I am Tracie Sloop. I am in Mt. Airy, North Carolina in Norma Hiatt's

Transcription

1 START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A TRACIE SLOOP SEPTEMBER 29, 1997 TRACIE SLOOP: I am Tracie Sloop. I am in Mt. Airy, North Carolina in Norma Hiatt's living room. This is my tape It is Sunday September 21,1997. Okay. We had a little problem with the mike but we've got it settled out now. So Sister Hiatt do you wanna try again to tell me where you were born and brothers and sisters and things. NORMA HIATT: Ok. I was born in Provo Utah, December 8, I was the next to the youngest of seven in our family. Of course three sisters take it back-four sisters and 2 brothers. When I was about 3 years old because of my father's health we moved to Orem, Utah, and that's where I grew up. We lived within a block of the church and the school and my father's business and all right in the center there of Orem in what is now called State Street and I think 8th, but I'm not certain. They named all those streets after I moved here. TS: Did they? NH: When I was growing up it was Highway 89 and 11th street TS: How about that. I lived right off Center Street for a while NH: I grew up and I was baptized when I was 8 and grew up in the church, going through all the various programs of the church including seminary. TS: Did they have early morning seminary? NH: What? TS: Did they have early morning seminary? NH: No. We had our own seminary building next to the school. And we had what you call release time now. For us it was just another class in our school curriculum. TS: But you had to go off the school campus? NH: Well, yes, about 10 steps, [laughs] It joined the school property. When I was a teenager is when I met my husband. I was 17 and he had, had gone to Utah to go to BYU. His home was here, Mt. Airy North Carolina. He went to BYU [Brigham Young University] and in his second year there I met him on a blind date through one of his distant cousins whose foreparents had left here back in the

2 1800s to go to Utah to settle. Back then we were advised by the Church to build up Zion. So, it was hard to build up the church here in North Carolina. Anyway she was a descendant of those people. And so she was also my best friend in high school and she arranged the blind date. And that's how I met him. We dated about two and a half weeks. He was already-had volunteered for army service in World War II and didn't know exactly when they would call him up but it was about two and a half weeks after we had dated that he was called into active service. And we corresponded then for nine months. The next time I saw him we were getting married [laughs]. He was ready to be shipped out over seas from Oregon. He was stationed in Oregon, and he had gotten orders they were going to ship him out. TS: Do you remember where they going to ship him to? NH: The Pacific. TS: Oh my goodness. NH: And so we decided--/ decided-that I need to be married to him if I was gonna wait for him and so really against the advice of my friends and others because I had never met any of his people except his brothers who were at the Y also-i got on a train and went to Oregon and we were married by the Branch President in that ward. And I stayed there for two weeks and then I had to get back to school. By then I was a senior in high school and I had to get back in order to graduate so I went back to finish my schooling at Lincoln High School. TS: Well how did your parents feel about you getting married when you were still in high school? NH: They weren't too happy about it, but I've always been told that I've pretty much had a mind of my own and during World War II things were so different. No one now can appreciate what it was like during World War II. Everyone was so caught up in the war and everyone was doing whatever they could to advance the war and help the service men and it was just a different situation than what we think of now but anyway they weren't too pleased with me but they allowed me to go. TS: How did you make a decision like that? How did you decide to~ NH: I had done some praying. I was just fed up with dating for one thing. I was just fed up with dating and I knew that I loved Talmage and he obviously loved me. He told me that the very first

3 date. And in fact after our first date, that blind date, the next morning my mother, I remember came-i was in the kitchen-and Mama was asking me did I enjoy the date and I said "That's the man I'm gonna marry." I just knew it from the first time we got together and I said, "I don't know why he's not what I thought my husband would be. He doesn't have a car; he's out here going to school; he's from North Carolina of all places," but I just knew that that's who I was supposed to marry and as it turned out he had the same impression, so we just went from there. I just didn't want to wait for him unless I was married to him. That would have been very hard. TS: No, that would have been impossible. NH: So, we did the best we could by getting the branch president to marry us. TS: Well now that would have made it even harder because you weren't getting sealed in the temple. NH: That's right but as it turned out instead of shipping him overseas as the orders had comethat's something about war time: you never know exactly what to believe when they tell you-they decided to send his unit to California and ship them out from California to the Pacific and in the meantime they gave him a 30-day furlough. This was in May after we were married January 3, 1944, so he came to Utah on his 30-day furlough, and we made arrangements then to go to the temple. We had to go through the First Presidency of the Church, but we didn't have any problems because they like everyone else-it was wartime and conditions were different and we got to. Of course his membership was here in Mount Airy [North Carolina] but there was no problem with getting his approval through the mission president. TS: So, was the mission president the presiding priesthood in this area? NH: Yes. TS: I didn't know that. NH: And anyway, so we had our, the, approval and by May fifth we went to Salt Lake for our temple ceremony and we just happened to be walking beside the Church Office Building and met Elder Charles A. Callis who had been a mission president here for a number of years. TS: Can you spell that for me? Is that spelled C-A-L-L-I-S?

4 NH: Yes. And Talmage spoke to him and said, "Oh, President Callis" and he turned and he recognized Talmage as being one of the Hiatts. He had been in Talmage's home when he was younger and he knew his father and his grandfather and most of the people here in Mt. Airy so after we told him why we were there he was very happy for us. It was a very special moment because he was so filled with the Spirit of the Lord and he said, "Would you like for me to perform the ceremony? I would really like to perform the ceremony." So we were more than happy to agree to that. Talmage was ordained an Elder in the temple. Up to that point he was not an Elder. Back then they did not ordain the Elder until they were ready to go on a mission or get married or whatever. TS: So Talmage never went on a mission. NH: No, he wasn't 19. TS: Are you serious? TS: How old was he when he was going to school? NH: He was 17 when he started at the Y and in his second year when we got married. In fact he had just turned 20 and in Oregon you were supposed to be 21 to get married, but we didn't know that. And when we went to get our license, we had to have a witness and so he just stopped a service man there on the street, a Sergeant, and said, "Would you like to witness? We're about to get married. Would you like to be our witness?" "He said, SURE" so we went in to get our license and the magistrate he didn't ask for our ages. He just asked this fellow, "Are they old enough to get married? He said, "Sure." TS: He probably didn't know either. NH: He didn't know either [mutual laughter] and we really didn't know that you had to be 21. That the man had to be twenty-one. So I had just turned 18 not even a month before. So anyway that's how we got our license and were married. But anyway he was not an Elder until they ordained him in the temple and then we were together then for that 30 days and then he was sent to California. I finished high school. I graduated, and at the end of May, and then I went to California to stay with him until he was ready to go overseas and we were together probably two or three weeks before he left for the Pacific area. And then I didn't see him again. It was a terrible time to tell him bye and go back home. And at

5 home at that time nearly every window in the community had those little stars in the window to show that they had service men. Once in a while-got more frequent as time went on-they had a little sign that us told that someone had been killed in that family. TS: What did the stars look like? Were they your regular five-point star? NH: Yes. TS: What color? NH: As I remember they were red with a white background but I can't be certain about that. I haven't seen one in fifty years. More than fifty years. TS: I haven't seen one. That's why I asked. NH: But it was-everything was rationed you couldn't get food unless you had a rations stamp. It was war time. So anyway I went back to Utah and he was overseas for 18 months and we wrote back and forth of course. He was in combat in the Philippines, Okinawa, and all of those terrible places. TS: The ones they make the movies out of. NH: He was there. And he was right in the middle of the fighting. At one point he contracted yellow jaundice we called it we called it then. Now it's called-what is it called? Can't think now. They won't take your blood if-hepatitis. They call it hepatitis. But he got it and he was in the hospital for probably a month and a half. And I didn't hear from him during that time. Of course it was a terrible time for me because I thought he was missing in action or had been killed so that was very difficult. But when I did get word from him again, it was that he was in the hospital that he had been too sick to write and after he got well they just put him back in the fighting. And, anyway, he came home. I worked while he was gone. I worked in Thomas's Butler and Thomas's-when I started working there, in Provo. It's a department store and I saved money. And in fact, I had saved enough money to buy our first little trailer house to live in after we came to North Carolina. TS: Well, I have two questions for you before we go too much further. NH: Ok. TS: Was your family with you when you were sealed in the temple?

6 NH: My sister and her husband and the parents of this cousin who had introduced us. The four of them were with us. My parents at that time had not been to the temple; they have been since but at that time they had not. TS: And Brother Hiatt's parents didn't get to go because they were still here in Mt. Airy NH: That's right. That was wartime and they couldn't travel. He had two brothers out at school with him. One 14 months older and one 13 months younger, but they were both in the service also, so there was no one except my sister who had already been and her husband and my friend Mary's parents so they were the ones who went of the family. TS: Are you glad that you did it that way? NH: I would much have preferred you know to have my family and his family represented and been married to begin with in the temple but it was out of the question. There was just no way. I think the Lord just answered our prayers by changing the plans and allowing him that time to come home so that we could be. My Bishop at that time, Bishop Davis, said, "Are you sure you want to be sealed? You know he could be killed, and if you're sealed to him you can't go back and be sealed to anyone else." And I thought it was very foolish. I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be sealed to Talmage. So even that didn't discourage us. So we were married. Any other questions about that? [Laughs] TS: No. No more questions. NH: There's much to tell, but I don't know how much in depth you want to go. TS: I just wondered you looking back on that time in your life, if you were happy with that decision. NH: Yes. If those conditions existed again, I would make the same decision. TS: Well, I think that you're right that the Lord just opened those pathways. NH: I've found that He's done that so many times through my life and in fact when I got my patriarchal blessing some time later, a few years later, that was one of the things the patriarch pointed out. Elder G. Smith who was the patriarch for the Church. We didn't have patriarchs here at that time. Just one for the whole church for those who didn't have a patriarch. So who was that?

7 TS: That's my mother. [My mother comes in the front door here and we turn off the tape recorder momentarily.] NH: The one thing that stuck with me was him telling me that the Lord had already influenced- I can't remember the exact word-but had part in things that had happened in my life already and of course I felt like that was one of them. And those 30 days getting furlough that way my family were able to get better acquainted with Talmage and he was able to get better acquainted with them and of course we were in my ward and people in the ward. You know we had gold and green ball and banquets so that it was after the fact that everyone got acquainted but that's all right too. TS: Well tell me about your parents. Did you come from a fairly wealthy home? You said that you expected your husband to have a car. NH: Yes, I wouldn't say we were wealthy, but we were not poor. We had a nice home. Wallto-wall carpeting, furnace. I had my own room and bathroom. That's one reason I had so much trouble adjusting to what I found here because I was used to better things. My dad was in the city council of Orem. He was quite instrumental in having Orem become a city and putting up a lot of different thingsthe water system and some other things. He was quite a politician in that sense so-and then later he was mayor of-they moved to Alpine, Utah, after I came here-and he was mayor of Alpine, so he was always quite active and my mother was very active. My dad was born of a polygamist family and he was of the younger family and his father was much, much older than his mother and he grew up feeling like his father was too strict and he got a lot of whippings with canes. Back then that wasn't all that unusual but Daddy was a redhead and he didn't appreciate those things so when he was old enough he ran away and joined the cowboy group. TS: What's that? NH: They're cowboys out on the plains roping cattle and herding cattle and he was-in fact his parents had no idea where he was and he didn't contact them. He just ran away from home and during that period of time his father died and they didn't know where he was. His mother didn't know where he was but he was in his bunk, he said, and his father was suddenly standing there at the foot of his bunk and this was out in the whatever it is where they herd the cattle-no one else around much-and his father

8 was standing there and his father said, "Willard, go home. Your mother needs you." And then he disappeared and so dad had turned-he wasn't interested in the church so that just made such an impression on him. And he went home and found that his father had died that night but there was no way of reaching him, so the Lord allowed him to find out that way, so he did go back and he gave up his- He stayed then-made something of himself there in Utah but he never was really active in the Church. Mom was. Mom was a convert to the church. She came from Denmark when she was just a young girl about 6 years old and, but, she didn't join the church until after they were married and my two older sisters were baptized. Our home teacher visited them often, so she decided she wanted to be baptized and it was fine with Daddy. He didn't have anything major against the church; he just didn't want to be a part of it. But he was a member, baptized as a child, so it was Mom that kept us in the church. Saw to it that we went to all of our meetings. Of course Daddy, he'd have been very upset if we hadn't, but he didn't go. TS: And so your brothers and sisters are active? NH: Yes. Except my oldest brother. He sort of followed Daddy's example and he didn't. He's not active now. He's still living but he's not active. Says he never will be. And after my dad became active he said that that was the hardest thing for him was realizing that he had had that influence on his son to the extent that he was not interested in the Church. But the rest-we've all been sealed to Mom and Dad except this brother. Did so while we were still living. My mother was my best friend. I'll tell you that. We were very close and of all the children, I'm the only one that moved far, far away and that was hard but- TS: You had some really tough decision to make-really hard decisions. NH: But at the time I didn't think they were so hard because they were what I wanted. They felt right. They felt right. It was very hard to leave home, and I admit that as we came on the bus from Winston-Salem to Mount Airy I kept my face turned to the window so Talmage wouldn't see me cry. It was February and it's TS: And North Carolina is so ugly in February.

9 NH: It was ugly and so dreary and I thought, "what have I done?" But, and then, for the next while it was difficult to adjust to what I found here because things were so extremely different and Talmage didn't prepare me. Talmage didn't prepare me at all. And I asked him about it later-years later because I never wanted to make him feel bad. I loved him too much for that. And he said, "I didn't think it'd make any difference. It didn't bother me." He just never gave it any thought that it might bother me, but I loved his family. But they lived in-their home didn't have heat except in the little pot belly stoves. There was no running water in the house. Had to use an outhouse and I'd never done that before. Never been in that situation. Water came from a well-in a bucket which they sat on a cupboard and it had one ladle in it that everybody drank from, and the kitchen was used to wash the face or brush their teeth, and that was very hard for me. I was used to privacy and it was hard to sit at the table eating breakfast and have one of the children come running down brushing their teeth right next to you. It was different. TS: What else was different? NH: The speech of course was very different. My brother-in-law Bill, who is a state representative now. I don't suppose I understood what he said for the first year. He mumbled so much. He still does to some extent but it was very hard to understand. I loved his mother. She was an angel if there ever was one. But she was very different from my mother. My mother was more modern and always dressed nice. Kept herself very nice. And Talmage's mother was just a country lady who paid little attention to what she looked like but she was an angel. She really was-there wasn't anything she wouldn't do for anyone, and in all the time I knew her I never heard her say a cross word or anything bad about anybody. She was very educated although she hadn't had much schooling. She grew up in Ararat, Virginia, and used to walk from Ararat across over here to go to church. TS: Now how far is that? From Ararat to here is about- NH: Well it's a long way if you go the roads, but she came across the fields. TS: It's about 8 miles. I clocked it today driving from my house to yours and it took me 8 miles by the roads.

10 NH: Well, this was way out beyond where your house is. It's up-you know where Doe Run Church is? It was up in that area so that was several miles beyond where you live. TS: She walked every Sunday. NH: She walked over here to go to church and course when they started church it was held outside in a grove of trees and things like that but she was. She didn't get much school because she was the oldest of 13 as I remember, but she studied the dictionary and the Bible and all of these things and I soon learned that if you wanted to know anything you asked Grandma Hiatt. TS: What was her name? NH: Ethel. Ethel Puckett Hiatt TS: She's one of the Ararat Pucketts. Were her parents members of the church? NH: They were. NH; Anyways at Relief Society [the women's organization of the Church] at the classes they had here when I first came if anyone had questions about anything they would turn to Ethel to get the answer. She was very knowledgeable and that struck me as very different because she didn't appear that way. She was a wonder. Of course, Talmage s father was an attorney and I knew that and so I expected a nicer home what I was used to but with 11 children they had just never been able to have a nicer place. Now the homes in town in Mt. Airy had sewer and water but out here in the country they didn't. TS: So they still lived here in Sheltontown. NH: They lived where Versie lives. TS: Where Versie lives. That's what I thought. NH: It wasn't too many years after I came that they finally put water in and had a bathroom put in and so they had. I'd never been in such a large family either and I was the first to marry in the family and the kitchen had a huge, huge black cooking stove and the longest table I have ever seen that had two benches down each end. And of course all the little kids come running in to eat. It was different. And of course there were no rugs on the floor. None of the niceties that I was used to but I never let that come up. I can talk about it now but I would never have done-never have said anything to hurt anyone's feelings. I tried to blend in rather than be different.

11 TS: How did you do that, well, besides not talking about the differences, what else did you do? Because I heard you say one time in Relief Society I think about you'd heard people talking about you wearing makeup and socks. NH: Because in Tannage's. Talmage s father would not allow his daughters to wear any makeup and they-they didn't cut their hair for years and years and years; it hung all the way down the back and so I was used to having my hair permed and wearing lipstick not a lot of makeup but lipstick and mascara and I didn't change that. I wore little white anklet socks. That's just the way I grew up. Here they went barefooted and I 'd never been barefooted in my life. Around home and outside they ran barefooted and the church at that time was just a little white frame building. I'd never been in a branch before. I wasn't quite prepared for that either so they just had one little stove in the center and, the, I loved the people. I would never say anything bad about the people and they did the best they could. This is what they grew up with. This is what they. You know it was fine. At least they had a church and they were together and worshipping together and it was mostly family oriented. Everybody there was either Talmage's aunt or uncle or cousin and I was the first outsider to enter the group and in a way it was nice because they looked. They realized I was different and they would-i hate to say this, but they kind of looked up to me-when I didn't want them to. Like I should know. I grew up being quite shy about participating, giving talks and things in church. There were so many of us I could just say, "Why don't you let Mary do it" and that was fine. Mary could do it. But here I had to be a leader because they expected me to be. TS: Well, you came from the center of the church. NH: That's right and they knew that and they recognized it and they turned to me to do some of the things and although I didn't like it. I was sort of was forced into doing things. [Pause] And it's the most blessed thing that's probably ever happened to me was to come here because if I'd stayed in Utah I'm certain that I would have missed out on many opportunities to serve because there were too many to do it. Here I served in every capacity in the church. I've grown from it and it's been wonderful and I've been greatly blessed. TS: We've been greatly blessed because you brought all that knowledge that you had with you.

12 NH: But see, you don't think about that at the time. TS: No. NH: And I was so young and so-and, well for instance, I mentioned getting my patriarchal blessing. It was after we moved, after Talmage hadfinishedschool and we came here to stay. And we went to Salt Lake to visit my people, but we also got my blessing and in the course of talking to Elder Smith he wanted to know what I was doing in the Church and I told him I was teaching the Miamaids [an organization for girls ages fourteen andfifteen]class and I put on a little drama and showed them how to put up a little curtain and all that. Anyway, he just looked at me for a few minutes and he said, "But what are you doing with music?" I was startled. I just said, "Nothing" and he said, "You read music don't you?" I said, "Well, yes. I've been in the band; I've taken lessons!' You know, different things. I didn't play the piano very well, hardly at all but I could read the music so he said, very sternly, he said, "Sister Hiatt, don't you know the Lord gave you a special talent for music?" You can't imagine how I felt. I thought, my first thought was of Mom because when I quit taking piano lessons she was so disappointed and then I thought, if she was disappointed and the Lord has given me a special talent, He must have been disappointed. And so that was my feeling, but Elder Smith didn't wait for me to answer he just put his hands on my head and gave me a blessing. And it was very special and then after he had finished, he turned to Talmage and Talmage had just been put in as branch president. He said, "President Hiatt, when you get back, I want you to organize a choir and call Sister Hiatt as choir director. He had asked if we had a choir. Of course we didn't. So I was worried so about that. I didn't want to do that because that would-people were so funny about singing and there was no one to play the piano. We had a little organ and a little piano, but the person who played it played by ear and the songs- -they didn't sing the right melodies. Nobody knew how to harmonize except just by ear, you know, and I didn't want to tell them that wasn't right. I was trying to blend in, not dictate things. So I cried all the way from Utah to North Carolina about it and then-i've written this down by the way. Anyway, I remember one of my favorite seminary scriptures, First Nephi, where the Lord said, or where Nephi said the Lord gives no commandment unto the children of men save He shall prepare a way for them to accomplish the thing He has commanded. Anyway, I knew that when we got back, I'd

13 have to do this, but I had no idea how to do it-how you teach people who don't read music to read music and be in a choir. How would I do with all these old, older people? Well, I didn't know what to do and the night that we got home, there was a knock on the door, and it was two elders, quite old elders. They were at least over 60 which was very unusual, and the one Elder put his hand out and said, "President Hiatt, we've been sent to your ward to organize a choir" and Talmage looked at me and I looked at him and I shook my head, "Don't say a word," you know. Of course, he didn't either because he knew what a trial I was going through but they, I know the Lord sent them. I know with all my heart he did and they stayed and we organized a choir and the choir members elected me as choir president. And I watched while they I'd never seen anybody teach by rote where they just went over and over and over something. When I was growing up we read the music, you know. So I watched how they did it and they got one of the teenagers-one of the teenage girls. She was taking piano lessons and he got her and knew what she could play and anyway they practiced with us for a good while and we were getting ready for a district conference. The district president was coming and we were going to sing and we went down early before the meeting started so we could run through it one time. We got down there and the Elders had been called to somewhere else and the choir members said, "What are we going to do?" I was saying, "What are we going to do?" and they all said, "You're the choir president. You're gonna have to direct us" and so I stood up with my hands shaking and my knees knocking and scared to death especially with the district presidency there. So that was my first time directing choir but it lasted for over 30 years. TS: I remember when you were choir director. NH: And though at first it was very difficult. One of my brothers-in-law refused to stay because he said I was trying to make them sound like they came from Utah because I was trying to have them sing the parts rather than what they sounded. And but the rest of the people, you know, they went along with it and bit by bit we had others move in and teenagers grew up and before long we had people who could at least partially read music. And I held lots of get togethers down at the church-classes where I would use the black board and teach them the value of notes and how to read music, how to direct music. I can name any number of people that are directing music today that were in those classes.

14 Norma Draughn, Betty Simmons from Dobson, and Joan Carrol down at Winston-Salem. This is how I tried to teach them the value of music. TS: No wonder people take pictures of you NH: That's true. I am history. But anyway that's just another example of the Lord knew where I was. He knew what I needed. He sent me help. And I knew that He would, but I didn't expect it in that way TS: Well, they knocked on your door. NH: The very night we got home. It was unbelievable. TS: So do you feel that you have followed what the Lord has wanted you to do in coming to North Carolina? NH: Oh yes, definitely, definitely. I'm so glad that I did. I'm so glad our children were raised here rather than in the west. TS: Why do you say that? NH: Because I think they're stronger. I think they're stronger in the gospel they've had to stand up for it, you know. Unlike when I was growing up everybody was really LDS [Latter-day Saint]. You didn't really have to argue the point, you know, it was just understood, so I'm very glad that they grew up here and this doing what the Lord commands you has always been a very intricate part of our life. In every calling I've ever had. I've had just about anything you can imagine. I approached it with that in mind. I wasn't qualified and I walked the floor back and forth when I was called as stake dance director [The Church is divided geographically into congregations, and a stake is a geographical group of seven to nine smaller congregations.] because at that time they gave you a manual with the steps in it and you were supposed to teach these particular steps. They had a floor plan where your feet went and although I loved to dance and did for a long time-it was one of our favorite things to do-still I'd never read any manual on how to teach dance so there again I walked the floor, cried a bit and tried it again and it ended up fine. But there have been lots of challenges. I was stake young women's president for a number of years and that was a challenge especially because our district was I started as district young women's president, then stake. But at the time we were in a district, the district went from here to

15 Charlotte down to Burlington. I think I told you all this. It was a huge area-all the way down to Rockingham and Caswell County and in each of these areas there were just a handful of Saints and we spent a lot of our time traveling and we'd get there and there would be three or four, or five or six at the most. So all of those were challenges, but then in our lifetime look how it's grown. It's a wonder to me to look and see how it's grown. I personally knew what it was to start with. The largest group was right here in Mt. Airy. These other places of course sprung up from TS: From here? NH: Yes. And it's been wonderful to see the growth of the church. We have had a lot of challenges too. When Tamala was 10 years old she was so badly burned and it took seven years of hospitalization. TS: I had no idea it took that long NH: Trying to rebuild her face and her hands and the challenge was great. And then when our oldest son, Kenny, was called on his mission we were so excited. Everyone talked about how the family was so blessed when children go on missions but he'd only been out in the mission for five months when he had a brain hemorrhage and that was a very trying time for me because it had only been two years I guess at the most since we'd finally gotten Tamala. [END OF SIDE A; BEGINNING OF SIDE B] NH: Especially on a mission of all things. I had a hard time handling it. In my patriarchal blessing, it mentions that I would have a lot of blessings in disguise and I felt like I didn't want anymore of those blessings if that's what they were. I couldn't handle anymore and it took me a while to get through that. TS: Where did Kenny go on his mission? NH: He was in the western states. He was in Nebraska when he had the hemorrhage and of course they didn't expect him to live. They called us to come and when we got out there he was like a vegetable and he was in a coma but he would rouse up, not awake, but he would rouse up just he was so strong. He was such a big strong kid that he would just break these leather bands they had around him to hold him down-just snap them. They had to have four to six Elders with him all the time to try to keep him on the bed. When hefinallydid start to come out of it he was blind for a period of time and he

16 couldn't talk. He could talk baby talk. "Wanna drink a wa" or "Wa, Wa, Mama. Gotta pee pee." That kind of thing for a big 19-year-old kid that we'd sent on a mission, that was very difficult. [She's crying.] Probably the most difficult thing that I ever faced because it's a lifetime thing for him. It was terrible with Tamala but hers was. She was younger. She was 10 and she adjusted better. But Kenny, you know when something happens to your brain, it never really heals. You just have to live with it. [Pause] Sorry. [She's crying]. Today when I see six boys striding down the aisle with him. And his oldest one just back from his mission. It's very. It's great. It's great. And he is a good father. [At the request of the interviewee, three sentences have been deleted here.] But he does very well, and I'm proud of him for doing that. But it was a very traumatic time for us. When they sent him home fromwell he wanted to finish his mission and at first they said he couldn't. After he finally came out of it he couldn't walk straight. He couldn't do so many things. He'd been an athlete. He went to BYU on a football scholarship just the year before and had given up his scholarship in order to go on his mission. That was his decision to do that, not ours. So I felt like the Lord had let me down a little bit. But and then when he went to stay in Arizona with Talmage's brother who's a surgeon. He wanted him to come there to recuperate and see if he could go back on his mission. And when they thought he was well enough to go back and try it again, he did, but it was with the understanding that he would not exert in any way. And it was winter time and he and his companion ran out of gas in some long stretch of Nebraska countryside and they walked 5 miles to where they were going and by the time they got there he did not know who he was or where he was or who his companion was or anything about it. And they sent him home on a plane and back then the missionaries got half fare on the way back, but for some reason when he got into Chicago they wouldn't honor his half fare ticket and he didn't know what to do. He couldn't think, see. And so he sat down in the terminal and just sat there and cried. This big 6 foot kid just sitting there crying because he didn't know what to do. He couldn't think to call us. He couldn't think what to do and somebody-and to this day we don't know who-somebody arranged for him the rest of his ticket and pinned a note on him, on his coat, so when he got off the plane in Greensboro-this big man, who was really a child again-had a note pinned to him that told us what had happened. What they

17 had done, and I felt like the Church had let us down because they should have sent somebody with him, but that's in the past and I've gotten over it. I had to do some repenting. TS: Sometimes you just have those trials of faith... NH: But that was terrifically trying for us because he was, he was back in the hospital in Winston for a good while and you know, it just took him a long, long time for his brain to-the way they described it his brain had to adjust to damage-everything had to learn to work differently. And his personality completely changed. We had to get used to a new Kenny. And most important, he had to get used to it. He wasn't what he used to be and he knew it, and he wondered what, you know. It was a very, very trying time for him. Still is. He will still ask me sometimes, "Mom tell me about-what was this" or "What did I do then?" Or, you know. So, he's had a hard life. But he's raised six fine sons. TS: He certainly has. NH: He's got a good wife to help him along and she knew all his problems before she ever married him, so she went in with her eyes open. TS: She was one of my favorite primary teachers. As you were talking about Kenny, I was thinking I need to tell Kathleen how much she helped me when I was in Primary. NH: Well, she's had a hard, hard time. Well, because you know, when you live with someone who's had brain damage of any kind, you have to learn to take it with the ups and the downs; try to smooth them out. And so have his boys had to learn that. [At the request of the interviewee, a sentence has been deleted here.] But anyway, so. That was probably the greatest trial along with Tamala. Tamala's were bad and you want me to keep going? TS: You can stop there. It's 6:30 and that bench is hard, I know. NH: It's not hard, but there's so many things that, blessings that we received with Tamala, some of them almost too sacred to talk about, but, maybe next time if you're interested to know we'll talk about that. The Lord's greatly blessed us. TS: This is the end of the first interview with Norma Hiatt. END OF INTERVIEW.