Memorial Day Weekend - Aunt Lajune's Biography
Autobiography of Lajune Mills
In a hot day in July a third child was born to my parents. This child was me, born July 11, 1939 in Price, Utah. The two older were boys.[1]
Shortly after I was born, my grandmother Sudweeks became very ill. Mother, myself and the two boys went to Kingston so mother could be with her. Daddy couldn’t go as his mother (my grandmother Mills) wasn’t expected to live.
Shortly after we arrived at Grandpa’s home, she regained consciousness long enough to know we were there. Grandpa held me up so she could see me. She uttered, “Our little girl.” And again, she lost consciousness. Those were her last words. She died two days later. Grandpa gave me a tiny gold ring that she had kept for her first granddaughter.
We returned home shortly after the funeral and were only there a few days when Grandma Mills died. And thus my life began in this world of sorrow. It wasn’t all sorrow though as I soon found out. At nine and one-half months, I cut my first tooth and four and one-half moths later took my first steps.
At twenty months I found that life had some pretty rough breaks. I fell off the bed and ran the axle of a toy car through my bottom lip. I screamed like I’d almost been killed. (I thought I had).[2]
A month later, making the date April 12, 1941, the world again retrained the brighter side and my younger brother was born.[3] It still hadn’t lost the dark side though because almost a year later I came down with the measles. For the first six or seven days I was so sick, my parents didn’t have too much trouble keeping me in bed; but on the eighth day I felt better and was determined to get up. I found my chance when Mama went outside after some water. I climbed out of bed and ran to the door and opened it. Out into the cold winter weather I ran. It’s funny I didn’t get pneumonia; but I didn’t. All I got was put back in bed to stay until I got over measles.
Again the brighter side of the world came and on my third birthday, my youngest brother was born.[4] Oh boy! Another brother, how did I rate so lucky?
I found that brothers weren’t always so wonderful too. One day, while I was having my hair braided. Glendon was teasing me because I usually always cried when my hair was combed. It seemed like Mama didn’t even care how hard she pulled. Anyway, his teasing made me mad so I picked up the book and hit him in the stomack with it. His face went a funny color and he looked sort of funny. Oh well, maybe that would teach him to leave me alone. But I was sort of scared because he still didn’t look quite right. Finally, he began to look better and it wasn’t long until he was teasing me again. However, I didn’t try that again.
Shortly after Christmas of 1942, I had the Chicken Pox and the Christmas of ’43 I celebrated in bed with Scarlet Fever. It was that year that old Santa brought us my first doll with real hair.
Early the following Spring we moved to a farm near Elmo, Utah. The fall of ’45 I started school walking the two miles distance to Elmo with my two older brothers; that is for awhile. I couldn’t keep up with them very easy so I soon began to walk alone. I walked home alone anyway because my class was let out earlier than the others.
The first day of school was almost awful… I didn’t know any of the kids from town. It wasn’t long though before I met them and we soon became friends. There were only four girls in the class. They were Evelyn Erickson, Patsy Wilson, Margaret Alger and myself. We were all close friends. Miss Georgena Lofly was my teacher until I completed the second grade.
Somewhere about the December after I started the third grade, we moved to a house in Elmo, which was only one block from school. Boy! This was really great. I wouldm’t have to walk very far now. It was great too, that is for a while. Early the following spring, we moved again. I’d thought walking was bad before. Well, now I walked three miles to school instead of two.
I finished my third year of school with Mrs. Andrew McNeil as my teacher. That was the first year I had attended Primary. I was in the second year Zion’s Boys and Girls. I didn’t complete that year though because if I stayed after school for Primary, it would be almost completely dark before I got home and I wasn’t very fond of walking alone in the dark. The last week of that school year I spent at home with some sort of strep throat.
The summer of 1948[5] I spent on the farm. Daddy was farming another place about 5 miles from where we lived. When he and the two older boys went there to haul hay they would take me to get dinner for them. There was a one room house on this place. A stove, a table, a cupboard and 2 or 3 chairs were the only furniture.
On one occasion, they left me at the house to get dinner and left to get a load of hay which was quite a distance from the house. I went inside and started the fire and began preparations for dinner.
I watched for them to come in with a load of hay and took them a drink. Then I returned to the house and hurried dinner as fast as I could. By the time they came in with their second load of hay, dinner was ready and waiting. I say dinner because that was what it was supposed to be. It was really a mid-morning snack as I soon was told it was only 10:00 am. You wonder why I’m telling this but it was one of the very few experiences I had with Daddy. He was usually working in the fields where I very seldom went with them.
I was baptized that summer on July 25, 1948.
Most of the summer there were rumors of sending us to school at Cleveland. Nobody was sending me to Cleveland. I’d go to Elmo if I had to walk. At least that’s what I told them. But the morning school started I was the first ready and I did go to Cleveland. I made new friends and really liked school.
That October, I was stricken with Rheumatic Fever. The Dr. (Dr. Truman) told me I could expect to spend 2 or 2 ½ months in bed, and that it would be at least 3 months before I could go back to school. He didn’t diagnose the case right away. I had to go to the Price Hospital to have my blood tested and return to him in 3 days. Those 3 days were spent in horror for me. I remember that quite a few people, mostly relatives or close friends came. I remember hearing one man say that I had Rheumatic Fever. The thought terrified me. I didn’t have it and I wasn’t going to have it. That’s what I thought. When I went back to the doctor, he said that I did and I was to be taken home and put to bed; and the only time I could get up was when I went to him for an examination. Well, just who did he think he was fooling? How could I get up when I couldn’t even bend my joints and I even had to have help to turn over in bed. Not only that but he gave me some nasty chocolate flavored medicine and some pink capsules. I hated the chocolate medicine and so the next time I went for an examination he changed it to cherry flavor. This was somewhat better, but I could think of lots of other things I would rather have.
I think the Dr. was almost as surprised as I when I was ready to return to school in two months.
My first day back at school I spent with my cousin as the furnace at the school was out of order. I hadn’t been back many days when I was again returned to bed with a back set of Rheumatic Fever. This time it didn’t last too long and I was back to school in about a month. Mrs. Bertha Peterson was my teacher that year. She was wonderful too. I doubted that I’d pass that year of school, but I did. It took lots of hard work to make up what I’d missed and keep up with the class. I passed as one of the top students and went on to my fifth year of school.
On Sunday morning, September 11, 1949, when I awoke Mama was gone. Daddy informed me that she was in the hospital with a baby sister.[6] I considered myself lucky that it wasn’t another brother. I missed school every day that week to get dinner ready for Daddy. I was home alone most of the time because Daddy spent most of his time at the hospital.
Of course, I just couldn’t wait until Mama came home. I was rather disappointed when she finally came. The baby was so small I didn’t think it would ever grow big enough for me to play with. Besides, all she ever did was sleep. When I returned to school, everyone asked me where I’d been and with pride I told them of my baby sister.
The latter part of March, Daddy and Mama decided to move. Until then, everything had gone quite smoothly, but now it was rather exciting. At home everything was packed into boxes and suitcases to be moved. At school I said goodbye to my friends.
The morning of April 6, 1950 we were to leave early. In order to do this we were to get up at 4:00 a.m. We were all excited but Glendon must have been more so than the rest of us be ause he got up to see what time it was. Seeing it was 4:05 he aroused the rest of us. It was awful; the fires hadn’t even been built. After we were all out of bed and breakfast was almost ready we noticed that it was only 1:20 a.m. instead of 4:05. Of course we were too excited to go back to bed so we just waited. That was the longest 3 hours I ever spent. Finally, it was time to go but then we had to wait another hour for the truck to come. At 7:20 a.m. we were on our way to Kingston.
We started school at Junction on April 10, 1950. Again I had to make new friends and become acquainted with the teachers. The rest of that year and the following year I was taught by Mr. Darrell Lake.
The following June, Daddy, Mavin, Glendon and Uncle Lavar went to Idaho to work. About one month later, they came home because Daddy was sick. Mama and Uncle Lavar took him to the doctor and from there to Salt Lake to a Specialist. The doctors up there couldn’t find anything wrong with him so he came home.
He just kept getting worse so about the fourth of September when I came home from school, he asked me to go to Salt Lake City with him. I had a hard time trying to decide whether to go or not to go. I wanted to because I’d never been there before. I didn’t want to because I would miss school, but I guess most of all, I wanted to because Daddy wanted me to and so I went.
We had only been there a few days when Daddy got so bad he was put in the hospital. Just as they were leaving for the hospital, he came over where I was playing and kissed me good-bye. I stayed with my aunt in Woods Cross so mama could stay in Salt Lake near the hospital. My aunt took me to the hospital to see Daddy. She got permission for me to see him and then took me to the room. Just before we entered his room, she warned me not to cry. I tried. I really did but I just couldn’t help it. I went to the side of his bed and he hugged me, kissed me and called me “his little girl.” The tears welled up in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks as I left the hospital. On the way back to my aunt’s I was told why I had been able to see him. He was to go into surgery in 2 or 3 days.
When the Doctors operated, they found he had cancer and gave him 48 hours to live. The boys (my Brothers) were brought to Salt Lake City immediately.
On October 5, he died.[7] This was about 2 weeks after the operation. I didn’t cry, I couldn’t. That is until the funeral and then I just couldn’t help it.
I started back to school and finished that year and my seventh year at Junction. Mr. Jason V. Norgren was my teacher in the seventh grade.
The next year we went to Circleville to school. I met a lot of “KIDS” and quite liked school. The eighth grade went quite smoothly. It wasn’t until I was a “Freshie” that I began to do things, some that were fun and interesting but oh so mean.
One Halloween, for instance, we (meaning some of the Kingston kids) really did have fun. First of all, we built a ghost on an old broom then D.M. from Salt Lake City asked us to go with him as he had a car (we didn’t). We began our fun at the Junction grade school by waxing and soaping all the windows. We did the same thing to the High School at Circleville. The only difference was that we added a few toilet paper streamers and bows to the fence. After all, this was where we went to school. It deserved something special. We also rearranged some certain “men” and “lady” signs.
After all this, we came back to Kingston and made use of our ghost by standing it against doors, knocking, then running There were some scared people when they opened their doors and the ghost would fall into the room. No, that isn’t all we did that night, we also put toothpaste on a certain family’s doorknob. This particular family wasn’t very fond of trick-or-treaters so they had gone to the show.
Finally, we ran out of ideas so we went to Bety Kae’s home and partied until 3:00 the following morning. The funniest part of it all was that nobody knew who we were because we were in a strange car. By the way, while we were partying someone had let the air out of the tires of D.M.’s car. Wasn’t that a mean thing to do?
The next morning, being Sunday, we were all present at Sunday School. Our lesson was about repentance. Our teacher referred to it as being very fitting at Halloween but we didn’t think so. After all, we didn’t have anything to repent of or did we? We also heard about someone putting toothpaste on a certain family’s doorknob that day. It couldn’t have been us or could it?
Another timer was on Valentines. Betty Kae had a crush on a certain couple of bachelors, so Barbara and I decided to send them valentines and sign her name. We got off the school but at Junction Post Office to post them. There wasn’t anyone but us that knew anything about it; but somehow a couple of days later, she (Betty Kae) found out. Little did we know how much it would hurt her. She cried all the way to school that morning. Barbara and I apologized to her, but it didn’t seem to help. Barbara started to cry too but I couldn’t make myself think of it as a crying matter.
After that incident, I’d almost decided it didn’t pay to be mean; but about a week later, Barbara called for me to go to Mutual. I knew something was wrong when I saw her. On the way to Mutual, she told me she had dropped some records and she didn’t know how many were broken. After going through the albums we found that only two were broken. We knew we had to get rid of them somehow. Any ideas? Of course, I came up with one. We could drop them into someone’s backhouse. We did and to this day, those records could be found but which backhouse is a secret. Nobody but Bsrbara and I should know.
Some of the other things we did were as follows: Chicken roasts, stealing apples, hunting pine gum and cooking our dinner out in the fields. Once we even waded in the river in the middle of winter. By the way, this is a sure way to catch a cold because every one of us did.
Another time we tied toilet paper on every car in Kingston and still another time we borrowed (not stolled) some wieners from those in the Priesthood. They were having a wiener roast and they didn’t even invite us; But we had a wiener roast that night (on borrowed wieners) and not only that but we sept in sleeping bags out under the stars.
These are just a few of the things we did. I wasn’t mean all the time though. In September 1954, I was asked to be a teacher in the Primary. I accepted and was assigned Group class, 2. On July 10, 1955, the day before my sixteenth birthday, I received my Patriarchal Blessing. The following September I as asked to be Speech Director and Young Women’s Secretary of the YMMIA. I accepted, but finding I couldn’t hold 2 positions and still attend my class, I resigned Speech Director. In November of 1955 I began teaching the nursery class in Sunday School, but the following January I was transferred to the 6 and 7 year olds. I loved (and still do) every minute I spent preparing lessons for these two classes.
Although I still find it quite hard to keep up with my school lessons and hold these 3 positions in the church, I am doing my best. Sometimes it is almost discouraging but I know that for every minute I spend doing this work, I will be paid well, not only now but also in the future.
(Typed with added footnotes by Valerie Mills Hunt July 2011 and again in March, 2021 from copy typed by Lorna Gail Mills in 1967).
[1] Mavin Mills DOB: and Glendon Mills DOB:
[2] Uncle Glen shared his memory of this event as: “At the time we were living in the log house on Miller Creek. Wood house in a neighbor’s house. Lajune fell off bed and cut her cheek on a metal toy car. Mother took care of it – pulled it together with adhesive tape and healed pretty good. Mave & I were pretty scared about it. Mother must have throwed the car away – at least we never found it again.”
[3] Len Mills DOB 12 April 1941
[4] Cline Mills DOB 11 July 1942
[5] Lajune about 9 years old.
[6] Lorna Gail DOB: 11 Sept 1949
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