Weldon P. Monson
Personal History
[Written
sometime between 1961-1973]
I was born in Preston, Oneida County, Idaho on September 22,
1905. I was born in the old Gooch
house, where the new hospital now stands.
It was a small brick house of about five rooms and faced the Town
Square. My parents were Walter Peter
Monson and Leona Smart Parkinson Monson.
I was the sixth child. My older
brothers and sisters were Elna Rose who died in infancy; Walter, Venna,
LaFayette and DeLysle. My father was the
founder and owner of the Superior Lumber Company (now Anderson Lumber Co.) and
had the Studebaker Wagon and Harness Co. where the J. C. Penney store is now
located. He was also County Commissioner
and during this term of office constructed the first bridge in Preston, and
built Oneida Academy and other buildings.
He was active in church work holding
various offices in his ward and stake.
My mother’s father was Samuel Rose Parkinson, one of the
first white settlers in the State of Idaho, if not the first. He founded Franklin, which was the first town
in the State and was a member of the bishopric there for some 33 consecutive
years. He founded the first cooperative
store in Franklin and ran it for this period.
He was a great community and church leader and there is a mansion in
Franklin containing the covered wagon and oxen
harness, among other memorabilia, he used to cross the plains, as he
journeyed from Stockport, England, to the west.
My father built that house on the corner across from Oneida Academy, and
right next to my grandfather Samuel Parkinson’s home. My sister, Blanche, was born in this
house.
I attended the Central Public School, or grade school, in
Preston. This school, at this writing,
still stands but is now to be torn down and a new one built. Preston was built on a 6 acre homestead of my
uncle Matthias Cowley, who later became an Apostle of the Church, as did his
son Matthew. My uncle Nephi Larson was a
co-owner with his brother of the general store in town, Larson Brothers Dry
Goods Store, I believe it was named. My
father’s brother-in-law was Lonnie Skidmore, who became his partner is
business. My uncle Leon Packer, a
prosperous farmer, was bishop of Preston First Ward for 23 consecutive
years. From this beginning came two
great families, the Parkinson and the Monson families, and with many of the
descendants achieving distinction in
business, education, law and medicine, and public life. Preston was a beautiful setting and provided
many of the values which would guide these families throughout their
lives and build the fine character which was to make these families,
particularly the Parkinson family, noted wherever they have gone in life. Pages could be written on Preston, but the
above will have to suffice to describe the setting of my birth.
When I was five the family moved to England. Dad had been called to preside over the
English Mission which was then part of the European Mission. I went to school in South Tottenham, at the
Elm Park School, which still stands. The
English boys used to think that their manner of speech, dress, and manners were
far superior than the culture my brother Lysle and I brought from Preston and
they constantly picked fights with us.
As we usually won they kept getting the larger boys after us. We were dressed in Little Lord Fauntleroy
suits, with a large bow tie and high stiff collar. When we came home these were all in disarray
and our faces and hands dirty from fighting with the English kids. The English schoolteachers were very strict
and used to rap us over the knuckles with a hickory stick. So Lysle and I played hookey a great deal,
going out to the park in back of the school and along the banks of the River
Dee, which was a barge canal, or we would go to the steeple of Old Deseret (the
mission home) and lock ourselves in. My
parents would lure us out by putting food at the bottoms of the door and when
we opened the door we would get a tanning with a hairbrush. Later, the school principal used to call for
us each morning and take us by the hand directly to the Elm Park School.
Living with the missionaries we thought up a way to make
money. Lysle bought a little hand organ
for a few English pennies and stood out on the sidewalk playing simple little
tunes. As the missionaries looked out
the windows and listened they threw down pennies to the sidewalk, as did some
of the passersby, and I went around and picked them up. Then we would go off to the nearest candy
store, fill our pockets with English hard candy, and perhaps get a bottle of
soda. I remember the constable, Mr.
Dobson, who was later killed in World War I, always looking at us approvingly
as if to say that he liked our form of entrepreneurship and free
enterprise. It was something the English
had hardly seen before.
I also remember very vividly, the time an English gentleman
saved Lysle from drowning in the River Dee.
We were walking along the side of this canal, accompanied by another boy
from Preston, Idaho, on a sidewalk used for pedestrians (on the other side was
a path used for horses to draw the barges up the canal), when a lday came along
with a twin baby carriage. As was the
English custom, our friend from Preston and I gave a nice English bow and
backed onto the adjoining lawn. Lysle,
who was wearing an English blue roll-neck sweater also bowed nicely to allow
the lady to go by, but being nearest the river, he stepped back and stepped
right into the river. Now none of us
could swim at that age and we stood by as Lysle frantically tried to keep his
chin above water and splashed around.
And Englishman who was out for his morning stroll, dressed in high hat,
tails, spats, monocle and cane came along and saw what was happening. He looked at Lysle and simply said, “I say
there.” He removed his hat, set it methodically
on the lawn, then took off his monocle, jacket, vest, tie, spats, and set them
neatly alongside his top hat. He dove in
like a girl, his hands together like in prayer, and fetched Lysle out. Lysle had become blue from the dye in the
sweater and, by now, he had taken in quite a good deal of water. The Englishman stretched him out on the
grass, applied artificial resuscitation and as Lysle appeared to be coming
around again, he methodically wiped the water from his hair and face with his
hands, wrung out his trouser bottoms, put on his spats and shoes, tied his
necktie, put on his vest, jacket, and top hat, and then, after carefully
putting on his grey gloves, he took his cane and continued his morning stroll
down the path, enjoying the sunshine and the good blessings of life. There was a little path of water which
followed him, water which still dripped from his clothing. He did not say a word, except to say, “Now
laddies, I think you will be all right.”
He did not leave his card or his name. My father looked all over England to find him,
if for no other reason than to express his thanks for saving Lysle’s life. I have always thought of this incident as
representing the finest in English chivalry.
Here was an English gentleman, in the true sense of the word.
Lysle and I were given boxing gloves as we had a natural
instinct to fight. We boxed at the
slightest suggestion. The missionaries
used to delight in watching us slug it out, and there never seemed to be a
winner. On our return to America we used
to box on the deck of the ship for the passengers and they threw in English
pennies after it was over, with both of us on our feet. It seemed that we boxed from morning ‘til
night with just time out for meals, and I have never been able to remember an
advantage going to either one or the other.
We were exactly evenly matched.
But there were other memories of England, too numerous to mention here,
but which are in the account of my father’s life, his friendship with the young
budding English politician Winston Churchill, which led to his close and
lasting friendship with William T. Stead, the Titanic, and so on.
I remember the carriage and horses coming to take us to the
ship and back to America, and how Lysle and I looked back at the shore,
standing in the aft deck as the ship pulled out, feeling greatly relieved that
a certain
English bobby (policeman) had not caught up with us for
starting a June grass fire on his beat – the last official act of a couple of
kids from Preston, the missionaries dubbed as The Katzenjammer Kids, and the
bobby as one of his problems as he often gently tapped us across our backsides
to keep us moving along and not get into fights with those English kids, one of
whom had flamboozled me out of a nice pearl handled pocketknife my father had
given me on my birthday as we were going to school one day. Lysle and I had the same birthday, September
22, and we were both given these beautiful English pocketknives as we were
going to the Elm Park School in South Tottenham, this larger English boy saw me
admiring this knife and said, “Let me see that, will you?” I let him see it and he just flipped it into
the air and I never saw it again. He probably
caught it in his sleeve. You can well
imagine how disheveled I was when I finally arrived at school. I did not get my knife back, and I got a
crack across the back of my hands with the teacher’s hickory stick and made to
sit on the high stool in front of the room, in the corner, for my appearance
and for fighting.
As my father had sold his business in Preston, and because of
a close friendship he had formed with David Eccles and Charles Nibley, during
his first mission to the Northwestern States (he was one of the first three
missionaries there; my uncle George C. Parkinson was the first mission
president. The mission headquarters was
in Preston) he was offered the general managership of the Eccles Lumber Co. in
Ogden (now part of Anderson Lumber Co.) and we moved to Ogden in 1912, living
first in a green shingle house on Madison Avenue (where Maurice was born in
1912) and then to a home Dad built at 2521 Van Buren Avenue, which later was
sold to Dr. Pugmire when we moved to New York City. The Pugmires still live there at this writing. Dad was a fine builder and his own architect.
In Ogden I attended the Quincy School where I had many happy
memories. We were close friends with the
Jacobs family, the Williams, the Eccles, the Taylors, Wheelwrights, Brownings,
etc. Heber Jacobs and Ed Williams were
my best friends and I liked Ed’s sister, Roma, and sent her valentines each
year which we generally made in Ed’s kitchen with his mother supervising the
job. Ed had a pony and cart and his
father owned the grain and feed store downtown.
Heber and I used to play in the clay pits and go for hikes in the
foothills about Ogden. We had a little
dog named Tip and later, when we moved to New York (1914) I gave this dog to
Heber, my best friend. It was given to
us by my cousins Donald and Wesley Lloyd of St. Anthony, Idaho. Heber kept that dog for many years and other
members of the family such as Mary Jacobs Wilson, still remember it fondly.
We lived in the Ogden Fifth Ward and it was here that I was
baptized into the church. We used to cut
through a corner lot adjoining the Stewart Eccles house on our way to
church. Lysle and I wore bull dog oted
shoes, the substantial kind Dad would buy for us, and as we walked through this
lot we would take turns kicking a can, like soccer, through the lot. I suppose Stewart Eccles wanted to sleep on
Sunday mornings so he devised a little scheme to cure us of the habit of
kicking the can through his lot. He
drove a stake in the ground and put a can over it. He knew we would run to see who would kick it
first. I got to it first and gave it a big
kick and nearly went over on my face.
Stewart was sitting on his porche this Sunday morning to see the
show. When I kicked it he laughed so
hard we could hear it some 100 yards away.
We had to have our inning, so one evening we went over and took a couple
of his watermelons he was growing near his house, with corn and other things
planted around so no one would know about the patch. One other kid named Red Nichols (of the band
fame) knew of this patch. We did not
like him because he used to bully us around, being larger and older than
we. When Stewart Eccles saw that two of
his prize melons were missing, he immediately thought of Red Nichols and one
day when Red Nichols was coming by he gave him a good beating. We were nearby and now it was our turn to
laugh and we did, nearly splitting our sides, both at Stewart Eccles and Red
Nichols.
We used to love to go fishing on the Weber and Ogden rivers,
to go on family picnics to the Hermitage, to go to Brown’s Ice Cream Parlor for
a wonderful ice cream cone, to ride on the lumber wagons behind fine teams of
horses and to work on Saturdays bundling shingles at five cents a bundle. Pete Mennick was the yard superintendent and
used to like having us around. He was
killed in an accident at the Hermitage one 24th of July and I have never
been able to forget it. There was Ray
Bassett, Harold (“Fat”) Browning, and the Nootebooms and the Gilgens (Aunt
Cherstie) and we had relatives there on Dad’s side of the family. [Aunt Cherstie was Emma Chersta Monson Gilgen,
our grandfather’s sister. I found her on
FamilySearch.] We had many visitors
at our home such as President Joseph F. Smith, Jay Golden Kimball, George
Albert Smith, George Q. Cannon, Matthias Cowley, and our relatives from Preston
and St. Anthony always dropping in. Dad
was a favorite speaker in the wards of Ogden and was in the bishopric of the
Fifth Ward while we were there. Ogden
always had a certain aura of well-being all its own and I loved the place,
second only to Preston which has always held a special place in my heart,
perhaps above all other places in which I have lived. There were lovely people and wonderful
friends in both preston and Ogden and I have always them both for the wonderful
childhood experiences, and influences upon my life.
But our stay in Ogden was not for long as his interests were
always closer to the church than anything else in life. When President Ben E. Rich died in New York
City while presiding over the Eastern States Mission, President Smith called on
Dad to succeed him. This was the latter
part of 1913. The details of this
calling and his relationship with Eccles are more fully set forth in my account
of Dad’s life and need not be repeated here, but they are important as an
influence in my life, the lives of my parents, and each of my brothers and
sisters. We moved to 33 West 126th
Street, a brownstone, now right in the heart of Harlem. I attended Public School #28 on 128th
Street just off Lenox Avenue. When I
entered the school I was put back from the 4th to the 2nd
grade because as school authorities stated, the western schools were backward
and there was this two grade difference in favor of the New York schools. (I made this up when we moved back to Utah in
1919. I simply walked into high school
from the 7th grade and never did graduate from grade school.) The school was integrated and colored and
white boys played together normally and without thought of race. I took jobs, one at Collingwood Meat Market
on Lenox Avenue between 125th and 126th Streets, delivering
meat with a horse and delivery wagon, and I received $2.50 each week for this
job. I also worked at Nobemis Ice Cream
Co making and delivering ice cream, and I was not paid any money on this job,
but had all the ice cream I could eat which was perfect, as far as I was
concerned. Then I sold all of the New
York papers on the streets and Lysle and I devised other ways of making a
little money, such as going to the Metropolitan Opera House early in the morning
of great operas in which Enrico Caruso, Galli-Curci, Martinille etc were
appearing. We would stand in line and as
we neared the window we would sell our places in line to elderly gentlemen or
ladies wanting seats for that particular performance. We would get tops of one dollar usually and we
could get back in the line and repeat the performance two or three times during
the course of a day. Then we would take
umbrellas to the subway entrances on rainy days and take people home who had
forgotten to bring their umbrellas. We
received tips of from a quarter to a dollar for this. We played on the streets using one manhole
cover as home plate and the next as second base with a fire hydrant or tree on
each side for first and third bases. We
used a rubber tennis ball and hit the ball with our fists. Then there was stick-ball, stoop-ball, cops
& robbers, cowboys & Indians, etc.
One of our spectators, who liked to watch us play from his front stoop
directly across the street was George M. Cohan, later to become one of
America’s greatest playwrights and music composers. He wrote “Over There,” “The Yanks Are
Coming,” “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” [I think
he means “Yankee Doodle Boy”] and numerous others, and had some of the best
hits on Broadway. Needless to say, the
neighborhood was very fine, from every point of view. Our next door neighbor was a prominent
banker, Mr. Marconi, and his children, Mitchell, Rowena, Anita, etc were a very
wonderful family. Mitchell, or Mike as he
was called, now lives in Scarsdale and remembers the days when we lived on 126th
Street very vividly. In 1916 we saw
youngsters die on our block from the polio epidemic and following this the
Spanish influenze epidemic, for which there were no cures in those days. We continued to play on the streets through
it all. My father said. “If the boys are
going to catch polio or the flu they will catch it if they remain in the house
so they might as well play.” He believed
deeply that God would protect his family while he was doing His work. Keyne was born on the second floor, front
room, of 33 West 126th Street in 1916 and barely survived pneumonia
which he contracted shortly after birth.
In 1916 we moved to Brooklyn, on the corner of Franklin and
Gates Avenues, in the first church owned by the church east of the Mississippi
and the first mission home built for the church and for that purpose in the
east. [Meaning post-Nauvoo exodus, I’m
sure.] Dad built them both at a cost
of $52,180. They were sold at auction in
the late 1950s because of neighborhood problems, for $75,000. Before the decline in property values this
price probably would have been double that amount received for it was a fine
property and fine buildings, built right in the heart of some of the finest
churches anywhere.
I went to Public School #3 and both Lysle and I played on
their baseball teams which usually played for the borough championship in old
Ebbets Field, the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
I worked on Saturdays and after school, in Marguerite and Juliet’s
millinery shop vacuuming rugs and delivering fine hats all over Brooklyn and
Forest Hills, etc. I received $2.50 a
week for this job. I also took care of
the chapel with Lysle doing all of the cleaning and upkeep work, each of us
running the carpet sweeper over the rugs, sweeping the floors, dusting the
church seats and polishing them, scrubbing the bathrooms, keeping the front
sidewalks clean of dirt and snow etc. We
each received $1.00 a week for this work.
Then we bought a little printing press and printed all the name cards
for the missionaries saving them a great deal of money over the printing
establishments. We were the only deacons
and those jobs seemed to be natural for us to do. Levonia Fuller, son of Perry A. Fuller, later
came with his family to Brooklyn but the jobs seemed to continue to be given to
us. Our friends were outside the church,
such as Linwood Thomas and Mason Coombs, and I learned that there were fine
young people of all denominations and I have lived with this principle
throughout my life.
Some of our most enjoyable moments while living in Brooklyn
were those trips out to the country to visit with the Touts in Amityville, Long
Island, the Knechts in Flushing and the Sopers in Oceanside. They were all close friends and wonderful
people in the church. We loved them all
and the many missionaries, the soldiers going off to war in World War I, and
students who came to New York to study.
It was a very worthwhile and rewarding period of our l ives, in terms of
the better values.
We also visited during the summer in Preston, Ogden and Salt
Lake. One summer I was offered a job
herding sheep in Malad, Idaho working for Anne Packer’s husband, Mr.
Taylor. I was called at 3 AM one morning
and was taken to the hills where the sheep were. I thought I had put in a good day’s work and
it was time for breakfast. After
breakfast I took my extra shirt I had brought along and walked back to Preston,
a distance of 22 miles. Sheepherding was
not for me. When Grandpa Parkinson asked
why I was not out herding sheep I simply told him that I got tired just looking
at the things and there was nothing else to do.
In 1919 when President Smith died and Heber J. Grant became
president of the church all the mission presidents, including my father, were
released and we moved to Salt Lake City, living first at 1464 East 17th
South, then 152 South 11th East, then 3123 South 7th
East, and lastly, 1888 South 11th East in Sugarhouse. I attended East High for one year and then
Granite, graduating in 1923. I played
football, basketball, baseball and track in my years at Granite and won 11
letters in 3 years. Because we had
little money coming from the mission field I worked at any job I could
get. At Hygeia Ice Co., Citizen Ice and
Storage Co., Utah Storage Company, Utah Copper Company, in the clothing shops
selling suits, shirts and ties, selling cars for Taylor-Richards motor Co., at
Saltair, and even ushering in the theaters.
Later I sold real estate for Orin Woodbury when he first started out in
that business. I did not have the money
to go further in school and none of the schools in Utah were giving athletic
scholarships then.
In 1924 I went to Washington DC and during the summer worked
on Byrd Stadium, putting in the sod for their new stadium. I had promised Harry “Curly” Byrd that I
would attend the University of Maryland at College Park that fall. During the summer school session, the
Athletic Manager of Washington and Jefferson College of Washington PA, who was
attending the school, induced me to attend W&J. I went there and worked on the stadium doing
similar work. I played on W&J’s
first football team, a team that consistently beat the varsity. I played fullback here but in high school I
played center. Toward the end of the
season I had a disagreement with Graduate manager Murphy, largely because of
certain aspersions he cast on Utah as a state, and without finishing the team,
went back to Washington. I wrote Lou
Little, coach of Georgetown, a letter telling him of my interest in Georgetown
and inasmuch as his backfield coach was Herb Kopf, the quarterback and captain
of the W&J team (varsity) when I was there, I was offered an athletic
scholarship. W&J had played in the
Rose Bowl the year before, with a great team, and Herb Kopf was captain of that
team. As Lou Little was in the process
of building some great teams at Georgetown Herb Kopf’s strong recommendation,
for my paying at W&J, enabled me to secure a scholarship and, this with
various jobs on the outside enabled me to go through school. In 1927, when I was being groomed for an All-America,
following Harry Connaughton, who in 1926 was selected All-America guard,
Georgetown now concentrated on pushing me for these same honors. The injury to my tendon of Achilles prevented
that and, in fact, stopped my athletic career altogether. During my playing years I was always a
regular member of the varsity and in track competed in the dual end national
meets in the shot-put, discus, high jump and javelin. I was a member of the Georgetown Glee Club and
engaged in various other school activities.
I had many good friends at school including harry Connaughton, Tony
Plansky, Dud Saur, Frank McGrath etc etc .
Tony Plansky was American decathlon champion, an All-America in football
(Benny Friedman of Michigan said he was the greatest football player he had
ever seen). And for many years was coach and Athletic Director at
Williams. Tony and I played golf
together in Washington, and here again was a sport in which he excelled winning
the New England amateur championship while in college. We bought a $10 touring car together and used
it to take dates to the Mayflower Hotel school dances. While dressed in our borrowed tuxedos (with
black shoe polish for sox) we drove to a parking space on Connecticut Avenue, the
car’s reverse gear was gone so we just drove the front end into the parking
space and then Ton y would get out and lift the back end into place. Coming out, after the dance, he would lift
the front end out, crank the car and we would drive off. Once we could not find a parking space so we just
pulled the car up in front of the Mayflower and left it there, right out on the
street. We never saw it again. I enjoyed my years at Georgetown very much
and constantly enjoyed the Irish wit and warm hospitality that was accorded me
by faculty, fellow students, alumni, and everyone connected with the school.
[This is where it
ends. He didn’t get back to writing more
about his own life in these drafts in this folder.
There is a draft of his life’s story on file at BYU in the Harold B. Lee
Library Special Collections which might be more complete. He spent time on the BYU Coaching Staff
(football) under head coach Ott Romney in the early 1930s. He married Aunt Erma, who was Erma Jergensen
of St. Anthony, Idaho. They lived in
Washington DC where Aunt Erma worked as a secretary for J. Edgar Hoover at the
FBI until she was summoned to work on the White House secretarial staff of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt. They had Diane in 1937. Weldon was an attorney and presented a case
to the U.S. Supreme Court. He worked for
Yale and Towne lock company in Stamford CT and settled down there. He
eventually was part of the Graduate School of Business faculty at NYU. They stayed in their Stamford home until both
he and Erma passed away. Diane inherited
the home and stayed there until she had to go to memory care and soon
thereafter passed away in 2018. She was
their only child and did not marry. All
three are buried in the Fremont Co. Riverview Cemetery in St. Anthony, Idaho.]
A Tribute To My Father’s Life
Given by Diane Monson
at the Memorial Service
held May 27, 1986
Westchester Ward
Scarsdale, New York
I am here to finish part of what my father, Weldon Parkinson
Monson, wants me to do. A daughter has
an opportunity to be a special witness to her parents’ lives. I wish to share this witness with you, to pay
tribute to my father as well as to comfort my mother.
My father is a man of strength and integrity. He has successfully met the many challenges
of his life with intelligence, ingenuity, and hard work. After his marriage, he had the additional
sustaining support of his devoted wife and helpmate, Erma. The fifty-fifth anniversary of their marriage
was quietly observed May 15th.
Among his hallmark characteristics are his fortitude and
perseverance in difficult circumstances, his strong will to achieve, and his
deep beliefs in independent thinking and individual expression.. These qualities of character have enabled him
to make significant decision as to the course of events and the values of
ultimate meaning in his life.
It seems to me that a poem by Robert Frost provies an
appropriate description of my father’s life:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
A part of the difference has been a deep and profound
religious belief, the foundation for the harvest of his life. I would say that the wheat that is
represented here on the stand and on the cover of the program is meant to
represent that harvest, and also the Staff of Life which is the Gospel of Jesus
Christ.
Weldon was born in Preston, Idaho, on September 22,
1905. His parents were Walter Peter
Monson and Leona Smart Parkinson Monson.
Weldon was the sixth of ten children – seven boys and three girls. The combinations of Scandanavian and English
lines produced individuals with handsome, sturdy physiques, inquisitive minds,
and searching spirits.
Since my father’s passing, we have been most grateful for
have Ded’s brother, Keyne, a recently retired doctor in the Bay Area, in our
home, as a comforting, understanding Monson influence. Dad’s other remaining brother, Maurice, and
his sister, Blanche, will join us at the Graveside Service to be held in St.
Anthony, Idaho, on June 18th.
St. Anthony is the original home location of my mother and her family.
Dad was proud of his Idaho roots, and of his ancestors who
were early settlers there. His
grandfather, Samuel Rose Parkinson, was one of the first settlers in the State
of Idaho. Dad’s birthplace of Preston,
Idaho, was a setting of great happiness in his life. Much of this feeling undoubtedly came from
the many relatives who were there – not only his immediate family but also the
many aunts, uncles and cousins, primarily on the Parkinson side.
At the tender age of four, Dad was uprooted from this idyllic
setting of Preston, and he experienced the first in a series of changes in
culture. In 1909, the Monson family
moved to England – as the result of a mission call by the Mormon Church for
Weldon’ father. This first ocean trip to
England left an indelible imprint on Dad, who enjoyed the new experience of
being aboard a ship. This love for ocean
travel remained with him throughout his life.
There were initial cultural adjustments made, but Dad was
fascinated by the new sights and customs in England, and was soon dressed like
the English children of the time: I.e.,
in little Lord Fauntleroy suits, either with a collar and bow tie or with a
rollneck sweater. Weldon’s informal
education in England was implemented by various sightseeing trips when his
mother would occasionally take her large family of children on the trains to
the big cities and far off places.
In 1912, the Monson family was scheduled to return to the
States, and reservations were made for them on the Titanic by William T. Stead,
a member of Parliament and the editor of the London Times. Mr. Stead was interested in the Church, and
in seeing the West. However, Weldon’s
father had to report to the Eccles Company in Ogden, Utah, two weeks earlier
than the scheduled departure, and the family returned instead on the H.M.S.
Carpathian. W.T. Stead went down with the
Titanic, after offering his place on a life boat to a mother and her child.
[Kris’ Note: This Titanic story, however romantic it may
sound, I’m sad to say, doesn’t work out.
Maurice was born in Ogden, Utah in early March of 1912, as attested by
Maurice and verified by an affidavit by Weldon himself for Dad’s reconstructed
Utah birth certificate. Dad’s Utah birth
certificate was filed by a physician who did not attend the home birth well
over a year after this birth and had the wrong day, wrong year, wrong spelling
of his name and perhaps other errors.
Church records were correct with his birth on March 6, 1912. Dad used those and affidavits from Weldon and
Blanche to get Utah to correct it. Dad
graduated from high school soon after his 17th birthday because he
skipped 3rd grade. Had he
been born in 1913 he would have graduated just after his 16th
birthday and left on a mission at 18.
Neither was the case. He was born
in March, 1912. Titanic sailed from
England in April of 1912. They were
settled in Utah before she embarked and sank.
Weldon was young enough in 1912 that this story must have developed in
his personal timeline as he grew, yet he also recounted clear memories of
Maurice’s birth at home in Ogden. Research
bears out the truth of Weldon’s account of the sad and noble death of London
Times editor William T. Stead aboard Titanic. And there is no doubt he was friends with
Walter P. Monson and had planned to visit the family in the West.]
In 1913, Weldon’s father was again called by the Mormon
Church to undertake another mission, this time presiding over the Eastern
States Mission with headquarters in New York City. [Kris’ Note: Grandfather was
called upon the sudden death of Mission President Benjamin Erastus Rich on
September 13, 1913.] The Eastern
States Mission then extended from Toronto, Canada, on the north, to Huntington,
West Virginia on the west, to Richmond, Virginia, on the south. The Monson family moved to a brownstone
located at 33 West 126th Street; the meeting place for the Church
was then in a hall over the Apollo Theater at 125th Street. Weldon attended Public School on 128th
Street, just off Lenox Avenue. The
school was integrated, and the black and white boys played together normally,
without any thought of race.
In New York City, Weldon absorbed the new sights and customs
and became “street-wise” – both in holding his own in the fights and games on
the street in his neighborhood, and in learning how to make his own money
through jobs he could obtain through his own initiative. As Weldon recalled, “Wherever there was a
job, I was there.” These jobs included
delivering meat with a horse and delivery wagon, hawking newspapers, working
for an ice cream company and taking his wages in all the ice cream he could eat
(that was a short-lived job for the employer!), selling his place in line for
tickets at the Metropolitan Opera House to elderly gentlemen or ladies, or
helping people on rainy days who had forgotten their umbrellas, or delivering
fine women’s hats from Marguerite and Juliet’s Millinery Shop. My father did it all.
In 1916, the family moved to Brooklyn; on the corner of Franklin
and Gates Avenues was located the first church building owned by the Mormon
Church east of the Mississippi [Kris’
Note: This means after the Nauvoo
Exodus, as Nauvoo itself is east of the Mississippi, but the Church lost all
its holdings when they were expelled, I guess.] and the first mission home
in the East built just for the Church.
Weldon and one of his brothers took on the job of the cleaning and
maintenance of the chapel, for which they each received $1.00 a week, out of
which they tithed 10 cents. They would
also show the missionaries the main sightseeing attractions in NYC, including
the Woolworth Building which, at 48 stories, was then the tallest building in
the world. While living in Brooklyn,
Weldon joined the Boy Scouts in September, 1919, which was very shortly after
its start in America. [Kris’ Note: BSA founded in 1910.]
In 1919, all mission presidents, including Weldon’s father,
were released, and the Monson family moved the Salt Lake City. The 1920s and 1930s were difficult years for
the Monson family, both in economic and in health matters.
Weldon graduated from Granite High school in Salt Lake City
in 1923. And here is a theme that plays
throughout his life – his love for athletics.
Weldon played football, basketball, baseball, and track in his years in
high school, and won eleven letters in three years. In his yearbook at the time of his
graduation, there was inscribed under his senior picture: “An athlete – yesterday, today, and
forever.” And I must say when Dad had difficult
health times recently, I would remind him of that inscription – “an athlete,
yesterday, today, and forever.” It is
important that Weldon developed a strong athletic physique, because the jobs he
took demanded that hardiness. He had to
work his way, and ice jobs and jobs at the copper company were jobs that Ded
could handle, because of that physique.
And as Ded has recounted:
“It may have been “The Roaring Twenties” for some, but I
didn’t find any gold mines, except the hard work I did has helped me all my
life in physical build-up and in the learning of values. The business experience I obtained was also
invaluable. Being left on my own
resources, and making it, made me self-reliant, strong, and resourceful for
later years, particularly during the Depression and other years when so many
others fell by the wayside. My life has
been made up of rich experience obtained through just plain hard work.”
One of the turning points in Weldon’s life occurred when he
wrote a letter to Lou Little, the Football Coach at Georgetown University,
expressing his interest in attending Georgetown. Lou Little was in the process in the
mid-1920s in building some great teams at Georgetown and offered Weldon an
athletic scholarship. The athletic
scholarship, plus various jobs on the outside, enabled Weldon to undertake his
undergraduate studies at Georgetown. And
at Georgetown, Weldon appreciated the academic discipline of the courses he
took while, at the same time, excelling in athletics. During his playing years at Georgetown,
Weldon was always a regular member of the varsity football team and, in track,
he competed in the dual and national meets in the shot-put, discus, high jump,
and javelin. In 1927, Weldon was being
groomed for an All-American honor in football but, in a game with Syracuse, he
incurred an injury to his tendon of Achilles which prevented that honor and
stopped his athletic career altogether.
You can imagine his disappointments, but his interests were somewhere
else, ultimately more important.
Another major turning point in Weldon’s life occurred in
1930, when he was offered a job as Line Coach in Football at Brigham Young
University. Of everlasting importance to
Weldon’s life was the fact that it was at BYU that Weldon met Erma Jergensen, of
St. Anthony, Idaho. It was undoubtedly a
case of “love at first sight” when Weldon first saw Erma walking down the main
stairway in the main administration building.
He learned her name from a friend, told him that he was going to marry
her, found out her course registration, and proceeded to register for all of
her courses that would fit into his program.
Weldon and Erma were married in the Salt lake Temple on May 15, 1931, by
George F. Richards, who was the President of the Twelve at the time and who
presided over the Temple.
My parents moved to Washington, D.C. in 1931, in the depth of
the Great Depression, and Weldon enrolled in the Law School at Georgetown
University, and worked his way through school.
In 1934, he received his LL.B. degree and, in 1936, his Juris Doctor,
which was then the highest earned law degree given; he had a specialty in Labor
law which was then I its early development.
His doctoral dissertation was titled “Federal Jurisdiction Over Labor
Disputes.” Dad has always felt grateful
that he obtained the two law degrees, since he has acknowledged that the
advanced degree opened doors for him for the rest of his working career in law,
both as a ‘corporate labor lawyer’ – a career that was envisioned for him by
his Dean at Gorgetown, and later as a member of the distinguished faculty at
the Graduate School of Business Administration at New York University.
The period from Weldon’s graduation from Georgetown law
School to 1945 included the following professional commitments: private practice of law in Washington, D.C.;
Trial an Litigation Attorney with the National Labor Relations Board; Special
Trial Attorney, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice; Industrial
Relations Attorney, Airplane Division, Curtiss-Wright Corporation; as well as
private practice of law in New York City.
I would like to underline the experience at Curtiss-Wright during the
years of World War II. It was
significant, since Dad had responsibility for all labor relations of the
Airplane Division, which consisted of seven plants located in Buffalo,
Columbus, St. Louis, and Louisville.
There were approximately 125,000 employees in the Airplane Division, and
Weldon was involved in the negotiation of all labor contracts in the Division,
all arbitration cases, and cases coming before the various government boards
and agencies. The contracts which Weldon
negotiated were used as models in the industry.
The labor relations of the Division were considered exemplary by the
Secretary of Labor, Mrs. Frances Perkins.
And again, all this was crucially important during the war years.
In November 1945, Weldon was asked to negotiate an agreement
ending the 1945-46 Yale and Towne strike in Stamford, Connecticut; at that
time, Yale and Towne was the world’s foremost lock and hardware company and was
in the midst of a long and bitter strike of national importance, involving the
issue of the closed shop – which the company strongly opposed. During his tenure at Yale and Towne, Weldon
served both as Labor Counsel and as Director of Industrial Relations for the
Stamford Division, which comprised some 6,500 employees and was the main
industry in the city of Stamford, known as “The Lock City.”
After the later assignments, such as Cities Service Oil
Company, the Salary Stabilization Board as well as private practice in New York
City, Weldon joined the faculty of the Graduate School of Business
Administration of New York University where he taught Management ad Industrial
Relations for twenty years. I am so
pleased that Phyllis Jones Kimball is here, because her father, Thatcher Jones,
is a dear friend of my father’s, whose friendship not only stems from the
NYU/GBA days but also from a much earlier period in the Church. [Kris’
Note: Thatcher Jones was one of the
missionaries while Grandfather was over the missionaries in London. He was a businessman in NYC while Grandfather was Mission President in NYC. He was also close friends with
Maurice when he lived in the Bay Area.
During my early childhood I knew him as the lovely old man who always
had a stick of gum for me at church. I had
no idea he was a big deal until I went to BYU and walked past the Thatcher C.
Jones Lecture Hall in the JKB. I called
Dad to see if it was the same Thatcher Jones.
His daughter Dot was one of Mom’s dear friends. We stayed close until he died in 1989 not
long before his 101st birthday.
He was a dear man.] During the latter part of Dad’s NYU
tenure, he also served as Faculty Advisor to the International Students, and
had the opportunity of visiting most of their countries during his Sabbatical
leacture tour in 1965-66. During that
world trip, he lectured at the Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand;
the Sidney University in Sidney, Australia; Delhi University in Delhi, India,
and to management groups in New Delhi and Bombay, India; Baghdad University in
Baghdad, Iraq; to management associations in Cairo, Egypt; the University of
Rome in Rome, Italy, and he was a Visiting Professor lecturing at the London
School of Economics in London, England, and at the Bristol School of Science in
Bristol, England during the Lent Term (Jan. to April 1966). In 1972, he retired as Professor Emeritus,
and was given special recognition for his teaching over the years. It should also be noted that March 1985,
Weldon received a special citation from the dean at the Golden Anniversary
gathering of his remaining classmates at the Georgetown University Law School,
in Washington, D.C.
Again, this April, he was specially commended by Georgetown,
in honor of the 50 years since his graduation with the advanced Juris Doctor in
1936. At that time, he was in the
hospital with serious and complicated medical problems. After five weeks in the hospital, he returned
home on May 2nd and passed on to Our Heavenly Father’s Loving Care
Thursday morning, May 22nd.
His passing via Cardiac Arrest was sudden and without pain, releasing
him from a struggle with impossible health alternatives.
Before he left for the hospital the evening before Easter, he
did not want to leave home. Once in the
hospital, he yearned with every fibre of his soul to return to the home he so
loved in Stamford. He did return
home. He particularly loved the
springtime progression of the various blossoms around the home. This was his Last Spring in his beloved
Stamford home. In June, his remains will
be “going home” to Idaho, and there will be a graveside service there. But he is already home with out Heavenly
Father.
At this point, let me give comfort to my mother, Erma
Jergensen Monson. Dad has written the
following:
“But to Erma goes my deepest love and appreciation for all
that she did, through all kinds of weather, in good times and bad, constantly
through the years giving me her unstinting support, economically, spiritually,
and, above all, keeping my life moving ahead even through very difficult
times. I will never be able to repay her
for what she has done to my life, and I give her my deepest love and gratitude,
now and always. She has always done more
than her part… I trust that we will both
never forget the struggles we went through together to make what we have today
possible. She is a wonderful lady, from
a wonderful family and home life, and I am proud and thankful for all that she
has been to me.”
Mother, Dad loves you and will be with you always. And always remember that.
There were a number of major turning points in Dad’s life,
and these junctures required decision-making that needed to be inspired. Dad’s basic traits of character served him
well as he met each situation on life’s path but, undoubtedly, the propitious
developments that made a critical difference in his life were made possible by
Divine Guidance. Certainly, the Lord has
seen Weldon as a valuable instrument for His Purposes in this life. And for this part, Dad has strongly believed
that it is necessary to keep “an open mind to truth from wherever it may come
and not to follow blindly any dogma from whatever source.” Dad’s upbringing and experience is rooted in
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and yet his commitment reaches
out to the practice of Christianity wherever it might be.
Dad has written the following:
“What is needed most is the practice of Christianity
more among all Christian peoples and faiths.
It is simple and uncomplicated, and does not require advanced degrees to
know what Christ expects of us in our lives, lives which are all precious to
Him. This practice must be understood
and practiced today, here and now… “Build thee more stately mansions, Oh my
soul, leave thy low vaulted past…” Those
are not just the words of the poet; those are words of truth and a blueprint
for living today and tomorrow… Let us
try to make the most of what we have and, if possible, help others in need to
make the most of what they have. That is
why I think that teaching offers the most to one’s own growth and the
opportunity to enhance the growth of others.
“As ye do so unto the least of these my children, ye do so unto
me.” This is my philosophy of life, and
I would commend it to others who might want to know what the practice of
Christianity means.”
[Kris’ Note: Perhaps this is the
Weldon Translation of Matthew 25:40 “… Inasmuch as ye have done it until one of
the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Or perhaps he is quoting something else.]
our church home has been in
Westchester Ward since 1955, and our family appreciates the many kindnesses of
our extended ward family here. We deeply
appreciate the dedication of the three members of our Bishopric, Blair Garff,
Ron Inouye, Mark Bench, and also of Det Lehnert and John Stone in preparing and
dressing my father’s body, last Friday morning.
I realize that my father’s spirit had moved on, and yet I was amazed at
the spiritual strength which radiated in the peaceful composure of my father’s
face. The circumstances were special and
unusual, but a compassionate judicial
quality was conveyed to me, and the more I think of it the more I am impressed
that the Lord will utilize my father’s patriarchal strengths in this area of
compassionate justice.
To all of you who prayed for
my father, you did not pray in vain.
Your prayers were answered in many ways.
Our Father in Heaven simply needed the unique worth of my father, and
called him home. And my father mentioned
to me while he was in the hospital, that the Lord after all is in control; Dad
not only recognized that but honored that.
His faith is complete in the missions of the Father, His Son, Jesus
Christ, and in the Holy Ghost. My father
has a deep and profound belief that all is made whole in Eternity. My father knows that Our Redeemer lives. And it is my testimony, and it is a
hard-fought testimony, that my father lives in Our Heavenly Father’s Kingdom.
The larger design of
obedience to the will of Our Father in heaven was set by Jesus Christ, and
recorded in the Gospels. In John, Chp.
17, verse 4, we read, “I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the
work which thou gavest me to do.”
Throughout his life, my father took the road “less traveled by” in order
to finish the work Our Heavenly Father wanted him to do. And that will continue to make all the
difference.
To all of you and to My
Father in Heaven, I commend to you this great spriti of my father, Weldon
Parkinson Monson. And I seal my witness
as his lovoing daughter. And I say this
in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Diane Monson
May 27, 1986
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