HEROES continued

     My mother was never Relief Society president.  The Bishop asked her once but at the time, she couldn’t even go to Relief Society.  You see, she was working full time to support her eight children after my dad was killed in an accident.  That was in the days when Relief Society was held on a weekday--always Tuesdays in the Orderville Ward; Primary was always on Wednesdays.  I remember during the summer time, they used to ring the church bell ½ hour before primary to alert us to get cleaned up.

    When our seminary teacher asked us to write on a card what positions our parents held in the ward, I crumbled my card up and left class in tears.  I was the only one in class who didn't have a dad and my mother didn't have a job in the ward at that time.  It wasn’t until I had children of my own that I realized that Mama had the most important job in the ward--or in the whole Church for that matter.  She was both mother and father to eight children who needed every drop of energy and time she could muster.  She also raised two big gardens, milked cows, gathered eggs, saved the swill for the pigs; bottled fruit and vegetables; and on her own remembered the shut-ins, sick and lonely routinely and especially on every holiday.  I remember riding in the back of the pickup delivering treats to all the widows in town; never mind the fact that she was a widow herself and the only one with a big family to rear.