We All Grow Old if we live long enough

Whenever I hobble around outside, especially in the garden with my stiff sore knees and balance issues, I invariably think of Jennie Brown, my mother’s bosom childhood friend. Jennie was actually Mama’s niece, the oldest daughter of her oldest brother, Charles, while Mama was the youngest child in her family.

Jennie and Amy in their white 8th grade graduation dresses,
hand-made  by Aunt Esther Johnson (Mama's sister)
of white voile trimmed with lace.

When we went out to Moccasin for our reunion on October 2, 1993, the night before, Verla, Lynn, and I walked up to Jennie and Ren Brown’s home.

Jeanette, Ren and Jennie Brown 1993

           We wanted her to identify everyone in a picture of Grandpa Heaton, his two wives, children and grandchildren that appeared on the cover of Sunstone magazine without identification. Later someone replied to an inquiry that it was the family of Alvin F. Heaton.

A couple of years before, on a trip to Orderville, we encountered Irene Heaton Baird in the Orderville grocery store, then in her ninety-second year.  She is Grandpa’s oldest grandchild.  My sister, Verla Esplin Galloway, is one of his youngest grandchildren and was forty-two at the time—a fifty year time span.  I sent the picture of Irene and Verla to Sunstone where the family had been incorrectly identified telling them that I recognized many of the people in the picture, including my own mother.  I received a call from the Church History Department.  They told me that in Joseph Fielding Smith’s own handwriting, the family was identified as Alvin F. Heaton and family, Moccasin Springs, Ariz June 1^st 1907.  (They sent me copies to prove it.)

“I recognize my uncles and aunts,” I told the historian on the phone.  “I believe you,” he said.  “Would you mind identifying everyone in the photo and labeling it and sending it back to us?”  “Sure,” I said,  “it might take me a year.” 

By porch light on that warm October night in Moccasin, Jennie Heaton Brown positively identified every single person in the picture.  I send the information to the Church History Department getting that little issue straightened out.

On that night, Jennie talked about our mother:

Your mother was born first.

Her hair was naturally curly;

I had to have mine rolled up in rags.

Her eyes were brown;

Mine were blue.

She could run faster;

She could swim further;

She could stay under water longer;

She could dive deeper;

She could hike longer;

She was married first;

She had one more child;

And one more husband.

“Well, life isn’t over,” we jest, “you may still catch up.”

“Oh, ho, ho,” Ren, her husband, who had been silent all evening, interjected, “you should see her hobble around the yard.  She couldn’t catch anyone.”

And that’s why I inevitably think of Jennie as I hobble around outside.

Jennie didn’t mention this,

but Mama also died first.

Mama died at age 73 (1977).

When we visited with Jennie

she would have been in her 90^th year

(born 15 August 1904.

Jennie died in 1995

and her husband, Ren, died in 1999.)

Mama’s kids at her beloved Moccasin.

Only Jerry is missing.

He was probably deer hunting in Idaho.