| Notater |
The Life History of DeLores McClellan Brightons five miles south of Grace, Idaho.
My mother told my dad that the baby was coming and he went to get some help and to get the doctor. We had no phone at the time. Mother said, “No, don’t leave. It’s almost here,” but he took off anyway. He ran to a neighboring house about 100 yards away and told his sister, Clara, to come help. She came over and looked in the bedroom door and said, “Oh Mildred, are you that far along?” Then she ran back home because she was so nervous. My older sister, Verla, was there, but she didn’t dare come near because she wasn’t supposed to know anything about such things. She just stayed in her bedroom and cried.I was born she reached down and placed me on her stomach and made sure the membrane was away from my nose and mouth so that I could breath. It was an hour or more later before the doctor arrived to tie the cord. I only weighed about five pounds.uldn’t sit still long enough to snap the picture. Finally someone caught a new born baby chicken and brought it for me to look at so I would hold still. suck my thumb. In fact I was in about third or fourth grade when I decided I didn’t want kids to make fun of me anymore, so I broke myself of the habit by tying stockings over my hands at night so I couldn’t suck my thhumb while I was asleep. It worked!that my mother made me wear. I hated them so bad that I never bought any for my kids or made them wear them. It felt marvelous in the spring when the days got warm and I could wear ankletsts. Just like being set free again.heep and when a mother didn’t want her baby, or if the mother died, we would have bum lambs. My dad would bring them to the house. We would put the newborn lambs in a tin wash tub anand set them on the oven door until they got warm and could stand up on their own. The lambs that were left motherless I would feed from a soda pop bottle with a nipple on it. We used cows’ milk in the bottles. I raised 11 lambs one year. My sister, Karol, thought it looked kind of fun so she decided to try to raise one. Her’s died, but all 11 of mine lived. I got the profit from the wool for a couple of years and saved my money from them. I had $375.00 saved in bonds. I cashed them in to buy our first and only piano after we were married. I also took some of the money, $50.00, and bought my mother a cedar chest for Christmas. The cedar chest is the one tthat Bernice has at this time. When I was raising these lambs I had to feed them every morning before I went to school and again in the evening after school. The mild had to be warm and I would feed two lambs at once with two bottles. I also took care of the chickens at that time. me up to me to eat out of my hand. I could always pick her out of all the herd because of the spot. s had a lot of snow. We had an outside toilet in the backyard. I can remember what it was like wading through the snow drifts on a cold winter day to get to the toilet and then when you got there to find it was busy. The outhouse had three toilet holes, but that didn’t help much. Nobody wanted to share.water. I heard someone say that running water purified itself so I thought the ditch water was clean. I passed a long white tape worm. My mother took egg shells and baked them in the oven then masheed them up real fine, and mixed them with jam which I ate and the egg shells killed the worms. I was extremely nervous when I had the worms. I was even scared to go through a mud puddle in the middle of the road. I was afraid wwe would get stuck. When we came to a puddle dad would stop and let me out and I’d walk around the puddle while he drove through.n the attic. I could hear Mother downstairs and she said, “Well it’s about time shhe got even with you.” That was quite a relief! I thought I was going to get it for sure. bed and put her cold feet on me. Sometimes she would bring her friend Maxine to spend the night and both of them would put theiir cold feet on me. They always made me sleep in the middle. That way I could warm both of them up. We only had a stove in the kitchen and one in the living room. There was no heat in the bedrooms at this time. I waas in the 6th or 7th grade before we had a furnace put in the house.was little and like all little kids she kept getting into my things. Finally I took the door knob off the door and hid it. This made a good lock for my room.t lived just across the street from us. They were my friends that I played with the most. We had a lot of fun playing games. We played cops and robbers, house, hide and seek, run sheepie run, and antie-i-over. We made play houses in the darndest places; like the wood shed, pig pen, cow barn, or in the willow trees. The best one we had was in the chicken coop. We even put up wallpaper on the walls. When we played hide and seek I would always pick the gooseberry patch to hide behind and then I’d sit and eat gooseberries while I was waiting for someone to find me. We would often play hide and seek in the evenings when it was starting to get dark. It was harder to find eeverybody then.rd eggs. We would climb all over the barns and trees gathering the bird eggs. My dad was glad to have us do this because the birds were so think they ate a lot of the grain that was put out for feed for the animals. One time dad said he would give me a penny for every egg I got. In one day’s effort I got 100 eggs. It was hard to believe the high and hard places we could climb to. I never did fall or get hurt.ld find the treasures. The treasures were in small metal aspirin boxes with a dime in it. We found just about all of them and Karol and Maxine were a little perturbed because we found them so easily.t a half an hour and then I’d sneak tto the bushes and spy on them without them knowing it for a long time. She used to get pretty mad about that. She also had a diary she kept and I would read it. Then when she was going to tell something on me, I’d bring uup something that I’d read in her diary and blackmail her. She didn’t like that very much either. I never did keep a diary.he back of the bus and sway back and forth trying to get the bus to slide off the road. I don’t think it ever worked, but we liked to think it would. There were a number of days we missed school because the bus got stuck. I pitched hay, milked cows, drove the tractor and shoveled grain. I worked better outside on the farm than in the house. I would rather of had blisters on my hands than to do housework. I disliked doing the dishes most of all.oes was always a big job on the farm each fall. I can remember that my girlfrirlfriend, Florence, and I would work as hard and as fast as we could to make a lot of money. We would give it all we had the first day, but the next day we were so stiff and sore we could hardly move. Sometimes we would work 12 hoururs a d day to get the spuds in before a storm would hit. I think the most I ever earned in one day was $7.00.p;We usually got the chickens from our own folks’ chicken coops and I’m sure they knew what was going on, but theey tasted better if we swiped them. I would get the axe and would chop their heads off and then hang them on the clothes line by their feet. I would then skin them. Another way to clean a chicken was to dip them in boiling water and ththen pluck the feathers off. Chickens really smell bad when you clean them this way. Maybe that is why I don’t like chicken very well today.was formed from a lava flow many years ago. This was our favorite spot to have a party. The cave was half a mile long. It had a hole in the top about half way through the cave which we called the window. You needed flashlights to go through the cave because it was so dark and because of the jagged rocks. We would play a game of turning off all of our flashlights and see who could go the longest without turning on their light. It is a wonder we didn’t get hurt. I remember turning my ankle a couple of times and maybe a few bruises on my hands and knees. Once in a while someone would bump their heads on the wall, but still nothing serious happened.o the big sleigh my dad used to haul hay to feed the cattle and sheep, and I would ski along behind. Sometimes Arlen Bennett would get his car or tractor and we would ski behind them with a rope attached to the tractor or car. We skied in the borrow pit and along the back roads. One time my girlfriend, Lucille, and I were both on thhe same rope. We were going along pretty fast and she fell down in front of me. I couldn’t think fast enough to let go of the rope and I ran right into her. My ski ripped a big hole in her snow suit. She wasn’t hurt, thank goodness.ool and then we would decide whose mother was having the best Sunday dinner. That would be the place we would go to for the rest of the day. My mother made the best pie. I think the biggest part of the time we spent at my house. It was also closer to the church and the main road that went into town. We spent a lot of time watching the cars go by.cided to go for a long bike ride. We got on our bikes and headed for Thatcher about 7 miles away. We had planned to get something to eat at a little grocery store there for dinner. We had a marvelous time going there. It was downhill most of the way. When we got there the store was closed! We were so hungry that anything would have tasted good. We went over to the cheese factory and the man there let us have some cheese curds. This was the first time I had seen cheese being made. The round balls of new ccheese tasted especially good. On the way back home it was up hill all the way! We weren’t sure we would even make it back. I don’t think I was ever so thoroughly exhausted. Every muscle in my body ached and wwe were dying of thirst. We had to push our bikes up some of the steeper hills. We never tried that again. climb on top of the barn where we were sure the bull couldn’t get to us and then mock (making sounds like a bull) ththe bull. &nnbsp;When we did this he would beller back at us. The more we did it the madder he got. He would paw the dirt and put his head down as if to fight. We would have been in trouble if we were on the ground. We had a high woo wood fence around the barnyard. And we could walk on it to get down from the barn so we felt pretty safe. I did worry a little about falling off the fence and into the bull pen though.t for a hike up to Hubbard’s Hill about a mile to the north of my house. We cut across the fields to get there. On the way back we stopped at a cow shed in the middle of the field and climbed on top. We started mocking the bull as usual and it started pawing the diirt, etc. It was fun for a while but when we got tired of the game the bull didn’t and he wouldn’t leave the shed. We were too scared to get down. We must have stayed up there for three hours. Finally the hired man came to get the cows to bring them for milking. We were really relieved to see him and was able to climb down.ough Jack Gibb’s barnyard to make a short cut to someone else’s place and it was quite dark. As we weere walking through the corral we heard a big beller from behind us and it was a bull that had a reputation of being mean. Well, you can guess what happened next. We climbed the first fence we could as fast as we could. Everyone made it over the fence in time, and boy, did we ever have a good scare for Halloween. I used to always dream that a bull would climb into my bedroom window and sit down and discuss with me why I like to mock him.s going tto high school I always worked hard to get good grades. My senior year my dad said if I got a straight A report card he would let me take a trip to California by myself. I did get a straight A report card that year and I went to Ogden to catch the train. My sister Karol and her husband Blaine lived in Ogden then and I spent a couple of nights with them before I went on to Los Angeles. I stayed with Kate and Rich Hayes. They were my cousins. My aunt Clara Gibbs lilived in Los Angeles too. She had two daughters that lived with her named Margaret and Ruth. The two girls never married. All of my relatives showed me a good time. I especially remember the trip out to Cadillina [Catalina] Island on a ship. It gave me a lot of confidence to travel by myself. Sydney Ann Gibbs, another cousin came back with me on the train however. le of days a year just to be doing something different. OnOne time the principal, Mr. Hartvixion, asked the students of the school not to go to a baseball game in Soda Springs because they needed the attendance for school. A car load of us girls decided to go anyway. The next day we were all called into thhe principal’s office for sluffing. We had no excuses and just admitted that it was spring and we had spring fever. The principal asked us what we thought he should do to us for punishment. We suggested thhat we would cleaean all the windows in the school. I had noticed how dirty they were for a long time and thought they needed cleaning. Mr. Hartvixion thought that was a good idea so we got our supplies and went to work. My next class that I wawas to go to was geometry. I went to geometry but I was washing windows instead of participating in class. Mr. Peterson wasn’t too happy with me. One of my friends, Grant Burke, was in the principal’s office when the slip with the absentees came in. He saw my name on it and tore it up and threw it away in the waste paper basket. The next day I went to geometry class as usual. Mr. Peterson said, “DeLores, wasn’t your name on the absentee list?” and I said, “No.” I thought for sure that I was in for it, but nothing more was said about it.you and Helen sluff once in a while because you always find out what your assignments are and are prepareed for the next day. Your grades are always at the top of the class.” Then he mentioned some of the other kids that always missed a lot of school and had poor grades. We didn’t even get bawled out.ls’ State in Pocatello. I felt that was really an honor. We met with girls from all over the state and lived in the dorm at Idaho State College. There we had lectures on government proceedings and set up a government pparliament just lilike the real thing. We both had a very enjoyable time. The last night we were there they had a dance for us and invited the college boys who were going to summer school to come to the dance. There was this onone neat guy that had been waiting on our table all the time and we invited him to come to the dance with ten of us girls. We bought him a flower to wear in his jacket. All ten of us went to his dorm to pick him up. He asked his buddy, Frank Koeveven, to come along. I guess he decided ten was a few too many for one guy. I danced with Frank and he was a very good dancer. He liked to jitterbug. I let the rest of the girls have Knox and I spent ththe rest of the evening with Frank. I dated Frank several times after that. We wrote letters all summer and through the next year. Frank was one of the reasons I decided to go to Idaho State College the following year.ots of fish in the sea. At that time there were 3 guys to every girl and my roommate was going steady so I got her three. I think going to college was the funnest time of my whole life.ollege and I asked him to go to the dance with meme. At first he saaid no because he was going steady with a girl in Logan. A day or two later he said he had changed his mind and that he would like to go with me. He had broken up with the girl in Logan. We spent a lot o of time together. We played ping pong at the Institute, went to many church functions together, went to the library in the evenings to do our studying, and we really did study. The second half of the year we went steady. In the spring the following year, Homer graduated in Pharmacy and found a job in Boise. We were engaged for the summer and then got married in the fall, September 5, 1950. We were married in the Idaho Falls Temple. We had a small reeception at Grace the day before we were married. We had to be in the temple at 6 o’clock in the morning to do our endowments. It was 3 o’clock in the afternoon when we finally got through at the temple. That evening we had a reception at Homer’s home in Idaho Falls. After the reception we drove to Pocatello and stayed in a motel close to the college. The next day we drove to Twin Falls and stayed with Wilma and Ed, Homer’s sister and brother-in-law. The following day Homer had to be to work at McMans at 12 o’clock. We had a very short honeymoon.ix and a half months pregnant when I had some terrible pains in my stomach. I called the doctor and he said, “Oh, it’s just the flu. Have your husband give you some of these pain pills.” Well, the pain pills would work for about 4 hours and then the pain was right back, only worse. The pain was so bad I couldn’t sleep. I finally had Homer call him again. He said, “Well I don’t think it is anything serious, but you better come into the office tomorrow and we’ll check you over.”le better so I walked ten blocks to town to see the doc doctor. I told him I had walked to town. He couldn’t believe I could be pregnant and walk that far. He didn’t think I was very sick but he decided to run a blood test on me just to be surure. The next morning at 6 o’clock our doorbell rang at our apartment. It was my doctor standing on the doorstep wanting to know if I had eaten anything for breakfast, which I had. The blood test showed that my white blood count was sky high. They wanted to operate right away but because I had eaten they would have to wait until evening. My appendix had ruptured the day I walked to town. That is why I felt a little better.y operated on me a and found my appendix in my back behind my uterus. That’s what threw the doctor off track. The pain I had wasn’t in my side where it should have been. I was mighty sick. Even after the operation I kept getting sicker and sicker. I remember vomiting and vomiting and I got so weak that I couldn’t even lift my head off my pillow. I had to just let it come out of my mouth. I almost didn’t make it through that sickness. My sister Verla, who is a registered nurse, heard how bad I was and she came to be with me as a special nurse.aby with a lot of black hair. The infection from the appendix had gotten to her and they started giving her penicillin righht along with me. She didn’t have the strength to make it however, and died 6 days later on March 28, 1951.;Homer took care of the funeral for little Barbara. She was buried in Memorial Gardens in Boise, Idaho.ernice was born on August 2, 1952. The morning of August 2 I woke up with a few pains in the morning but didn’t think much about it because my baby wasn’t due for three more weeks. I called the doctor anyway and he said, “I&’ll be out of town this morrning so you better come over right now to the hospital and let me check you before I leave.” We left right then still not very excited. Homer put me on the elevator and a nurse was going to show me my room while Homer signed mme in at the desk. I was just barely able to get my clothes off and they wheeled me into the delivery room. The doctor walked into the delivery room and in about two minutes our baby girl was born. It was 15 minutes after we haad entered the hospital that she was born. By the time Homer came up stairs to check on me they were wheeling me out of the delivery room. I was just going to the hospital for a checkup! Total labor time was two hours.r they brought her in to me and she looked much better; more like a real baby instead of a red mole. We decided to keep her!. 5, 1955. He was my largest baby weighing in at 8 lbs. He had quite broad shoulders and took about 5 hours to be born. The doctor said he would have come much faster if he had been turned the right way so that they could get his shoulders through. Greg was also two weeks late.sp;The delivery was eaeasy too. About 3 hours. &nbsbsp;When he was born the nurse and doctor had a little bit of trouble getting him to breathe. They had to keep working to clear his nose so he could breathe. Later when I was in my room, Dr. Way camme in and told me all the things that were wrong with him and some of the worst things that could happen. When Homer came into my room to see me I was the one that had to tell him the bad news. I’m sure this was the saddest time of our whole lives. This hurrt a lot more than losing little Barbara. The doctor said we could have him put in an institution later, but there wasn’t room for him at the present. He said the only thing we could do for him was just to take him home and love him. He said they are usually very good babies. Brent was a good baby. He wouldn’t hardly wake up and cry even when he was hungry. He was the only baby I had that would sleep ththe night through without a feeding.ving Brent. The night she was born Grandpa Brighton was staying with us. She arrived about 2 days early, but she was a slow poke about getting here. I had pains for 24 hours before she was born. I went to the hospital about 6 in the evening and the doctor said I was in labor alright, but that I might as well go home and work on it for a while. Since Grandpa was with the kids, Homer and I decided to take in a show. &nnbsp;Janet was born in the morning abouut 6 o’clock.the morning about 8 o’clock but I didn’t get any pains. We went to the hospital anyway and it just so happened that Dr. Curtis was out of town. They just waited for him to get home but wouldn’t let me go home. I stayed in the hospital all day with no pains. The doctor finally got there about 6 o’clock in the evening and started my labor for me. He said that I would be sevveral hours yet. He said that he&rrsquo;d be upstairs in the hospital so the nurse could call him. In about a half hour the nurse came in to check me and they almost didn’t get me into the delivery room in time. When Daviid was born they put a little tie taped to his chest to take him out for Home to see. He looked handsome.gh time carrying David. I had an operation on my hemorrhoids when I was about 4 months along with him. It took at leasst 2 months to get over the operation. &nbnbsp;The doctor said I had the worst hemorrhoids that he had seen in eight years. He was a specialist and did nothing but that type of surgery. I had one hemorrhoid that was as large as an egegg and it was growing upward and blocking my intestinal track. By the time I was beginning to recover from the operation toxemia started in and my blood pressure went pretty high. I had to have my blood pressure check every other day by the doctor until David was born. I had this same problem with blood pressure with Janet too.m too. He had such a nervous stomach and couldn’t keep his milk down for very long.walk. One of the first words she said was “see.” Bernice never learned to crawl. She would sit in the middle of the floor and when she wanted to move she would squawk and I’d mover her somewhere else. Bernice was 15 months old before she could walklk. to walk. She came wobbling out iinto Grandma Brighton’s kitchen and said, “What are you doing, Carmene? Making a mess?”e much to say. Grandma Brighton would ask, “Doesn’t he talk?&rdquouo; and I’d say, “Yeah, when he wants something he talks to me.”be blessed Homer and Grandpa Brighton got up to give him a name only Homer started right out with the blessing and almost forgot to name him. Grandpa kept nudging him, “Give him a name. Give him a name.” So at the end of the blessing he gave him a name.od. He got along better with her than the boys in the neighborhood. One day they announced to Mr. Wood that they were going to get married. He saidid, “Don’t you think you had better wait a little while?” He had a good laugh over that.wo years after Greg. Brent did so many things that you couldn’t forgeget. It was just about all I could do to keeeep up with him.ould run away every chance he got. We had double locks on all the doors to keep him in and he would still run away. It was always a different direction each time h he got out. I had all my neighbors and friendnds on the watch for him and when they saw him they would call and tell me which direction he was going in. Sometimes it was easier to sit by the phone and wait for someone to call than t to go out running all over trying to find him.ideded to drive around the block one more time and sure enough he was there. He had found a big mud puddle on the side of the road and he was sitting right in the middle of it. He was so covered with mud that you could hardly see that it was him. To top it all off, I had just put nice new shoes on him.ryone would say, “Aren’t you worried?” I’d tell them no because he’d usually turn up sooner or later. I’m sure that he h had many close calls from getting hit. He liked to walk right down the middle of the street and he expected the cars to wait for him. a neighbor telling me that Brent, Janet, and David were all riding trikes, and were trying to go over the track in the middle of the road. A little boy a couple of years older than Janet was trying to stop them. He had a rope and was trying to pull them back. When Brent took off, Janet and David thought it was all right for them to go too.ly reunion at Lagoon. Brent got lost and we looked for two hours for him. Finally we went back to the terrace where we had had our lunch and there he was. ;I guess he didn’t like all the crowd and the noiise so he decided to get away from it for a while.warm in there. I could hear him crying but couldn’t figure out where he was. Janet was little then and she had shut thhe door to the dryer. When I got him out his little face was as red as a beet. I’m sure he had air to breath, but the heat in there was a little too much. He never tried that again!antenna into the washing machine whehen it was going. It wrapped around the agitator, knknocked Brent to the floor, (he was standing on a chair), and made such a terrible noise that it really scared me. I had quite a time trying to get to the buttons to stop it with all the paraphilia flying around. Brent had a big goose egg on his head. If he hadn’t been knocked to the floor he would have been wrapped around the agitator too.ne because he was heading for home. The next day Lois Corgitt, a neighbor said she had seen him over at the Scottstsdale Shopping Center about a mile from home. We were surprised that he knew how to get home. He seldom came home on his own. He’d just keep going until we made him come back.th some little kids about two years old at the time. Anyway, she came up missing. We all got on bikes and Homer in the car. We went all over Sunset. Finally after two hours, we called the police. ThThey asked where we had been looking and then went in the opposite direction. They found her over in Roy by the Roy swimming pool. In just 15 minutes the police stopped and talked to a lady that had seen Janet. The lady asked if the police were looking for a little girl. The policemen found Janet and brought her home in their police car. I was so glad to see her that I didn’t even scold her. After she got out of the car she kept repeating, “You get home. You get home.” She didn’t even cry. I’m sure she found some people along the way that thought she ought to go home and told her so.City to see the lights. We went into Aurbach’s to try the new escalators. There was a large crowd oof people everywhere. Home just got through saying, “Now, let’s all stick together so we don’t lose anyone.” We were riding on the escalator and going up several floors. When we got to the top Gregory was missing. We went up and down the escalators several times and couldn’t find him. Finally, after about an hour of looking for him we decided to ask the store personneel in the office for help. Just as we were walking to t the office I spotted Greg in the store. He had gotten off the escalator on the 2nd floor and decided to take the elevator back down. When he couldn’t find us, he left the store to go to the car. He couldn’t find the car, so he came back to the store and we saw him as he walked in. Homer was so mad and upset that when we were walking to the car he stopped and said, “Now where is Janetet!” We just looked at him and laughed, when made him all the madder. He had Janet in his arms. Greg must have been about 4 ½ at the time.a very active little boy. One day when he was still at the crawling stage, I put him in the basement while I was fixing supper. All the rest of the kids were playing in the basement. My doorbell rang and I went to answer it. There was a strange lady there holding a baby. She asked, &ldqquo;Is this your little boy?” I started to say &ldquuo;no” and then looking underneath all the dirt, I realized it was my baby. David had crawled out the basement door and clear up the steps in the backyard, and was out in the road when the lady found him. It was just at dusk and she was white as a ghost. She said she almost hit him because she couldn’t see him. David wasn’t very old then and he wasn’t very steady on his feeet. I was laughing at him because he was so funny and Homer walked out of the bathroom and said, “You’d better stop him before he falls and gets hurt.” Just then, David fell and hit the fireplace. He cut a big gouge on his forehead just above the eyebrow. We had to take him to the hospital for stitches. When we brought him home he started running a fever and his eye started swelling and getting bigger and bigger. I called the hospipital and told them about it. They said it was normal and that he’d be better tomorrow. The next day puss was running from the cut and he was mighty sick. We took him back to the hospital the next morning. The doctoor asked why we hadn’t called him. I told him I did. The doctor wasn’t at the hospital, but the staff on duty surely gave me a run around. Anyway, we had to leave David at the hospital in an isolation ward because he had gotten scarlet fever from the infection in the cut. Daviid cried all the time I wasn’t there. I stayed with him for about 12 hours at stretch. He would be crying when I got there in the mornings and crying when I left at night.t door when he decided to ride his trike off the back step onto the patio. As he was tipping over, he grabbed for the brazier that you barbeque on and it was sharp. He cut one of his fingers just about off. Homer went with me to take him to Dr. White. Even though the doctotor deadened his finger good before he started sewing it up, David screamed at the top of his lungs. It was all Homer and I could do to hold him down long enough for the doctor to get it stitched.holes in our garden spot. They had pretty good sized holes dug and spent a lot of time in them playing army. Greg got a sore throat and after about a week he didn’t get better. He started compmplaining about pains in his ankles and wrist. Of course, I checcked his temperature and it was about 101 every morning. I took him to Dr. Way and told him I thought Greg had rheumatic fever. He didn’t think so but ran the tests anyway. Sure enough, when the tests came back they showed a high sedrate test [sedimentation rate]. Dr. Way put Greg on cortisone and told him he was to stay right down. Greg had a hard time swallowing his pills. p;I would shove them down his throat. While he was on the cortisone he had a big appetite and I had a hard time keeping him filled up. He really gained weight too. His cheeks got puffy. It was hard to make him stay in bed. He even liked the chance to wipe the dishes if he could get up for a while.. She knew it was there so she jumped over it and landed on a piece. She let it go for a week. She kept telling me her food hurt and was walking with a limp. Finally, I took her to Dr. White. He dug on her foot for two hours before he found the sliver of glass. She was on crutches for Grandma Brighton’s funeral.couple of times. She has been thrown ffrom horses too. One of those times we thought she had broken her wrist but it was ok. She was square dancing once and a kid stepped on her big toe and bent it backwards. It was broken but the doctor didn’t do anything for it. Another time, she was working at Skaggs and had some hot greaase spilled on her leg and ankle. She had very bad burns. On her mission she was running to catch a football and wiped out. She had a bad sprain then. The people in Chile packed her foot in mashed potatoes to take away the swelling. It was when she was nursing her bad leg that they had an earthquake tremor that was their worst one while she was there. It wasn’t too fun knowing that you couldn’t move if it became necessary.a nice one as she was putting the jack away in the trunk. Since then she hasn’t had any major accidents. Maybe she has finally grown up. |
Eulogy for DeLores McClellan Brighton born at home on the family farm about five miles south of Grace, Idaho. She was the youngest child of Scott and Mildred McClellan. s, Hollis, Verla, Arthur and Karol. Being closest in age to each other and having to share a room, Karol and DeLores were continually tormenting one another. Once she got so upset with Karol that she threw a shoe at her. It gave her a bloody nose. Karol went running to their mom and DeLores was worried so she hid in the attic. She could hear her mother down stairs saying, “Well it’s about time she got even with you.” DeLores would secretly read Karol’s diary and when Karol wanted to get her in trouble she would blackmail her sister with information from the diary. DeLores never kept a diary just so Karol couldn’t do the same thing to her.nds in Grace, Idaho. They would play cops and robbers, house, and hide and seek. Grandma would always like to hide in the gooseberry patch so she could eat berries until she waited for someone to find her. bsp;She felt like she worked better outside on the farm than in the house and would rather have blisters on her hands than have to do housework, especially dishes! Her father owned a lot of sheep and when a ewe died or couldn’t take care of the lambs, DeLores would raise them. One year she had 11 lambs to care for. She’d put warm cows’ milk in a soda bottle with a nipple on it and would get up early before school to feed her little flock. She could put a bottle in each hand and feed two lambs at once. DeLores got to keep the profit from this little business venture and saved up $375.00 which she used to buy a piano years later after she got married. y School and they would decide whose mother was having the best Sunday dinner. That would be the place they’d go for the rest of the day. DeLores’ mother made the best pie and her house was closest to the church so they usually spent their time at her house. d get him to charge. The more mocking sounds they’d make the madder the bull would get. They never got hurt, but once they climbed the roof of a neighbor’s cow shed to tease their bull and made him so angry he wouldn’t leave. They were stuck on the roof for three hoours until someone came by and rescued them. well in school. But she also had a little rebellious streak and liked to sluff classes once in a while with her friends, especially when they got spring fever. Sometimes she’d get called into the principal’s office but she never really got in trouble because she was a straight A student.ersity in the fall of 1940. It wasn’t long before she met Homer Brighton. In fact, when asked what she majored in while at college, she would say with a twinkle in her eye “Homerology”. They were married on September 5, 1950 in the Idaho Falls Temple. He was 24 and she was 18 years old.ventually settled in Sunset, Utah. Their first child, named Barbara, was born in 1951, but only lived for a few days. Bernice was born the following year. Gregory came along in 1955, followed by Brent in 1957. Janet was born four years later and David joined the ffamily in 1965. She was a talented homemaker and enjoyed sewing, quilting, crafts, gardening, ceramics, canning, and sports. She was always on the move. Once her children were all in school, she started working as a cook for ththe Davis School District. She was the head cook at Sunset Jr High for many years. About 18 years ago Homer and Delores moved to Kaysville. er the years in Primary and Relief Society. She was even the drama director in her ward in Paul, Idaho and they took 1st place for their road show that year.ldren and 13 great-grandchildren. It seems she was always making a quilt or doll clothes or something for one of us. She loved to make beautiful thinings, whether in her garden and flower beds, ceramics, quilts, flower arrangements, you name it. And I will always remember her pickled beets and blueberry cheesecake. I’ll let you guess which one I actually liked to eat.rst when you are putting a puzzle together. I remember spending many hours putting a puzzle together with a Jazz game on the TV.Probably my most memorable trip with them was a long weekend in Las Vegas when I was around 12 or so. Grandpa was usually the music lover, but on this particular trip Grandma wanted to go to the Liberace museum. Now I had never heard of Liberace before, but after the longest afternoon of my life I became quite familiar with his flamboyant career as an entertainer. For those of you who might not be familiar with him, he was a very talented pianist popular in the 60’s and 70’s, known for his outrageous lavish costumes. With all of his fancy costumes and jewelry and cars and even a rhinestone covered grand piano, Grandma was in heaven! She had to look at every single thing. She told me she had been a fan of his for years and loved how handsome and charming he was. Out of sheer boredom, my sister Amber signed the guest book while we waited for Grandma. Much to her horror and my utter delight, Amber received quarterly newsletters from the Liberace museum for years afterwards! Grandma bought some tapes of his music and we got to enjoy them for what seemed like eternity all the way home. I cannot think of Liberace without remembering Grandma. of terror and suspense. The very thought still runs a chill down my spine, even after all these years. I was always in awe of her ability to come up with such great stories. It wasn’t until years later that I figured out she was borrowing from Alfred Hitchcock, Stephen King, and the like. I remember watching “Wait Until Dark” as a teenager and realizing at the climax of the movie when Audrey Hepburn forgets to remove the refrigerator light that I already knew this story!a was her family. Even right up to the end she wanted to know how everyone was doing. She loved seeing her grandkids and great-grandkids and loved seeing us grow and change. She kept track of all of us. Especially in her later years, I think that brought her great joy and comfort. always easy. Like all of us she had tough things to deal with. But she dealt with challenges and trials that came her way with such a positive outlook. She knew that there were things she couldn’t control or change and she learned to let those things go. I don’t think I ever saw her discouraged even when she had reason to be. I learned from her that there is always a silver lining to whatever challenge comes your way. It is her example of resilience that I will cherish most.
My Personal History by DeLores McClellan Brightonores McClellan Brighton was born on January 26, 1931 at Grace, Idaho (Niter, five miles south of Grace on a farm). I was born in the back bedroom at home. When I arrived it was a month early. My mother told my dad that the baby was coming and to come help her. Instead he went to get some help and to get the doctor. We had no phone at that time. Mother said, “No! Don’t leave, it’s almost here,” but he took off anyway. He ran to the neighboring house about 100 yards away and told his sister, Clara, to come help. She came over and looked in the bedroom door and said, “Oh, Mildred are you that faar along?” Then she ran back home because she was so nervous. My older sister, Verla was there but she didn’t dare come near. She just stayed in her bedroom and cried. In those days, kids weren’t supposed to know much of anything about babies. My mother had me by herself. After I was born she reached down and placed me on her stomach and made sure the membrane was away from my nose and mouth so that I could breath. It was an hour or so later before the doctor got there to tie the cord. I only weighed about five pounds but was healthy. I had three sisters and two brothers: Avis McClellan Blodgett, Hollis Scott McClellan, Verla McClellan Isom, Arthur DaDale McClellan, and Karol McClellan Hodges.n May 2, 1943., Lucille Longenbon, Emma Jean Bennett, Florence Rassmussen, Flays Wells.kins, Howard Johnson. My special teachers whom I remember were: Mr. Archibald, Mr. Williamson, Mr. Simmson, Mr. McGregor. I graduated from High School on May 20, 1949.minary for four years at the Grace High Seminary. I graduated on May 9, 1948.ss.ts, 2nd counselor (3 years), 1st counselor (3 years), Larks (girls). &nnbsp;I’ve taught just about every class at one time or another.(Paul Ward)sp;His name was R. Homer Brighton. I was 18 years old and he was 24. We were married on September 5, 1950 at Idaho Falls Temple. We made our first home in Boise, Idaho. We have been blessed with six children. |
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1931 - 2015 (84 år)
