about us. Here’s what she said.

—dustin

TO D USTI N

TO F I O N A

I love watching you dance.

I love singing songs with you.

I love listening to you talk to Colin while you change his diapers.

I love your stories about when you were in high school.

I love watching you run and play with Fiona.

I love holding your hand when we walk down the street.

I love how committed you are to doing the right thing.

I love it that you like to wear firefighter boots.

I love it that you appreciate my influence.

I love your good memory.

I love your sense of adventure.

I love listening to you pray.

I love getting hugs from you.

I love the questions you ask.

I love how interested you are in things, like trains and maps and languages and making things look nice.

I love watching you jump and dance when you talk.

I love it that you do silly things like having a dish brush poke its head in the door to say goodbye to me.

I love your laugh.

I love the excited look you get on your face when you’re about to do something you know will make me laugh.

I love being cozy with you and talking about things like rain or plants.

I love it that you know how to be happy and take joy in little things, like ordering pizza in a hotel or having 12 cans of tomatoes.

I love the way you help us take care of Baby Brother.

I love knowing that you love me and that you want to be the best you can be for me, Fiona, and Colin. I love it that you looked at my ring every night and thought about that.

I love it that you like to go to the museum.

DIAL ANN APRI L 2014

11

THE JOURNAL

Colin goes ‘hoteling’* for the first time 17–18 february 2014 Colin spends his first night away from home—and takes his first train ride, to boot.

Colin hangs out on the bed in our hotel room in New Haven, Connecticut.

DUSTIN | 21.08 EST, 17 FEB 2014

* This is a Fionaism that simply means staying in a hotel. (Perhaps it also includes watching a movie, eating pizza and a treat, and drinking soda in said hotel, since that’s what we always do, too. See page 10.) Except she normally pronounces it as if it were spelled “hooteling”.

12

R

ight around the time I started to get used to my surroundings, one day Mama and Daddy and Fiona started packing things into these boxes—“suitcases,” they called them—and then they packed me into my car seat in my stroller and away we went to some places I had never imagined before. It was an interesting experience, I guess. Not what I was expecting (I didn’t really know that there was anything else to expect besides going to our house, to church, and on walks).

First we rode the subway, which wasn’t that unusual. But then we went into a huge room that almost looked like it must be outside, it was so big. And then we got onto a train.

Not a regular subway train, but a different kind of train. I looked out the window some, and slept some, as usual.

When we got off the train, we were someplace else. I don’t really know that much yet, so it’s hard to say, but it seemed new. And cold. We walked and walked until we got to a new building and went inside. I was pretty hungry at that point, so I mostly remember crying until Mama gave me a bottle while Daddy talked to a lady at a desk. Then we got on an elevator and went upstairs to a new apartment! There were two big beds, and later someone brought a little

bed for me. I got to flop down on some really soft blankets on one of the big beds. Fiona flopped down on the other one. She seemed pretty excited about “hoteling.”

After a while someone brought in another thing that Mama and Daddy said was going to be my bed. That sounded good to me. But then we went outside again and walked around. I don’t remember much of that, but eventually we went back to our new apartment while Daddy went to buy something sweet and cold that big kids and grownups eat. And then someone knocked on the door, and they handed us some food!

I don’t eat that kind of food, of course, but it seemed pretty nice that it just showed up. I had my dinner—my usual—while Fiona, Daddy, and Mama ate theirs and watched something with lots of colors and sounds. Then I went to sleep in my new bed.

The next day we went outside again, and there was a ton of that white stuff everywhere.

I mean, it just seemed to go on and on. I could see it out the side of my stroller as we went around town. I was perfectly cozy, of course, but Mama, Daddy, and Fiona didn’t seem quite as comfortable. But that meant that we stopped in at a few interesting places, like one place with giant tables where they got something hot to drink, and another place with lots of pictures hanging on the walls. That was a pretty neat place. I slept, of course.

After a while, we went back to the train station and got back on a train to go home. It was an interesting experience. It’s kind of weird that I slept in that bed just the one time, and I haven’t seen it again since. But it’s okay, I think, because it was so nice to come home to the place I know best. d

COLIN Colin’s baby blessing

COLINTRACKER

GIVEN BY DUSTIN TYLER JOYCE | SUNDAY, 2 FEBRUARY 2014 BUSHWICK FIRST BRANCH, BROOKLYN NEW YORK STAKE

TOOTHTRACKER

0

UPPER RIGHT

LEFT

So far, teeth.

But we’re sure he’ll have some someday.

LOWER

TRAVELTRACKER

Colin and Dustin with those who participated in his blessing in front of our church building at 185 Marcy Avenue, Brooklyn.

CHRISTINA KIM HOMER | 10.13 EST, 2 FEBRUARY 2014

ur Father in Heaven, by the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood, we bring this child into our arms to give him a name and a blessing. The name we give him is Colin Everett Joyce.

Colin, you have been born into a family that loves you. You have parents who have testimonies of the gospel of Jesus Christ and who were sealed in the temple by proper priesthood authority. Because of that, you have been born into an eternal family—a family whose goal is, like your Father in Heaven’s, to help you be happy in this life and to gain eternal life and joy.

We bless you as you grow up that you will develop properly physically and mentally and spiritually.

We bless you with the knowledge that your body is a temple where the Holy Ghost can dwell if you are obedient to Heavenly Father’s commandments.

We bless you that you will be curious about the world around you, that you will

O

enjoy learning and exploring and seeing new things and that as you do so you will gain understanding and knowledge that will help you in your life as you serve your family and as you serve in the Church and as you serve others.

Above all, Colin, we bless you with the knowledge that your Heavenly Father is real, that he loves you. We bless you that you will be able to gain a testimony of our Savior, Jesus Christ. We bless you that you will be eager to learn of his life and his ministry and to follow his example in your own life. We bless you that you will be able to be ordained to the priesthood and go to the temple and make covenants there and that you will have the opportunity to be a missionary and teach others the truth that you know. And we bless you that in all things you will follow the example of your Savior.

We love you very much, and we leave these blessings with you in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. d

2 STATES New York 2 January 2014

Connecticut 17 February 2014

FIRSTTRACKER Goodnight (family singing, scripture study, and prayer before bed) 3 January 2014 “I Am a Child of God”; Alma 25:1–6; at New York Methodist Hospital, room 5S22B Visit to Junior’s restaurant, Brooklyn 1 February 2014 Train trip 17 February 2014 On a Metro-North train from Grand Central to New Haven, Connecticut Time off an island and out of New York City and New York State 17 February 2014

DIAL ANN APRI L 2014

13

Revelee, on the bannister, with her mother and siblings, 1921.

TRANSCRIBED BY DUSTIN RECORDED & EDITED BY SUSAN

14

At a springtime memorial service in Oregon, the Hibdons remembered their mother, grandmother, aunt, and matriarch in the way only the Hibdons could.

APRIL 2014

15

SATURDAY, 12 APRIL 2014 BANKS, OREGON Deborah Deegan: o, I’m Deborah, Revelee’s granddaughter. Dolores is my mother. And I want to thank everyone for coming here to honor her today. On the back of the program is a poem that kind of reminded me of her [see right]. So I put that on because she just loved everything about nature. But one of the things that—There’s a line towards the bottom that says a part of us went with you. And it was my—it’s my opinion and my experience that Grandma Revelee left a lot more with me in her—a lot of memories, her attitudes, and her character traits that have served all of her children, grandchildren, greatgrandchildren very, very well. And today we have an opportunity to celebrate and share and deepen our knowledge of her and each other and share stories.

S

David Hibdon: So, I was told it would be nice if I talked a little bit about Mother’s life.

And among the things I want to make sure we emphasize is that life was a lot tougher in 1920 than it is now. And it was tougher in some places than it was in others. Mother was born in 1920, the youngest of nine children. And before she turned two years old, her father at planting time on the rented farm died of pneumonia. Now, she had older brothers that were old enough to help with the work, and they tried to make a go of it on that rented farm for two or three more years. But, it was a tough go, and the older boys needed to go and get jobs and make families of their own. Anna May got married at about 14 and was gone.

So within three or four years, Grandmother Lee was taking care of four kids by herself, the oldest being about 13 years old, and the youngest being my mom, at 5. And over the course of the next few years, as they wandered from rented farm to a job in Lark—as my mom described it, a big yellow house by the water tower. She showed it to me. By then it was 65, 75 years later, and the house was white. But it was still there, next to the water tower in Lark. And they lived there while her mom did housekeeping for somebody for a while.

Then they moved to western Oklahoma, to a town—to the Martin ranch.

About that time, her oldest brother was working for Mr. Martin. The Martin ranch was comprised of three farms, and Mr. Martin ran one and his son ran one and my uncle Sterling ran the chicken farm. My mom was 8 years old and she talked to me many times about how proud she was that when she was 8 years old and none of the Martin kids were allowed around any of the animals or equipment, she got to drive the water wagon—the water wagon being a wagon that carried water, and I’m not sure exactly how it worked, but I do know 16

that she was supposed to keep this wagon going at a steady pace while her big brother watered the chickens. And she was also very pleased with being able to run the go devil.

Now this go devil is like a small harrow that digs about two rows. Do you know what a harrow is? It’s like a bunch of, like, railroad spikes driven in some logs, and it was made so that it would crumple up the dirt and kill the weeds between the rows and then had boards behind it, it would push up the dirt up around the rows of whatever crop you’re trying to protect. And she got to drive that when she was 8 years old. She was very impressed with herself.

But ultimately, you know, the economy got the better of Mr. Martin.

And my uncle Sterling went away with Mr. Martin’s youngest daughter, Debbie, who came to parent several of my cousins. And my mom—by that time, Herbert had left when he was about 14—and my mom and Lola and Herman went with their mom to, I think, Shamrock, Texas, and Herman left from there and moved to New Mexico and started working in a dairy and boarding in a boarding house when he was 14. And by that time they were left with just Lola and Revelee.

And Grandmother Lee still kept trying to make it on her own. And there was a lot of pressure of course for the kids to be gone from the household, because it was tough for one person to support three people in those days, especially if she was a woman.

So Lola got married when she was 13 and that didn’t work out very well. Lola, I guess, and certainly my grandmother Lee both agreed that this guy was not the right guy.

So when he proposed to move Lola and him out of Denver and go to Kansas City, grandmother Lee said, “Well, you know, my sister in Ninnekah (in Oklahoma) has told me that they have a job for me there.

Could it be possible—I think it’s a great

God looked around his garden And found an empty place, He then looked down upon the earth And saw your tired face.

He put his arms around you And lifted you to rest.

God’s garden must be beautiful He always takes the best.

He knew that you were suffering He knew you were in pain.

He knew that you would never Get well on earth again.

He saw the road was getting rough And the hills were hard to climb.

So he closed your weary eyelids And whispered, ‘Peace be Thine’.

It broke our hearts to lose you But you didn’t go alone, For part of us went with you The day God called you home.

—author unknown

This is the poem on the back of the program that Deborah referenced at the beginning of the service.

idea for you and Lola to go to Kansas City— would it be possible for you to drop us off in Ninnekah?” And I assume Wilson Orr was happy to drop his mother-in-law off anyway.

So they got to Ninnekah, and Mother had two older cousins that were probably in their early 20s. And when they got to Ninnekah—we’ve got pictures of the family gathering. Everybody. Wilson Orr was in the pictures. But he didn’t stay overnight the first night. My mother told me that [inaudible] and her little brother—I can’t remember his little brother’s name—took him aside and persuaded him that this is a tough country for people that had had a reputation for potential white slavery. “We did hear you were investigated by the FBI in Denver, and, you know, I’m not sure if I were you that I’d want to go to sleep in this country because you might not wake up.” So, needless to say, Wilson kept on going—no doubt went to Kansas City with somebody, but not with Lola.

And that was kind of the story of their lives. Shortly thereafter the three of them went to New Mexico and that’s where Lola met Charles Jimerson and she got married when she was 14. I don’t think she was more than 15 when Doyle was born, was she?

Something in that order.

Anyway, so, by the time 1931 rolled around, Mother Lee was getting tired.

She’d been taking these nitroglycerin pills for a long time. She had a definite heart problem. And so she went back to Lark, where her oldest daughter was living. That’s Anna May. And they hadn’t been there more than a year and a half—my mom was not quite 13—when her mom died. And, as she put it, “Well, people say she had a stroke. All I know”—all my mama knew at the time she was talking to me—“is that she had this stroke, and then she lived for another day or day and a half, and she didn’t know anybody during that time except me.” So my mama was 12 years old and her mama was dying and the only person that her mama could talk to was her, because everybody else was not relevant any more.

So then Mother lived with aunt Anna May for about 3 years and that’s where she got this sister relationship with her niece Jackie, who was less than 4 years younger than her. And she went to Whitfield High School, I remember her telling me, and she played basketball on the Whitfield High School basketball team with the freshmen.

And then, for one reason or another—I can’t remember the rationale—she had to

Revelee, Grandmother Lee, and Lola on Easter Sunday 1926 in Shamrock, Texas.

DIAL ANN APRI L 2014

17

Revelee and Cecil Hibdon’s first date, 1936.

18

transfer to Kingston High School, and she wasn’t really that happy about it. But she was ready to start playing basketball.

But then in the fall this guy came around. He lived just down the road about half a mile. She had just turned 16 and he had just turned 26. And he brought his brother along for moral support, along with his brother’s girlfriend, Estelle. And we’ve got pictures of them. I’m not sure if it was their first date, but on your discs the pictures are labeled “first date” because they reflected the story my mother told me. She was sitting there thinking she was a little high-school sophomore and, you know, a basketball player, and this grown man came around courting. And it didn’t take much

longer after that before she and this grown man were married. And they probably didn’t live together more than maybe 20 years at the most. But they never did get settled. The discussion they started out with was about where they were going to live. My dad wanted to live near his family in Oklahoma. And my mom wanted to live nearer her family, which was spread out more or less across California. California was the land of opportunity. Daddy’s oldest sister had settled down earliest and stayed pretty much where they grew up. But everybody else had to move because Lake Texoma took all the land they were farming, so they all moved together to Oklahoma City, and after that none of the siblings ever lived more than 10 miles from the others, except him in California and his big sister in ... So, anyway, they really never got that issue settled and ultimately it drove them apart, and my dad ended up going back to Oklahoma and getting run over by a truck in 1958. And after that—you know, it wasn’t very long before I graduated from high school and left. And Mother had settled an insurance claim for problem people like her. And she could afford to buy a little house and she got a job. And that started, I think, what was the happiest part of her life. Her first generation of grandchildren were born. And she was hanging around Bakersfield most of the time to watch them grow up, until she started following Dolores and Deborah around—and I think Dolores or Deborah could tell us about that part of the story.

But one big thing I do want to add is that as my mama, my mother, matured, she became a very different person. She still had the same basic attitudes, but she became better at expressing them, and by the time she started losing her memory and all she had left was attitude, the attitude she had was that she was the kind of person that deserved respect, that she was the kind of person that anybody ought to like, and she made sure that everybody liked her and she made sure that everybody respected her.

And the people—she didn’t have anything left but attitude—all the people that took care of her at that nursing home loved her.

You can’t say that about very many other people. The good news about her is she didn’t whine, she told people what she wanted and what she didn’t want. But if you treated her right, you could persuade her to reconsider.

Charlane Leslie: Oh, not always!

DH: Not always. But I remember—you know, she got so sick that she couldn’t eat, didn’t want to eat, couldn’t do anything.

She could not remember how to stand up: she was strong enough, but she couldn’t remember how. And all this happened within a week or so. And I remember she was really, really sick, and she woke up one morning and I got there to see her, and this woman, Rachel, had awakened her and got her all cleaned up and ready to go to breakfast. She said, “I think I should stay here.” So Rachel fed her in bed, and she ate a big breakfast, and she finished everything she was supposed to eat, she drank everything she was supposed to drink, and she looked at Rachel and she said, “I need a hug.” And she gave her a hug and she said, “I love you.” And then she gave me a hug and said, “I love you.” And then Rachel said, “Well, I’ll be back to see you in the afternoon.” First Mother said, “Well, I need to go to sleep.” And so Rachel said, “I’ll be back to see you in the afternoon.” And I said, “Well, Mother, have a good nap.” And she squeezed my hand and smiled a little bit and went to sleep. And about 38 hours later her heart quit beating but she never woke up.

My belief is that that whole thing about eating the big breakfast and drinking everything she was supposed to drink was going out in style.

DD: Well, I probably was blessed with spending more time with Grandma than most of the grandchildren—definitely a lot more than the Hibdon grandchildren, just by geographic proximity to her. But probably even more than that—I realized this probably even more as an adult, when you kind of look back you don’t think about some things as a child—but, I’m not necessarily sure that Grandma chased my mom around near so much as—I mean, I think there was some of that. But there was also an awful lot of Grandma getting all settled in a house, us going to visit, and it was Grandma’s house, Grandma’s house. And all of the sudden us moving in with Grandma. Six months later Grandma would move out and head for Texas or to Oklahoma or something. Anybody who’s lived with my mom probably doesn’t need much of an explanation as to why that might be.

But Grandma always stayed very connected. I think she was always concerned, maybe, about how my mom was doing. My mom was married and divorced a

Revelee with all her grandchildren, Christmas 1985. standing: Diana Seibert. back row: Revelee, Ellen Hibdon (in lap), Mitch Seibert, Martin Hibdon. on floor, left to right: Karen Hibdon, Susan Hibdon, Nicholas Seibert, Theresa Krier (Drake), Deborah Deegan. number of times. And so what I remember is my mom being married, and when she wasn’t, it was Grandma, you know, taking care of us more or less. And my mom would get married again and Grandma would be gone for a while visiting everybody else and loving on everybody else. And my mom would get divorced and there was Grandma, you know.

So Grandma was around to teach me a lot of things. I remember her talking an awful lot about her job and about the various jobs that she had. And I know that she took a great deal of pride in, one, doing what was considered a man’s job at any given point in time. I mean, I think she at times felt like she had to fight for the opportunity to sell sporting goods and convince people that she knew every bit as much about guns or fishing equipment or things along those lines as any salesman would, as she used to put it. But she had a great work ethic, and I remember talking to her an awful lot about that. And when I was a young employee and first becoming the manager, sometimes I would have, you know, some issues that I would talk about, and she always had an opinion. And not

all of her jobs worked out well. I mean, I agree with David that she kind of learned some smoother ways of dealing with people, especially on the workforce, as she got older. But she was invaluable to me in helping me with showing up and doing a good job.

But I’m very appreciative for Grandma taking care of me and always being available, and the things that she taught me and reading to me and the love of books. And I remember being jealous as a kid because I was hearing about all of these great letters she was writing about these birds and stuff like that—the little mother bird who was taking care of her babies outside the window. [Susan: She named one of them Alexander. She wrote us letters about that little bird family.] And I think I was much older before I really realized what I had in Grandma comparatively. I’m like, She loved them more?! You know. It’s funny how, when you’re a child, you don’t really see the full, big picture.

But she wasn’t always the easiest of grandmas. She definitely wasn’t a storybook, milk-and-cookies kind of a person. But, boy, she’d curl up with a good DIAL ANN APRI L 2014

19

Revelee working at the Naval Exchange on Treasure Island, San Francisco Bay, around 1965.

20

book—Wizard of Oz and old westerns and stuff like that. And we spent a lot of time doing things like that and playing cards. She was pretty tremendous. I appreciate it.

DH: Can I add one more thing? The best job that she ever had—I think, at least from my understanding of how much she appreciated it—was selling cameras and guns at the Naval Exchange on Treasure Island. And I remember talking to one of the guys that used to flirt with her and—she had pictures of him, and they lived in the same apartment complex for a while—I think maybe with Deborah and Dolores— but I remember talking to him one time and I said, “I suppose it’s an advantage, you know, if you’re a good-looking fortyish woman to sell cameras to teenage boys.”

And he said, “I suppose the reason she can sell more cameras and guns than anybody else is because she knows more about cameras and guns than anybody else.”

DD: But she had to prove it, you know. She always said she— DH: Well, she had to prove it to the boss, but she didn’t have to prove it to the people who were buying them. Because if you know enough to be buying a gun, you ought to know enough to understand whether the person who’s selling them to you gets it.

Diana Seibert: I remember her stories about Vincent’s. When I would go to Vincent’s, a sporting-goods store in Bakersfield where she sold all the guns and fishing poles and the actors would come from L.A. up to buy them and they would always ask for the man—you know, they wanted Mr. Vincent. And Mr. Vincent would say, “No, you need to talk to Revelee.” And she could talk fishing poles—any kind of fishing poles. She could talk any kind of guns. I remember being in the store all the time; she would just reach in that case, pull out the gun, show them how to take it apart. I mean, she was just awesome. I would be in there and she would be helping a customer and although there were two other guys in there, that they would wait in line for her. And they would wait behind the one she was helping when she was taking apart the guns and showing them the guns. So that was pretty neat when I was a kid.

Mitch Seibert: Well, you remember, you know, dad, when we had a lot of family

gatherings over, right, and there would be a lot of talk about Hibdons talk and stuff like that. And I was always intrigued by it.

I always thought it was great. But my dad didn’t always have a lot of patience for that stuff. But the one thing that would keep him sticking around and talking, I remember, was we would talk guns with Grandma.

We’d talk for hours about that.

DD: Well, she did have a lot of respect from all of the guys that came through the Naval Exchange. She used to bring people home all the time, especially around, like, holidays, or she sensed somebody was lonely or there was something going on in their life. You just never knew who she was going to bring home for dinner—a lot of young servicemen.

DH: I just threw away a bunch of Christmas cards and, you know, I-remember-you cards and that kind of stuff from all kinds of officers at every level up to captain and, you know, the most junior sailor that ever walked through Treasure Island.

DS: So, do you know the story about some kind of sheik that came over on a ship and went to—and I don’t know if it was Treasure Island or if he drove all the way to Bakersfield. I think he knew her from Treasure Island? And then, I don’t know, some kind of massive ship and, anyway, came—I think it was Bakersfield he came to see her.

DH: I don’t know that story. But the thing that impressed me was all these people that—people that she worked with at Treasure Island and people that were customers at Treasure Island were still sending her cards 10 years later. I don’t know—I mean, I used to remember the names of some of them. I met several of them. But, anyway, she got better with age.

She was a holy terror when I was a little guy.

DD: Oh, yeah, she was a good shot.

Unknown: She was always proud of that.

DH: Yeah, I think this is a pretty good story.

We showed up at my grandfather’s house.

We thought he was going to die. We drove all the way out from California to watch Granddaddy Hibdon die. And we got there and my youngest uncle was probably—I was 6, I guess, so my youngest uncle was about 12, and he had been instructed that

when it was time to let the chickens out he was supposed to grab that one gray, broody hen—you know, the one that being broody all the time, hiding her eggs—and keep her in the pen. And he forgot, so he let all the chickens loose. And the broody chicken was chosen because she was hiding her eggs—you know, you can’t keep a chicken like that. And you got to eat something. So when my grandmother found out today’s dinner is wandering around the yard, she asked Martin, my youngest uncle, to go get the rifle. And he brought a single-shot, .22 rifle and my grandmother said, “Revelee, you’re the best shot here. You kill the chickens.” And the chicken was not more than—probably a little more than halfway to that gray car, and my mama shot it— stood up like this and—[gun sound]—shot its head off. And I was very impressed.

Shortly after that, we—everybody in the family—got involved in a contest about shooting off Prince Albert’s head. There used to be these red tobacco cans. And, you know, if you set them off half as far as here—you know, I can hardly see the can.

My mother never missed the head. And she was clearly the best shot at that time that she had ever met. And she probably hadn’t had a gun in her hands for 5 or 6 years before that. Oh, no, more than that—longer than before I was born, and I was 6.

DD: I have a fishing story. Since she knew so much about that kind of stuff. So—I don’t know if we want to do stories out here. Is everybody comfortable or freezing?

John Deegan: I do have one thing to say about this just before we end. I remember driving with Grandma, just driving with her wherever. I mean, whether it was Forest Grove or whether it was just down the road. And the beautiful thing was that she noticed trees. She just said, “That’s a beautiful tree. Those are great flowers.” But you could not go by a white house without her saying, “That’s a nice house.” And if you came across another—you go through a million houses, but when you came across a white house, “That’s a nice house.” I just remembered that if it was white, it was something about it. I just remembered that.

DH: She really liked the big white house in Lark.

JD: She did. Just something about the white. So—I was really blessed with knowing her, in a lot of ways. And one of DIAL ANN APRI L 2014

21

DH: How about we just put it in the ground— JD: Okay, let’s both do it at the same time.

DH: —and kick some dirt in it.

DD: There we go.

Martin, my youngest uncle … brought a single-shot, .22 rifle and my grandmother said, “Revelee, you’re the best shot here. You kill the chickens.” And the chicken was not more than—probably a little more than halfway to that gray car, and my mama shot it—stood up like this and—[gun sound]—shot its head off. And I was very impressed.

DAVID HIBDON REVELEE’S SON & SUSAN’S FATHER

DS: Where did the box come from, Deb? DD: Grandma picked it out.

DS: Beautiful.

JD: So, you got to kick the dirt in it? Is that— DH: I’m going to start. Whoa! Okay!

[Susan: Note the pomp and ceremony involved here, and imagine David Hibdon trying to kick dirt into a hole. This might be the point that he almost fell in.]

DS: Do you want to put it in with your hands and not your feet?

the commonalities that we had was music.

And when her memory started to go just a little bit more—you could start asking her about some music, and she’d start singing “Strawberry Roan” or “Pecos Bill” or one of these songs. I think we recorded it somewhere down the road. And it was just such a beautiful thing to listen to her, a capella, sing these old country songs. And— DS: And she wasn’t afraid to do it. You know? She wasn’t afraid to do it in front of a group like this. She’d just break out singing.

JD: So she and I had this—I think when me and Deb first met—we had kind of this loggerhead thing going on. She was the grandma. But, as David said, I think you had to just give her that respect. She was just, ”That was her place, that was cool, but hey, I’m me. I have a little issue here.” And in due time we actually had a great bond and I’m very privileged to have known her.

DS: Could be you both had an ornery streak, but I don’t know.

CL: I’d just like to—I’d just like to talk about—you know, when my sister and I were growing up, and Lois and David— during those times that they were in California. I don’t know how many times 22

they were in California and how many times in Oklahoma. But the times they were in California that Aunt Revelee and Lois and David and Dolores would come over to the house we had in Green Acres and she would read to us. And her drama and the voice and so on that in reading these stories to us, I mean, it really developed for me a love for reading. And, actually, I think as I got older it gave me the way to dramatize things because, you know, I was one of the little scared kids, but Aunt Revelee gave me that power. And you know, I became a lawyer when I was 39 years old. And I know a lot of it was the encouragement and just the example that my Aunt Revelee set.

DD: I don’t think we made a provision as to when we were going to do that so—do this part—I didn’t really build that into my agenda. We can do the closing prayer. But we have this issue here.

JD: What’s the issue?

DD: Well, whether we were going to do this now or later. I mean, with everybody here or later. We didn’t really— [Susan: “This issue” was the box of ashes, which was supposed to go in a lovely hole next to a lovely tree.]

DD: Well, traditions. It depends. You know, some people do, some people don’t.

JD: He has the right to do whatever he wants.

MS: There’s a shovel, there’s a shovel.

DH: Oh, there we go!

Jenna Kisor: I think it is tradition to— [Susan: Jenna, I think, was the one who got things rolling with each person tossing in a handful of dirt.]

DD: Yeah, people, if they want to can do that,.

JD: So, we’re talking about picking a spot on the property somewhere and David and I walked around a little this morning and we looked around and—there you go!—and he really just said, “This is it.” This old hawthorne tree that’s out in the middle of—she loved trees, and it seemed like a good spot.

DS: You know, I should probably do it from this side.

DH: I’m not really very good at ceremony,

am I? DD: Apparently neither am I.

Mama Lee kills the neighbors’ hogs

MS: You’re still going to need a shovel.

DH: Yeah, I know!

[Susan: At this point it seemed like the dirt was taken care of, but perhaps not ….]

DD: I’m going to close us in a very short prayer.

DS: Oh, sorry, Deb. DD: Sorry.

DS: I can hand you this.

DD: Oh, sorry.

CL: That’s okay.

Jimmie Lee: I’d get a big bunch.

[Susan: Jimmie Lee picked out the biggest dirt clod, probably a good eight inches in diameter, and rolled it into the hole.]

DH: Oh, that’s it!

JD: You’re actually related to David!

JL: I want to do one more. That one right there!

[Susan: One final dirt clod, and we were ready for a prayer.]

DD: You know, I think competition is a family trait.

Shall we bow our head in short prayer?

Heavenly Father, we thank you for blessing us all with earthly life and the gift of Revelee, for her 93 years. We treasure every memory of love, joy, knowledge, and sorrow shared with us. We thank you for her life and for her death and for the rest she now has in you through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Alright, back up to the house, where it’s warm!

This is a story I typed up a few years back when Mother was reminding me of all her childhood stories. I printed it and several shorter ones for her “reminder book” when she went into the skilled nursing center.

The story was confirmed for me by my Father’s sister Hazel about 2002. I think it might help people understand Mother to know about “where she came from.”

Mother’s father died in 1922 before Mother turned two years old. Over the next several years life was pretty hard for the Lee family.

During the first few of those years, Sterling [Revelee’s older brother] was married but still around, living close and helping out when he could. Mama Lee [Revelee’s mother] and her brood stayed in the Lark, Oklahoma, area through the mid ’20s. Pleas was in his teens and could do the plowing.

About 1924, the family had some trouble with a neighbor’s hogs. Oklahoma was a modified free-range state in those days. During normal cropping seasons, animals were required to be penned up. But during the winter, hogs were turned loose to forage in the forests and fallow ground.

They were all marked with ear cuts that were registered like cattle brands. That way they could be identified when gathered up in the spring or at hog butchering time in the late fall.

But some people, like Roy Young’s dad, may have interpreted the laws a little loosely. Or maybe the Youngs just had a weak hog pen. One spring morning the Lees woke up to find the dogs barking up a storm and the Youngs’ hogs in the cornfield.

They had rooted up about a quarter acre of corn that had been a few inches high. Mama Lee, Pleas, and the other “big kids” joined the dogs in rousting the hogs. Then Mama went down to have a talk with Mr. Young.

Mr. Young told her that he would see they did not escape again.

A day or two after the corn was replanted, it happened again—another patch was rooted up. Mama Lee went back to the Youngs and explained the obvious, that she had nothing to feed her children

that did not come from the crops she could raise. She encouraged Mr. Young to keep his hogs penned up, reminding him that there was only one way she could keep them out of her corn once they were loose.

They came back again. Mama, and the family, got them out of the fields and onto the road. Pleas, who was about nineteen then, said he was going to talk to Young this time. But Mama said no. She said the Youngs would surely kill him if he did what needed to be done.

So Mama Lee got a rifle and took the dogs to drive the hogs back to the Young place. She drove the hogs the few hundred yards to the Youngs’ front yard, ran them into the yard, and then shot all four, while the Young family sat, or stood, on the front porch.

The Youngs spent the next few days in some early hog butchering. Naturally Mr. Young was displeased with the lack of expected growth, and with butchering during a hot season. That probably caused a lot more wastage than would have been normal with late fall butchering. Besides, and maybe more important, he did not like being shown up by a woman.

Mr. Young talked some. But his words did not mean much to Mama Lee. Mama’s married daughter Anna May Dodd lost a cow a few weeks later—to a sudden, unexplained death by gun shot. And of course they did not find out in time to butcher. The Lees suspected a purposeful shooting. But no one was admitting anything.

It is hard to say who won that battle.

But at least it did not turn into a war, and the Lees did not starve. —david hibdon

DH: You know what? My mom would really love this dirt.

Susan: I was thinking the same thing! That’s really nice dirt! d

DIAL ANN APRI L 2014

23

F RO M O U R A RCH I V ES

sunday, 26 november 2000 A journal entry from the month I received my mission call reveals the mixed emotions of that day— and the Spirit’s confirmation that I was going where the Lord wanted me to go.

OPPOSITE PAGE Dustin’s mission call.

(Yes, we have printed this once before in our magazine, in the January 2013 issue, but it was reduced in size. This is Dustin’s mission call at its actual size.)

RIGHT The original journal entry.

Receiving the call

BY DUSTIN

It is with a little trepidation that I print this. Becoming reacquainted with your younger self is often an embarrassing experience as you grimace at your bravado, naïveté, and know-it-all nature. Some of the worst of that has been edited out of this version. Also, some slight stylistic changes have been made.

GOT MY MISSION CALL!!! It actually came about three weeks ago, on Friday, 3 November, but I’ve been VERY bad, of course, and have not been writing in my journal like I should, and that’s why I’m only now mentioning it.

It came while I was at work. Mom and Randy were going to to go Hilton Head [South Carolina] that day to be with Randy’s family as his mother was in the hospital. (I’m not sure why she was in the hospital.) Anyway, because they were getting ready to go, mom was home from work and was able to bring my call up to me [at work].1 She also brought sweet little Miss Katie [our dog] along.

We went up to Independence Park to open the call. We parked at a [medical] office at the corner of North Caswell Road and Greenway Avenue, and we walked over to a beautiful area at the corner of Hawthorne Lane and East Seventh Street with an arbor and a no-longer-used waterfall and pool that are a memorial to a young woman who gave her life in rescuing a child from a waterfall in the [North Carolina] mountains.

Normally you can see a beautiful view of Charlotte’s skyline from that location in Independence Park, but it was obscured by smoke from forest fires in the North Carolina mountains—sadly, in Linville Gorge2—that had been carried by the wind down to the piedmont.

Those were a couple of very strange days; I had never before seen in person the effects of a natural disaster.

As I sit here now thinking about that smoke, it almost seems very appropriate that I opened by mission call in such conditions, for on my mission I will be helping clear the smoke that obscures the vision of the truth from the eyes of those whom I will be teaching.

I offered a prayer before I opened the call, telling our Heavenly Father of our thankfulness for the opportunity I have to serve a mission, and also asking him to bless us that we may be able to know

I

that wherever I was assigned was the place he wanted me to go. Little did I ever dream that I would really need to rely upon that confirming spirit, for this is the place that I have been assigned to serve my mission:

Utah Salt Lake City South Mission Yes, that’s right: I will serve in the Church’s Utah Salt Lake City South Mission. I am to report to the MTC [Missionary Training Center] in Provo [Utah] on Wednesday, 17 January 2001. Don’t misunderstand me: there’s nothing wrong with the Utah Salt Lake City South Mission. It’s just that […] everyone, myself included, was expecting me to go foreign. But one of the first thoughts to enter my mind was this: So often we work up in our minds this idea about what would be best for us. I know that I’ve done that many times in my own life, such as what dog would be best for me, what job would be best for me, and, yes, what type of mission assignment would be best for me. So often, what the Lord blesses us with is nothing like that “perfect” idea we’d worked up in our own minds.

But always, if we accept the Lord’s will over our own, the blessings we will receive will be far above and beyond what we could have imagined. I know that such will be the case with my mission call.

That thought was the main focus of my acceptance letter, which I finally got signed and ready to send in today.

I also realized a few things about my desire to go foreign. First of all, if I were going foreign, I’d probably focus on the architecture, the language, the culture, the history, and so forth, not the work that I’m really there to do. Further, I really feel that I wanted to go foreign only so I could brag about it. Then again, in a way, I am going foreign. I mean, come on: Salt Lake City can be a pretty foreign place to a good ol’ Southern boy like me. Further, I can still DIAL ANN APRI L 2014

25

above Dustin’s letter to the First Presidency, accepting his call to serve in the Utah Salt Lake City South Mission. opposite page Dustin in front of the Provo Missionary Training Center shortly before he started his mission on Wednesday, 17 January 2001.

26

kind of brag about it. How many Mormon missionaries go to Salt Lake City? (A lot, I know, but I’m trying to make a point, okay?)

That first weekend, and, well, even all that first week, and, well, even now I’m still almost expecting another letter to come telling me where I’m really going.

And for a couple of reasons. First, with all the speculation people have had over the past couple of years about where I’ll be going, it almost feels like that letter was just someone else telling me where they thought I was going to be going. Okay, so maybe that person was President [Gordon B.] Hinckley, but, you know: it doesn’t really feel like it’s binding. Second, it would have been more believable had it been a place like Zimbabwe or Tahiti. I mean, come on: how many Mormon missionaries go to Salt Lake City? … Also, Brigham Young did always say that God has a good sense of humor, and you never know when he may feel like playing a joke.

But I know that the Spirit was there when I opened my call. I’ve felt that confirming whisper telling me that Salt Lake truly is “the place” for me. And I’ve thought of many advantages of going there.

Foremost in many people’s minds is the fact that the 2002 Olympic Winter Games will occur there about halfway through my mission. And who knows: I may be at the far edge of Summit County, Utah,3 during the two weeks or so of the Olympics, but I may be right there in the middle of everything, and it may be there that I have the opportunity to use my knowledge of foreign languages and cultures.4 Also, being in the United States, I shouldn’t have to worry about unsanitary living conditions. I won’t have to worry about obtaining vaccinations and visas. And I shouldn’t have to worry about having to eat strange food. Though Utahns’ love of Jell-O with who knows what in it is a little strange… (Everyone keeps on telling me that I can expect to eat Jell-O with carrots in it.)5 Another advantage in going to Utah is the large Mormon population. I’ve been told that people will often go up to missionaries in the grocery store or in a restaurant and offer to pay their bills for them. As missionaries are walking down the street, people will often offer them rides.

That’s really cool. Also, Brother Griffiths in Carmel Ward served part of his mission in the Salt Lake City North Mission.6 He said that they didn’t go tracting there, but that

everything was done through member referrals. And though they frequently laugh at me me when I tell them where I’m going—Sister Cope in Carmel Ward even told me to “shut up”7—they also frequently tell me that the Utah Salt Lake City South Mission is one of the highest-baptising missions in the world because of the large LDS population and that I’ll have a great time.8 One thought I’ve had is that either they send the best missionaries to Salt Lake City because they can do something that even millions9 of Mormons there can’t do or they send the worst missionaries to Salt Lake City to keep a close eye on them. I’m probably among the latter. I can just see one of the General Authorities watching me through a telescope on the twenty-sixth floor of the Church Office Building and listening to me with a long-range listening device.

I’ve been hard at work telling everyone where I’m going. Like I said, they laugh at me at church when I tell them where I’m going. Nonmembers are often perplexed as to why missionaries would be sent to Utah, especially to Salt Lake. The one thing that has bothered me is some people think that I’m disappointed. I’m not. It’s where God wants me to go.

I’m just grateful to have the opportunity to go on a mission. I can’t wait!

Ever since I received my call, it feels as if time has been sped up. I can hardly believe that it’s been three weeks since it came. Then again, it feels as if I’ve always known. In all those times I joked around about getting called to Salt Lake City on a mission, I never thought that it would really happen. But, it has, and I couldn’t be happier. I just hope that I can do the things that I want to do before I leave, and that in the short time I have left that I’ll be able to prepare myself as I should; that I’ll be able to buy the things that I need; that I’ll be able to read the things that I should read; that I’ll keep myself on the straight and

narrow. I hope that I can prepare well for my open house and farewell. …

You know, I don’t think I’ll ever care about what I receive in the mail again. I mean, what I just got is the most important thing I’ll ever get in the mail, so it’s all downhill from here.10 And on that happy note I’ll end. d

NOTES 1. I was working at my very first job, as an administrative assistant at Charlotte Pipe and Foundry’s headquarters on Randolph Road in Charlotte, Specifically, my office was located in the building at 2039 Randolph Road, at the north corner of Randolph Road and North Chase Street.

2. I had visited Linville Gorge a few years earlier on a ward Scout camping trip and had fallen in love with the unique beauty of Linville Falls and the rugged gorge beyond.

3. As I somewhat incorrectly pointed out in the original journal entry, at the time I served in the Utah Salt Lake City South Mission it covered the south half of the Salt Lake Valley, from around 4500 South (give or take—the boundary was not a straight line) to Point of the Mountain and from the Wasatch Mountains on the east to the Oquirrh Mountains on the west. It also covered Summit County to the east, including the towns of Park City, Kamas, and Coalville. But … (see next footnote).

4. I never served in Summit County. There were at most four companionships serving there at a time and, of those, two were sister missionaries working in part at the Family Tree

Center on Main Street in Park City while another set were Spanish-speaking missionaries. And, seriously, who was I kidding—“knowledge of foreign languages and cultures”? I didn’t know nearly as much about them as I thought I did.

5. For the record, I was served Jell-O at most half a dozen times throughout the two years of my mission. Which is good, because I’m not a fan. Though even I have to admit that some Utahns’ Jell-O creations are spectacular.

6. The official name of this mission is the Utah Salt Lake City Mission, but many people refer to it as the “north mission” to distinguish it from the Utah Salt Lake City South Mission (and, these many years later, the other missions in the Salt Lake Valley, including the Central, East, and West missions).

7. This was a friendly comment and not a rude one.

8. All of this, I learned on my mission, is pretty much true.

9. It’s actually not quite “millions”. More like, “hundreds of thousands”.

10. In all honesty, I’ve cared plenty of times since then about what I get in the mail. Everyone, especially in today’s world saturated by electronic media, likes receiving cool stuff in the mail.

The one thing that has bothered me is some people think that I’m disappointed.

I’m not. It’s where God wants me to go. I’m just grateful to have the opportunity to go on a mission.

I can’t wait!

DIAL ANN APRI L 2014

27

WE BELIEVE IN CHRIST

Growing in the gospel Two more of the talks I gave in church as a youth.

BY DUSTIN

President Howard W. Hunter  Sacrament meeting, Charlotte 3rd Ward Date unknown, but probably given in late 1995 or early 1996, after President Hunter’s passing on 3 March 1995, when I was in eighth grade. The original was written and edited by hand. ood morning, brothers and sisters. For those of you who do not know me, my name is Dustin Joyce. Just a little over a week ago, Brother Watterson, the second counselor in the bishopric, asked me to speak in church today about a prophet. As you can see I accepted. I chose to speak today on the childhood of Howard W. Hunter, because he was the prophet for so short a time and we didn’t have an opportunity to get to know him well. I hope that you can learn some about him through my talk today.

Howard W. Hunter was born to Will and Nellie Hunter on 14 November 1907 in Boise, Idaho. On 5 April 1908, when Howard was five months old, his mother took him to fast and testimony meeting at the Boise Branch of the Northwestern Mission. There the branch president, Heber Q. Hale, gave him a blessing.

Soon after Howard’s sister, Dorothy, was born, his mother was sterilizing some water by boiling it in a pan on the living room stove that the family used for heat. She had taken the water off the stove and set it on the floor because it was too hot to hold. Then Howard came running through the house. He fell headlong into the pan, throwing his left hand in front of himself, and it was badly scalded.

Many years later he described what happened next.

G

A call was made to the doctor and he recommended that my arm be packed in mashed potatoes and bandaged.

Some of the neighbor ladies came in to help. I can remember sitting on the drain board in the kitchen while boiled potatoes were mashed and packed around my arm and cloths were torn to make a bandage. Fortunately the serious burn did not hinder the growth of my arm, but I have carried the scar all my life.

Howard’s lifelong interest in woodworking was foreshadowed when he was just two years old. His father, along with the help of the brother-in-law of his mother’s aunt, Christie Moore, built the family a three-room frame house on a quarter-acre lot in a subdivision just outside the west city limits of Boise. Howard’s father purchased for him a small hammer and let him pound nails into the living room floor.

As a boy, Howard loved animals. He had a pet dog, pet rabbits, and, he said, “every stray cat could find a haven at our house, even against family objections.”

As a boy, Howard read many books such as Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and the Tom Swift series, and took piano lessons.

28

Howard W. Hunter served as 14th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His tenure, 5 June 1994–3 March 1995, is currently the shortest in Church history.

Howard was liked by adults for his good manners. He would tip his hat to people on the street and give up his seat on the streetcar if anyone was standing.

Howard once had polio, which he got from his friend Buster Grimm. Buster was crippled for life because of the disease, while the only lasting effect of the disease on Howard was a lifelong stiff back: he was never able to bend forward and touch the floor.

For the most part Howard did well in school. However, he claims he did have 2 handicaps: “I was not good in sports and I had a problem telling colors—not all colors, but shades of red, green, and brown.”

He devised an ingenious way to solve his color-blindness problem. He would put his crayons on the top of his desk, and when the art teacher asked the students to pick up a crayon of a certain color, he would run his finger over the crayons on his desk and Beatrice Beach, who sat behind him, would tap him on the shoulder when he came to the right one. He was embarrassed to admit to the teacher that he couldn’t distinguish the colors.

He enjoyed reading, writing, and most other academic subjects, but he didn’t always work hard to master them. He had many other interests as well, such as a succession of afterschool and summer jobs.

Adults seemed to sense that Howard was conscientious and dependable. As a young boy he helped around the neighborhood, mowing, doing yard work, bringing milk from the dairy to the widows, picking fruit, or any other work. Sometimes he was paid for such work; other times he did it just because he liked helping others.

These experiences and other that Howard W. Hunter had in his childhood as a young boy helped prepare him to become the 14th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a true and righteous prophet of the Lord.

What a junior home-teaching companion expects of his senior companion  Stake general priesthood meeting Charlotte North Carolina South Stake Sunday, 23 November 1997 ood evening, brethren. I really enjoy giving talks, believe it or not, so I’m very thankful to be here this evening to talk to you. I’ll be talking to you this evening on something that is very important to me personally and, as we learn in the Doctrine and Covenants, an integral part of the system that the Lord set up in his restored Church to look over his sheep. That topic is home teaching and, more specifically, what a junior companion should and does expect from his senior companion and the role the senior companion should take in relation to his junior companion.

There are some simple needs in a home-teaching companionship over which the senior companion has a stewardship. The first that comes to mind is that, as needed, a senior companion should provide his junior companion with rides to and from their home-teaching appointments. The Lord has his reasons for sending out home teachers in pairs, and when they cannot or do not fulfill their duty as a pair, these reasons are brought to nothing. Additionally, the time spent together as companions allows them to catch up on each other’s lives, learn the needs of each other’s families, strengthen their relationship as home-teaching companions, and prepare for their visits. One suggestion that I would have is that, during this short trip, they pray for the presence and guidance of the Spirit at their appointments and for the welfare of their families. The Savior in his earthly ministry said, as found in Matthew 18:19, “Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.”

Also, the senior companion should take the primary role in ensuring that he and his junior companion keep in touch and maintain good communication between themselves. The Melchizedek Priesthood holder should make sure that his junior companion knows the time and place of upcoming visits, and the junior companion should do likewise. A good area in which an Aaronic Priesthood holder can be given some responsibility is in making the home-teaching appointments and informing his senior companion of the time and place of these appointments. This also assists the junior companion in keeping in touch in his own way with his home-teaching families.

We read in Doctrine and Covenants 84:26, “And the [Aaronic P]riesthood … holdeth the key of … the preparatory gospel.” In other words, the Aaronic Priesthood prepares young men to hold the Melchizedek Priesthood and fulfill the duties

G

We as junior companions expect our senior companions generally to be a leader and an example. We expect them to teach us as guided by the Holy Ghost to be good junior companions and good Aaronic Priesthood holders, and eventually to be good senior companions and Melchizedek Priesthood holders.

above The Charlotte North Carolina South Stake center at 5815 Carmel Road in Charlotte, where we attended church when I was growing up (and where these talks were given).

GOOGLE MAPS | JUNE 2014

that come with it, including that of being senior home-teaching companions. A senior companion is supposed to be one of the people who implements this program of preparation. As a result of this responsibility, they are to take the leadership in the companionship, and junior companions recognize this duty.

One way that I as a junior companion recognize this duty of my senior companion is by expecting him to take the primary part in preparing each month’s lesson. At the same time, however, I expect him to keep me in mind when preparing the lesson and to allow me a job to play in the presentation of his lesson. Occasionally, I even like to have the role of preparing the lesson myself when the topic is of less magnitude than in other months (though I won’t mind not preparing this month’s lesson, Brother Barringer). I have done so in the past, and in doing this I have been able to sharpen my skills in giving talks in sacrament meeting and even in writing reports and making presentations for school.

In conclusion, we as junior companions expect our senior companions generally to be a leader and an example. We expect them to teach us as guided by the Holy Ghost to be good junior companions and good Aaronic Priesthood holders, and eventually to be good senior companions and Melchizedek Priesthood holders. We expect them to let us and to help us be involved in recognizing and fulfilling the stewardships over which the Lord has called us.

We expect them to guide us in performing our roles as junior companions and, while keeping enough responsibility for themselves, allowing us sufficient responsibility to teach us what exactly we should do. Last of all, we expect our senior home-teaching companions to help us exercise and to even execute themselves the scripture in Doctrine and Covenants 20:59 which states: “They are … to warn, expound, exhort, and teach, and invite all to come unto Christ.”

And this I say in the name of our Redeemer, Lord, and King, Jesus Christ, amen.

DIAL ANN APRI L 2014

29

The Church in our day

continued from page 5

STATISTICAL REPORT APRIL 2014 As of 31 December 2013 Church units Stakes 3,050 Missions 405 Districts 571 Wards and branches 29,253 Church membership Total membership New children of record Converts baptized Missionaries Full-time missionaries Church-service missionaries

15,082,028 115,486 282,945 83,035 24,032

TEMPLES UPDATE

As of 30 April 2014

Operating 142 Under construction 14 Announced 14 Dedicated Gilbert Arizona ▼

30

2 March 2014

needed to know that somebody cared and that I wasn’t alone. And this woman—I don’t think I ever even found out what her name was, and I never saw her again after I talked to her for about five minutes—it’s not like she was going to be the one who would be there to accompany me through this scary thing of trying to find a job and move and trying to figure out what to do with my life. I never saw her again, so she was not the one that was going to be there to make me not alone. But she was the one that let me know that Heavenly Father was there and that I wasn’t alone. And she was the one who, just by giving me a hug and listening to me, let me know that Heavenly Father was going to be there with me while I made all of those hard, scary decisions.

I know that our job or our calling as children of God seems overwhelming sometimes. Sometimes we feel like we can’t help and there’s just too much to do, and this person has too many needs and I just can’t do it, I can’t handle it. But our job is not to fix everybody’s problems. If we can fix them, great. But obviously this woman was not going to be able to fix my problems. If we can’t fix somebody’s problems, it doesn’t mean that we failed, and it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try, and it doesn’t mean that we can’t be of any help at all. Our calling is just to love people so that they know that they’re not alone in their problems, to make sure that nobody ever has to go through those difficult times wondering if anybody knows them or

cares about them. Our job is to make sure that nobody ever has to wish that they had friends, because we’re their friend.

Our job is to provide people with plenty of evidence, just in case they ever wonder on a dark night if they really are alone, we should be the ones giving them evidence that they’re not alone, that they’re never alone. And it seems hard and scary to be the person that has to love. But we can do it.

One last story, and then I’m going to wrap up. Before I left on my mission, I was living in a singles ward in Texas. Our Relief Society president was just about to age out of the singles ward and “graduate”, as they say. So we knew that she was going to be getting released, because we knew that she was moving to a family ward. And one of my friends said to me, “Oh, Susan, I think I know who the next Relief Society president is going to be,” implying that it was going to be me. I said, “Oh, no, it can’t be me because I don’t love people enough.” As soon as those words came out of my mouth, I thought, Oh, no, that’s why you get callings.

I’m definitely going to be the Relief Society president. And, sure enough, I was the next Relief Society president. I did learn in that calling that it’s hard and it’s a lot of work, but it’s not the love that’s a lot of work.

Loving people doesn’t take that much work. It’s the meetings and the other things that are hard work.

But we can all love people. And that’s what people need most. And I say that in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. d NOTES 1. See 1 Corinthians 13 2. See Moroni 7:44–48 3. Moroni 7:47 4. See John 21:15–17 5. Mosiah 18:9 6. A 7.0-magnitude earthquake that occurred on 12 January 2010, killed an estimated 100,000– 160,000 people, and caused widespread destruction across the country, which is the poorest and least developed in the Western Hemisphere.

7. A 9.0-magnitude earthquake that occurred off the coast of Japan on 11 March 2011 and caused a massive tsunami that was up to 133 feet (40.5 meters) high and traveled up to 6 miles (10 kilometers) inland. Almost 16,000 people were killed and over 1 million buildings were damaged or destroyed, including a nuclear power plant that had a meltdown. (See Dialann 2.18–19.)

8. Typhoon Haiyan (or Yolanda), which struck the Philippines on 8 November 2013 and killed over 6,000 people while causing widespread damage.

9. See Doctrine and Covenants 45:26

N O T I F I C AT I O N S

JANUARY–MARCH 2014 A new quarterly roundup of the tidbits of our lives we share on social media.

FA C E B O O K DUSTIN 2 January 2014, 7.50 Taking a taxi in New York for the first time.

—with Susan Hibdon at Eastern Parkway DUSTIN 2 January 2014, 9.42 | Brooklyn It looks like today’s the day!

—with Susan Hibdon DUSTIN 8 January 2014, 23.01 The things my phone comes up with.

Just now I was sending a text message to a friend, “I’ve been in the other room working on a project.” Except instead of “project” it inserted “prophecy.”

No, I have not been in the other room working on a prophecy.

SUSAN 19 January 2014, 23.51 Fiona: “That is a nice little baby brother in his car seat in there. I wuv him. I wuv to get hugs from him and from my grown-ups.”

SUSAN 26 January 2014, 21.14 Dustin: Fiona, would you help me set the table?

DUSTIN 1 February 2014, 10.32 Going through photos on my phone and ran across this one. Fiona looks so urbane, with her orange lollipop and black coat, on the concourse at Grand Central Terminal.

—at Grand Central Terminal

Fiona: Well, I’m kind of busy right now.

DUSTIN 27 January 2014, 21.17 Watching Fiona do yoga with Susan (while I sit here and feed Colin) is one of the most adorable things I’ve ever seen.

DUSTIN 9 January 2014, 22.35 At my age, a man can have a pink birthday cake if he—or his three-and-a-half-year-old daughter—wants.

—with Susan Hibdon

DUSTIN 1 February 2014, 10.53 In this one, Fiona isn’t looking at the camera because she didn’t want me to take her picture. But she almost looks like she’s posing this way on purpose. Our little fashion model.

DUSTIN 27 January 2014, 23.42 Troy’s gone.

(And Jeff Winger has never set foot outside of Colorado???)

—feeling sad

SUSAN 13 January 2014, 13.00 13 January, reading with Daddy. (11 days old) —with Dustin Tyler Joyce

DUSTIN 29 January 2014, 0.48 I thought it was a rather solid State of the Union address—perhaps the best of Obama’s presidency—all the more surprising considering how his administration has virtually gone off the rails in the past six months or so.

SUSAN 1 February 2014, 10.25 Facebook should add a “what?” button next to the “like” button. For all the comments people make that don’t make any sense.

DIAL ANN APRI L 2014

31

DUSTIN 13 February 2014, 17.18 Cleaning out papers and ran across this…

My mom printed out this email (yes, printed out—that’s what you did back in the day) and gave it to me sometime in the 1990s.

Amazing that people dreamed up paying a payphone by using “the body’s ability to transmit electricity” instead of, you know, a phone that you just carry with you everywhere.

DUSTIN 4 February 2014, 11.29 Fiona, pointing to the map on her wall: “Do you know what place this is, Baby Brother?”

Me: “Do YOU know what place that is, Fiona?”

Fiona: “Australia!”

Fiona, smarter than the average inept New Yorker I’m currently dealing with. Far smarter.

—with Susan Hibdon

DUSTIN 15 February 2014, 11.28 Fiona just went around with a cup asking me and Susan for money. Where’d she learn that?!

DUSTIN 24 February 2014, 7.30 Sign you’re a stay-at-home dad in Brooklyn: Someone gives you a cash gift and the first thing you think is, “Great! Laundry money!”

DUSTIN 26 February 2014, 21.49 Pleasure in the simple things: the cold weather makes it difficult to do things outside, so this evening Fiona and I went to JFK Airport and rode the AirTrain. It’s an automated train, so there’s no driver, and we can get a rare view through the front window. It’s better than a roller coaster (and less expensive than an amusement park, too).

Here, Fiona plays with one of the touchscreen maps in a station.

—at Howard Beach – JFK Airport

(If you’ve ever ridden the New York City Subway, you’ll know the answer.)

DUSTIN 15 February 2014, 17.19 Coming here and learning about the universe always overwhelms my mind and makes me feel really small and insignificant.

Like, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really small and insignificant.

—at Rose Center for Earth and Space DUSTIN 15 February 2014, 22.30 Ice skating last night with my three-foot-tall Valentine.

—at Bank of America Winter Village At Bryant Park

SUSAN 5 February 2014, 22.15 The new NBCNews.com: the Pinterest version of actual news reporting.

DUSTIN 27 February 2014, 21.59 Colin stares down his arch-nemesis, Иiloc.

—with Susan Hibdon

DUSTIN 13 February 2014, 10.58 There’s a blizzard outside. But I’m wearing shorts. Because I can, and because I feel like it. So there.

DUSTIN 14 February 2014, 15.46 I rediscovered the journal I attempted to start writing in summer 1997. It’s so embarrassing to meet your 15-year-old self.

DUSTIN 20 February 2014, 1.15 Just calculated that Susan paid $1,204.08 in dues to her worthless union last year.

Almost makes me wish we lived in a rightto-work state.

DUSTIN 20 February 2014, 9.53 2013 tax return: done.

—feeling accomplished

32

TWITTER DUSTIN 7 March 2014, 23.28 | New York In a major argument with Susan right now over whether we’ve seen “Dan in Real Life” before. (We have.)

DUSTIN 16 March 2014, 21.03 Happy (early) St. Patrick’s Day! Shamrock sugar cookies, anyone?

@SEOIGH 1 January 2014, 22.12 Whenever @mint sends me a notice about a large deposit into my bank account, I always hope it’s one I wasn’t expecting.

Sadly, it never is.

@SEOIGH 11 February 2014, 15.58 And in #NH, the the Criminal Justice committee in the state House just voted 14–3 to repeal the #deathpenalty HT @ncadp

@SEOIGH 24 January 2014, 13.03 Learning more and more that my wife’s union (that would be the @UFT) pretty majorly blows

@SEOIGH 20 February 2014, 0.09 Just calculated that my wife paid $1,204.08 in dues to her worthless union in 2013 (once again, that would be the @UFT) #wewantourmoneyback

@SEOIGH 3 February 2014, 20.31 With my daughter at her very first @NBA game, @BrooklynNets vs @Sixers at @barclayscenter

@SEOIGH 19 March 2014, 9.21 I’m going to go out on a limb here: hands down the best subway musicians in #NYC are at the Metropolitan Av station on the #Gtrain @SEOIGH 28 March 2014, 20.45 “Overkill”. Maybe not the best choice of words when talking about airplane crashes, @TIME.

DUSTIN 21 March 2014, 19.15 Exploring Lower Manhattan with Fiona.

—at Stone Street

DUSTIN 28 March 2014, 20.57 I’m just going to say it: smart, successful people really piss me off.

@SEOIGH 3 February 2014, 22.16 Suddenly, drinking this makes me feel more like a real American. #AmericaIsBeautiful #thelanguagedoesntmatter

@SEOIGH 11 February 2014, 15.48 Proud, in my own small way, to protest #NSA surveillance on my sites hosted by @wordpressdotcom #StopTheNSA

DIAL ANN APRI L 2014

33

T H E G A L L E RY

Peas porridge day 11 January 2014, 17.15 est Peas porridge hot Peas porridge cold Peas porridge in the pot Nine days old.

Colin was nine days old, so we celebrated with some peas porridge (or, rather, splitpea soup) at Au Bon Pain at the Staten Island Ferry terminal in St. George. Here, Colin, Susan, and Fiona ride the John J. Marchi from Manhattan to Staten Island— Colin's first time on a boat.

34

Inspired by Time magazine’s “Light Box”, a quarterly roundup of images of our lives that might not otherwise make it into our magazine.

Admiration 3 March 2014, 10.32 est Colin looks up admiringly at his favorite person in the world, his big sister.

DIAL ANN APRI L 2014

35

ISSUE 14 A P R I L 2014

“She wasn’t always the easiest of grandmas,” Susan’s cousin Deborah Deegan recalled. “She definitely wasn’t a storybook, milk-and-cookies kind of a person. But, boy, she’d curl up with a good book—Wizard of Oz and old westerns and stuff like that. And we spent a lot of time doing things like that and playing cards.

She was pretty tremendous.”

SEE “REMEMBERING REVELEE”, PAGE 14

dialann.org