Eyvonne's Life Story

I would like to begin my life history with my testimony. I know the the Father, Jesus Christ his Son, and the Holy Ghost make up the Godhead.

I know Joseph Smith was ordained to bring forth the Book of Mormon for the restoration of His church here in the Americas.

I know that the Book of Mormon is a second witness to the bible and to Jesus Christ. I know the Book of Mormon is true.

I know there is no better way to live ones life than to Follow the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ.

I only have one real memory of my early life in Susanville, California and that is leaving my bicycle on the front porch of our little house in Susanville. We lived right next door to my Uncle Cutler and Aunt Vesta and their children Vernon and Phyllis. Down the street lived my Uncle Guy and Aunt Irene and their four boys: Boyd, Dale, Ned, Kent. All my Father’s brothers had gone to Susanville to work in the lumber factories during the depression and also one sister, Bernell. I’m not sure where Aunt Bernell and Uncle Eddie lived at that time. Also Uncle Lamar and Aunt Jean and their son David. My Uncle Earl had retuned to Utah in 1930. All 5 brothers worked in the fruit growers supply company in the box factory or other parts of fruit growers.

My parents, Var Niels Porter and Forrest Nielson met when my dad was driving the school bus for Richfield high school from which he graduated. He was 3 years older than mother who went to South Sevier high school [in Monroe, Utah]. Dad [Var] drove the Richfield High school for a ball game where he met mom.

After my dad went to Susanville to work he mailed mother a ticket to Fallon, Nevada so she could come out to California and get married. They lived for a short time in a tent in Uncle Lamar’s front yard then were able to get a small house. Grandmother Nielson had never met dad because as soon as the older children [Nielson children] were able they found jobs outside their home to help Grandma [Nielson] money wise. Mother was living with a school teacher and his wife because his wife just gave birth to twins and needed some help. Their name was Melville. So Mother and Dad’s courtship took place between Melville’s and Central. Grandma Nielson wrote Dad a letter telling him how much Mother meant to her and for him to be kind to her, and take good care of her—which he always did. I never rememberer Father going to work without kissing Mom goodbye each morning.

Grandpa Porter [William] was very good to his children and to provide for his family he hauled freight over the Nevada desert to the mines, operated a threshing machine, and operated 3 saw mills (one up Fish Creek Canyon, one on the banks of the Sevier River, and one on Cove Mountain). He also owned a farm west of Central up above the rail road tracks. He was physically powerful man, known as one of the strongest men in the territory. He could lift a wagon load of lumber by his shoulder. He used this method to tell if the wagon was sufficiently loaded for the horses to pull. I loved my grandpa Porter—he was so good to me.

Grandma Porter was a sweet gentle woman. Her mother was Danish [actually her father was Norwegian] and while grandma never spoke Danish she could understand anyone speaking Danish. She had a beautiful singing voice and loved to sing and dance. The older children remember Grandpa and Grandma dancing around the kitchen to the radio. Tragically she experience severe postpartum depression at the birth of some of her children in a time when nothing was known about how to treat this. This is why some of the children lived with other relatives. The first 5 children with Grandpa and Grandma Frederick Porter and Cutler with grandma’s sister in Salt Lake. My dad was the second to the youngest and by them Grandma was able to care for her family even though she was different. She would not leave home but raised a beautiful yard with a big garden and beautiful flowers. She had a large tulip garden and one day Garry picked all the tulips. It’s a good thing it was Garry or this may have been trouble with us living so close. Garry was her favorite so will some stress the problem passed.

There was large trees along the north side of Grandpa’s yard and lawn which still stand at this time. It was a beautiful place at that time. My brother Garry lives in the house today.

By strange I mean her house was grimy, because grandma would not use hot water or soap to clean with. She was always cleaning with cold water. One Thanksgiving Grandpa invited us to dinner. Now my mother was Famous for her hot rolls, butter, and home made jam. Grandma served baking powder biscuits, no butter, no jam. To this teenager [this was] entirely unacceptable. I look forward to know my real grandparents.

Their children:

William Guy 11 Aug 1892

Hyrum Ray 14 June 1894

Earl LeRoy 17 Nov 1900

Victor Lamar 22 Jan 1903

Norman Cutler 7 Feb 1095

Margaret LaPreal

Lillian Melissa 6 June 1906

Var Niels 13 Feb 1909

Bernell 6 Sept 1910

Grandpa’s house was built in 1926 it was the largest home in central at that time. 3 bedrooms, large kitchen, 2 front rooms with an arch between, I never could figure that out. And a room for a bathroom and a large porch front and back. Here is another example of grandmother’s strangeness. She would not allow Grandpa to put in a hot water heater because it would blow the house up or would she not allow Grandpa to put in the toilet, tub, or washbasin because she would not go the bathroom in the same house she cooked in. As soon as she died Grandpa installed both the bathroom fixtures and the water heater.

Grandpa had the walls and the partitions up on the house when the great depression hit the Central area. He lost everything except the house, one threshing machine, and the sawmill on Cove Mountain.

We left Susanville to live in Grandpa and Grandma’s old house that stood just south of the new house. It had 3 rooms [hand drawn picture of house set up] all in a row. We lived in the 1st and 2nd rooms, Grandpa Frederick lived in the 3rd room. He [Frederick] died just short of 94 years old.

Before we got to Central we stopped in Salt Lake for a year and then went to Vernal for a while. Dad sold Everware pots and pans. Mother would cook a large meal using all of the pans and have 3 or 4 couples to dinner. Then they would sell the everware. I don’t remember any of this part of my life. When mother died I got the large turkey roaster which I gave to my son Ted. After a short stay in Vernal we finally got home to Central. (WearEver Cookware can trace its origins back to 1888 when Charles Martin Hall, a young inventor from Oberlin, Ohio discovered an inexpensive way to smelt aluminum by perfecting the electrochemical reduction process that extracted aluminum from bauxite ore. WearEver Cookware helped aluminum consumption by introducing one of the first widely accepted and available aluminum based consumer products of their time. Initially this cookware was sold door-to-door by college students.)

I don’t know why we left Susanville but suspect Mom wanted to be closer to her family in Monroe. The depression caused the mill to shorten the men’s working days to 3 days a week. At 35-50 cents an hour not much to live on and Grandpa Porter [Will] had to move his father Frederick up from the the farm where he had lived 17 1/2 years since his wife died and [he] needed help. Grandpa Will really had his hands full with a sick wife to care for and his ailing father. *picture of Grandpa and Grandma Porter.

Where were you and what were you doing on 9/11?

I was home making cinnamon rolls.

What are your food preferences and how did they come about?

I like everything that is not good for you: candy, cake, pie, cookies, salads with a lot of dressing, hot rolls with butter. My eating habits are terrible and I need to change them today.

What was your most embarrassing moment?

When Russell was the Bishop we had a large party at the home of Jeanine Iverson. One of the games was to take off your shoes and throw them into the middle of the floor. When Dad [Russell] took off his shoes he had big holes in both stockings. It had been arranged before hand.

What do you think about movies—what are your favorite movies and why?

I like the movies, Gone With the Wind, Hello Dolly, and How Green Was My Valley. They are clean and great story in real entertainment. The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, On a Clear Night [Day?] those kinds of movies I really liked.

Tell about each of your children—personalities, talents, traits, who makes them special?

I was excited and could hardly wait for each of my children.  I love each one and wanted each one.

Jill was the first, a girl, blond and a mind of her own from the very beginning. She was a good baby except at nap time. She would dress up in the most awful combination of clothes when she was little. She didn’t learn to walk until she was 14 months old because we lived in a trailer house and she could go anywhere she wanted to by holding onto something. She didn’t play much with dolls but would direct a play or a parade. We had lots of parades when she was small.

When she was 6 years old she was hit by a car and was in the hospital for 7 weeks. She broke her femur bone in her left leg and her right hand, also had a concussion and bruised kidney. She didn’t go to school much the winter of her first grade but had a home teacher.

She was a good student, in lots of plays, and sterling scholar in drama and speech her senior year. She was also in pep club her junior and senior year.

She went to BYU 1 quarter then married our neighbor boy John Larsen. They had 5 children. While she was having her children she was in city politics for Highland City, took painting classes, and held many church jobs and was involved in family genealogy. Later, as the children were older she went back to school and graduated from BYU with her youngest daughter, Samantha. She now teaches at the BYU. I always enjoyed our relationship and I enjoy it more now. 

She didn’t get to be the baby very long because her sister, Susan, arrived just 15 month later. She [Jill] was born Easter morning and her father was in the Army at Camp Ord California so she was 3 days old before he knew she had arrived. She lived in Utah, Texas, and Kentucky before she was a year old.

Susan our second was as different as two girls could be. She was dark where Jill was blond, she loved her dolls and played with them all the time. She was a good baby. Born in Kentucky while Russell was still in the army and he was not at her birth either because he left the hospital to go back to our trailer to check on Jill who was left with neighbors. She cost us $5.75. She was a real easy birth weighing only 5 lbs. 6 oz. When she was 5 months old Russell was discharged from the army and we moved to Logan, Utah to attend the Utah State University. Susan had to have everything match, from the barrette in her hair to her stockings. She never got dirty, even when they played. She won a baby contest while we were at Logan.

From Logan we moved to Granger it was called at that time. Jill was in first grade and couldn’t find her shoes for school so she had to wear Susan’s new suede Sunday shoes. She [Jill] had them on the day she was hit by a car. The shoes were lost and Susan was really upset over this—much more than her sister getting hit by a car.

When we moved to Highland the next house which was 1/2 mile to us was a girl her age, Karen Larson, and they became best friends, always together. I was their 4H teacher and they had to make a simple apron. I made Susan unpick her’s until it was perfect. Karen’s mother made hers and she won a prize for it. But when they started Jr. High Susan got a wonderful sewing teacher named Mrs. Porter. She taught Susan so well the she [Susan] became a wonderful seamstress, making all her drapes, pillows, things to make her home lovely, beautiful clothes for her 3 daughters, and lots of wedding dresses for nieces and her daughters. Also lots of sewing for her mother. 

She was so tender headed it was a nuisance to do her hair. One Summer day in Granger the bathroom window was open and I was washing her hair in the bath tub and she cried so loud the neighbor rushed in to see what was the matter.

She was also in pep club. In about 6th grade she started to hold hands with a boy who lived down the street. She married him after he came home from his mission. She worked so Mark could go to school. The sealer in the temple told them not to put off having a family while he was in school. I know the Lord told them this because the older Susan got the more trouble she had with miscarriages, so they were thankful for their 3 girls. 

At one time Jill and Susan were Relief Society President and Mariann was 1st counselor so all three of our girls were in the Relief Society at the same time. At this writing she works in the Draper Temple and her husband Mark is the Bishop. We like the same things and one time bought the same sweater set, she in SLC me in Yuma.

Bruce our first sone and the first grandson on my side of the family was the biggest baby I had 7 lbs. 15 oz. The doctor said if he would have weighed him before he peed he would have been a 8 pound baby. He had a pretty hard time getting here because he was breach. He had red hair and Russell was there for the birth. Everyone was just thrilled that he was a boy. Such joy for our whole family. I don’t know for sure but I think his lungs were not totally developed because he had pneumonia twice by the time he was 3 months old. Once at 6 week, once at 3 moths and he has had lung problems all his life. He fell out of a tree at Dwaine and Rhoda Barney’s when he was about 5. He was really high up when he fell. I rushed him to the Richfield hospital where they took every x-ray possible and found nothing—he was a tough little guy.

He was always very independent and at about 10 he rode his bicycle about a mile to milk cows night and morning. Russell’s Uncle Spencer bought some ground about 2 miles from our place. It had lots of fruit trees and many little pine trees that needed to be watered. Russell was working in Jackson [Wyoming] for a construction company so it was up to Bruce and me to do the watering. At 3 in the morning we would go in the pitch dark with only a flashlight to help us and put in the large canvas dams that would send the water to the trees only to find out some mornings that our Bishop had come after us and sent the water to his place. When I look at 10 year olds now I am amazed at the responsibility that little boy assumed. 

He was also a Sterling Scholar in Industrial Arts in his senior year but could not accept it because he had missed so much school skiing. When we found out he wasn’t going to school Russell took him to Trade Tech where he earned enough credit to graduate from high school plus 1 year of college. He graduated from trade tech the next year and received an associates degree in heating and refrigeration. He has been in that business all the rest of his life. He now works for his so Charlie who owns his own business called B2.

Bruce built his first home when he was 19 years old. I have always been proud of him. He is now shift supervisor at the Mount Timpanogas Temple. He sent 2 of his 3 boys on missions and all 3 are eagle scouts. His daughter is working on an engineering degree at this time.

Our fourth child, Ted, was due the first part of April so on March 21st I felt so good that I took all the curtains down in the house, washed and starched them, and got them ready to iron (in those days everything needed to be ironed). We had planned to go out to dinner that night because it was our wedding anniversary. I was sitting on the front lawn talking with our neighbor, Lee Christensen, when my water broke so that night I spent in the St. Marks hospital and not out to dinner. Ted was born at 6 the next morning making his birthday March 22. We were over joyed to have another son making 2 daughters and 2 sons.

Where were your favorite places to go with your family when you were young?

My favorite place was to grandmother Nielson’s, also we took lots of picnics up Monroe canyon. At that time it was real nice and kept up real good.