Connie Mourtisen Wilcox, interviewed for the Aileen H. Clyde 20th Century Women's Legacy Archive, 2015

The Aileen H. Clyde 20th Century Women's Legacy Archive oral history project was created to record the personal histories of 20th century women; to record memories and emotions related to historical events and social change processes; and to explore women's participation in and response to social and cultural changes. The project is conducted by Resources for the Study of Social Engagement, a non-profit organization, and is supported in part by the Clyde Family Foundation and by the Aileen H. Clyde 20th Century Women's Legacy Archive at the University of Utah.

Connie Mourtisen Wilcox Interviewed by Carolyn Jenkins for the Aileen H. Clyde 20th Century Women’s Legacy Archive Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library University of Utah October 19, 2015 Connie Mouritsen Wilcox Interviewed by Carolyn Jenkins for the Aileen H. Clyde 20th Century Women's Legacy Archive Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library University of Utah Born: August 21, 1931, Bennington, Idaho. Parents: Homer Mouritsen and June Caldwell Mouritsen Siblings: Roger C. Mouritsen; Russell H. Mouritsen; Georgia Lee Mouritsen Hayden. Husband: Herbert G. Wilcox, Jr. (1928-2008) Children: David Michael Wilcox (1951- 1975) Richard Stephen Wilcox (1953 - 2011) Thomas Brent Wilcox (1957) Nancy Wilcox (1958 - 1974) Susie Wilcox Nelson (1964) James Patrick Wilcox (1970) The Aileen Clyde Life History Project is conducted by Resources for the Study of Social Engagement, a non-profit organization, and is supported in part by the Clyde Family Foundation. Carolyn Jenkins conducted this interview. Transcription was done by Elizabeth Condie Brough. Dawn Hall Anderson edited the manuscript and added footnotes, which were reviewed and approved by the interviewee. Elisha Buhler Condie prepared the final manuscript. The focus of the interview project was three fold: 1) To record the personal histories of 20th-century women, 2) To record memories and emotions related to historical events and social change processes, and 3) To explore women’s participation in and response to social and cultural change. 2 Interview 1 (October 19, 2015) Carolyn Jenkins (CJ): Could you also give me your birth date and where you were born? Connie Wilcox (CW): August 21, 1931. I was born in a little town in Idaho called Bennington. Do you want me to give you a little bit more on that? CJ: We’ll talk more about where you were born in a minute, but to begin with, if you could tell me your siblings names and your children’s names so that as we’re going through your life we’ll know who you are referring to. CW: I want to call him my older brother, but he was five years younger than me: Dr. Roger Mouritsen. He was, oh, a big shot (laughs) in Salt Lake City and Idaho. He was over the Department of Education in Idaho, and he signed my teaching certificate here in Utah. He was a really prominent guy. Then my other brother, Russ Mouritsen, who was fourteen years younger than me, was a professor at the BYU [in Communications]. My sister Georgia Lee Hayden was a teacher at Olympus High School. (She and my brother Roger have passed away.) Then me, four of us. CJ: Were all of you born in Idaho? CW: Yes. CJ: Okay and what about your children, just so we get this straight. CW: I have children; I have six children. CJ: Six children, and what are their names? CW: I’ve lost three of them, and you maybe want to talk about that later. My oldest is David. Then I had Richard, Thomas, Nancy, Susie, and Jimmy—James. CJ: And what were your mother and father doing at the time of your birth in Idaho? CW: Trying to survive. It was the Depression years, ’31 you know, and like my mother said, “Nobody had one penny. No money at all.” 1 They lived on a little farm outside of Bennington; my father was a potato rancher and a farmer, and he raised cattle—so there was always plenty of food. We always had plenty of wonderful food, but no money. But as children we didn’t know it or even notice. We had a wonderful, wonderful time when we were little. CJ: What brought them to Idaho? CW: To Idaho? Well, my mother lived in Idaho. Mother lived in Paris, Idaho, and my father lived in Bennington, Idaho. So my dad rode his horse, I guess, to Paris to see my mother. They 1 The Great Depression was a severe, worldwide economic downturn that took place during the 1930s. By 1933, when the Great Depression reached its nadir, some 13 to 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half of the country’s banks had failed. 3 had a wonderful courtship, and my mother, at the time they got married, had moved to Rexburg, Idaho, and was getting her degree, which was quite amazing in the ‘20s, you know, to be able to try to go for a degree. She was a beautiful, beautiful woman. CJ: What was her degree in? CW: She was going to be a teacher. She played the saxophone, had a lot of boyfriends—she was really beautiful—and a lot of handsome, charming brothers who loved my mother and looked out for her. Nobody dared do anything to my mother because of my [Caldwell] uncles . . . . (My little younger brother Russ looks like the Caldwells: he’s just a charming, handsome guy.) So, anyway, they got married and then they lived on this little farm in Bennington, Idaho. It must have been hard for my mother because she’d had beautiful clothing, and even though her family was very poor, they always managed to get her nice things. She was the baby of the family—and they dressed her beautifully. She was a gorgeous, dark-haired woman. So then to go live with a potato farmer on a farm that was not even making any money! I had to really hand it to her that she could do that. But she was quite the woman, and she got in and she did it. She lived there with nothing, except, as I said, they had the food. They would get together with their friends on the weekend and play card games. They played…let’s see…what card game was it that they played at the time. It was one you don’t hear about now so much. Then my mother and dad on this little place on their farm put in a dam. There was a stream of water and my father built a dam: it’s the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen. I was there in 2003 to check out “my roots,” and it’s still in perfect condition. You could put the board down in that dam and fill up this whole valley. And they did that in this one particular area, the big field. Then they filled it full of fish and people would come over there and fish. Even more amazing, they had dances there every Friday night or Saturday night maybe. It was called the Silver Pond. It’s quite well known in Idaho. It was written about in the Montpelier News-Examiner, and it was quite the thing. People would come from everywhere: they’d ride their horses in, or their buggies, or their old jalopy cars, or somehow get there. My father and his family all played instruments and, let me tell you, they were musical. Music would just be going on those dance nights. I was three or four years old, my sister was three years older, and we would look out the window and see the gas lanterns all around this cement floor where they’d dance at night. We would look out and see all that. It was so exciting to watch them and hear the music. Then in the morning, we’d hurry out there to see if anybody had left anything. One time I found a dime—it was so incredible—and my sister found a nickel. And my sister said, “Listen, Connie, I want you to have the biggest one. I’m going to give you this nickel; you give me the dime.” I said, “Oh you’re so good!” (laughs) That was a long time ago, but those memories are still so strong in my mind I can visually see it. I can actually visually see it. CJ: That’s wonderful. 4 CW: The dance floor that I remembered as a child was so huge, but when I went back there with my cousin in ’03, it was little. CJ: And you hadn’t been back? CW: No, I’d never been back to see it. I’d been up to Montpelier a lot, but I’d never gone over there to see that. It was kind of broken up in big chunks of cement. Let me backtrack a little bit and tell you about the root cellar. The old houses had root cellars, and my mother would send me down in the root cellar to get the cabbage or the apples. The funny thing is, she’d always tell me to get the apples that had the worm holes first. “Get the wormy apples first because,” she’d say, “we have to eat those—we can’t let those go to waste!” So therefore, we were really eating wormy apples all winter. (laughs) CW: You never got to the good ones? CJ: Never got to the good ones because by the time you get there, they’d have a wormhole. CW: She was smart. (laughs) CJ: Yeah. I also remember we always went to church. My father was very active. Mother was very active. CW: You’re talking in the LDS Church? CJ: I’m talking about the LDS Church; up there we’d never heard of another church. I was so little, you know. I thought that was the only church that existed in the world. Anyway, at that age, I didn’t even think about it. So we would have our baths before church, and mother would get the fire going—it was a coal stove—and she’d bring out the silver tub. She’d set it down in front of that coal stove so we wouldn’t freeze to death because you step out this way and you freeze to death! It was so darn cold up there! We’d both have to bathe in the same water, my sister and I, because, well, that’s just what you do: you don’t waste that water; it’s too much trouble to heat up some more water. There was no hot water tap: it was just what she heated on the stove. So we would each sit in that tub, I would sit alone and then my sister. Or vice versa: probably she had her bath first. When we would get out, mother would wrap us up quickly. She always had nice clean clothes for us. Always. Mother was strict on cleanliness, and she wanted us to look really nice. And we went to church every Sunday. CJ: So, when you’re thinking back on that, and picturing yourself in the tub, how old would you say you’d be at that time? CW: I was only three or four because my sister—she was three years older—was going into Bennington to school. There was just the one school building with all the grades from the first grade to the sixth grade all in the same room. (I wrote quite a story on that at one time. I won an award for it. At the time I was doing a lot of writing.) Anyway… 5 CJ: I was asking you how old you were when you were thinking of being in the bathtub, and it sounds like that was early. I’d like you to think about around ten years old: what you were doing at that time, what kinds of activities. You’ve already talked about some of those activities, but what else comes to mind from when you are about ten? CW: We moved into Montpelier. 2 And of course my mother loved that, and she was active in everything. My father actually became the bishop there. CJ: So you moved from the farm into Montpelier. About how old were you then? CW: I think I was only about six when we moved there. We had a nice home that my father built, because he was a builder too. He also owned and ran the grain elevator, and he would make flour—that’s another story, you know. But anyway, I remember this little house that we moved into. The back of the house was adjacent to what was called “The Burgoyne Café”; in fact, they were almost on the same property. So my father told them that they could store stuff from the café down in the basement of his house. So people would come over and get supplies; and we could just walk through the block and we’d be out on Main Street. We were close to the school too. It was first and second grade that I was there, so I was about six then, and my father—should I tell a little side story here? CJ: Yeah. CW: My father loved to catch fish, and he had a whole barrel full of live fish. (You keep them alive till you’re ready to eat them, you know.) But I was just a little tiny girl, and I had a little doll buggy, and I took this one big, huge fish and I wrapped it up in a blanket. I put a bonnet on it, put it in my dolly buggy, and I was walking along the street. People said, “Oh, can I see your dolly?” And I’d say, “Yes,” and they’d look at this little dolly—and here was this dead fish! I was hard up for toys I guess. (laughs) Anyway, that’s a little side story. But I remember Edith and Thelma Cooke lived right across the street from us. They were my good friends. The first time—I don’t know if I should say this or not—that I had ever seen a dirty picture or anything like that was their neighbor; he showed me a dirty picture. Let me tell you how pornography works: it’s still in my brain! I mean shocking, you know. So Mother always would say, “Don’t get too friendly with that boy.” Thelma and Edith Cooke lived there with their mother. Edith had had tuberculosis, I think. She had this great big shoe, and I’ll never forget how she had to walk with that shoe. Thelma was the younger sister and she was my friend; we’d walk to school every morning together. It was just through the block and then we were right there. Now, I looked on my high school’s sesquicentennial website to check and see what had happened to them. Of course, they are both 2 Montpelier is the largest community in the Bear Lake Valley, a farming region north of Bear Lake in southeastern Idaho along the Utah border. It was settled in 1863 by Mormon pioneers on the route of the Oregon Trail. Nearby to the east is the border with Wyoming. 6 dead: all my friends are dead. All my old boyfriends are dead! I thought I was going to get reacquainted with them—now that I’m single, you know (laughs)—but they’re all dead. Edith went on ahead of us, and I wanted to know whatever happened to her, having a leg like that. But as it turned out she became a beautician, and she did very well. She married, I guess. It’s funny how you think about the people you knew, and you want to go back and check on them. But you just can’t do it. CJ: Let’s go up to when you were ten. You were saying that that was kind of a dramatic time in your life. CW: It was dramatic for me, and it was dramatic for the country because the Second World War broke out that year on December 7th, 1941. I was exactly ten; I had just turned ten in August. Things were still real tight and my father had to make money. He couldn’t make it on the farm; he couldn’t make ends meet through that. He had to make some extra, so that year he got a job with the State of Idaho and he had to drive their truck, and in May of 1941 he was driving gravel around to the different roads with the ice and snow, you know, to put it out so that people could drive on them. It was the spring of the year when things were kind of thawing a little bit but not all the way. They’re still frozen at night but then thaw out throughout the day. He was with his boss Mr. Dunford who lived in Georgetown, which is close to Montpelier. The two of them were out of the truck digging this gravel, and the whole huge pile of gravel caved in on them. It buried my father up to his waist and almost totally buried Mr. Dunford. I’ve got to tell this so it’s understandable: I mean it was so critical because when I got home my mother was crying and distraught, saying, “Your daddy’s been in an accident!” CJ: You got home from school? CW: When I got home from school, mother told me about the accident. As a little kid I felt so awful. My dad was in the hospital for a hundred days and I would go after school. I’d go see him every day, and I remember I couldn’t even touch the bed. He’d just scream. All the bones in his body from the waist down were broken. I mean it was a miracle, a miracle that he survived. There’s so much to tell but this is the real miracle: Every single morning when Mr. Dunford and my dad would get in the truck—the old vehicles, you had to crank them to get the motor going— he always had to crank that old truck to get the engine going. Okay, now when he got buried he was able to reach over and grab the handle of a shovel that was still hanging sticking out. He was able to grab the handle of that shovel, dig himself out of all that rock, and in horrible pain, he pulled himself up into the cab of this truck. Mr. Dunford was lying there, almost dead, and my father started that truck up—I’ll start to cry, I can’t help it (voice tearful)—it started up without being cranked. A miracle. It started right up. He didn’t drive very far before he saw his brother who lived right there in Bennington, which was where the gravel pit was, or close to it, and he hollered to my uncle Irvin, “Hurry and get the doctor!” Somehow they managed to go get Mr. Dunford out of the rock and get him into the hospital. Now our hospital was in Montpelier, but Montpelier didn’t even have a hospital: the only hospital we had was on the second floor of A. B. 7 Thorf’s Clothing Store, and you have to climb these long stairs to get up there. That’s where my father was: in this hospital on the second floor. And I would go there after school to see him every day. He was there for a hundred days. Then he went to Arizona to recuperate, and I honestly can’t remember exactly how long he was there. CW: Why Arizona? CJ: It was warm, and he had a brother there. He could live with his brother. He would help him, and the doctors were there and could help him. When my Dad returned home after his accident, after spending a year in Arizona recuperating, he became owner of the mill. I was about eleven or twelve and he asked me to be in his office once in a while so he could take care of business. One day a fellow came in and asked for shorts. I was so surprised and told him my Dad doesn’t have shorts. You get those at J.C. Pennys! I didn’t realize the man was asking for what was left over after wheat has been milled, which are also called shorts. I loved being at the mill and would jump into the huge bins of wheat. I didn’t know it was dangerous. I just stayed close to the side so I could grab the tops of the bin. I was fascinated that my Dad could make flour out of the wheat. And I knew it was the best flour in the world. To see Dad sew the tap of the full flour bag was something. Even as a kid I was aware of how clever my Dad was. Dad would load the truck with flour and drive around Bear Lake and sell it. He asked Mom and me to go with him to Afton, Wyoming. I in turn invited Bobby Lilyenquist and he wanted to go. I remember how angry Mom was because of the room. The truck cab would only hold three so Bobby and I had to sit in the back with the flour. In an open truck with the wind blowing us all the way to Afton, Wyoming and back. It was miserable. Mother was looking out the window one day when it was getting closer to Christmas and she saw Bobby Lilyenquist coming up the path with a present. Mom was a quick thinker and hurried and wrapped up one of my Dad’s new ties. I thought she was brilliant. I always wondered what his family thought. While Dad was gone I helped cook a little bit but I loved to experiment with food and I made a lemon pie. I had to substitute ingredients but when cutting into the pie to serve my Mom, I couldn’t cut into the crust. I finally threw it into the barnyard with the chickens and our cow. Neither would eat it and it sat there on the ground taunting me. During that time, my baby brother was born and…did we have a baby brother then? I can’t figure this timeline out. Anyway, during this time my little brother [Russell] had to go live in Bennington with my Aunt Vina because mother had to go to work. Mother worked at the A. B. Thorf’s Clothing Store. CJ: That was below the hospital? 8 CW: Yes, below the hospital. But anyway, my sister [Georgia] was a princess. She didn’t like going out in the barnyard; that wasn’t her thing. She was a brilliant woman, and she would do things in the house, but she wasn’t crazy about cooking. Nothing like that. So it was up to me to feed the chickens and to clean the barnyard. Was there a cow? I couldn’t have milked a cow—I was too little. But I remember climbing up to the second floor of the barn where there were these open windows. I was just a little girl, but I remember now that I would pitchfork these bales of hay, the feed, and throw them down for the cow. So we did have a cow, then, but we had a neighbor, as I remember, who was taking care of the cow. But I had to do the chickens; I had to worry about the chickens. Just snippets of information come to my head about what went on. CJ: So you were home. You stayed with your mom, and two of your siblings stayed. And then one sibling went? CW: Well, Roger was with me and Georgia, so three of us were there. The youngest [Russell] went because he was a little bit older, but he wasn’t old enough to go to school, as I remember. CJ: So you were all in school, and your mom started teaching? CW: No, she had to work at the store. She was a good salesperson. She was selling clothing because that’s what they did at the A. B. Thorf Store. CJ: But she went to college. CW: She went to college, but she didn’t quite complete it. She’d met my father and they got married. So instead of being a wonderful school teacher, she ended up on the farm. So as a child that accident was very traumatic because it made an impact on our whole lives, all of our lives, after that. CJ: How so? What would you say was the impact it had on your life after that? CW: Well, my father wasn’t well for a long time and we struggled with money. We didn’t have any money, we just didn’t have any. We had to move up with my aunt in her home on Main Street. Her home had a caved-in roof. When you’d look at it, it was so caved it looked like a horseshoe. It was an old raggedy home, and we lived in the back part of it. I think our living conditions would have been different, nicer than that. But I didn’t know: it seemed good to me, and I’d come home and mother would have hot bread baking coming out of the oven, and there was never a problem with having enough butter and jam. They put up all this wonderful jam. And my aunt made little rolls the size of loaves of bread! It was great. There was a mink farm there in the back owned by her in-laws. They were raising mink, and she was living in a home that was owned by her in-laws. They lived next door. So we’d go through the farm and see these horrible little screeching mink that would scare you to death—you’d have nightmares! (laughs) I guess it was maybe hard for us, harder than it had to be. But I still had the best Christmases of anybody. I had the most wonderful Christmases. Mother was very ingenious and she’d go to the second-hand stores and for our Christmases she’d find old dolls and she’d redo the hair and she 9 would make beautiful clothing for it. For one doll that I wish I’d kept, she made the most beautiful wedding dress! And always…I was so thrilled. Everything I got I was so thrilled. My sister was a little bit spoiled; she wasn’t quite as thrilled with things. She wouldn’t want to get up on Christmas morning, and I just had to get up early. I just wanted to get up early! I couldn’t stand it. I loved it so much. I’d talk to her and beg her. Well, she wouldn’t come down, so I’d go down without her. Mother and Dad would buy both of us a sweater: if I liked hers more than mine, I’d switch ‘em! And I did that with many things. CJ: So this was before anybody else came down? (laughs) CW: Before anybody else was up. And at that time, Mother would put hers in a chair and mine in a chair. Now when I had my kids, I wrapped everything—that made it last a little longer, you know. But Mother would just set things out. Mother would always have lovely things for us, even if she ... The one Christmas I was able to get a pair of skis! I was so thrilled. Dad went to the second-hand store—I think it was called a thrift shop or something; they didn’t have D.I. [Deseret Industries]—and found a big old pair of ski boots that had big square toes. It was so awful; they were so ugly. But I thought they were gorgeous. I was so thrilled with them! Anne got me a pair of skis that she got because of the war [surplus]. They were selling these paratrooper skis, which you know were—what?—twenty feet long? (laughs) To put your foot in these old boots on those skis and just a strap across to hold them on? Well, no wonder I had trouble going down the hill! And I had a really nice boy ask me if I would go skiing with him. CJ: How old were you? CW: At this time I was getting older, maybe even high school. I don’t know, but I was old enough to go on a date, so probably sixteen. 3 As a family we were still struggling financially, and he had a brand-new car. He was well off. They had money—and he was very, very nice. We stop at the ski resort. We go in. I look at their boots: all these beautiful boots lined up. And there’s my big, squared toe boots! (laughs) It was so embarrassing. CJ: Those boots and skis that you loved so much! CW: And my skis that I was so proud of. I thought … (laughs) I don’t know! It was so horrible. CJ: Let’s talk a little bit about high school. What was it like for you in high school? CW: I loved high school. I loved it. I was kind of dumb, though, because they’d try to put me in different offices and they would nominate me for everything, and I didn’t know enough to withdraw my name from the others for the one that I wanted to belong to. (laughs) But I had a lot of boyfriends, a lot of sweet boys; they were just adorable. The one, Bobby Liljenquist, I loved Bobby Liljenquist, and he was a year younger than me and a head shorter: I’d 3 The LDS Church encouraged parents not to allow their children to date until they were sixteen years old. 10 go to the movies with him and he looked like my little brother. I had brand new shoes on this one date with him; they were saddle oxfords. Mother had got me some saddle oxfords, and I was so proud of them. But when I looked down, they looked awfully big on my feet. At that age, you’re shy of everything and embarrassed about everything. So I was wearing these shoes that I was so proud of, but unfortunately I stepped in some gum so every step I had this big long stringy thing. You don’t dare say, “Oh my gosh, look at my shoe!” You just hope nobody else notices it, you know? (laughs) It was so terrible! So terrible. So then we sat in the Burgoyne Café and they had a bar, a counter. Actually, it wasn’t Burgoyne Café; it was Burgoyne Drugstore and they had a café in it. (Later on I worked in the drugstore there, but at this particular time I wasn’t working there.) We ordered a root beer float, and wouldn’t you know, my straw got stuck in the ice cream, so my root beer went all over the top, all over the counter. Just these little dumb things that happen that stick in your mind. I did get a job in high school; I worked at the theater. How I got the job was kind of brilliant. I knew that they were getting a new manager for the theatre. It was called Rich Theatre and the owner, Mr. Rich, owned the bank, and he was rich. He owned everything in Montpelier and he managed the bank. I knew the manager of the theatre was going to be changed. When the new manager came in, I went up to his office and I said, “I’ve been hired as an usher,” and he said, “Oh, good. Okay, I’ll see ya tonight.” I just started working there! CJ: Smart! CW: Yeah, it was pretty smart, you know? All I wanted to do was work. All I wanted to do was make money because I was in the orchestra, I was in the band, and we took trips all through Idaho to play in the concerts and at the parades. And oh, I think I might have been kind of cute in high school? CJ: Sounds like it! CW: I might’ve been. I don’t know. But I didn’t think I was. Mr. Baker, who was over the band and orchestra, appointed me to be the drum majorette—no, the banner girl. My brother was the drum major. He was just a good-looking, smart, cute guy. He was over that position, and I was the banner girl. And I never knew if Mr. Baker had me be that because the costume would fit me, or because I was “just so darn cute,” or whether it was to get me out of the orchestra because of my clarinet. I had this old clarinet that my mother bought from a neighbor for $15 and it had no pads on it. And I loved the clarinet. Well, I didn’t know it had to have pads. It squeaked, and I’d hear Mr. Baker yell, “Mouritsen!” And I’d think, “I can’t help it!” I was in an ensemble. I practiced every morning: I had to be up at the high school at 4:30, no, 6:30 probably. And we had to walk and we froze to death. Anything that stuck out of a scarf or hat would have ice off it. It was bitter, bitter cold. I’d walk there every morning to practice in this ensemble. There were four of us girls. (I’ve got pictures of me playing in that ensemble.) So I 11 loved to participate, and I was in the orchestra and I was in the band and I was in the choir. I was in everything, and I loved it. CJ: Did you do art? I know you are an artist. Did you do any art at that time? CW: From the very first that I can remember as a little tiny girl, I had an artistic urge. I don’t say I was given the gift of the talent, but I was given the gift of wanting to do it—the passion. I’ve had to learn slowly. At that time as a little tiny girl I remember going out and pounding rocks— you hear kids pound rocks 4? (laughs)—because of the colors. I’d find one that was pink; I’d find one that was gray; and I’d stack them up in jars so I could see the colors. It excited me, you know, to see the colors. I didn’t honestly get into it very much because I didn’t know anything about it. We had no art classes, none in our high school. The most artistic thing there was the typewriter. (laughs) I came in at 72 words a minute on one of these old clunkers. I got a certificate for it. I and my boyfriend and one of my best friends, all three of us, were in the class. We had so darn much fun. Anyway, that’s why I did that: because it was artistic, and we had no art classes. Oh, except for Home Ec. We had Home Ec. and we could bake. Okay, here’s one other little side story since you asked for specifics: I was in charge of making the frosting for this big banquet because that’s what they assigned the Home Ec. Students. We were going to prepare the meal for some big deal that was going to be that night. And I mixed up granulated sugar instead of powdered sugar for the frosting. Ruined it. Our instructor, Mitty—I don’t remember her name but it was Mitty5 something—this little old lady, who probably was not old, I’m sure, but nervous and upset. “Oh, oh! What are we going to do? Oh! What are we going to do?!” And I remember how horrible that was. Anyway, I didn’t get a chance to do a lot of artistic things until I actually got married. CJ: Well, let’s go up to college. You went to college . . . CW: No. CJ: Oh, so what happened after high school? CW: Well, I couldn’t wait to come to Salt Lake. That was my dream. I loved Salt Lake, loved it, and I thought, Just to get to Salt Lake! My mother managed to get me in the Beehive House 6 — you know where the Beehive House is? 4 “Go kick rocks” and “go pound sand” are other slang variants for telling someone to go away, get lost, buzz off, go do something pointless. 5 Mitty Sloken was the instructor’s name. 6 In 1920, the Young Women Mutual Improvement Association of the LDS Church opened the Beehive House, formerly the residence of Brigham Young, as a boarding home for single women working in Salt Lake City, many of whom were working as secretaries at the adjacent buildings of the LDS Church's headquarters complex. It continued to operate as a boarding house until the 1950s. It was restored in 1959-60 and is now an historic house museum with period furnishings 12 CJ: Oh yes. CW: And I lived there before it was all redone and restored, in the room that overlooked Eagle Gate. CJ: You lived there? Wow. CW: I lived there. It was for girls from out of town so that they could come to Salt Lake and be safe. And I went to a little school called Comptometer School. You’ve heard of comptometers? CJ: No! CW: You haven’t? CJ: No. Tell us about it. CW: They’re like little adding machines 7, and it was six-weeks course, and you do it [data entry] like this—without looking at it. (Every once in a while I’d cheat a little bit and I’d look.) But, anyway, I wasn’t going to take six weeks; I did it in three weeks. Instead of just going half a day, I went all day long. CJ: And you lived at the Beehive House while you were doing this school? CW: Yes. CJ: Oh, my word! How old were you? CW: I was eighteen. CJ: Eighteen, okay. CW: I loved living there. I just loved living there! We got to see the presidents of the Church on Sunday because they would come over there and have dinner. Sister Smith, who ran the Beehive House, was the sister of Joseph Fielding 8 , so he would have dinner with us on Sunday. It was exciting, you know! It was thrilling for me. So we’d always have this wonderful meal on to depict the Young family’s life in the mid-nineteenth century. The Beehive House gets its name from the beehive sculpture atop the house. 7 The comptometer was the first commercially successful key-driven mechanical calculator. A key-driven calculator is extremely fast because each key adds or subtracts its value to the accumulator as soon as it is pressed and a skilled operator can enter all of the digits of a number simultaneously, using as many fingers as required, making them sometimes faster to use than electronic calculators. 8 Joseph Fielding Smith (1876-1972) was the tenth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or LDS Church). His father Joseph F. Smith was the sixth president of the church. At the time Connie would have seen him at the Beehive House he was not the president yet, but serving as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a position he held from 1951 to 1970. 13 Sundays. But I had no money for lunches or anything, so I couldn’t wait to be earning money. I didn’t ask my folks for money; I just simply went without. But my kids? Now if they need something, they borrow money. But I never ever thought of borrowing money. Never. So, I just got by, I just got by. I’d go with the other girls on break, and they’d get these big juicy cinnamon rolls, and I’d just sit there. CJ: You’d just have to sit there? Weren’t the meals provided for you? Some of the meals? CW: Yes. We’d have breakfast, and then we’d have dinner there. CJ: Aw, okay. So you’d have to wait. CW: Um-hmm. And it was a great place. I met a lot of really wonderful girls, and one of my high school friends was there, too: Nola Ipsen. She and I had the best time ever. We’re still friends now. CJ: So you both came from Montpelier. CW: We graduated the same year from Montpelier High School. She’s in Montpelier still, and she’s on Facebook with me. So it’s great to keep in touch with your high school friends—the ones that are left! CJ: So after you graduated … CW: I got the job at Auerbach’s 9. I was so thrilled! I liked my job there, I really did, but who should come in? This handsome guy just off his mission from South Africa, and I was just …. all the girls just… this darling, curly-haired, handsome—just handsome! And, well, who should he take a liking to? Me. And he wanted to be with me a lot, so we started going steady, immediately almost. We met in March. CJ: What year? CW: March of 1950, and we got engaged in April, 1950, a month later, and we got married May 18, 1950. CJ: Fast. CW: Fast. Married fifty-eight years. He died in ’08 right on our anniversary, fifty-eight years. But he’d been sick for about twelve years. I’d taken care of him, and I came back here. That’s why I had to have a ground level because he couldn’t go up and down the stairs. I wanted him back here with family and grandkids. I wanted him to see family back here. CJ: When you got married, did you move back to Idaho? 9 Auerbach’s was a department store in downtown Salt Lake City, on the corner of State Street and 300 South. Built by immigrants Samuel and Theodore Auerbach in the 1860s it was a well known and successful business until it closed in 1979. 14 CW: No, nooo ... (laughs) Because he knew nothing of Idaho. He was a Salt Lake boy; he lived right there in Highland Park. His family all did. So we got us a cute apartment—oh, did I say cute? It was a mangy apartment on South Temple, cheap, with the Chinese. 10 We weren’t there long enough for anything, but we had an old clunker car. I’ll need to backtrack again. When I first met him, he had bought, oh, I can’t remember the name of the car…they never made them again after that. But he had a brand-new one. CJ: Well, if it comes to you … CW: Studebaker! It was a beauty. The first thing I wanted him to do was to go up to Montpelier and meet my family because I was just crazy about him. He was just a darling guy. We got as far as Bloomington. No, we got through Bloomington and then you go on into Paris and then on into Montpelier—I don’t know if you know that country up there or not—but anyway, we got up into Bloomington when it was evening, pretty dark actually, and all we could see were these horses coming at us. We see these shiny eyes coming at us—and they ran right into our car! They wrecked it, the Studebaker. It was brand-new. It ruined the car, ruined the Studebaker. It was so traumatic, and we both got knocked unconscious. They called the doctors. I came to and I said, “Oh no, we’re fine, we’re fine.” Somebody drove us over into Montpelier to be with my mother and dad. And it was b-i-t-t-e-r cold. That was an introduction for him! He should have run. (laughs) He should have just taken off! But anyway, that’s how we got acquainted up there, going to meet my folks, and then Mother had a reception for us up there also. So in Salt Lake we did have an apartment—the crummy one—but then got into a nicer one, a really nice one right on Wilson Avenue. It was very nice. Then I had my first little baby—almost a year after we got married, I had a baby. A beautiful, beautiful child, beautiful child, and Mother said, “Let other people brag about him; you don’t need to keep bragging about him!” (laughs) Mother was one of these get-the-show-on-the-road women, you know the type? She was a wonderful woman, but she let you know what you should do and what you shouldn’t do. Then we got into a house right out here on 6200 [South]. That was our first little house, and we were able to get into it for only something like $7,000 or so. And they were cute little homes, darling little homes. I’ve still got friends that live there, but they’ve sold it to their kids for 10 Connie and Herb Wilcox would have been living near the Chinese enclave known as Plum Alley in Salt Lake. “Plum Alley ran north and south, dividing the city block between Main and State streets, the cross streets being 100 and 200 South streets. Within and around Plum Alley the Chinese developed a micro community with grocery and merchandise stores, laundries, and restaurants. . . . The decades between 1900 and 1930 were the years of growing Chinese activity around Plum Alley in Salt Lake City . . . [and] a new wave of Chinese immigrants began to settle in the United States in the aftermath of World War II.” [See: Don C. Conley, "The Pioneer Chinese of Utah," in Helen Zeese Papanikolas, ed., The Peoples of Utah (1976)] 15 around $350,000. The kids have built a big, beautiful home, and they live in the basement! (laughs) But anyway, we loved it and we were active in the Church and we had these wonderful, darling children. I was always looking for something better, though, looking to make a little money on this house and getting into another one. Herb wouldn’t do that. He was a very solid guy who was content. He would still have been out there [on 6200 South], you know, because he wouldn’t take a chance. CJ: What did he do to make money? CW: He worked at the oil company first, and then he got on with Wells Fargo. At the time it was not called Wells Fargo, it was…what was it called before it was called Wells Fargo? CJ: It wasn’t Walker, was it? 11 CW: Walker Bank. Right downtown, the beautiful building down there. When they got the new building, he was the one that had to oversee moving that big, humongous board table out through the upper window—he had to stop all traffic, have all the cops around. He was also in charge of the transfer of the money over there to the new location too. He was in charge of properties. He worked himself up to where he was the Vice President of Wells Fargo. He did very well; they loved him. He was a company man, and he was very honest and a good person. So let’s see, what else can I say? CJ: Well, now let’s talk about your kids. You’re out at this house that you’ve just bought—and how many kids did you have by then? CW: I had the four children. CJ: Okay, you had four out of the six. CW: Let’s see… I had five at that house. And then we moved into a place on Melbourne, a beautiful home there. It had been my brother’s. (You know, you think you’re not going to forget these addresses.) We bought it from my brother, and it was big—huge! In fact, people would come to deliver things and they would open the front door and step in, thinking it was like an apartment house. I’d go down. They’d be in the front door, and I’d say, “What did you need?” (laughs) So it was a beautiful home, but still I’m always looking for something else: I’m always ready to move; I just love to move. We moved from Melbourne to Arnett Avenue. And then again after the kids were grown I told Herb, “We could get into a condo.” I was just dying to get into Waterbury; I just loved Waterbury, so I found us a condo down here. It was, at the time, very cheap: only about $60,000 or something, and it was just a neat one. That was in the ‘90s when we finally moved there. But you want me to talk about my kids. That’s earlier. 11 Walker Bank and Trust was renamed First Interstate Bank of Utah in 1981, and First Interstate was acquired by Wells Fargo in 1996. 16 CJ: Well, just that time of your life. What were you doing at home? What was life like for you at that time? CW: Well, what happened was there was something tragic that happened in 1974. We had moved from our home on Melbourne over to this other new house on Arnett, and my daughter disappeared. CJ: Oh! CW: She disappeared. She walked out the door one night, and we never saw her again. They started talking about a serial killer, Ted Bundy12, and I said, “No. No that didn’t happen.” She was a beautiful girl, a beautiful girl. CJ: How old was she? CW: Sixteen. CJ: She was sixteen. Okay. CW: And I said, “No, that couldn’t be.” But that night my son went out on his motorcycle and looked everywhere. David—he looked out for Nancy. 13 But my son [David] had been quite ill too just before that. CJ: You had all six kids at that time? CW: I had all six. And the timeline is: This happened in October 1st of 1974, and we had all been to Lagoon to a fun outing sometime around July 24th and I remember that David had been very ill then. He’d been to the doctor and they had discovered that he had a kidney disease called Goodpasture syndrome. 14 Twenty-three year old, handsome boy, just a handsome boy, and well, that was so tragic. I remember going to the hospital: we took Nancy with us, and she just passed right out when she saw him because he had tubes everywhere. They had to remove his kidneys. They had to remove his kidneys, and it was so tragic, so tragic. He would come to our house every other night; we had a hospital in the basement of our home on Arnett Street. (That’s 12 Shortly before his January 24, 1989, execution in Florida, Ted Bundy, a former Utah law student (whose kidnapping and killing of young women had begun in Washington state), confessed to having killed both Debra Kent and Nancy Wilcox of Utah, as well as 21 other young women in the 1970s. Bundy also indicated on a map torn from an atlas where he’d dumped 3 of the 8 Utah victims. Connie’s daughter, pretty sixteen-year-old Nancy Wilcox, disappeared October 1, 1974. Debbie Kent, seventeen, disappeared the following month, on the night of November 8, 1974, from a Bountiful high school parking lot as she left a play early to pick up her younger brother at a roller rink before closing time, intending to then return to the play to pick up her parents. 13 14 David and Nancy were seven years apart in age. Goodpasture syndrome is a rare autoimmune disease that attacks the lungs and kidneys 17 where we lived then.) We had a hospital built in there where we could dialyze him—his wife and I—we had to hook him up every other day. CJ: So he was married when he found out about this disease? CW: Yes, and Jan was a nurse. So he wasn’t living right in my home at that time, but we all took care of it and took care of him. I’d have to drive him up there for dialysis; he’d have to go in every other day. Once they got him set up at my home, then we could do it in my home. It was horrible, a horrible disease. But, anyway, he was still able to go out on his motorcycle, and he looked for Nancy that night for hours. We called every friend from around the area that night, and nobody had seen her. Usually at night she’d run over to her friend’s house, and they’d talk about school the next day. She didn’t take her purse or her jewelry or anything, so I assumed that she’d just run over to her friend’s house as usual. But she didn’t come back. So Herb called the sheriff and said, “She’s missing.” He said, “Well, we don’t do anything for twenty-four hours; that’s the rule. And she’ll come back. If she doesn’t come back, then we’ll look for her.” Well, by that time she was dead, I’m sure, already. But it was so horrible. She had worked at a little place just up the street on 33rd [South] and at the time we didn’t know anything about a serial killer, anything about him at all. But we would just make sure that we walked with her along that street to go to work. We’d get her to work: well, actually she could get there during the day because it was light, and we’d go get her about nine or ten when she got off, and we’d walk back with her or drive her home or whatever. But I thought, Maybe’s she’s met that guy there or something? How would he know her? But what it turned out to be … Of course we didn’t know for twenty years what happened to her, but it happened that (voice breaks)…It’s all so hard, to go back there, back to … I try not to cry. Anyway, David had looked, and we’d called everybody and talked to everybody, and nobody had seen her. The sheriff—they did, they did a lot of interviews with friends. According to what they told us, they did lie detector tests. They tried their best, according to them, to try to find out anything they could find out. And then they say to us, “Well, this guy’s been known as a serial killer, and this happened with Debbie Kent.” Remember Debbie Kent? [phone ringing] CJ: Let’s take a break. 18 Interview 2 (October 20, 2015) Carolyn Jenkins (CJ): We are here interviewing Connie Wilcox, and this is our second session with Connie. We left off with Connie talking about the time of her life when she has grown children—or teenage-ish children—and I think we are going to continue from there. So, I’m going to have you, Connie, tell us the names of your children again and then we can start talking about Nancy. Connie Wilcox (CW): Okay. David was my oldest; he was born in ’51. Then I waited two years and had Richard— and these kids are all handsome. (laughs) Richard was born in ’53, just a handsome, beautiful child. He really was. He had a bad heart, unfortunately. So he didn’t play a lot of football, sports, and all that, but he was a reader. Do you want me to go through their life span, what happened to each of them? Or go over all the children, and then go back to individuals? CJ: Let’s do overall, and then we’ll move through your life and as it comes up, we can talk about your children individually. CW: So that’s Richard, and he was a reader! He had something like five thousand books, all hardbound and each author was categorized, you know? He had read every one of them—he was very, very smart. So that’s what he loved to do. Then let’s see, the next one was Tom and he was three years later, and so he would have been born in what? In ’57, I think. (I should have had their dates written down!) CJ: Oh, that’s alright. CW: That was Thomas. Then I had the fourth child, Nancy, in about ’58, just a year after. They were just little buds, you know: little friends, little partners. Then I went six years and had Suzy, my beautiful Suzy that I showed you a picture of, and went another six years and had Jimmy— James. He’s my baby—forty-five now! (laughs) Terrific kid. CJ: Let’s start with Nancy since it’s such a transformative time in your life, I would guess. Maybe we could start there. CW: It’s interesting because we had this wonderful little family, a happy family. Herb had a nice job. I always worked, but I was a homemaker: I loved to cook and everything to do with the house. I loved it. But the night she disappeared . . . That was a horrible, horrible night, of course: when she didn’t come home, when she went out the door and didn’t come back. I remember that night so clearly. It was almost like there was an evil spirit in the air. There was a big, full moon. Some people are crazy when there’s full moons, and I just wonder sometimes if that had an effect on things? Even Herb: he’d been out doing his home teaching, and some woman was rude to him and he came home angry. That was just so 19 unusual. And then Tom and Nancy got into a fight earlier in the evening over the television, this one little television that they traded back and forth, and so they were unhappy. So when she went out the door, she was kind of angry, and I thought at that moment, Oh, I should go after her. I should go out with her. See, you don’t know whether to blame yourself or who to blame. But she just did not come back. So after about fifteen minutes, we started calling friends, the ones that she would go see nearby. She’d go next door to see her friend. She hadn’t seen her. None of her friends had seen her. David got on his motorcycle and went out and went all around, everywhere he could find to look. Herb was on the phone with the sheriff and reported it, and he said, “Well, kids run away.” Well, I knew she hadn’t run away: her purse was there; her jewelry was there; she didn’t take anything with her. She wouldn’t run away. But that’s what they think: Kids run away. So anyway, she just didn’t come back at all. And you can imagine as a mother how you feel when your child is not in the house at night. (voice breaks) See, I don’t let myself get there because I don’t want to sit and cry all day—because I could. I could sit and cry all day long. And I just won’t do it because I’ve got to be stronger than that. Anyway, it was a bad night. Get up the next day and not have her there, then two days, then three days—and it was beyond belief. We even contacted a psychic, the one that had somehow located a person that was missing. She had a good reputation, and we contacted her. We thought, We’ll try anything. She said, “Oh I know. I have a strong feeling that she got in with a group, and she is over at East High School with some of her friends.” I thought, This is strange. But David looked real young so he posed as a student and went over there, and he looked, looked, looked everywhere. Well, of course, she wasn’t there. So we just did everything we could do, everything we could do. Then pretty soon word came out that there was some serial killer that they had … A girl out in Bountiful was missing, this Debra Kent, and they knew for sure that he had gotten her because she was at her school, or at the store, or somewhere—I can’t remember—and her little brother or someone was there and saw her being taken into his car, a Volkswagen. So they knew that he had gotten her. Well, when they talked to me, I said, “No, that’s not what happened to my daughter. That’s not what happened to her.” The worst that I thought was she was picked up by somebody, like [for sex] trafficking or something. Because she was a beautiful young girl, sixteen, and had some of the same M.O. 15 with the hair parted and blond, sweet, adorable. And then, as I mentioned before, she’d worked at this little place up on 33rd [South]. We lived there close, just up 33rd, and you come down our way and then about two or three houses in, you know. So it was only about a block and a half, and we walked with her, not even thinking there were any problems. But we always made sure that we went to pick her up to walk home with her after dark, so she’d be safe. I thought maybe there had been somebody there at her work that might have spotted somebody talking to her or something. So I looked into that, but nothing 15 M.O. or Modus Operandi: the characteristic methods and choice of victims from which investigators develop a profile of a serial killer. 20 came of it. And well, we just did every single thing we could think of doing. The sheriff even— once they finally decided to look—claimed that they did some interviews and lie detector tests. Now, I don’t know if that’s true but that’s what they told me, that they had done some lie detector tests. CJ: With? CW: Friends. People she knew. And even some of the boys in school that she was friendly with. Nothing. The time just went on and on. I’ll have to talk about David at this time. In the meantime, he had gone to the doctor and it was a clean bill of health one day, then the next day he had some problems. It seemed to happen that suddenly. When she disappeared was the 1st of October, but one month earlier, the September just before, was when the doctors said he had this Goodpasture syndrome. It’s a disease of the kidneys among the young males: his kidneys were failing, and we had to dialyze him. We set up a hospital in our home, and we would dialyze him. So that was, oh, that was a tragedy, let me tell you. He could eat nothing with potassium in it. He could eat apples; he could eat fresh fruits. Couldn’t have anything with sodium or potassium because his kidneys were not functioning. He slowly lost the kidneys; they had to remove them. So when the kidneys were removed, we dialyzed him, his wife and I, at our home every other day, and it was so awful. He could eat nothing. She would come in and fix some food for him; she could fix a chicken breast or some piece of chicken, with no salt on it and just in the frying pan, and try to cook it that way. And he couldn’t live that way. He could not live that way. He was a free spirit. He liked to fish. He liked to do everything there was to do, and he just couldn’t stand it. He loved tomato juice and he loved milk. So he kind of chose his time of death: he called all his friends together and had a big party, and he just drank everything and anything he wanted. The next morning he got up and slumped in the corner and died. He drowned: where your kidneys just fill up, your body fills up with liquid. So he chose that that was it, that was what he was going to do. CJ: How old was he? CW: Twenty-three—and again, a handsome, beautiful kid. So anyway, that’s what happened to him. So we lost two of them within those few months. It was kind of the same with Mrs. Kent: she also lost a son. She lost Debra and then she lost a … CJ: This is the woman in Bountiful. CW: Yes. So anyway, we just had to go on, and I always wondered if I had done my children a little bit of an injustice because I didn’t cry a lot. I did at night when no one was around; I’d pick and choose the time that I would sit and cry. But through the day I wanted those kids to have a normal life. I had this darling little four-year-old [Jimmy], and Susie was ten and Tom was seventeen then, and I wanted them to have a good life, you know? Most of the mothers would set up [a memorial] on their tables: they’d have candles lit and have their home like a sanctuary all the time. I guess I’m too pragmatic; I couldn’t see any point in it. I know Mrs. Kent had left her 21 light on, still does. I just think, you know, What good is that going to do? We just, I don’t know … It won’t solve the problem. Anyway, we lost two of them, and Herb was quite a trooper. He just went ahead and kept working, did his job and was a trooper. And I pitched in, and we just went ahead and raised the kids and did the best we could. It was never the same, though, after. CJ: How was it different for you? CW: When you lose two of your children, it can’t be the same. There’s just something missing there in the family. My son Richard was so close to David. They were just dear friends, and when David was sick, Richard moved in with him and Jan to help him financially. It was so hard on Richard because he just loved his brother. After, he could not get out of it. He was just so unhappy. After a while I had to sit him down and say, “Now, Richard, we all feel that way, we do, but you’ve gone on too long. It’s time to be nice about things and be happy again because nobody is going to want to be around you.” He snapped right out of it. Somebody needed to—his mother needed to tell him, “That’s enough. It’s time to be happy.” And he was. He was just a delightful kid, a sweet boy. Anyway, I’ve got to get out of this. What else can I say about them? CJ: Let’s go back to: So how did you move through this? And maybe it would be nice to go into your education and your art. CW: Well, I was always an artist. At that time it was pottery; I was heavy into pottery and I was teaching a class. I had a pottery shop in my own home, and I was teaching a course through the University of Utah for students who would come and take classes at my house and get credit. CJ: This was a little bit after the time that your two children died? At the time, you weren’t doing the pottery. CW: Yes, I was. For forty years I did pottery. CJ: So you were teaching at that time, too? CW: Uh-huh, I taught all through those years, at every home. I loved to move and I’d move to different houses, but every time I’d set up a pottery shop. I loved it, and I don’t have it here because I don’t have room. You have to pick and choose what you’re going to do, you know. So I did that, but also the art work . . . Now I lost my train of thought for a minute. (pause) Oh, I had been taking care of my sister until she died: she died at fifty-one of cancer, brain cancer. Brilliant woman. She had taught at Olympus High School, was top of her class at the University of Utah. I took care of her for a long, long time, and when she passed away, I thought, Now is the time. If I’m ever going to go get my degree, now’s the time. I had been working at the [LDS] Church Office Building. I was over the art pages for the international magazine [the Liahona]: I was the editor for eight pages of the magazine that went out all over the world. So I had a great job, a great job. But I had to quit that if I was going to go 22 to school, and what I did next is quite brilliant. I took an afternoon off and went over to Westminster. I wanted to work there, and I knew that if I could get into Westminster, I could take classes because once you work there, then you can take your classes free. I always say, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” So, I went over and I went into Human Resource and said, “I want a job here. Got any jobs?” “No, we don’t have any jobs.” I said, “Well, let me fill out an application.” I put down that I was a very fast typist—one hundred words a minute—and I could do the shorthand. (We were doing shorthand at the time.) And she said, “You’ll just have to check the papers, and see if there’s any jobs.” But in the meantime, she called this woman who was working for Horace McMullen 16 that was quitting. His daughter was Deedee Corradini. You know her, the mayor of Salt Lake City? So Horace needed a secretary because his secretary was quitting, and the woman in the Resource office said, “This most terrific woman stopped in!” And he said, “Hire her sight unseen! I want to hire her.” He had his secretary, the one who was leaving, meet me at my door when I got home that day, and she said, “We want to hire you to work for him.” It was a Godsend. It was a blessing from heaven. So I had to quit my job, and that was painful. Herb came home, and I said, “Guess what?” (laughs) “I quit my job, and I’m going to go to school.” He was used to it; he was never shocked at anything I did because … (laughs) Well, I could tell you other stories, but … Anyway, it was so exciting. So I thought, Okay, I’ll have to pay for this first class. It was quite expensive, like $2,000 for a three credit-hour class. But, I thought, it’s okay because it’ll get me in. In the meantime, Horace McMullen, bless his heart, wrote a letter to the president of Westminster asking for free tuition for me, starting the next quarter. (We weren’t on semesters; we were on quarters.) So the next quarter I had free tuition. It was $40,000 at Westminster at that time; it’s more than that now. I went to school and I got my $40,000 education with three majors and a minor in two and a half years. I was like a Kamikaze pilot, whoosh, just going for it, just going for it. I loved every minute of it. CJ: What were your majors there? 16 Horace McMullen, born in Vermont, attended Cornell, Andover Newton Theological Seminary, Princeton for doctoral studies, and was a Merrill Fellow at Harvard. He spent 12 years in the Middle East as president of the Near East School of Theology in Beirut, Lebanon, and president of Aleppo College in Syria. In Utah he was pastor of the Holladay Community Church for 16 years and then Minister of Counseling at the Wasatch Presbyterian Church for 15 years after becoming a licensed marriage and family therapist. 23 CW: English literature, psychology, and art. It was great; it was just great. I loved it. They also had a pottery shop on campus. I made a lot of pottery, and all my clay was supplied by the Eccles Foundation! If you go to school, they supply you the clay. Boy, I was in that shop all the time making pots! It was great. It was just the greatest thing ever. And I worked awfully hard and I got excellent grades: I had a 4.0 almost. The one grade I got that was a B+ was in Shakespeare, and somebody said, “How come you gave her a B+?” And he said, “That was a gift, believe me. Don’t question it!” (laughs) Because I had a hard time with Shakespeare, and the other one was math classes because I am right-brained. And all the math? Left brain, you know. So with math classes: a couple of them that were really pretty hard, I just somehow . . . well, I got a B. But I was grateful that at least it wasn’t in my field of expertise. CJ: Connie, what year is this that we’re talking about when you started? CW: I was fifty years old, so it was 1985—no, 1982. It was 1982. And I just went for it: studied every minute; twenty-eight credit hours a semester; pick and choose my professors, the classes that I knew that I could maybe get through, you know? But I studied! I studied, and I loved it. It was just . . . it just got me through. It made me happy. CJ: So thinking back about your mother and her opportunities, what are your insights on the differences between your opportunities and your mom’s opportunities? CW: She didn’t have any, except just getting a little day job. (Well, she went to college; I told you she went to college.) But she made a really nice life anyway because they were managers of apartments out in West Valley. They were owned by my aunt and uncle, and my mother and dad managed them for thirty years. So they did very well; they did very well. My mother was a very smart woman, a beautiful woman. So she was happy, you know, she was always happy. She had a little job over at the post office and everybody knew June. And when my dad died, then she’d be baking stuff and taking it to the neighbors. She was great, but as far as going on to . . . Well, she did start college, but as far as . . . I don’t know. She could have finished it. I think if you’re smart and you have the inclination, then even during that period of time you could do it. But of course she met my dad, a potato farmer, so that’s what she ended up doing. But she made a happy life for him, for us. I was very close to my mother, very close. I just always loved her. I took care of her for a long time, took care of my sister for a long time, and so anyway that’s why I thought, If it’s my turn now to go to school, I’m going to do it. Then [at Westminster] they had a program where you could get credit for life experience. I filled out a book that was so fantastic: all the things that I’d done all throughout my life. They kept it: they wanted to keep it to show other students because I had included everything in there. All my volunteer work has been in the church but I even had that in there. I used all of that experience. Why not? It’s still volunteering. CJ: And they used some of that for credit? 24 CW: They accepted it, and I got some credit for that. Yeah, I got some credit for quite a few things. I don’t know if I kept the records [transcript], but I got quite a few credits so that was a great start. I used to go out when the kids were little and bid on places out in West Valley that they were building—these big duplexes—and I’d get the job to go out and I would take my little kids out with me and paint them. I was a painter. I got some credit for that too. CJ: Oh, you’ve got to talk more about that. CW: Well, my mother and dad lived out there, and my dad was a builder and knew the fellow that was there. The first time I painted one of these apartments, I went to get my money and the fellow didn’t want to give me the same amount that he would pay the guys. And oh my dad, he really tore into him! (laughs) Because I was a painter. I could paint. I mean I did a job like you wouldn’t believe! I would stay up till one or two in the morning painting. At that time it was the strong paint. I remember coming home and laying on the cement outside. (gasping) Trying to get some fresh air because it was so intoxicating. It’s funny I was able to drive home! During the day, though, I could take my little kids—Tom and Nancy—and I’d sit them on the floor. I’d do that when they were just little kids. CJ: While you painted? CW: Uh-huh, while I painted. They’d just play. I’d have a little picnic on their blanket, and they were good little kids and would sit there and play and have fun and did what Mommy wanted. So I always worked. I always wanted to work, always wanted to make some money. I always wanted my kids to have wonderful Christmases, and I knew that Herb could only do so much. They didn’t pay much—the salaries weren’t that great, you know. Before he ended up, he had a good salary: he was the Vice President of Wells Fargo. I think I mentioned that? But during those earlier years, he really didn’t make that much money. So I just pitched in and helped and worked—and I loved it. CJ: What were your thoughts, where were you, during the women’s movement in the ‘70s? What was your thinking on that? CW: I was so busy with my family I really didn’t give a hoot! (laughs) I don’t even remember what the issues were during that time. I really don’t. CJ: How about the civil rights movement? Was that a time in your life when you were involved in that in any way? CW: We were all just watching TV, the same as anybody, thinking it was great. But I had never had any experience with black people. I didn’t know even one black person. I did not ever. Montpelier? No way! I thought that on this earth lived only Mormons—white Mormons— because that’s all I knew. When I saw my friend’s sister with the beads—you know, the Catholic prayer beads? [the rosary]— I thought, Oh, that’s the neatest thing! I wish we had some of those in our church! I didn’t know what she was doing, but I thought that was the neatest thing ever. 25 It was quite an education to leave Montpelier and to come into Salt Lake and start working at that department store where you’d meet “uppity” upper crust people. And I was a little old farm girl, “How you doin’?” It’s never left me yet! I get on the elevators and I’ll say, “How you guys doin’?” Before we get off the elevator, everybody’s friends and happy. “Have a good day!” We almost exchange emails. (laughs) But it takes somebody like that: in a waiting room with everybody sitting there, just looking at their magazines or cell phones, it takes a person to break the ice. CJ: You’re good at that! CW: I’m that person. I was that person when we had our big parties at our first little home and all these people from the subdivision came in kind of shy. It was one other fellow and me (because my husband is very quiet) but we would get ‘em goin’. We’d break the ice, I’m telling ya’. It was great. CJ: Let’s talk a little bit more about your art. You were talking about how you taught pottery. How did you get into painting? CW: Well, the first time I ever did anything was right after we got married. I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but my husband bought me a paint-by-number. CJ: No, you didn’t talk about this. CW: Oh! That was the greatest gift I ever got. That was the greatest thing ever: it was so exciting for me to have those little tubes of paint because, where we grew up, I didn’t even have a pencil. I’m telling you, I had to search for a pencil! At that time Life magazine was out—the big ones at that time—and I found a whole section called, “Little Joe.” It was some kind of a play or a stage play. If I could even find paper, I would draw. I drew every picture of that. I loved it. Then before that, when I got in the second grade, I was the one that they chose to do the programs for our little show: the Elves and the Shoemaker. I’ve still got the program there that I drew when I was in the second grade. So I always loved to create, I loved to create. So when I got this paintby-number kit from my husband, it was just exciting. When I was done, I turned it [the painting] over and I got out my Bible book. I loved the picture of Sampson—I was always fascinated with that whole story—and I painted that entire picture on the back with the little bit of paint that was left over. (I wish I’d kept it.) And Sampson, I’ll say one more thing about that: they would come around and ask us to give talks 17 in Sunday School. And they’d always call on me because nobody wanted to do it. So once a month I’d give a talk, the same thing every time, on Sampson. I always said it verbatim. I never looked at anything; I had it memorized. In order to recall it, I’d 17 Before the LDS Church moved to a block meeting schedule in 1980, Sunday School was a stand-alone meeting. Children were often asked to give a “two-and-a-half-minute talk” during the opening exercises. 26 look up in that corner and just say it. I didn’t look out into the audience; I’d look up at the corner and I’d say the whole talk. So, anyway, that’s how I started with art. Then, I started to buy a few oil paints, and when we got into our first house, my dear sweet friend was an oil painter. (It was our first little home out on 6200. We’re almost there now, aren’t we? I didn’t go very far.) Anyway, she had paintings all over her wall that she had done with oils. She’d gone to the university and had good training. I was just fascinated with it, and she and I would paint together, so that really began my love. CJ: Did you paint with her? CW: She and I would paint together; we would sit and we’d paint, and I did a lot with the oils. (I didn’t do the watercolor for a long time.) And then the first year that Park City started with their yearly Park City Arts Festival, I got in it! You had to be juried to get in it. At that time we didn’t just send in a negative. We had to take our stuff up there for them to look at. So I took my pots up there and my paintings, and you had to be juried to get in, and I got in. And I sold everything, everything! I even wanted to take the one pot that I had given to my husband, a big one I’d done by hand, a beautiful pot, and he said, “Where’re you going with that?” I said, “To Park City to sell. I’m taking it up to Park City to sell.” I’d given it to him for his birthday! I had more fights at festival time because I was gathering up everything from the house. Herb finally got to where he’d buy things. I had my own kiln. I finally built my own kiln at my house and was doing gas—that’s the real stuff—and he finally said he had to look at it first, when I’d take it out of the kiln. And if it was something he wanted, he would buy it to ensure that it did not leave the house and get sold! (laughs) CJ: Well, that first Park City event, what year was that? Can you remember? CW: It wasn’t till a little bit later… about the ‘70s. CJ: So this was before you went to Westminster College? CW: Oh, yes. You see, when you have to recall things really quickly, it takes a minute! But the mind’s still good: I still remember things, you know. So anyway, it’s just been a part of me, the arts. I just love it. I kept journals from early on because I loved to write. I don’t sit and write every night. I’ll wait maybe a month and then kind of capsulize something, so that it’s not a lot of minutiae but it’s the main things—and then I’ve got books, my journals handwritten. My brother did his on floppies [floppy disks] and you know what happened to that! So, anyway, but the art was always a big part of my life, always. CJ: Were you always able to sell things? I mean it sounds like it’s been pretty lucrative. CW: I’ve made some money on it. I’ve done a lot for free, volunteering, demonstrating at the schools, firing people’s pottery for the free classes, showing the scouts how and letting them do 27 things. Or going into the classroom and then I’d bring what they made home and fire it for them. So I’ve done a lot of free stuff. But it all pays off in the end. CJ: Do you have exhibits at this point in your life? CW: Well, I don’t now with pots because I’ve given most of them away. I’ve kept a few, but when I moved back [to Utah from Arizona] in ’07, I could not pack the pots. I was in an art group and I was, oh, just taking big sacks of them and giving them out to the girls, just giving them away because I couldn’t pack them. I’ve held on to a few. I probably will never do pottery again because you get to the point in your life where you have to pick and choose. I will always paint—I will never let that go. Now I’ve got three classes coming up. I’ve got one Thursday to do glass jewelry like this I’m wearing. CJ: So you make them? CW: Yes, I make them. I cut all the glass. I order big pieces of dichroic. 18 Do you know what that is? It’s a real shiny glass that was made for the space industry. I’ve been doing that since ’03. I had a good business in Arizona. Then when we moved here in ’07, I wanted to still do it, but I don’t like to get into the craft shows. I don’t want to be there and have people be saying, “Well, I don’t know if I like it or not.” I mean, I’m just not going to put up with that—because they are beautiful! (laughs) So I go to the senior centers and I set up classes there for them: I take everything and let them make jewelry themselves. That’s a lot more fun, and they love it. I’ve got one set up in November, and I’ve got this one Thursday here, right at my house, that I’m going to be teaching. Then I have a watercolor class on Friday. I have that every Friday, and I serve lunch. CJ: So you teach watercolor? CW: I teach watercolor every Friday. But I prepare a nice meal for them too because I still love to cook. It gives me an opportunity to be a hostess and I love it. Art is the one thing I think honestly, truly, that got me through it. CJ: How so? Talk a little bit more about that? CW: I think the Good Lord just helped me shift my brain. He knew that I needed to get away from dwelling on the one thing and think of something else. I’d wake up in those early morning hours when that creative part of your brain is just ruminating and figuring out what you’re going 18 When you look at dichroic glass, it appears to have more than one color at the same time, especially when viewed at different angles. This reflective phenomenon is known as thin-film physics, which is also why you see swirling rainbow patterns in a soap bubble, floating colors from oil on water, and the dramatic colors of dragonfly wings. Dichroic glass is the result of a special coating treatment. NASA originally developed dichroic glass for use in satellite mirrors in the early 1990s and also uses it for re-entry tiles on space shuttles. 28 to do, and these wonderful, wonderful things would come to me on pottery: what I’m going to do, what I’m going to make, and I would honestly get up and hurry and sketch it. Then I’d get back in bed because it was so early in the morning. I would make a lot of them that way. I think honestly that was how I was spared from just dwelling on it. That and I think it takes strength too. In fact, when I took a gerontology course at the University of Utah, part of it was on death and dying. And she said, “You don’t want to take this class in order to work through your problems.” But I told her anyway. I told her that after my son died I actually literally saw him in my dream. It was so real: the kids all came running down the hall saying, “David’s here! David’s here!” And it was as real as if he was visiting me. It was such a strong, visual dream that I couldn’t wake up. It was like if he was honestly there. But I never did with my daughter. So I wanted to ask her, “Why?” She said, “I think that you have just not allowed it”—because I wouldn’t allow myself to think that she was dead. She said, “I think that you’ve done that yourself.” Now my daughter [Susie] has dreamed about her. She was real close with her, and she’s dreamed about her; but I have not dreamed about her. She [the teacher] said, “Not until you decide.” But I don’t want to think about it so much that I can allow it to happen, you know? So, that’s what we do in our dreams, I guess. But I think the Lord spared me, I really do, because He just filled my head with these wonderful things—and even things to write, because I love to write stories. I was part of the Utah Writers Guild, and I won prizes there. I would always enter my work. I wrote a pre-teen novel that I could have published. I still can; I might even put it on e-book if I . . . you know, everything takes time. CJ: When did you write the book? CW: Well, it was when I was in Arizona. But first I got really big time into writing in Ivins 19. We moved there in ’90. Not till after the thing with Ted Bundy was all determined, when they put him to death. It was after that that we moved to Ivins. We loved that place; it was just so great. I wrote a story because I read in the paper that they were having a contest. That’s how I got into it: I just sat down and wrote a story. Well, it won so they invited me to come and read it to the group, but they said, “Huh, she’s probably some big shot Salt Lake writer. She comes and takes the prizes.” Well, no! (laughs) That’s not the case. This is my first story! But I just liked to write. So I met everybody, and then they wanted me to be president of that group. So I was president of the Heritage Writers Guild there, but I was still a member of the Utah Writers Guild. So I’d come to Salt Lake and enter my stories, and I won some big prizes. There was one editor interested in the pre-teen novel; he said, “If you’ll just get in touch with me, I’ll help you get that story out.” CJ: When did you write that one again? 19 Ivins is a suburb of St. George, Utah that became its own city in 1998. The community has a population of about 7,000 according to a 2011 estimate. 29 CW: That was right about the same time I was heavy into writing—when I moved to St. George. CJ: So that was in the 1990s. CW: Yes. In the ‘90s. Of course, all through the years I was writing the journals. Well, earlier on I did write a story for the Deseret News called, “The Christmas I Remember Best.” Do you ever remember those stories? CJ: I do remember those. CW: I won right on Christmas Eve! I won the prize. That’s been published in a book, and it came with $1,000. So I made more money on that than I have my art! (laughs) I don’t sell my paintings. I sold one—one that I won a prize on. I was going to Glendale Community College when we were living there in Arizona, and I got in with the artists there. It was like a club, really, and we all took this one class together. So I entered and I won a prize. I sold it and I’ve been sorry ever since that I don’t have that painting. CJ: So you like to be surrounded by your paintings. CW: I like to keep my originals. But I did have my website where I sold the prints, the giclée 20. My son has the big professional printer. He did the giclée of my rooster over there. [Giclée is a process, discovered in the early 1990s, of reproducing fine art by archival, high-quality inkjet printers.] Art has been my life; it’s my life. CJ: I think that we’ll kind of wrap up now. Is there anything else that you want to add? It’s been so interesting to hear about your life? CW: Mainly, that you can be as happy as you want to be under any circumstance. If you want to dwell on things—because everybody has something in their life that makes them sad—and if you want to spend your time dwelling on it, you can just be sadder than heck! But you know, it’s not going to accomplish anything. I think it drains you of all of your creativity. It takes your life. And my one goal is to be happy. My girlfriend and I, my wonderful, wonderful girlfriend Lapriel Bush in Arizona (I just love her), our motto was, “We laugh in the face of crap!” And that’s what I do: I laugh because I am basically very happy. I’m just happy. My little dog makes me happy; my art makes me happy; my kids make me happy . . . well, sometimes. (laughs) Oh, but my daughter, she makes me happy! She’s a beautiful girl. And my little grandkids! I don’t get to see them much anymore now that we’ve moved here. I do have some here that I love. But I did lose a granddaughter. CJ: How did that happen? 20 Giclée is reproduction process, discovered in the early 1990s, of reproducing fine art by archival, high-quality inkjet printers. 30 CW: She just pined herself to death after her daddy died. Richard died, I didn’t mention that. We went right down to the hospital in 2011, thinking he was going to be operated on. He was fiftyseven and bled to death, and he was in so much pain. It was the most horrible day of my life. CJ: That’s saying a lot. CW: It is. To see him lying there dead, almost dead, and watching them pound on his chest trying to bring him back to life, and such a vibrant, handsome, sweet, unusually terrific guy. And his daughters were so close to him. They had two daughters—my granddaughters. Jennifer just could never come out of it. His wife still cries all the time. Her name is Connie too 21. But the other little girl, little Angie, she’s quite the girl. She says, “Grandma, I’m not going to be like my mother. I’m not going to just sit and cry because my dad wouldn’t like that.” She went ahead and finished school, started her own business, got married to a neat guy, paid for her whole education, bought herself a house—and she’s still just a little, young girl. So, it depends on what you want to do. If you want to sit and cry, you don’t get nothin’ done. (laughs) CJ: I think we’ll end on that note. 21 Connie Jean Morley Wilcox. 31