After arriving in Geneva in May, 1996 I found some time on my hands and decided to use it to draft the third volume of my life history, bringing things up-to-date from the end of Volume II, my retirement in Guatemala. But computers are funny things. I've written not a few things in the past which have mysteriously ended up deleted and unrecoverable -- though Lola insists machines only do what they're instructed to do, and our Norton Disk Doctor usually does a good job of undeleting things. Anyway, some sixty pages of Volume III was safely on my C-drive, when behold! the next week when I got around to trying to prepare a floppy disk backup, it just wasn't there! Spent most of a day trying to recover something of it, but could find nary a trace. As with mysteriously lost documents in the past, I decided that the Powers That Be must have been somehow displeased with my portrayal of some incident or other and took matters into their own hands -- though I'd've been happier if they'd just erased whatever They didn't like. For a couple of weeks I just couldn't face the task of rewriting. But a couple of uplifting letters from my daughters convinced me that posterity might just have some interest in the third fourth of my journey through this Second Estate, and reflecting on how precious my own parents' autobiography is to me, and the fragments we have of the diaries of my grandparents and great grandparents to the current generation of the family, I determined to start again.
Guatemala - end of a career trail and beginnings of post-Foreign Service life
Don't have Volume II of my history at hand here in Geneva, and my "notes to myself" tell me to start with Paris, but just to be on the safe side, I'm going to devote a couple of paragraphs to recapping just why I retired when I did and what we did during our the last few months in Guatemala.
Before starting this volume, however, I return briefly to the possible origins of the family name. Our friend Albert Allred, who is bilingual in Spanish and English and familiar with the Spanish and French dialects of the Pyrenees (where one version has it the Timmins/Timmons clan originated), suggested during a Christmas 1996 visit that it is the "mons" part of the name which is most suggestive, pointing out that this means "mount" or "mountain" in the local dialect of that region. The most authentic spelling of the name would thus be Timmons , with the meaning "Mount Timothy", or "Tim's Mountain", presumably alluding to the family's residence on or near a mountain of that name.
Be this as it may, as 1980 drew to its close, I was serving as Charge d'affaires ad interim at the Embassy because the Carter White House had withdrawn Ambassador Frank Ortiz owing to a profound misunder-standing of the political situation in that country. When Ronald Reagan entered office, a former Ambassador of mine, Robert Neumann, who had a high opinion of my abilities, was named head of the Reagan State Department Transition Team. Neumann invited me to come to Washington to meet other Team members, especially Senator Jesse Helms' staff aide John Carmack, telling me that if he approved, he thought I'd be a shoo-in for appointment as a political ambassador -- if I were willing to take the risk of resigning my career position. This would save me several years on the career ladder.
The Reagan Transition Team liked me, and I resigned as instructed with the expectation of being nominated for an ambassadorship. As may be remembered, Alexander Haig, became the new Secretary of State. Contrary to expectations, and all precedent, Mr. Haig took the bit between his teeth and threw all the Transition Team's recommendations in his round file. And that was the end of my ambassadorship. Fortunately I landed on my feet and found myself running the American Chamber of Commerce in Guatemala for the next period of time. I also was invited to teach Finance & Economics at Francisco Marroquin University, the largest and most prestigious private school in Central America,. As icing on the cake, a half dozen well-to-do Guatemalan businessmen I'd come to know asked me to handle their investment portfolios in the United States.
As matters transpired, Neumann only lasted a couple or three months as ambassador to Saudi Arabia himself before being fired for something or other he said to a newsman, which Haig found displeasing. Haig was himself dismissed as Secretary after only a few months, following his egotistical declaration that he was in charge of the world when President Reagan was shot.
Senators Hatch and Garn, and Simpson (of Wyoming, which is my state of residence) all put my name forward for consideration again during the Bush Administration. Each later told me that they'd never had a more difficult time getting their political recommendations accepted than during Mr. Bush's years in office. As of this writing, my dreams of a political ambassadorship have yet to materialize. And, of course, my retirement scotched any possibility of further career progress.
During the course of my work as Counselor of Embassy for Economic and Commercial Affairs I'd become aware of an attractive investment opportunity in Guatemala. The Ralston Corporation had taken over a tropical plant operation which had been started by the Green Thumb Corporation. Green Thumb had run up a substantial debt with Ralston for fertilizers and whatnot which it couldn't pay. Ralston had no experience and no interest in the plant operation, and it being known that Ralston had this exposure in Guatemala its stock price was being depressed on Wall Street. So management had become increasingly interested in selling and had explored with me at the Embassy, as much as a year prior to my retirement, the possibility of finding a buyer.
I had visited the place and been impressed. The facility was on the Pacific Shore not far from La Democracia and consisted of more than 700 acres of prime land with a spectacular view towards the Pacific in one direction and Volcans Agua and Fuego in the other. It had a large house with two wings, one for a resident manager, the other for guest buyers, a swimming pool, and a tennis court and would make a fantastic vacation spot for an owner, or even a small group of owners, while still permitting the commercial operations to continue.
I explored the value of the land with a couple of banker friends and learned that because of the current level of insurgency in the region (which seemed to rise and fall ever decade or so) land values were severely depressed. Of course I had no knowledge of how to run such an operation myself, but I had a Guatemala/American friend Eddie Greenberg who was already running a long-stemmed rose exporting business who knew agriculture and export markets,. And I had another friend Lee White, an plant phytology expert with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who was about ready to retire. And we learned of the coming visit of a Dutch retailer who had been buying from Green Thumb and who might have an interest in becoming a fourth partner.
Prior to the arrival of the Dutchman, we figured that by each putting up some fifty thousand dollars we could take over the operation, optimally valued at about seven million dollars, for just under a million -- if Ralston would accept our note for the remaining seven or eight hundred thousand. And if we were willing to take on the substantial political risk at a moment of maximum insurgency in the region. Indeed, after several rounds of discussions with Ralston reps, and knowing they'd had no bids during the preceding three years, I'd become convinced we might win with a bid for as little as seven hundred thousand. Offsetting the risk somewhat was the fact that in addition to all the tropical plants, the place had a couple of hundred acres of teak, much of which was ready for harvest, which I figured would pay down another two hundred and fifty or three hundred thousand of our debt, leaving us only a final two hundred thousand to pay off to retire our acquisition payment. We figured sales would enable us to do this in two or three years, which we felt would be acceptable to Ralston..
A few weeks after the luncheon meeting at our house for the five prospective principals (which Lola had laid on in her usual inimitable fashion) and the submission of our offer, I got a letter back from Ralston saying they'd just received a slightly better bid than ours from a Dutch plant retailer (as it turned out, the very guy we'd invited to our luncheon and in front of whom we'd openly discussed our plans and initial bid). He'd bought the place out from under us for a mere fifty thousand more than our group's offer! Talk about betrayal -- or at least unrestrained commercial sharp practice!
I've since learned that he turned the place into a real winner and has expanded his tropical plant growing operations in Guatemala several times.
About this time, Lola was offered a transfer to Paris, and being more than a bit downhearted about the loss of this attractive business venture which would have kept us both busy and prosperous in Guatemala, we decided to move on.
Paris: Incarnation Three
I'd already served in Paris as Deputy Economic Advisor to the US Mission to the OECD, and subsequently as Executive Officer to USNATO Ambassador Harland Cleveland. This time I was to arrive without employment. But again, I landed on my feet. I was shortly hired by the American College of Paris to teach Finance and Economics, and with little delay taken on by the International Energy Agency of the OECD as a Consultant. The Deputy Director of the IEA, a retired FSO who was a vestryman at the American (Episcopal) Cathedral in Paris, soon got me hired on a two-afternoons-a-week basis to handle the Cathedral's business affairs. So I found myself with three jobs, providing a pleasant variety of things to do. Indeed, it was quite pleasant to ride the busses or metro from one job to another around Paris. My pass cost something like seventeen dollars a month and the distance between the metro and one or another bus route was never more than a few steps., with never a parking place to look for The Paris transportation system is really quite marvelous.
Cathy came to visit us. What a bright, lively, and pleasant young woman she was (and is). She quickly was taken on as an intern by USOECD, and won such a reputation that when summer was over the offered her a full time job (just as she had been at the Embassy in Guatemala). She planned every weekend for us, and we found ourselves visiting parts of France (and Europe) neither Lola nor I had ever seen before. We did the menhirs of Carnac, Richard the Lionheart's Castle on the heights above the Seine (and his, his mother Eleanor's, and his brother John's burial place in the Monastery he founded for this purpose). We saw Mont St. Michel and Quimper in Normandy, and the church in Antwerp where the only Michael Angelo statue outside of Italy is located -- a Madonna and Child. We also found the (so far) best eating experience of my life at the Duq de Bourgogne restaurant.
All good things must end, and Cathy went back to BYU to graduate. But her cousins Mont and Laurel Timmins, my brother Bill's teenage kids, soon came to visit us. Laurel was still not sixteen, and under Church dating rules not yet eligible to go out with boys. But Laurel was already the beauty she grew up to be, and the French boys were pushing each other out of the way to get to her. Mont had his hands full getting her home each evening after visiting the museums and other sights of Paris. They begged me to help them locate the Guinness Book of Records "cheapest five course meal in the world". It proved to be on a small back street in east Paris. The lunch consisted of a small bowl of watery soup, a piece of stale bread, a glass of even cheaper wine (we had water), a dozen limp noodles, and a small, half-spoiled peach from which the rotten portions had been removed with a knife. Not much of an eating experience -- if a memorable one -- but perhaps no bad value for two francs fifty (about fifty cents) we each paid.
Mont and Laurel's successor was Karen Smith, my sister Verna's teenage daughter. Karen stayed with us for almost six months. Karen stayed in the maid's room downstairs, so she had considerable privacy. She undertook to be our au pair, doing light housekeeping and preparing dinner in return for room and board and a little spending money. We took her on our trips and to many of our social engagements, and she helped entertain guests at our place. Karen was a great conversationalist and we enjoyed having her with us.
While in Paris I was called as Stake Executive Secretary. And shortly thereafter, because it was hard to find qualified High Councilmen without weakening the Wards by raiding them, I was given the simultaneous calling of High Councilman -- my fourth High Council position.
During one meeting, Stake President Daniel Pichot read us a letter from the Regional Real Estate manager in Frankfurt telling us the Regional Office was going to sell the site which had been acquired for the future construction of a Paris Temple. This property had been purchased by President Henry D. Moyle during a visit to Paris almost twenty years earlier. It was sited on an extraordinary location. Paris is built in a basin. To the north on a high promontory is located the basilica of the Sacred Heart (the noted Sacre Coeur of Montmartre) which can be seen from virtually any spot in Paris and which is a favorite of all tourists. The basilica was constructed following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 as a thank offering for the liberation of France. The LDS site was directly opposite the Sacre Coeur -- and looking across the Paris basin towards it -- from the south side of the city towards the north, at the end of a metro line running directly from Charles DeGaulle Airport -- one of the major airports in Europe and readily accessible from any of the rail terminals in the city. French members considered President Moyle to have been inspired in acquiring the site, and President Pichot told his High Council that after the five or six intervening Stake Presidents who'd been preparing to construct a temple,, he wasn't going to be the one to approve selling the property. Moreover, the Paris suburb which wanted to acquire it for a park had a communist mayor who was offering less than a tenth of its fair market value under threat of expropriation. President Pichot appointed a high Council Committee to advise him how to handle the Frankfurt demarche . I was a member of the Committee.
We met following the High Council meeting. In typical French fashion the matter was discussed up and down and sideways. At about 2 a.m. we finally adjourned with no decision having been reached -- or likely ever to be reached. Me, being me, the next day decided to take the bull by the horns, and I sat down and wrote a letter -- carefully saying I was doing so on my own account -- to Elder Howard W. Hunter, whom I'd met when he came to Spain to look into whether the Church should file for recognition under the Franco regime. I ventilated all the pros and cons to the best of my ability, describing the communist mayor angle, the undervaluation angle, and the extraordinary location angle, recalling how the initial decision to sell the Church's cattle ranch in Florida had been reversed when a member with real estate experience independently contacted Church leadership to say that the real estate agent handling the sale had seriously undervalued it. .
Within ten days I got a phone call from Frankfurt telling me there was to be a special meeting on the matter to be held at a site in Neuilly and could I be there at a specified hour. When I arrived I found that all of the longest-term members of the Church were there to fortify with their memories the scanty written record of the acquisition, together with a member of the Area Presidency from Frankfurt and Elder Thomas Monson from the Quorum of the Twelve.
Four or five months later we were informed that, indeed, the Brethren had finally decided to sell the property. But this time when the matter was presented to the High Council, and subsequently to members of the Stake, there wasn't the slighter demurrer. It was now known that the matter had been considered at the highest levels in the Church and the First Presidency itself, after solemn prayer, had made the decision instead of just a couple of real estate flunkies in Frankfurt. I've always felt justified in having written this letter because a) it salvaged the feelings of the French Saints (and particularly President Pichot), and b) because knowing its actual value, Frankfurt held out for something approaching its true market price.
Cathy was called on a mission from her BYU ward while we were still living in Paris. She served in the FrancoBelge Mission, her first assignment being Brussels. We got permission from her Mission President to visit her a couple of times, always taking along some of the things not available to missionaries -- notably peanut butter and root beer, and taking care not to stay long. We made deliveries in Brussels, Liege, Reims, Strasbourg, and Lille. She was one of the most popular Sister Missionaries of all time. It's often said that such visits induce homesickness in missionaries and should be avoided. Perhaps because Cathy had moved so often as not to know where "home" was, perhaps because we never stayed long, or perhaps because she'd just such a self-possessed young woman, she later told us that our visits had never interfered with her morale or her mission.
Following Cathy's mission, we planned to have her stay with us again for a couple of months before returning to the U.S. to look for her first full-time employment. Her new Mission President said, "No". By chance Elder Neal Maxwell came to Paris for a Regional Conference about this time. I was serving on the Paris High Council and as a member of the Stake Presidency. President Pichot asked Lola and me (and our friends Betty and Barry Hornabrook) if we could escort Elder Maxwell and his wife and Elder Russell Taylor and his wife from their hotel to the Conference site -- a large downtown movie theater -- on Sunday morning, and then to the airport following the conference. (As an aside, Lola and I invited the Hornabrooks to do a dry run the evening before. They declined, saying they knew the route. Lola and I did it, encountering all sorts of one way streets and feeling good we'd taken the time. Sunday Morning we got the Maxwells to the building on time. But no Hornabrooks and no Taylors. So Elder Maxwell had to do all the interviewing himself. We were just about ready to start the meeting without Brother Taylor when Betty and Barry came running into the back of the hall with the Taylors. They'd run into all the one ways and ended up totally lost. But all's well that ends well. It was an outstanding Conference. Elder Maxwell assured the assembled French Saints they'd yet have a temple. And at an even better site. And he pronounced the first Apostolic Blessing I'd ever been privileged to hear. After being a bit stunned initially, Lola quickly dug out a pencil and paper and took down in shorthand all but the first couple of paragraphs of the blessing -- which we later reconstructed with the help of others who were present. She gave Elder Maxwell a copy to get his approval, and it was then fairly widely distributed among top stake leaders.)
The point of this "Aside" is that we were able to discuss Cathy's mission situation with Elder Maxwell -- whom I've known since we sat together in a Homer Durrham Seminar at the U of Utah over forty years ago. We told him that Cathy's Mission President was insisting that she return to Utah to be released before coming back to Paris to see us. He said. "Nonsense. You are her father, and in the Stake Presidency here. She can be released here as well as in her mother's ward". So she was given her missionary release interview by President Daniel Pichot, who later told me he'd never met a foreign missionary who spoke French as flawlessly and accent-free as Cathy. (Of course I didn't tell him she'd started in Ecole Maternelle at age two and a half and gone through the French school system to Lycee level. Not to mention having had several French companions during her mission.)
So Cathy came directly to Paris, spending another couple of months with us at the end of her mission. She gave an excellent report to the Paris Stake High Council as well as to the Second Ward in a Sacrament Meeting. She then went home, eventually settling in California where she went to work for an Oranga County newspaper. Her life has in no way diminished in interest, but from here on the details are for her to tell, apart from my reporting that so far she's provided us with three darling grandchildren, brunette Amy, tow-blond Sarah, and carrot-top Daniel..
We had any number of other visitors in Paris. Lola's cousin Barbara Vance saw us on her way to Israel for one of her periodic stays there. She'd only been gone a few days when we learned she'd had a massive stroke while riding on a buss in Tel Aviv. Only her presence of mind in writing her name and address on a piece of paper before she lost conciencness, and the providential presence in Tel Aviv of three of the top brain surgeons of the world for a conference got her the attention which saved her life. She's now back teaching full-time at BYU, no longer needing even the cane she required for a couple of years after her recovery. But, again, that's her story to tell.
My sister Margaret Bailey and her husband Bob also visited us. And that's something worth recounting in some detail because it involves my own history a bit. Bob is a retired Hollywood musician who's played with Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, on the Laverne and Shirley Show, and for any number of other top names. He and Margaret had served a post-retirement mission in Pittsburg, where Bob put on a series of concerts allover the Pittsburgh area, with generous newspaper coverage. Lola decided to have a few (about fifty) Church and US Mission friends over for a buffet and to meet Bob and Margaret. Bob, of course, sat down at the piano during the evening and put on one of his sterling performances. Our Mission President was among those present. He was so impressed that he asked Bob if he'd consider a second mission -- to France: that the Mission could provide an "advance man" to line up performance opportunities all over the country. Bob said he'd do some reflecting.
`` We then hied off to Scotland with Timme and Bob to see my missin companion Joel Dunn, who was serving as Mission President in Edinburgh. Joel and Jackie Dunn also mounted a soiree musicale at the mission home. And Joel also asked Bob if he'd consider another mission -- that the Mission could arrange any number of performance opportunities not only in Scotland, but south of the border. Well, Timme and Bob were called by the Missionary Committee soon after their return to the US and told that they could serve half their mission in France and half in Scotland. So they did. Part of the story is that Bob met the niece of Claude Debussy at one of his performances, who was so impressed by his playing of a Debussy piece that she invited him to her home, and as they became better acquainted gave him Debussy's music which she'd kept over the years.
And any number of the Dunn children stayed with us for a day or two, or three, as they passed through to see Paris after having visited their parents in Scotland. We considered it a privilege to get to know them a bit better than just seeing them in passing while calling on Joel and Jackie in Tooele during home leaves. The older Dunn kids were now getting married and it was especially nice to get to know their spouses.
The end of our Paris tour coincided with the end of the Scotland half of the Bailey's mission, the end of the Dunn Mission Presidency, and also with the celebration of the sesquicentennial of the arrival of the first LDS missionaries in Great Britain. So Lola and I were off to Edinburgh again to participate in the sequicentennial activities -- dedication of a bench with commemmorative plaque in Queen's Park at the foot of Arthur's Seat (or Pratt's Hill, as Mormons call it), a memorial oratorio (if that's the best musical term), written and directed by Bob Bailey, in Usher Hall, and a bang-up dinner at the Mission Home.
We then undertook a tour of Scotland and England with the Bailey's and the Dunn's, ending up in Copenhagen, where Joel had arranged with Danish Mission President Scofield for another performance by Bob to a standing room only audience in the Copenhagen LDS chapel.
Mexico
As the saying goes, we'd been as happy in Paris as "pigs in dirt". But the State Department has a policy of strict rotation after a maximum of three years for people assigned to the best posts -- to give others a chance after a less desirable assignment (perhaps the reason why Lola got Paris after Guatemala -- though we'd enjoyed Guatemala rather well). In looking over the Open Assignments list as her time in Paris drew towards a close, she noticed that Hermosillo in Northern Mexico was available. I argued against Hermosillo, saying that a border post wasn't really Foreign Service. But Carolyn McDonald was training Arabian horses in Scottsdale, Rob and his family were at El Toro, and Cathy in Orange County in Southern California, and it would be nice to be able to visit them. Since it was no longer my career in question, I acquiesced. Turned out it was one of the best decisions possible. We not only got to visit Rob and Cathy two or three times, and Carolyn, it seemed, every other weekend (she later moved her operation to Tucson, making the transit even shorter), but Lola got heavily involved in computer work at the Consulate, which resulted in her being selected as the first Foreign Service Secretary to be admitted to the computer specialist course at the Foreign Service Institute and her eventual "re-coning" as a computer technician.
We found perhaps the nicest house I'd ever lived in during my period of Foreign Service -- a three bedroom rambler in one of the nicest sections of town, an easy walk from our Wardhouse, and an easy drive from Monterrey Tech where I soon found work as Professor of Finance and Economics. Lola talked our landlady into installing a swimming pool as the price of our signing our lease with her. And with a pleasant covered patio (with grill) right next to the night-lighted pool, we were soon having all sorts of cookouts and pool parties with friends from church, school, and consulate (plus bunches of American friends and family visitors). Early on we planted some small Bougainvillea along the high back wall, and by the next spring they'd spread over the entire wall. Magnificent! Also transplanted a couple of Saguaro cactuses (illegal to do on the U.S. side of the border), and a highly aromatic shrub a Mexican friend introduced us to.
We quickly made friends in the church. Indeed, several Foreign Service friends have over the years expressed amazement at the number of Mexican (and French and Guatemala and Romanian and Swiss) friends we had, while most F.S. people know only a few government officials and other foreign diplomats met in connection with their work. Our bishop, stake president, mission president (a retired Mexican army Colonel from Mexico City), and a high councilman who was a secondary school principal, were soon frequently showing up at our place with their families for cookouts and swimming -- and sing alongs as our Stake President played his guitar and his wife helped Lola prepare our cookout). I was called as Counselor in the Bishopric just a few weeks after our arrival, and when our Bishop moved to Guadalajara a couple of years later to go into the restaurant business with his brother, the Stake President asked me to serve as Encargado de Barrio (Acting Bishop) until he could find a replacement. (He told me he'd planned to install me as bishop, but the Regional Presidency told him they'd prefer a Mexican national -- big change in Church policy from only seventy years earlier when several thousand Mexicans formed a splinter church when SLC wouldn't call a Mexican as Mission President). I served as Encargado for going on a year before a replacement was found. And hereby hangs a tale:
When our bishop left, I found he'd been supporting the Ward from his own pocket (Lola and I decided that was why he'd moved to Guadalajara. Mexicans are often reluctant to speak out on matters they find embarrassing and sometimes will go to great lengths to contrive a way around a problem). In going over ward accounts, I found that our light and water bills (other than air conditioning) were actually quite modest. I totted up how much we'd need, divided it by the number of active families in the Ward, and made a budget presentation to the Priesthood and the Relief Society sisters, telling them I'd be speaking to individual families over the next couple of weeks. I said that I realized I didn't know individual financial situations, so the amount of budget contribution I'd be discussing would only be indicative. If it was too high for their means, they were just to tell me. And if they thought they could afford a bit more, ditto. Got pledges for almost enough to cover our needs. Had also mentioned my plans in a couple of family letters, and, behold! friends on the other side of he border sent along enough to put us in the black. (I know this is against Church rules, but all I'd done was explain in my letter how close we were to making our budget and how poor most of our members were. I didn't actually ask for any money! Indeed, when my budget campaign was over, I found we had enough that, invested in high yield Mexican government bonds, we could pay for water and lights from the inerest alone -- sort of a perpetual budget fund. (this was before the Church extended its own payment of budget costs to overseas units). In the process, I'd gone through the building, finding that the airconditioning was set to cool off the entire recreation hall on its way to the chapel, so we were wasting more than half our money on uneeded cooling. And the system was being run several nights a month for private weddings and dances -- when the janitor didn't forget to turn it off after church, leaving it running uselessly for days at a time. I found that the Rec hall outlets could be shuttered down so the cool air went directly to the chapel, talked to the janitor (checking every now and then as I passed the chapel as I walked home from the Consulate), and told members that if they wished to use church facilities for private purposes we'd expect them to at least cover the costs of lights and airconditioning on a pro-rated basis. The system worked well and we were operating in the black for a change
When the new bishop was at length installed, I discussed the ward's financcial situation in great detail with him in turning over the tithing and budget accounts. He seemed to understand. But within a couple of weeks we were having airconditioning every Sunday, whether the weather was particularly hot or not, and people were again using the Rec hall for free. Our budget fund was exhausted within three months. Don't know how things were handled after that, because by then Lola and I were off to China.
Mentioned that I worked at the Consulate and taught at the Instituto Tecnologico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey while we lived in Hermosillo. Chris Kennedy the Consul took me aboard as a contract employee to help install the first machine readable visa operation in the world. Congress had enacted a new visa law permitting American farmers to legally hire temporary Mexican farm workers. Hermosillo was to be the visa issuing post, and it was expected we'd have thousands of applicants. Set up a whole new building, with a shaded exterior waiting area and "cattle chute" through which applicants could pass in single file to be processed inside the building. The Assistant Secrretary for Consular Affairs came down for the opening celebration (and to have her picture taken for the American papers). We issued several thousand visas during our first month or two of operations, then noted a sharp fall off in applicants. As it became more widely understood that the penalties of the law were directed only at American farmers who hired illegals, not at the illegals themselves, both American farmers and prospective Mexican workers reassessed their positions. If the employer were shown what looked to him like valid evidence of legal residence, the American employer was off the hook -- even if the paper was forged.
And Mexicans quickly found it more costly to buy a Mexican passport, take a bus to Hermosillo, stay over night, waste a day waiting for a visa to be processed, pay fifty US dollars for the visa, then pay for another bus to the border, than it was to go directly to the border, walk (or swim) across the border, and then buy forged paperwork at less than half what a legal visa alone would cost. And as we found out visiting Carolyn (who quite openly let us know she was using illegals in her horse operation), even when one of her barn boys was picked up, he was merely sent forty miles south of the border and would show up again in a few days to resume his work. And nothing happened to her at all, since she could always show a photo copy of the papers she'd been presented -- however poor the forgery (the new law said nothing about that).
Once the Farm Worker Visa operation was underway, I was asked to stay on at the Consulate. It was an interesting experience to spend my mornings interviewing visa applicants as I'd started out doing thirty years before. If nothing else it was good for my Spanish. Chris also had me update the Post Report (a rather detailed presentation of the local geography, society, political and economic situation, houwing and educational prospects, etc.) prepared to give FSOs some idea of how their next assignment would affect their faily situation. I also did the first detailed economic report on Sonora -- the second largest and most propserous (and a per capita basis) of the Mexican states. Got a commendation on the economic report.
ITESM also hired me to teach Trade, Economic Development, Comparative Systems, and International Finance. I had some of the brightest students I've ever taught. ITESM is an expansive private university, perhaps the most prestigious private university in Mexico. And the Hermosillo campus was among the best. The sutdents all came from upper class families, and unlike many American kids from rich families, were highly motivated. One of my first graduates made his first million (helped, I'm sure by family financial leg up) before we left Hermosillo three years later. Must mention: when the Chinese who'd been imported to build the Union Pacific railroad finished their work in the U.S., many of them moved on to Mexico to help with the construction of the Mexican rail system. Many then married Mexican girls and setledd down as farmers. After a couple of generations, this Chinese/Mexican bland was producing some of the most beautiful coeds I've seen anywhere. And I had any number in my classes.
The school authorized me to attend a couple of Southwestern Economic Association Meetings while in Mexico -- one in Laredo, one in San Antonio. Both my papers were well-received and published in the SWEA Abstracts. This gave me substantial prestige on campus since Mexican professors are under much less "publish or perish" pressure than their American counterparts. My brother Bill also helped me place a couple of papers in various journals. Indeed, he assumed co-authorship for some, including one which appeared in Encyclia , the Journal of the Utah Academy of Social Sciences.
Among the papers I wrote during this period was one on The Theory of Cross-Border Free Trade Areas, growing out of a discussion with Brother-in-law Bob Bailey about the Mexican debt to the U.S. and the development possibilities of Baja California. This paper was published in the Foreign Service Journal (copies distributed to all members of Congress), which I was later told was instrumental in persuading certain undecided Congressmen to support the NAFTA Bill when it came to a vote. I have mixed emotions about my part in this. NAFTA is considerably different than the proposal I made -- which would have authorized the border states -- in both Mexico and the U.S. --to negotiate the type of arrangements they thought most suitable, submitting the treaty to the Senate for ratification. Instead, NAFTA was negotiated by the White House's Special Trade Representative and pretty well forced down the throats of both nations. As such, it proved premature to say the least for Mexico as a whole (whereas an arrangement limited to the border states would, as I argued, have advanced their economies, leading to the meltdown of the Mexican peso and necessitating a twenty billion dollar U.S. bailout -- worsening the overall Mexican/U.S. debt situation..
Possibly I should mention at this point (don't think I have earlier) that when I was at my point of greatest despondency following my divorce, Bill gave m a blessing in which he said I had much yet to accomplish, that I still had many papers to write, and that I'd find publishers interested in giving my thoughts currency. It was hard to believe a the time. I had no energy, no initiative, and little confidence in myself. Indeed, I'd contemplated whether it might be better to end it all. But Bill's blessing was inspired and shortly afterwards I began having some of the most rewarding career and intellectual experiences of my life. I met and married Lola. I served a rewarding period as Charge at an important embassy during a critical period, I've seen China and Romania - - countries I never expected to visit, I've written and published papers the subject matter of which had never previously crossed my mind, I've served on another couple of High Councils, two Stake Presidencies, and a Mission Presidency, have seen three of my four children married, and have (so far) welcomed eleven choice grandchildren into the world.
My sister Margaret and her husband Bob visited us, as did Joel and Jjackie Dunn. Margaret's son David arrived with a group of senior scouts, who spent a day with us swimming and overnighting on their way to Guaymas for deep sea fishing. One of the kids broke his arm in Gaymas, and instead of ruining the trip for all the others, or the expense of flying hom along, he spent the week with us, sunning, reading, and watching TV. We enjoyed having him.
A univesity of Arizona professor came to southern Sonora to find some of the disappearing desert tortoises to further study of how to preserve them. He thought he had advance approval to take them back to Arizona. But when he got to the border he found that whatever papers he'd been given weren't enough. So he showed up at the consulate to find out what he could do. He'd stayed at a local hotel until he was broke, and his higher level approval to export from Mexico City still hadn't arrived. Lola was in Utah visiting her brother who was dying of cancer, so I invited him to stay with me for a few days until the papers arrived. I think he stayed four days (and I showed him the tortoise which had found its way into our garden and let him release his own catch to live on the bugs and plants around our pool).
From Hermosillo, we also made a couple of trips back to Utah to see Lola's brother Wally, who eventually died of colon cancer. During one such visit, Verna and Paul, Margaret and Bob, Bill and Theda, Jim and Devin, and Lola and I were dining out. While waiting for our dinner to be served, Timme pulled out her glucose testing machine. I asked if I could use it. And then both she and I suggested that Verna, Jim, and Bill also test, because they were also genetically vulnerable to diabetes. Bill's blood sugar was near 400 -- dangerously high. He was naturally disturbed, saying he'd just passed his annual physical with flying colors. We nevertheless both insisted he return to see his doctor immediately. Long story short: his doctor told him "Good news and bad. Good is you don't have diabetes. Bad is, you'll wish you did. You've got severe myeloma (bone cancer)".
Bill was told he only had six months at most. He kept teaching at BYU, finishing a couple of books he was working on. After a full year had gone by, he was unable to keep up his teaching schedule, but the Y gave him the sabbaatical to which he'd been entitled for several years, but which they'd never let him take because they couldn't find a replacement teacher for his public administration and personnel management courses. So for his final year he at least was on full salary. And he outlasted his doctor's expectations by a factor of four. I spoke at Bill's funeral. And when we attended his daughter Laurel's wedding in the Salt Lake Temple some years later, Bill was there (see account among my Religion papers). He destroyed all his files and work in progress. I wish he'd left his son Clark to publish some of it. But it was his choice. Before his death, Bill had some kind of deep religious experience during which he was given to understand that the Lord was not going to intervene in his case with a miraculous cure: that he was wanted on the other side for a work he didn't feel it appropriate to discuss (though he told his wife Theda in some detail about it to help alleviate her feelings, and which from some things he said to me appeared to involve working with our father). The doctors did everything they could for Bill, but found that the high blood pressure medicine he'd been prescribed had damaged his liver to the extent that he couldn't be given chemotherapy.
And so our Mexico experience ended on something of a low note.
But it had unexpected positive elements for Lola's career.
She's done so much computer work, and was so highly praised by her boss, that she became the first F. S. secretary admitted to the State Department's training course for computer technicians. This took more than six months at the Foreign Service Institute in Virginia. We lived at the pleasant town house we've often rented a stone's throw from the Kennedy Center and an easy walk from the Department. Since we'd be in Washington so long, we subscribed to the Kennedy Center programs, and attended any number of exceptional events. And we then took three months of intensive Mandarin to prepare for her assignment to Beijing as Assistant Computer Specialist.
China
I'd studied Chinese history and post-Revolutionary Chinese government at the U of Utah. But I didn't have the language and had never anticipated spending any part of my career in China. But life with Lola has been interesting. I'd never anticipated Latin America either.
My old friend Dorothy Sampas was Counselor for Administration at the Embassy and served as ex officio Embassy rep on the Board of the International School. The school's Business Manager was leaving at the end of the year (as were the Sampas'). She gave the Board a glowing recommendation about me, and I received a telegram offering me the position. It was something to do, and not being subject to U.S. taxes, the pay wasn't bad. So I spent the next year running the finances of the International School of Beijing.
I found, as brother-in-law Paul Smith warned me, that school teachers are a bunch of prima donnas. It was impossible to keep them happy. I found that they'd become accustomed to asking the store room clerk to do all their personal shopping for them, leaving her virtually no time to do the things she was hired to do for the school. And they'd been using school vehicles after work for personal affairs (which was permitted on a prior authorization basis upon payment of gasoline and maintenance charges -- which had never been assessed by my predecessor). I told them, as gently as I could, at an early faculty meeting that the new Board, and new Business Manager, had decided that the rules were going to be applied. Mrs. Liu would no longer be available for personal shopping, and a monthly fee would be deducted from each salary check tot cover the cost of teacher use of the cars. There was an uproar.
I also found problems with the school accounts. Something like a million dollars seemed to be missing. Initially I decided that being such a round figure, I either had to be adding wrong, or there was a special account elsewhere. But the accounts had been auditted by a leading American firm. And while the final audit for the previous year was over six months delayed in being presented in final form, they hadn't found any problem. But I discussed the matter with the Board's Financial Representative, the Chrysler Corporation Finance man in China, with whom I was told to work as the Board's representative. He agreed with me that we should change auditors to get someone who'd give priority attention to our work. And that we should change our banker from First National of Chicago, which was paying us nothing on our accoount of almost two million, to Merrill Lynch, which at the time was paying the highest interest on its Cash Management Account of any American bank.
The new auditors confirmed that we were missing exactly a million dollars. They worked with me to trace it to the Bank of China, which had apparently been instructed by my predecessor to transfer this amount to our U.S. bank in Chicago, but hadn't done so. They'd ceased showing it in their monthly statements to me. But the Chicago bank had never received it (and, not expecting it, had not notified us of its non receipt). And with the departure of the former Business Manager, our book keeper had noted no problem -- until I couldn;t reconcile the accounts when our Philippina book keeper lost control of her books and I had to step in. It took some doing, but I got the Bank of China to return our million dollars -- which they'd casually kept in their own pocket for almost a full year. I was never able to figure out if they thought they'd gotten away with something, or were simply as bad book keepers as our Phillippina. I was still working to get them to pay us a year's interest on our money when I left the school.
The school also had a unified tuition schedule, meaning that high school students -- with labs and special supplies, paid no more than kindergarteners who attended only half a day. I talked the Board into adopting a three fee system: a moderate tuition up to fourth grade. A middling tuition for fifth to eighth graders. And a considerably higher tuition for high schoolers. I worked closely with teachers to make sure their orders were sent off within a couple of days of receipt, and insisted tha they checkc their own orders when received, to be sure everything had arrived in the still sealed boxes (when the store room supervisor opened them, teachers insisted that our poor Chinese woman had lost -- or pilfered -- anything which hadn't arrived, whereas they soon discovered that the American supply houses often had incompetent help in thei shipping offices and simply omitted some items the school was charged for).
Between the interest earned on the school's CMA deposit with Merrill Lynch, money saved on undelivered supplies, and the (modest) amount the school was paid by teachers for car use, I told the Board at the end of the year, that I figured I'd saved them a couple of hundred thousand dollars -- not to mention the million recovered from the Bank of China (with the a year's interest on that yet to come). But some of the unappy teachers had done their best to sabotage me with the Board because they no longer had free use of the cars and had to do their own shopping. So when R&R time came for Lola and me, I wasn't sure whether I'd have a job when we came back or not.
As matters transpired, I got a call from the Consul General at the Embassy telling me they'd just had anew position funded and would I be interested. State Department Regulations require letters from Congressmen to be answered within three working days. The Consular Section had a six months backlog of unanswered letters beeause officers were so busy working on the visa line that no one had time to do "Congressionals". I'd hand;ed lots of correspondence for the Secretary and Undr Secretary of State, as well as half a dozn Ambassadors, and told her I'd be delighted to take on the task. It enabled me to return to working with the kind of people I'd known and respected during my previous thirty year career -- and to get away from prima donnas . Lola helped me set up my office computer so I could develop sixteen or eighteen form letters responding to nearly every variation a Congressman could throw regarding the visa or citizenship situation of a person he (or she) was interested in. I hjad another dozen stock phrases I could paste into letters in an appropriate place to further customize each letter. The backlog was caught up in a month, and we never went over three days again, except once when the ConGen was away and the gal who stepped in for him was such a miserable manager that she let my letters/telegrams stack up on her desk, despite continual prodding from me. Th Ambassador learned of my doings, and I soon found myself handling many of his inquiries from mayors, governors, and others. I got a nice commendation at the end of the year and a top-rated EER (Employee Efficiency Report). A short comment: Chinese are perhaps the most political people I've ever met. Political in the true sense of the word -- insistent on working every human angle possible to achieve a desired end. When a visa was denied (under the law as written by Congress), the local Chinese would write his friend or relative in the U.S., who would then contact every Chinese (or other) friend he had across the entire United States, and each would then rope his Congressman or Senator into telegrpahing the Embassy in Beijing to see what could be done about rectifying the situation. It was not unsual to get three or four -- often six, eight or even ten -- telegrams about the same case. Again, Lola helped me develop a computer program for keeping track of letters written up to a couple of years before on the same case and calling up my replies to each previous inquiry. I could then copy the identical reply, adding the words, "You may be interested to know that Senator (Congressman) w, x, y, and z have previously inquired about this case". The hope was that as Congressional staffs came to understand how much staff time (and government money) was being fruitlessly wasted on multiple inquiries on behalf of people not even residing ina particular Congessman's District, they'd perhaps be less quick to burden the Embassy.
Learned that the School's new Business Manager quickly found she couldn't handle the job alone. So they hired at first one, and eventully two assistants for her. And even then they ran through three managers the next year. And, yes, as I'd recommended, they also replaced the book keeper who couldn't keep books. But I was working at the American Embassy in Beijing -- a posting I'd never anticipated, but found an altogether rewarding experience, even if I was doing the kind of consular work I'd started out doing thirty years before.
We'd arrived shortly after the Tiananmen Square incident and there were still bullet holes in the walls of some apartments where Embassy personnel were living. So things were a bit tense at first. Cars were not allowed to travel outside the city. But travel by train and plane was possible, and Lola and I traveled as much as possible. Out first trip was by train with an Embassy group to Louyang, the Chinese end of he Silk Route, and the first city to breed peonies. We visited the caves in the river gorge west of the city which had been inhabited by Buddhist monks and walked the old city walls. At the time we arrived, Beijing was preparing for the Asian Games and every street was lined with ten foot high bleachers packed with potted flowers, and at every major intersection there were even more elaborate floral displays. The Game's mascot Pan Pan (a giant panda) was everywhere. Beijing was truly festive. It was quite an experience.
Just before our departure, Beijing was trying to win the 1996 Olympic Games, and again the town was cleaned up and decorated to impress the Olympic Committee. Thousands of brand new Japanese mini-taxis suddenly appeared on the streets to prove China could handle the transportation problem. Overnight the moderate traffic flow which had driving in Beijing less of a problem than, say, Paris or Madrid, became so congested it was almost impossible to drive. Most of these cabs were just driving around the streets empty (presumably to impress the Committee) because no more Chinese could afford taxis than the week before. I've wondered what became of all these cabs and their drivers when Atlanta was awarded the Games. Following the Asian Games, all the flowers suddenly disappeared. Turned out that in typical communist neighborhood committee fashion, every household along every street was assigned to produce a put of flowers for the stands along the road. And once the display was no longer needed for political purposes, in typically prudent Chinese fashion, the pots were immediately reclaimed less someone else take them.
Some months later Sheldon Poon came to town with one of his tour groups. They were all LDS and Lola invited them to our apartment for dinner (they laer told Sheldon it was the best meal they had in China). Sheldon had a spare space in his group and invited me to join them, which I did. I roomed with Sheldon and got to know him. He joined the Church in Hong Kong when he was about fourteen or so. He became the first Stake President in Hong Kong. The group saw the terra cotta warriors near Xian, another Silk Route town; Shanghai (where I was much impressed by the old French quarter and the waterfront Bund); the town where Chang Kai Chek was held prisoner by Mao Ze Tung; and the fantastic Li river and landscapes of Guelin in the far south. I'd always assumed the mountain piled on mountain, looking for all the world like upside down ice cream cones stacked side by side, were merely artistic renderings of some kind of idealistic Chinese landscape. But the Li River gorge is just as it's been painted by hundreds of Chinese painters.
Our next trip, some months later, was to Xinjiang, the furthest west of all Chinese provinces. We started out by flying to Lanzhou where the first iron railway bridge was built across the Yellow River. Hiking to the top of the high bluff overlooking the river, we visited the Buddhist Monastery, there being surprised to find the monks playing pool outdoors under the trees. I suppose even Buddhist monks are entitled to a bit of fun.
We then flew on to Dunhuang where we bussed out into the desert to visit another (abandoned) Silk Route fortress. And the way we stopped at a vineyard and fruit orchard located in mid-desert. Water had been led by underground conduit a good twenty miles from the mountains, and was drawn up from some twenty or thirty feet underground by a water wheel operated by a camel and an ass yoked together. We were told that the camel provided the power, and the ass the guidance system. I'd read about this method of irrigation, but had associated it with Iran, and never expected to see it in China. But we were already getting into a part of China which is not Chinese. The people are Central Asians in appearance, religion, customs, and writing -- all being more akin to Iran and some of the former Soviet Republics, than to Han China. Green eyes are not uncommon, dress is different, and the writing is all in Arabic script.
We then took the bus to a train stop in the middle of the Gobi desert where we had pre-payed reservations for bunks on a train leaving at 6 p.m. When the train arrived, we found our berths had been resold to another group, but were assured that another train would be along in two hours. When the next train arrived, it was even fuller, the very platforms between the cars being crowded with people. But we were taking no more chances and pushed our way aboard. It was some experience standing on a jolting iron platform between trains while Chinese came out from the inside to hawk on the platform at (or on) our feet. The Chinese are the world's most inveterate spitters, though Lola thinks I must have some Chinese genes. Some of our better linguists finally managed to bribe some third class berth holders to sell their bunks to us. My berth (for which I'd now paid twice, plus bribe) was top of a four high stack, and about twenty inches wide.
We'd all read Paul Theroux's Riding the Red Rooster (the name of the very train we were on), and his account is accurate. The stewardess came along at 5 a.m. to pull the blankets off our shivering bodies a good hour and a half before we arrived at Urumchi terminal so she could have her work all done when the train pulled in and head straight home. Lola and I were in a compartment with six Chinese men, who proceeded to undress in front of us (her); and then the guy across the way from her spent the rest of the night trying repeatedly to get into her purse. So poor Lola got exactly no sleep at all.
From Urumchi (pronounced Oolumoochi), we again took a plane for Kashgar -- about as far west as one can get in China. The outdoor market there is immense. There were men repairing shoes, others shaving heads (to keep scalps free of lice and, perhaps, cooler under the fur hats most wore). And sellers of everything imaginable. We bought about every kind of cap we could find as mementos of our trip to Central Asia.
Streets were planted with Lombardy poplars, the same kind that used to line Utah streets in our childhood. There were dozens of magnificently tiled mosques. And the streets were full of donkey carts carrying everything imaginable. We took a donkey cart taxi from the far end of town where we'd walked back to the hotel. Not particularly fun, but an experience. That evening we strolled around the central market, buying shish kebabs and slices of fresh melon and examing local handicrafts for sale.
Next day we drove by Mercedes mini-bus another forty miles or so up into the Tian Shans -- the Mountains of Heaven. Arrived at a glacier and a lake -- for all the world like Lake Louise in
Alberta, Canada. Never had imagined China had scenery like Colorado, or the High Uintahs, or the Canadian Rockies. Beautiful. The lake was still frozen over except for perhaps ten feet of melt around the shore. By this time we were only a stone's throw from the Pakistani border.
On the way back we stopped at a Kazahk mountain camp where we were entertained by a riding show. And they let us examine the interiors of their felt Yurts. We ended up with Kazahk, Kirghiz, Uigur, and Mongol hats (plus a couple more tribal trilbies whose names I can't remember). Biggest problem during the trip was the unvarying menu. We were served mutton sish kebab morning noon and night. Last couple of days, I couldn't stomach any more mutton. The only alternative was rice. So I asked for ni niao (cow juice) and survived on rice cereal with milk -- something I'd grown up with as mother alternated oatmeal, cracked wheat, grits, cream of wheat, yellow corn meal, bulgar wheat, and cooked rice for breakfast. An altogether memorable trip I never imagined I'd ever be able to take through Communist China.
On a yet later trip we visited KungFu, Confucius's hometown. It has the largest cemetary in China where everyone with the surname KongFu is entitled to be buried. Saw a man sitting at the entrance who seemed to be a hundred years old. The old "Confucius House", actually a large compound, we were told was not bestowed on the family until well after Confucius himself had died. But his descendants lived ther until the Commuunists took over.
Next morning we hiked up what seemed like miles of trail to the top of the sacred mountain to which all new emperors had to ascend to watch the sun come up. But it was so clouded in that we coouldn't even discern the ball of the sun through the cloud. Men were carrying loads of bricks on shoulder slings up the ten thousand steps to the top of the hill where there was some construction underway. We were told they were paid about a penny a brick. Each worker seemed to be carrying perhaps fifteen bricks from each shoulder -- so his hour and a half journey earned him thirty cents (return tiip, no wage). Assuming three trips a day (half hour out to eat a bite), he'd make ninety cents. Working six days a week, that'd bring in about US$22 a month. For unskilled labor in a country where the monthly wage is no more than thirty dollars, that figures about right. Talk about the labors of Sisyphus!
We had visitors in China. Mignon Holfert came with Sheldon Poon's group. And Ray Hillam and his wife Carolyn came on sabbaatical from BYU to teach at Nationalities University. Ray and Carolyn would bus in each weekend to attend Church with us, spending Saturday night at our place. We so enjoyed getting to know he Hillam's. My brother Bill had served on the faculty with Ray and thought the world of him. He and I had all sorts of interesting discussions of world events. When the Hillams left,Spencer and Shirley Palmer arrived. Spencer had been invited to be the first teacher of Comparative Religion in a Chinese univsrsity since the Revolution in 1949. The authorites had apparently discovered that religion couldn;t be abolished by decree, as they'd naively assumed, and they decided that this being the case, the next generation of young cadres, who'd have tot deal with the benighted in their distant provinces, should at least knwo something about the superstition they'd encounter. Ray must tell his own story, but let it be said that he so impressed some of his initially rock hard communist students that some told him towards the end of his course that if they weren't living in China, they'd bcome members of the LDS Church. Ray carefull kept his notes and prepared a text which was translated by his teaching assistant and has been publishd for use by other teachers in all Chinese universities. It covers Buddhism, Taoism, Shinoism, Jainism, Islam, Catholic Christianity, Protestant Christianity, American versions of he Christian message -- Adventism, Christian Science, and Mormonism. And we had the Dick Harris and his wife. Dick was a retired Readers Digest editor from Cache Valley who knew many of my Thornley cousins. The Harrises enjoyed playing dominos and we spent many hours playing at their house and ours.
Timme and Bob also visited us in Beijing. Lola put on one of her great soirees musicales , with excellent food and a select cmpany of about fifty embassy and church friends. And Bob did nis usual entertaining best. Jim Levy's parents happened to be present, and his father is a music professor, I believe in Michigan. He and Bob really hooped it up as the evening wore on. Even Jim and his wife, both excellent pianists, performed for us.
On the political side, I contacted the Bush reelection committee and was made head of Republicans Abroad in China. Our committee contacted every American business in China and arranged with the Intercontinental Hotel to set up a dozen television sets tuned to satellite CNN for an election watch (which took place at noon in Beijing, given the time difference). We calculated, based on a poll we did, that we got eighty per cent support from American expatriates in China for Mr. Bush. But of course it wasn't enough to change the outcome of the election.
We were surprised and pleased to find an active LDS Branch operating in Beijing (there was another in Shanghai). Tim Stratford, the Embassy's Minister Counselor for Commercial Affairs was our BP (and District President for all China). Tim was a Harvard Law grad and had two exceptionally bright sons, about eight and ten when we arrived, and a cute blond daughter above six. The Tony Hutchinson family also had two boys of about the same age. I was the Sunday School (and later Priesthood) teacher for the boys. Never had a more challenging assignment. These kids were smart. And inquisitive. No superficial answers for them. Found myself teaching them Orson Pratt's Funeral Service for All Saints and Sinners, and for the Heavens and the Earth to satisfy their demands for a reconciliation of traditional Christian teachings about the infinitely diverse but universally immanent God, and LDS teachings about the God of individuality, body, parts, and passions. My Priesthood lesson ended up as one of the papers in my collected works.
We had an attendance of fifty or sixty members on the typical Sunday -- and often ten or fifteen more when we had visitors from Hong Kong or the US. There were some twenty or thirty local Chinese members who'd joined the Church while studying or working abroad. But under the Chinese "three rules of religion law" they were not permitted to attend our services -- which were permitted under international law governing diplomatic immunity. Other churches held illegal underground services, but the LDS Church eschews illegal behavior. And so the best we could do for our orphaned Chinese members was to hold a monthly social. In summer, this often took place in a park where we could picnic together and then played baseball or soccer. In winter, we met in one or another's home for conversation and refreshments.
Church Headquarters was, of course, vitally interested in opening the door to introduce the Restored Gospel to a quarter of the world's population. And where today General Authorities visit Stakes only once every two years, we had General Authority visitors every few months. We had the experience of seeing Neal and Colleen Maxwell a couple of time during our three years in Beijing. Lola accompanied Sister Maxwell on a shopping trip and was invited to stay to have lunch with her and Elder Maxwell in the Da Beijing Fandian where they were staying. The Maxwells wrote us later to ask us to buy a half dozen twenty foot long Chinese dragon kites as gifts for their grandchildren. One of our nicest church experiences was the arrival of Elliott Richards, Executive Secretary of the Area Presidency, who arrived with Elder Vaughn Featherstone of the Seventy. I'd known both when we were all members of the Hillside Ward Elders Quorum following my mission and first marriage. Elliott was Quorum President and
Vaughn and I quorum members. On Sunday our baby Mark had developed a high fever and severe ear ache, Laurel stayed home with him, but called m at the wardhouse to tell me she thought I should find a doctor. Elliott was a pediatrician and offered to come home with me between meetings. We gave Mark a blessing, and Dr. Richards gave him a shot of penicillin, and in typical Mormon fashion, when we'd done all humanly possible, and added the power of the Lord, Mark was better before supper.
Well, Lola and I came into the living room which was serving as our meeting place and I about fell off my chair when I looked up and saw Elliott and Vaughn sitting at the front of the room. I rushed forward and we all fell on each other's shoulders. When Vaughn spoke, he said that it was the first time he'd visited China and as he picked up Dr. Richards in Manila t continue his trips with him, the two were reminiscing about old days and wondering what had ever become of David Timmins. Imagine their surprise, he said, to see me walk into the room just a few minutes after their arrival from the airport.
Russia and Moscow
Our final trip was from Beijing via he Trans-Siberian Express to Moscow. We'd planned to go the previous spring with the Hillam's, but a friend of Ray's arrived at the last minute expecting to go, which was of course impossible since reservations must be made werll in advance. I let him have my ticket. So here we were, just befoe our departure, traveling with Shirley Fichtman, one of Lola's Wang cat friends (one of the Wang technicans who visit embassies periodically to solve any hardwar problems which have come up. Lols's job is to keep the software working and train people in its use). Shirely had made the trip previously, which proved a good thing. The trip is six days long. When we got to the Russian border they had to change the wheels of the train, 'cause there's a change of gauge. Same thing happens between France and Spain, where the change over takes maybe twenty minutes. In Russia it took all afternoon -- and there were no seats in the station. So it was tiring and boring in the extreme.
Crossing Siberia was an experience. It was early spring and the trees and shrubs were in glorious bloom -- nothing like the Siberia I'd imagined. There were miles of grassy fields and meadows with nary an animal to be seen. If this had been the American West there'd have been cattle men driving critters from Texas to Montan to take advantage of the grazing. It will be interesting to see how long it takes pst-communist Russia to make use of all this splendid grazing.
We quickly made friends with a youngish French couple and a young German (who we found was a security guard at one of their Far Eastern embassies). First night out Shirley made sure our carriage door was not only locked with the mechanism provided, but wrapped a rope she'd brought along securely around the lalch. Next morning we found the German security guard had been robbed of his passport, camera, and money. We fed him from our food stash till we arrived in Moscow, whee we assumed his embassy could take over regarding passport and money to get him home. We'd been warned by Shirley about the food on the train. We tried the diner once, found she'd understated how horrible the food was, and stuck to what we'd brought with us.
As for keeping clean, wwe found that despite notice to the contrary, there was no shsower aboard our train. So we took a liter bottle, half filled it from the boiling samovar at the end of the car, mixed it with cold water from the tap in the sink, and just poured the warm water over our heads and body while soaping down. Water simply ran out the hole in the floor (which also served for other purposes). Ningun problemo ! We kept clean and reasonably cmfortable.
When wwe came to Lake Baikal we were impressed by its size. It took us all day just to get by the lower end of the lake and part way up on side as we proceeded towards Novosibirks. It was a letdown to cross the Urals. It's a bit like South Pass inWyoming. You can see somewhat higher mountains in the distance, but the actual crossing is over low rolling hills, and if it hand't been for a marker at the side of he track we wouldn't have known whee to take our photo.
When we got to Moscow, we stayed with a friend of Shirley's who was an embassy maintenance man. He had a nice apartment just outside Moscow, part of a hotel complex, which provided us with free bus transportation to the city center and back. The friend had acquired tickets for us to all the concerts, ballets, and other events in town, including both the summer and winter circuses and a couple of cabarets. Wouldn't even let us pay for them. They cost something like a quarter each! Except the Boshoi. They wee sold out. And our first dull day in Moscow was to be the Boshoi's last performance for a time. The theater is sited on an old river bed, was sinking, and needed shoring up. So we bought tickets from a scalper. Still, the price was not ehorbitant by US standards. And the ballet was spectacular. It was Spartacus. We had to listen to a forty minute seminar given by half a dozen Russian professors about the message Katchachurian had intended to convey in his ballet not a word of which we understood). But the dancing, staging, costuming, and scenery was unforgettably magnificent. We also enjoyed going through the Kremlin. I've been privileged in my life to see many things I never thought as a kid growing up in Salt Lake I'd ever see. But I tell you, I certainly never thought I'd walk through the Kremlin -- not in my lifetime. And we shopped in the GUM department store, visited Lenin's tomb, and St. Basil's cathedral. We took the metro (about as Art Nouveau as we'd been told) to an outdoor park where people were selling family treasures to make ends meet. (The ruble fell from about 900 to the dollar when we arrived to some 300 to a dollar during the ten days we were in Russia). All sorts of amber jewelry (some with insect inclusions) was being sold. But Lola said she didn't like amber (now she's become aware of how valuable some of this stuff is, she regrets putting me off). We did buy a bunch of Matrushka dolls and some Carved Santa Clauses. And during a trip to the country where the locals make mother-of-pearl inlaid jewelry boxes, Lola bought several of these (which are worth hundreds of dollars in he US) for moderate prices.
On the metro we saw what appeared to be Mormon missionaries. More got on at the next stop. And more at the next. Then some Sister Missionaries joined the group. We all got off at the same stop and we saw about fifty missionaries and members had assempled for a baptism. They told us where church was held and the time. We showed up Sunday and met with a group of about fifty. We were told that members meet in fairly small groups scattered all over town to avoid attracting attention. Another aside: a young Russian convert we met later turned up in Salt Lake City as a Temple Square missionary. Lola recognized him while we were visiing the Square. And he remember us. Small world. The Branch President told the congregation in his talk about a small miracle with enabled the LDS Church to come to Russia. Seems the first missionaries came to a Russian border town from Finland to work. The Town Council held a meeting at which one member said, "Russia is already Christian and we don't need another new church". And he wanted the Council to vote agaijst giving us permission to operate. Finally, it was decided to postpne a decision until the next meeting. In the meantime, the Mayor was discussing the matter with a neighbor he knew well and trusted. The nieghbor had lived in the U.S. for a time and had a nieghbor their who was LDS. So he'd gotten to know a bit about the Church. He told the mayor, "If I had any choice about nieghbors, I couldn't choose anyone better than a Mormon". Th mayor recounted this conversation at the beginning of the next Council meeting and the Council voted at once to welcome the LDS missionaries.
We took the train to St. Petersburg for a few days. Extraordinary town. Much different than I'd anticipated. We saw some of the Russian fleet in the harbor, visited the Hermitage, and drove out to Pushkin Village. We also attended the /st. Petersburg ballet where we saw Swan Lake. This was also the Kirov's last performance of the season.
In St. Petersburg we found all the hotels booked. We were referred to a new Swedish hotel, a remodeled ferry moored in the harbor. Guess the Swedes figured if the Russians renationalized, they could just tow there hoel back to Sweden.
We found in every part of Russia that the mafia had taken control of the taxi stands. And wanted ten or fifteen US dollars to let you go anywhere. But we quickly found we could walk a hundred feet down the road, holdd up our hand, and one of the first cars to wheel past would pull over and inquire, most often in English, where you wanted to go. For a couple or at most three dollars they'd detour from wherever they were going and deliver us. Two dollars, after all, was more than a full day's wage at that time. And every restaurant we ate in -- and we ate in some fancy ones -- had printed notice on their menu that payment was only in US dollars.
We passed a fur shop and walked in to look around. The quality was magnificent and the prices unbelievable (remember the ruble had devalued in the few days we were there by seventy per cent). So what cost us $900 had been worth almost $3000 the week previous. -- which would still have been cheap compared to US fur prices.
At the end of our stay in Moscow we flew straight back to China and began packing out for our transfer to Romania.
Another Aside\
I flatter myself that I have been involved in a half dozen exceptional episodes during my life. Being born a Mormon, I underwent the experience, fairly unique in the U.S. at the time, of leaving callege after my sophomor year to serve a two year mission abroad for the Church. Utah colleges had become accustomed to this. But it was still almost unheard of for students at other universities to interrupt their studies for any other purpose. Today a Junior Year Abroad has becom a feature of many universities. And spending some time in the Peace Corps, or taking time out to pursue some other personal interest before starting one's career, has become part of the American way of life.
Upon my return from my mission, I became a reader and exam grader for Dr. Heber G. Richards who was a Professor of English. Professor Richards' eyesight was failing and he could no longer read for long periods of time. I read to him on afternoon per week at his home, which was not far from ours. Among other works we read were Huckleberry Finn -- which Dr. Richards considered the Great American Novel, and about which (and its author Samuel Clemens), he was writing a book; Milton's Paradise Lost (an autographed copy of which he gave me at he end of our association); and Goethe's Faust . I remember having trouble correctly pronouncing Goethe, which prior to my study of German sounded as if it had an "r" in it.
I also proctored exams and graded papers for a couple of my political science professors, G. Homer Durham, who was Department Chairman, and Sam Rich, who taught International Relations. Sam Rich, who'd served for a time in the Foreign Service during WWII, encouraged several of his better students to take the Foreign Service examination. Another of my favorite professors was Francis Wormuth, from whom I took Constitutional Law. I had the privilege of having one of my papers included in a Festschrift for Dr. Wormuth put together by some of his students, and which we were lucky enough to present to him in print just before his death.
I was one of only two Utahns who passed the Foreign Service written and oral examinations that year. The other was my classmate and friend Martin Hickman (who residned after his first posting and returned to the BYU to teach political science. Martin (after whom we gave my son Mark his early nickname of Marty) later became Dean of the School of Arts, Letters, and Sciences at the Y, and later still a member of the Board f Directors of FARMS, the foundation for Boom of Mormon archeological research. Dr. Hickman came to Guatemala to visit a FARMS dig while I was Charge and we had a good reusion after many years. Marty Hickman and I were among the last FSOs to be examined under the old three day exam system and among the last to have to pay our own way to Washington for the orals. And also among the last to be orqlly examined by a panel of agency officials representing Treasury, Commerce, Agriculture, Defense, Labor, and the US Infor mation Agency. In those long ago days the Foreign Service was truly an integrated corps representing all American interestsats abroad. Today virtually every agency has its own representsatives at every embassy around the world -- Treasury Attaches, Foreign Commercial Service reps, Defense Attaches, Legal Attaches (FBI), Foreign Agricultural Service reps, and even US Information Service (USIA) reps. I was a member of the diplomatic corps when there were only some FSOs and everyone knew everyone. Within my first five years the number of FSOs had exploded to 1200, and it is now (1996) about 7000. Yet there is less cordination and apparently less awareness and reporting of) emerging critical issues affecting US interests than there was with only 700. I was among the last FSOs to attend the Foreign Service Institute when it as located ina five story apartment building on C Street between the War Department (by then "New" State) on 21st Street and some overflow quonset huts on 23rd Street. I can remember sitting on the fifth floor during hot August days trying to stay awake while some lecturer droned on about visa law or the requirements for childrn born abroad of US parents to acquire citizenship. (I remember starting to think at that time about why kids of foreigners -- even illegals -- could acquire US citizenship just because a Greek mother was aboard a Greek vessel which happened by chance -- or acute planning -- to be temprarily in a US port. This eventuated in a proposal for revising the Constitution to sharpen the provisions of the XIVth Amendment regarding acquisition of citizenship with which I pestered Senators and Congressmen for nearly ten years before, in late 1996 the new Republican Congress at last took up consideration of this measure.
FSI next moved to a new apartment complex across the river in Rosslyn, Virginia where I studied required languages for the next fifteen years, and later still to a couple of purpose built office buildings in Rosslyn. FSI has after forty years finally acquired its own campus in Arlington where it can offer integrated courses in languages, economic and political reporting, and area studies in a cully congenial campus atmosphere.
In early 1996 I wrote, and had published in the Foreign Service Journal , an article said by the Editor to be a seminal contribution to the Foreign Service Personnel system, a longish article suggesting how the new Foreign Affairs Training Center could be made even more useful by providing in-service examination procedures to assure that officers were up-to-date in their knowledge of their fields of supposed expertise, as well as the manual of foreign servic regulations, to qualify themselves for consideration by Promotion Boards.
I was one of the first FSOs selected for advanced university studies when it became evident that State's traditional officer recruiting method was not satisfying the needs of Trasury and Commerce. And, as earlier stated, I was, to the best of my knowledge, the first and only FSO accorded Lave Without Pay to take on an outside assignment -- when I spent two years at Weber State as Economics Depatment Chaiman helping Harvard friend Quinn McKay get AACSB accrditation for the School of Business and Economics of which he was Dean. Coming back to State, I hold myself in large measure accuntable for persuading the Direct or Gerneral to adopt the Open Assignments System under which upcoming openings are published and officers given the chance to bid on assignments of interest to them.
I recount all this in the China section of my history because it was in China that I made a further conribution to Foreign Service practices. The DG (Director General) came to Beiiing to observe how things weere getting along in the era of Deng Xiao Ping reforms. He held an assembly for all embassy personnel at which he entertained questions. H later called some of us in for individual inerviews, apparently based on questions we'd asked or comments we;d made. I had commented on the paper work difficulties I'd encountered when I'd been recalled to service in Mexico -- having to have my security clarance redone and all the personnel forms which had had to be filled out and resubmitted. We discussed this at some length. And a few months following his visit, we received notification that the Department was creating a Foreign Affairs Reserve Corps to be constituted of selected retirees whose security clearances would rmain valid for six years and who could be recalled to service upon need with no further processing. I was among the first half dozen to be certified. And I like to think this was a positive contribution to Service needs, just as all sorts of new posts were being opened up in the independent republics of the former Soviet Union, stretching existing Foreign Service manpower to the extreme.
Romania
We'd had a pleasant home leave following our China tour. Had visited Karen and Blaine and the grandchildren in Idaho Falls. And then the Browns, the McGreevy's, Rob and his family, and even Mark had come to Salt Lake for Christmas to visit us and the other grandparents. We had an Open House and were planning our regular New Year's Eve party, when Lola got a rocket from Bucharest telling her we must arrive before the end of December. So we arrived in Romania the late afternoon of December 31. We were met at the airport by a somewhat put out "sponsor" who drove us home for a drink with his wife, and then dumped us at our furnished embassy apartment. There were New Year's Eve parties at many embassy homes, but we weren't invited, so we spent a rather depressing evening alone. So much for arriving on time as demanded. We later found there was no reason in the world why we couldn't have arrived for work early the following week.
We had the Mission Home phone number we'd gotten from Church HQ in SLC. When we phoned for directions to Church for the following Sunday, the missionary who answered the phone offered to call for us early Sunday morning and show us the way. So early Sunday morning Elder Nix and his companion came by for us. They showed us how to take the tram to the Metro headquarters which we were renting for church services. The small room was packed -- probably seventy people there. This was the Sunday the first branch in Bucharest was divided. We found ourselves members of the Second Branch, meeting not far from our apartment.
I've written elsewhere of the first missionaries in Romania over a hundred years ago, and the problems caused by the First World War, the Great Depression, the years of the iron Dictatorship, WW II, and forty five years of communism, and will not repeat here. But a half dozen new missionaries had been sent from the Budapest, Hungary Mission by President Dennis Neuenschwander, and had started small branches in Bucharest and Ploesti. The first President of the Romanian Mission, John Morrey, had arrived just six months before us. So we were there almost at the beginning of missionary operations in post-communist Romania.
The very next Sunday the missionaries told me President Morrey wanted to see me. I called on him during the week and we talked -- apparently only to get acquainted. Few weeks later, Lola and I were driving to Antwerp to pick up our car. President Morrey said he'd like me to drive home by way of Frankfurt and call on the Area Presidency. We found this impossible timewise, and merely gave the Area President a phone call. When we got back to Bucharest, President Morrey told me he'd like me to serve as Counselor in the Mission Presidency. Thus began one of the most satisfying Church service experiences of my life. Both John Morrey and his wife Barbara were among the most dedicated, hard working, and spiritual people I've ever known. I could go on for pages recounting our experiences with the Morrey's, but having done so in some detail in my paper on the History of the LDS Church in Romania , will not extend discussion here.
Romania was my first experience actually living and working behind the (former) Iron Curtain. But we soon found the so-called Revolution of 1989 had been a put-up sham. The Russians had become convinced Ceasescu was becoming too independent minded and decided to replace him with his Deputy Ionescu. They conspired with Lybia to combine a force of KGB infiltrators with some Lybian infiltrators and set off street demonstrations which led to Ceausecu's being shot. The, abruptly, the KGB and Lybians disappeared, leaving Ionescu in power, with all the same secret police and cadres filling the same positions as before, and carrying out much the sam policies.
While there's been some (welcome) liberalization of travel and foreign imports, only about three per cent of the economy had been privatized after seven years of post-communist government. This was of siggnificance to President Morrey and his church work because we were operating in Romania as The Liahona Society, a humanitarian association and were looking towards approval as an operating church. A friend Lola and I made through our embassy cnnections, Earl Pope, an ordained Presbyterian Minister, was in Romania as a representative of the World Council of Churches, working to help Ionescu achieve sufficient religios freedom to be acceptable to the European Union. By more than chance, BYU Law Professor Cole Durham had been asked by President Ionexcu to put together a committee of European jurists to also advise him about the steps he must take. The main issue was whether to approach the Parliament for approval prior to enactment of the proposed new religious liberty law, thus being "grandfathered" in as a legal religion, or await enactment of the law. Arguments pro early action were that "grandfathered", it would take an act of Parliament to alter our position. Under the law, a mere administrative decision by the Minister of Cults (the Romanian term for the Minister in charge of the legal position of all denominations other than the Orthodox Church) could diminish or remove our privileges.
Earl Pope strongly recommended an early approach to Parliament, arguing this would give us two bites at the apple. If Parliament didn't act, we could later apprroach the Ministry. I agreed, pointing out that the LDS Church had been the first non-Catholic church to seek and achieve approval in post-Franco Spain. Cole Durham was more reserved. Indeed, he had a hard time producing his report for President Ionsecu, for reasons that weren't at all apparent to me.
The Minister of Cults resigned, leaving several candidates contending for appointment. I suggested to President Morrey that we should arrange for the candidate we considered most likely to be chosen to attend a General Conference in Salt Lake as guest of the Church, to give him a better idea of the Church's size and importance in the the US and world (most Romanians considered us just another obscure sect). Church HQ accepted our recommendation, and we lucked out. The individual we invited to attend Conference was named Minister. Upp\on his return, told us how warmly he'd been hosted and how much he'd been impressed by Salt Lake City, LDS Church HQ and the officials who'd rreceived him, and the Conference itself.
One day, after President Morrey had been trying for some time to phone the Minister to ask some questions, finding him always unavailable, the Minister himself called the President to suggest that they meet for "coffee". Once they were together, the Minister took President Morrey for a walk in the park, telling him that Mission Office phones (and the office itself) were bugged by the secret police and that many of the sensitive matters the Presidency had been discussing (including rcognition policy) were causing problems to the Ministry because they were immediately fed back by the police to the Prelature of the Orthodox Church, which considered it had a historicaly bestowed monopoly on religion in Romania. He suggested that when we had delicate issues to discuss, the Mission Presidency take a walk in the park. Not a few Presidency meetings were thereafter held in the park.
When we arrived, there were two branches in Romania: one in Bucharest and one in Ploesti. And the mission was comprised of about twenty missionaries. By the time we left two years later we had 180 missionariess and nineteen branches: sixteen (many small neighborhood ones, as in Moscow) in Bucharest, two in Ploesti, and one in Brasov -- so all the locations in which the Church was operating prior to WW I were again being served. I saw the first two Districts created. And plans were advanced for opening branches in Arad on the Hungarian border, and another in the industrial town of Timisoara in the far west of the country.
The Morreys period of service was up just six months after we left Bucharest. The came to se us in Geneva (with a daughter and four grandsons) and we had the grat pleasure of showing thm around this corner of Switzerland. We'd also had the pleasant experience of having dinner with Romanian Mission President Orton at John Young's home in Salt Lake during our home leave, President Orton was interested in all we could tell him about mission operations, life in Romania, and the politics surrounding the recognition issue. I gave him some of the papers I'd written on these issues and told him I'd left a number of other analyses on the hard drive of the laptop computer we'd left at the mission office.
I was unable to secure a teaching job in Romania. The head of an Americdan university operating there wanted very much to hire me to teach market economics to the many former communists who were trying to reprogram themselves. But when university officials came from the US, they told him (and me) that they'd prefer to send a couple or three communist professors of economics to the US campus to be retrained, then return to Bucharest to continue teaching on a long-term basis. Frankly, in their position, I'd have taken both roads.
I worked for a time in the embassy's consular section, which had a Congressional Correspondence backlog as in Beijing. I'd hoped my polished letters/selected paragraphs file Lola had had Beijing send on by e-mail, and which had won me a commendation in China, would fill the bill. But the Consul General in Bucharest was a woman who'd risen through the ranks, a "mustang", and very insecure. She wanted nothing more than her arid, informationless form letter retyped in unvaried form. This was more a job for a semi-skilled typist, and we parted company in less than a week. I then went to work as Office Manager for the Strategic Armaments Mission (SAM) which was staffed by a rotating group of US Customs Agents. But by this time SAM operations were winding down and there just wasn't enough work to justify a full time employee. The Head Customs Agent took over sending the required one faxed report a day and keeping track of the half dozen travel claims a week. So my work with President Morrey in the Mission Presidency was a life saver.
As our branches multiplied, President Morrey had me undertake a search for meeting places. Both I and the other Counselor, one of he first couple of Romanian converts, independently located the two villas which eventually housed the six largest of our sixtn Bucharest branches. Others were located in technical schools, union headquarters, and -- still -- the Metro Offices.
I also was put in charge of training priesthood and auxiliary leadership. We had no manuals, no lesson books, no Doctrine and Covenants, and only a couple of hundred pages of extracts from the Book of Mormon. So I scheduled regular Thursday evening sessions at the Mission Office for Branch Presidencies and, every other week, for quorum presidencies. During one such session, I went over what "sustaining" meant. It wasn't a vote or an election, but a covenant of support. Don't know what possessed me, I'd never have done this in a group of Americans or Brits, or Mexicans, but I spent some time on what shuld be done in the rare event sustaining wasn't unanimous.
Very next week, President Morrey and I were in Ploesti for the first division of the Ploesti Branch. The old BP, who was conducting the business annouonced the boundaries of the new branch divisions and told people to sustain only their own new presidencies. But when he giave the name of one of the new BPs, a guy stood up to declaim he wasn't the best choice and that he nominated so and so. President Blegianu, without missing a beat, repeated almost verbatim what I'd said in the BP training session three days before and invited the protestor to retire to the foyer "where President Timmins will hear your views and bring them to the attention of President Morrey". Well, needless to say, the fellow didn't know church policy or practices and was merely trying out the new participatory democracy Romanians had been yeaning for for fifty years. He simply thought someone else better qualified. The sustaining went forward without further delay. But it was a lesson to me (and other Branch leaders) that we're ofen inspried to say or do something for a very good reason known beforehand by the Lord, which we only understand much later (in this case not so much later).
We had a couple of Registered Nurse humanitarian missionaries, Sister Haslam who'd taken leave as Manager of the Nursing Education Program of 26 hospitals of a large HMO operating in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Sister Killian, who was Director of Trans-Cultural Nursing Programs at Ricks College in Idaho, who were working with the Romanian National Nursing Association -- and who'd published any number of articles on modern nursing practices in the Romanian Nursing Journal. They each had considerable experience in Primary and Relief Society, and I got them started holding once a month Saturday morning training sessions at the Mission Office for Branch Relief Society, Young Women's Association, and Primary leaders.
We also had an adult missionary couple who were supposed to do microfilming of Romanian records of births for the Genealogy Library in Salt Lake City. But government officials were so successful in foot dragging that not a page was filmed during their entire year of service. We later figured out that these former communist cadres -- still in place and still doing the same work five years after the so-called Revolution, were themselves living in houses which had been confiscated from their owners, some of whom had escaped and were now living in the US. -- and they feared that provided with documents establishing their Romanian birth and family connections, they'd be able to arrange for the U.S. Government to legally espouse their legal property claims and the cadres would be booted out of their homes. So they conspired to prevent any filming of records, despite assurances that these were only for genealogical purposes and no records less than a hundred years old would be filmed.
We did a great deal of traveling in Romania. The roads were terrible -- perhaps second only to Albania as the worst in Europe. As soon as one crossed the Hungarian border, the potholes began. And it was impossible to drive more than thirty miles an hour without blowing out a tire or shaking the car apart, But the Embassy arranged a regular sequence of trips -- to the Danube Delta (saw a fish a good seven feet long, motor launched the delta waters to the Ukraine frontier, and observed all sorts of delta wildlife); to the Black Sea resorts (some excellent folk dancing and native music entertainment); and the painted monasteries of Bucovina (really quite marvelous. The equivalent of the stained glass windows of Chartres or the films of Mormon temples in their teaching impact on the illiterate Romanian peasants of a previous age). We took Margaret and Bob -- and Lola's cousin Barbara Vance and her companion -- to Bucovina. First time, we stayed in an Orthodox Convent which accepted visitors. Fascinating! But the shower was stacked with boxes, so we went without bathing for three days. And all they served us to eat, morning, noon, and night, was yellow corn meal mush slathered with sour cream. Good enough fare the first time or two, but it soon got boring. Never did find a substitute a I did in China. Just before departure, Lola and I took another trip to the Painted Monasteries, but this time arranged to stay with peasant families in their typical houses. Glad we did. We slept in comfortable feather beds in rooms heated with typical porcelain stoves (which reached from floor to ceiling, filling an entire corner of the room, and ate wonderfully varied peasant cooking. After dinner, neighbors came by to sing folk songs to us accompanied by balalaikas and other native instruments. Lots of fun.
We also visited the Dracula Castle at Bran (impressive little castle which actually served as a customs post on the border between Romania and Transylvania when the latter was a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Also visited the house where Vlad Tepes (Dracula) was born in Sigisoara. And we returned to Bucharest via the Becaz Gorge, with a huge vertical stone peak which put me more in mind of Macchu Picchu than anything.
I belonged to a male chorus comprised of three or four American Embassy types, three or four young Romanian medical doctors (and a couple of dentists), a Fulbright Scholar, couple of other embassy people, and assorted Romanians who enjoyed music and singing. We put on an evening of Broadway selections at the American Center, did two Easter and two Christmas programs (the program consisting of a medley of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and secular songs) at a Roman Catholic Church and an Orthodox Church. We got good enough that we undertook a trip through Bulgaria (where we sang at a couple of Orthodox monasteries), and northern Greece. We'd been scheduled to sing at the dedication of a brand new Greek Orthodox church in Thessaloniki, but, held up by snow, didn't arrive till ten in the evening. The people ave waited for us!. We did our thing and were then invited to the best restaurant in town where the mayor and town council hosted us to a magnificent dinner.
Tragedy struck our young, newly married Romanian doctor friend. He and his bride (also a physician) were on their way back home from Vienna where they'd drived to take the American medical equaivalency test to qualify for their respective Residency programs in Chicago, when their car was struck head on by a drunk driver. He was killed. She was only slightly injured. We'd already attended an Orthodox wedding cereemony inolving an Embassy clerk. We now had to attend a funderal. At the funeral we met our friend's parents for the first time. They later invitied us to their apartment for a sort of memorial dinner. We got to know them quite well socially. The husband was an aeronautical engineer, the wife, who was ddaughter of a lieading Romanian musician, was also a professional woman -- though I've forgotten her field. Thereafter we often went to eat together following symphony performances we found we were both attending on a regular basis. We were struck with the astonishing similarities between Mormon temple marriages and Orthodox wedding. Indeed, as I made a study of Orthodox doctrines and practice s, I was impressed how much original Christian teachings had been preserved in Orthodoxy -- especially compared to the deeper apostaccy of Catholicism and protestantism. One supposes that this is bcause the Eastern churches were not subject to the teachings of the Great Philosophers as integrated into Western Christianity by the Schoolmen (though why this should have been so is difficult to understand since many of the philosophers were themselves Greek), and forwent the efffects of the Reformation (and Counter Reformation). I ended up writing a paper comparing the parallels between Orthodoxy and Mormonism, largely the outsome of our friendship with young doctor Haiduc, and later his parents. As a comment: The young bride was so affected by the loss of her husband that she intended to scrub her plans to do her Residency in the United Stattes. Lola and I convinced her that the best way to put the tragedy out of her immediate concienceness and get on with her life would be to follow through with her plans. That is whar her husband would have wanted her to do. And she finally agreed.
Another person we met as a result of our musical interests was a young violist in the National Symphony. She began attending our Branch and was soon going out with a youngish medical doctor who'd joined the Church. She made it a point to buy our symphony tickets each week, thinking she was saving us money. To be sure, buying them as a member of the orchestra got them for half price. But since they only cost something like seventy-five cents, the saving meant nothing. But it saved us queuing for tickets and we gladly accepted her courtesy. She and her doctor friend often joined us and the aeonautical engineer and his wife for dinner following the concerts.
Lola and I took advantage of being so close to Athens, taking two trips there -- plus a side trip to Ephesus, which we'd already seen. Loved Athens. So modern and so clean. Since my first trip there thirty years ago, all the street signs are now in both Greek and English. During our second trip, we sailed to a couple of islands, including Patmos, which was celebrating the two thousandth anniversary of John's exile there. Quite an experience. We found an unbelievably good little restaurant high up on the top of Patmos run by a Greek man and his wife. Place only seated perhaps fifteen people. And the cooking was three star in anyone's book. Talking with the proprietor/cook, we learned he'd been a cook in the U.S. Air force and had been stationed at Hill AFB near Ogden in Utah. He had good memories of Utah and its people. And left us with good memories of Greece and its people.
We were sorry that we hadn't been able to visit while Verna and Paul were serving as missionaries in Greece. And we were disappointed that despite looking in the phone book, inquires with the police, tourist offices, and major hotels, we were unable to locate LDS services on our Sunday in Thessalonica. When we knew we were gong to Athens we phoned Paul to ask directions. He explained that the LDS church wasn't listed, nor its location broadcast, because we were still having problems with Orthodox authorities in Greece. And while the LDS Church was legal, and fully entitled to carry out its activities, it had been decided that it would be wiser to keep our heads down. He told us the meeting facility was just across the street from the Holiday Inn. We found it without problem
And met two Church security men from SLC who had just completed their visit to Athens and were on their way to Bucharest. When we got home, the Embassy Security Officer, knowing Lola was a Mormon, told her that Messrs. so and so of our church would b coming that week. When she said, "I know", he couldn't believe how tight relations were in the Mormon Church. He'd earlier told us he'd never met a Mormon he didn't like, and asked her for any information sh could supply him so he'd know more of their beliefs and background when they arrived. We supplied him with some of the standard stuff -- Meet the Mormons , and so on. The Church security guys were of course coming because of the harassment from Orthodox priests some of our missionaries had been reporting, and the bugging of the Mission Office which President Morrey had told the Regional Office about. At the end of the visit, the Embassy Officer told us how much he'd been impressed with these two former FBI types, and the Church guys told us how impressed they'd been with the cooperation and knowledgeability of LDS Church operations and concerns the Embassy security officer had exhibited.
My last two major activities as a member of the Mission Presidency were to arrange hosting for the visit of the BYU Lamanite Generation dancers, and to arrange for an Open House at the larger of our two villas for Romanian media representatives in hopes they'd begin publishing less distorted and tendentious articles about the LDS Church once they had some facts.
The Lamanite Generation Fiasco/Triumph?
President Morrey asked me to plan, make arrangements for, and accompany and monitor the visit by the BUY Lamanite Generation dancers when they came to Romania as part of their summer 1996 tour. Initially we thought of performances in Brasov, Bucharest, and Timisoara, before the group went on to Sofia in Bulgaria. The Romanian Youth Council had sponsored them on a earlier tour and the Manager assured me they'd be interested in helping again. He appointed one of his assistants to work with me. We put together a committee of half a dozen interested parties. The Youth Council promised to secure appropriate halls in Timi, Bucharest, and Brasov at no cost. A woman restaurant owner pledged meals, and a printer promised publicity posters and programs. The Romanian-American Chamber of Commerce promised all sorts of things.
President Morrey wanted to send me in a mission vehicle to meet the group at the border. For complicated reasons which there isn't space here adequately to explain, I couldn't get away. So two missionaries went. Missionaries arrived and border crossing arrangements were made with border officials so crossing could be accomplished expeditiously as planned.
But the group arrived five hours late, delayed by the death of one performer's mother. One of our sponsors (Chris Douglas of the Euro-American Chamber of Commerce) had also planned to be at the border, but learning they'd been delayed, put off his departure to meet them at the estimated new arrival time. He, too, arrived late, meeting them about half an hour on the Romanian side. I'd finally gotten on my way, and was waiting at an agreed crossroads near Brasov with another sponsor, Mr. Ioan Rodean who'd done our printing and who was providing hotel accommodations for the first night in the Carpathians (when the Youth Council let us down) to avoid a too-long drive to Bucharest.
Chris needed to refuel after his long drive from Bucharest, but when he signaled the group he was pulling into a gas station, the Elders, thinking they knew the route (though they'd never driven in this part of Romania) just waived that they were proceeding onwards to make up lost time. Regrettably, they got lost. Chris drove extra fast to overtake them, but hadn't found 'em by the time he met us at the agreed crossroad. Deciding they were sleeping on the bus, we returned to Bucharest to find they'd driven straight through by a longer route and were sleeping on the floor of one of our chapels.
Other flummoxes followed, mainly due to people taking decisions they shouldn't have and which they weren't authorized to make. But the group at least had two days at a four star resort hotel with swimming, horseback riding, great meals, and first class rooms provided by a third sponsor at Slobozia, Mr. Ilie Alexandru, an authentic Romanian billiardaire.
Regrettably, his place, which he'd called Southfork (Romanian style) -- he was a dedicated Dallas fan, was further from Bucharest than stated, and put the group on a rushed schedule for the next two days. To minimize the time between Southfork and Bucharest, Mr.Alexandru put a phony flashing police light on the roof of his car and drove nearly a hundred miles an hour, dangerously passing all sorts of cars and busses and scaring the wits out of me and the BYU's Austrian bus driver.. But he cut travel time during the initial trip to nearer the promised hour and a half.
The pre-performance "circus parade" through downtown Slobozia had, however, been well advertised and the turnout was fantastic. Kids were literally mobbed, but did some great dancing every couple of blocks. The turnout that night was beyond expectation. Sports stadium was sold out except for perhaps fifty seats behind the stage (set up on the 25 yard line). Estimated audience was between 6,000 and 7,000 with the mayor and several ambassadors and other diplomats in attendance. Couple of last minute misunderstandings arose with the temperamental TV star announcer one of the sponsors had arranged for, but after a forty minute delay, all got underway (we dropped the peacepipe ceremony in part because of the late hour)
Crowd loved the performance. Sponsor Alexandru had arranged for forty of his employees in traditional costume to meet our guys on the stage at the end of the performance and lead 'em one Romanian, one BYU student, in a parade around the running track. Great idea to emphasize the theme of international friendship and brotherhood.
Arrival for the TV interview and filming the next day was more than a little late because the BYU guys had no "police" escort. Next foul up was finding that the promised TV interview wouldn't be held after all because the Minister of Radio/TV had been leaned on by someone offended by the success of a TV interview the week before featuring an outstanding presentation by President Morrey, five missionaries, and one of our two first Romanian national District Presidents. But there was filming by other TV stations and the audience at the religious book fair -- where another mini-performance had been scheduled was receptive.
Worst scare was finding (no more than six hours before stage time) that arrangements for the evening performance at the Sala Polivalenta had been canceled by the sponsor responsible for the Bucharest end. She'd apparently gotten her nose out of joint for some reason (we believe related to what she considered insufficient financial reimbursement from the highly successful Slobozia event). But hadn't had the guts (or courtesy) to tell anyone else what she'd done. Providentially, Elder Dellenbach from the Frankfurt Office and Mike Van Rosen from the Vienna P.R. office had come for the performance. So we all sat down together to see what could be salvaged.
We decided the only thing to do was inform the manager of the huge sports auditorium (the largest facility of its kind in Romania) what had happened. When we told the Manager of the Polivalenta what had happened, we pointed out that he'd be unable to schedule another taker at that late hour. And as we'd hoped, he came in as a fourth sponsor, asking only reimbursement for employee wages and cost of electricity. We got what had started out as a $2500 rental for $640. Local sponsor also let us down by not having obtained permit to sell tickets (though she'd solemnly assured us she had). So we had to announce we'd refund for tickets stubs at the end of the performance to anyone unwilling to consider it a donation. (Not one person asked for a refund). And our local sponsor had been so late delivering the announcement posters that the missionaries had time only to put up a minimum number. So we had only about two-thirds of the orchestra full -- perhaps 600 persons. No one in the balcony at all. But it was a reasonably fair turnout, and with the lights in their eyes, the kids saw what appeared to be a respectable audience. Performance was outstanding. Embassy friends who'd come out of consideration for Lola and me told us next day that if they'd had half an idea how great the kids were they'd've brought all their friends (we'd told 'em, but people just don't believe what Jenielle can do with a bunch of student non-professionals). Members were ecstatic. Kids were fed and lodged by local members last two nights. Was an extraordinary experience for members and their children to get to know some American college kids and for the BYU types to live in real Romanian homes, eat authentic Romanian food, and meet real Romanian people.
Group didn't have time for all the shopping or sightseeing they wanted. But when Chris failed to show up for the afternoon tour of the city (still don't know what happened to him), I took 'em to the principal sights.
That evening we had a member (and friends) only Fireside at the university student center. Terrific spirit. The giving away of coup feathers ceremony was both well-thought-out and highly popular with the youngest kids. The peacepipe didn't arrive until the next morning (another slip up by DHL), so Elder Dellenbach suggested we give it to Mr. Alexandru who'd provided beds, food, and outstanding publicity support for the Slobozia leg.
Took fifteen foreign students to the U.S. Embassy by pre-arrangement for F-1 visa renewals. Found out on arrival that only five would need visas -- others were still valid. Will be sending a note to Consul General Pelletreau thanking her for outstanding support.
Final foul up was when bus was an hour down the road towards Sofia, one of the students found she'd lost, mislaid, or had stolen her U.S. passport. Had to turn around and return. My wife Lola arranged for the passport section of the Embassy to slip her ahead of the queue to save time. But Missionary Elders, carefully searching the dressing rooms at the facility used the night before, found she'd just dropped it in a corner, so no new passport was needed. And Elder Dellenbach was flying to Sofia that afternoon for the performances there, and she accompanied him by air instead of having to return to the U.S. alone.
All of us learned from the mistakes we made. But Ed and Norma Morrell who lunched with us in the Embassy cafeteria met Consul Nick Grenius who'd arranged a three nation Lenten tour for a men's Glee Club I sing with and who told us our experiences had been all in true Romanian tradition. He, too, had had terrible experience keeping his seven sponsors in line, had had more than a few drop out (leaving him with a financing deficit), and had all sorts of last minute scheduling changes -- all of which he'd concealed from the performing group. Didn't make me feel lots better, but I at least feel less of a failure. Just hope we were able to conceal from the Lamanite kids how many close calls we had during the Romanian leg of their East European tour.
My final Church experience in Romania was arranging the Open House.
We held our first planning meeting with the DPs and Auxiliary heads. We initially decided we should plan at least two dates: one for VIPs, one for Members and Missionaries to bring family and friends. Some thought we should have a third, preliminary event, before either formal session, at which Branch Presidents and wives could listen and offer suggestions for tightening up presentations. But it was finally decided the member and friend evening would have to provide the necessary polishing given everyone's busy schedules and the problems of holding Brother Von Rosen from Vienna for three days. It was decided to hold the events at Villa Pasteur on September 22 - 23.
It was decided that we should probably have a couple or three distinguished members at the front gate to greet people (and to make it easier to identify the "open house" villa. Among the names put forward were:
a. John Hill - the IMF Representative to Romania
b. Iordonescu Lucian - Media Rep and local businessman
c. Chabap Titu - Mitsubishi Representative (brother Chabap is now a District President)
d. Lizette Kuhlman - Danish Consul
e. Daniel Viorel - a local TV broadcaster
We also thought it would contribute to the tone of the event to have three presentable teen age girls to act as ushers from front gate to seat. And, later, from one room to another at end of each presentation. As matters turned out, the girls performed fabulously.
Based on the experience of those who'd attended Church Open Houses elsewhere, it was decided to have guests congregate in the chapel where they'd be entertained by music or examination of exhibits until enough have gathered to make a formal presentation worthwhile. So we decided together either a member, or missionary chorus to sing six or eight songs. As matters eventuated, we had a missionary string quartet, which played after the session as guests mingled with their member friends and missionaries to ask questions and partake of light refreshments. This proved to be a highly popular form of entertainment and we received many favorable comments.
The open house started at 7 p.m. anticipating that people would drift in at any time between the announced hours of our being "open". We aimed at completing all presentations within two and a half hours, leaving half an hour for questions and answers and half an hour for cookies and soft drinks and visiting.
It was decided that we should have a number of presentations. President Vasilescu was to talk in Sacrament Room for twenty or twenty five minutes on Apostasy/Restoration, give a short sketch of the B of M as the instrument of Restoration, present a brief History of the church, its Distinctive Doctrines and Practices, and the Fruits of Mormonism. President Icleanu was to talk in the Baptism Room (with lit font) on Church Organization, the B of M as a New Witness for Christ in an age of unbelief, on Church Organization (apostles & prophets, wards, stakes, missions, regions, and areas), lay priesthood, blessing of infants, baptism, confirmation, blessing of the sick, the sacrament,.plus brief reference to the Auxiliaries. Sr. Biolaru was assigned to talk in Relief Society Room on Temples and Eternal Family, Church's Social activities, Compass-ionate, and Humanitarian Services and the Welfare Program. And Sr. Tieru talked in the Priesthood room on the LDS Church in Romania (other than missionary work), emphasizing that the all Romanian leadership of the local LDS Church. She was also, as time permitted, to cover
Youth programs -- Primary, Young Women and Young Men. Law of Chastity and Word of Wisdom. She also mentioned the Church's emphasis on education: providing statistics to the extent possible on educational, health, cultural, and professional attainments of church members. (I provided her, in this respect, my paper with extracts from the most recent World Almanac and my memorandum on the Doctrines and Practices of the LDS Church which I'd prepared for President Morrey as an aide memoire to give media reps following interviews with him). We stressed that talks were to be kept short and focussed -- no more than twenty to twenty-five minutes so guests would not get bored. Teenage ushers were to lead each group to a succeeding room for the next presentation. After the first presentation, Guests could chose which others to attend -- or could attend all. Mission Office Elders were to be available to help speakers prepare appropriate talks.
Initially, we proposed to invite Guests to jot down questions, holding them until end of open house, when they'd reassemble in the chapel to ask questions of the panel of presenters, with whoever felt best qualified to answer each question, other panelists making supplementary comments if they wished.
When Brother Von Rosen came from Vienna just before our first actual Open House evening, he recommended dropping the Q&A period, saying it had sometimes been found that an antagonistic visitor would ask troublesome questions which would not even have occurred to less quarrelsome guests, impairing the spirit of the evening. And as things worked out, this advice proved wise. Guests were able to ask any really meaningful questions of members or missionaries during the social hour following the presentations without their questions bothering others.
Guests were, of course, free to depart at any time. But none did, I believe by reason of the interest maintained by the well-prepared presentations and frequent change of rooms and topic..
As noted, Brother Van Rosen, of the Church's Public Relations Office in Vienna arrived a few days before the Open House(s) to call upon government officials and media representatives to distribute individual VIP invitations. He brought with him suitable materials from which to mount exhibits appropriate to each room where presentations were given. In an effort to make this a useful missionary tool, every effort was made to make this a Romanian event. We had (almost, but not quite exclusively) Romanian greeters at the gate (we thought having the IMF rep and Danish Consul participate would help put the Church's best foot forward), Romanian ushers to show people to their seats and to accompany them from room to room, and the most "representative" qualified and well-spoken Romanian Church members to deliver the talks and answer questions from those who attend. Brother Van Rosen worked with each speaker for an hour or so before the initial presentation to help presenter polish his/her talk and help him/her to help with mechanics of presentation.
Both the member/friend evening and the media evening went off splendidly -- though media rep attendance was lower than had been hoped because a) the Mission Office staff didn't get the printing done soon enough to have invitations distributed in time to let all invitees fit our event into their busy evening schedules, and b) because (as Sister Biolaru later told me) the Mission Office Romanian wording of the invitations was a bit ambiguous about whether this was in fact a special informational event for the media, or just an invitation to a regular LDS church service of some sort. While visiting with President Morrey's successor, President Orton, in Salt Lake while we were on home leave, I urged him to mount another Open House in late 1996 -- about a year after our first try -- making sure printing occurred sufficiently early to permit timely distribution, and to be sure to run the wording past a native Romanian to make sure their was no ambiguity in wording regarding the nature of the event.
Home Leave and Adventure in Politics
We left Romania for home just two weeks short of two years later -- in time to spend Christmas with all my kids and their families -- who's especially congregated in SLC to greet us. We had a marvelous Christmas. And Lola invited Bob and Margaret, the Dunns, our neighbors Jose and Pat Oliveira, my cousin Ray Thornley and his wife, and a few other choice friends to a New Year's reveillon at our Governors Plaza condo.
Stopping over in Washington, we'd attended the downtown ward which meets in the National Press Club and met Utah Republican Representative Edith Greene Waldholtz, who was already experiencing some public relations problems regarding things her husband Joe had done during her campaign to assure her victory.
After the events of Christmas and New Years, we were busily involved in getting ready for Rob's wedding to Karen Kindred of Kaysville (and Anchorage, Alaska) and then visiting with the other kids and grandchildren..all of whom came to the event in the SL Temple. About this time Enid announced she's not be running again.
I suppose all Homer Durham's former students have carried around the notion of running for office if circumstances were right. I know Ralph Mecham seriously considered running for the Senate. And Jack Carlson did run. Indeed, his wife Renee wrote a fascinating book about their experience called The Best Man Doesn't Always Win , which paralleled my own experience in a number of ways -- particularly how the media choose their own favored candidate and ignore the superior experience and positions of those they haven't chosen to support. Main difference was that Jack left his widow a million dollar post-election bill to pay when he died of a heart attack shortly after his defeat, while I took my defeat less seriously. And hadn't gone into debt nearly as much as Jack. My Twenty-first Ward friend Keith Melville ran for the House. And another U classmate Claude Burtenshaw ran for the House from his Idaho District. And I'd had earlier stirrings of interest. I was a class officer in high school, co-Chairman of Young Republicans for Eisenhower in college (and at the same time co-chairman of my voting precinct). And, later, President of my graduate school class at Harvard (main duties being, with my two V.P.'s, to line up weekly speakers for our luncheons in the Harvard Faculty Club. Remember getting acceptances from David Bell, later JFK's AID Director; John Kenneth Galbraith, JFK's Ambassador to India; George McBundy, later JFK's National Security Advisor; and Sam Beer, a noted Political Science Professor of the day). While at Weber I'd been a member of the campaign staff of Lawrence Burton when he ran for the Senate. And I was Head of Republicans Abroad in China working for Bush's reelection. And was later active in the Dole campaign.
Being now retired and not dependent on putting in a forty hour week to earn a paycheck, having nothing else important to do, and Enid's seat being the only uncontested seat which had come open during my lifetime -- at least without a strong candidate in the wings) I decided to run. Of course, before making any formal announcement I'd have to consult with my family. I invited Timme and Bob, Jim and Devin, Theda, and our close friends the Dunns to dinner to talk things over. Also discussed the matter with life-long friend Dave Hoggan and his wife Joyce in Washington, D.C.
Initially they were all afraid I'd get the family name dragged through the mire (which didn't happen in a miraculously clean campaign) -- but they all finally told me to go ahead and have my fun,. So I filed for the Second District seat in Congress. This was done in the office of the State's Lieutenant Governor, who happened to be Olene Walker -- sister of brother-in-law Paul Smith -- and whom I've known for forty years. So it made sense to talk with politically experienced Olene before paying over my filing fee. I got only encouragement from Olene Walker (as well as and my politically-experienced cousin Florence Brighton Covey who's several time been a Utah Delegate to the Republican National Convention) -- though both warned me I'd need to spend a million to win. So I filed, and stayed on in SLC while Lola returned to Washington to prepare for her next assignment here in Geneva. ( I did join her for a week to consult with Senators Hatch and Bennett and their staffs to get their advice).
I spent the next two and a half months campaigning for office. During this period I felt it best to stay away from the Church Office and GA friends -- despite an invitation from Elders Maxwell, Scott, and Hale to get in touch with them. And in retrospect am glad I did. A District Three candidate got himself and a GA Emeritus in hot water when the media learned they'd been in contact. Utah, it seems to me, is compelled by local anti-Church activists -- who are more virulent than any I've encountered even in the parts of the communist world I'm familiar with -- to carry the notion of separation of Church and State to extremes the rest of the country (and the world) would consider ridiculous. It's my reading of the Constitution that the ban on Church/State relations was intended by the Founders to relate only to the Federal Government (several states had tax-supported state churches until well after the adoption of the Constitution, as I found by reading in the library at Harvard for a graduate seminar) -- and was intended only to ban establishing a federally sanctioned state church: Nothing to prohibit the free exercise of religion according to local custom -- including excused time for seminary, prayer at graduation ceremonies, singing by school choirs in local churches as an extra-curricular activity, funding of chaplains in circumstances where citizens are compelled to serve away from the community where their church is located (as in the armed forces or Congress), or religious mottos on coinage or public monuments. But, then, all I know about Constitutional Law is what I learned from Francis Wormuth -- and we all know what a brain-washed Mormon apologist he was!
The Swiss Confederation on August 1, 1996 celebrated its seven hundred and fifth anniversary, the oldest democracy in the world (Iceland would contest this, dating their existence from 960. But Iceland was absorbed by Denmark for a couple of hundred years), while the Swiss have been able to endure while surrounding Germany, Austria, Italy, and France have all undergone periods of autocratic, expansionary rule, by strict adherence to the division of sovereignty between federal and local authority with which our Founding Fathers tried to endow us -- but which we've spent the last sixty years, if not longer, trying to convert into a traditional centralized state, something our inspired Founders realized couldn't work in a nation as large and diverse as they knew we'd grow to be. Tried to make this point during my campaign, arguing for deliberate reenactment of the IXth and Xth Amendments, but most people just found this quaint, arguing that they already existed, so why bother. I think we couldn't send a more powerful message to the White House, the Hill, and every level of the Federal Court System that We the People still mean it: Feds Keep off of our turf. What a pleasure it is to be in a country where the distinction between Federal-and Canton authority is taken seriously, all matters not specifically delegated to the federal level -- defense, foreign relations, communication, and inter-communal trade -- being left absolutely to the cantons, including language, religion, decisions regarding what foreigners may or may not be naturalized and under what conditions, legislation related to schooling and professional qualifications, and all laws regarding crime and punishment. I remember discussing some of this stuff with Earl Rouche (later Personnel Director of the Pan American Union, President of the Arlington Stake, and later, President of the Washington, D.C.Temple) and Marty Hickman (who entered the Foreign Service with me and was later Dean of BYU's School of Arts, Letters and Sciences, and a members of the FARMS Board of Directors) way back in grad school days.
As already signaled above, I was defeated at the Republican State Convention. But I was in good company. Carol Nixon, Bangerter's Chief of Staff, and David Harmer, Enid's Chief of Staff, were also both eliminated. I've yet to read a media pundit's explanation of how all the strongest candidates went under while Merrill Cook, who's engaged in every possible tergiversation regarding Party and policy went into the primary with a virtually unknown ex-FBI type. Actually, I quite liked Todd Neilson the former FBI guy, whose positions closely paralleled my own. I offered him my support, and instructed my friends to back him. Yet Cook won.
But it was worth it. I Had more real fun than almost anytime since the State High School debate finals almost forty years ago Was invited by J.D. Williams to speak at the Hinckley Institute at the U. Also participated in a joint appearance in the Union Building with the other candidates. Debated on KBYU-TV and KUTV. And talked before any number of neighborhood and civic groups up and down the county..
My L.A. Daily News political reporter son-in-law (and my equally talented journalist daughter Cathy who's talking time our of her reporter career to raise a family) helped me polish my 60 second radio spots, position papers, debate talking points, and Convention speech. My old missionary companion Joel Dunn (Lorin's brother), proprietor of the Tooele Transcript, printed my campaign literature at cost. The family-owned O.H. Gygi`Co. let me put up a fifteen foot banner on the back of their building facing the I-15 (which Todd had to spend $6000 per copy per two week term to equal with his I-15 ads). Lola did her computer magic to print the address labels for 720 State Convention candidates so four of us could do the mailing it would have cost a mini fortune to have a commercial firm handle. A couple of dozen nephews and nieces and some friends and in-laws helped phone all the candidates with my message, as well as putting up placards in a hundred and fifty front yards on most of the main thoroughfares around town. And a very special niece and her two teen-age daughters devoted a couple of weekends to decorating and staffing my booths at the County and State Conventions.
I didn't spend the million Olene told me I'd need. I spent just under $6000. But I think my campaign was just as impressive as anyone's. I more than held up my end in each of the debates (I'd feared the old debating skill and missionary street meeting wit might have evaporated with the years -- but they hadn't). This was the upside of my political experience. One doesn't have to be a millionaire to run a decent campaign. (Though one must concede that Merrill Cook told me he'd spent a quarter of a million on his pre-Convention campaign and expected to spend another $800,000 during the Primary and November campaigns -- and he's the guy who survived the Convention).
. If I say so myself, I was the only candidate with workable solutions rather than platitudes, on the budget, gun control, and national morality issues. My booths were as well-decorated. The refreshments my niece provided as delectable. My grand-nieces who "worked the floor" for me cuter and just as effective as anyone else's adult floor workers. And the kids agreed it was a good practical supplement to their high school civics courses.
Indeed, any number of delegates told me that they thought my background was the most impressive and my positions the best-considered, nuanced (and honest). But that they'd have to vote for a better-known candidate to prevent Merrill Cook from winning. This was the downside, and where my education about practical national (and Utah) politics was deepened. I'd naively assumed the job of the media was to present the background and positions of the candidates so voters could make an informed choice. To be sure, my journalist daughter and son-in-law had cautioned me that this is no longer how journalists view their profession. They now see themselves as "opinion makers". This means They decide who the viable candidates will be, based on the positions the media believe should be supported. And ignore the other candidate(s). And ignore they did. Only two TV channels bothered to cover my announcement at Brighton High School -- pre-selected, with the approval of the Principal, to help with the name recognition problem (my maternal grandfather gave me Brighton as my middle name). But each TV crew carefully positioned its camera to cut off the school name placard just above my head (this had to be deliberate). And gave me only a five second flash in the evening news with not a word of my message. Carol Nixon got a solid hour on KALL -- during which she avoided taking a position on a single issue, invariably responding, "Well, I'd have to think about that". I'd`been of the opinion that anyone seriously presenting him/herself for national office should already have the background and experience to have thought long and deeply about the issues confronting the state and nation and have carefully formulated positions to share with his/her constituency.
The Trib accorded me an interview, but deliberately misrepresented my positions on abortion and gun control. The DesNews promised an interview, but apparently higher authority decided somewhere along the line that I wasn't well enough known after forty years away from the State representing the nation as a diplomat to be worth wasting newsprint on. And when KSL talk show hostess Amy Iverson told me she was eager to have me in for a half hour one on one interview to talk about my "colorful background and unique qualifications", she was also overruled up the line, and later called to apologize for reneging.
So political life ain't quite as simple or straightforward as I'd naively believed. Hatch and Bennett were anxious that Utah not send a politically unpredictable Cook to Washington. But the Utah media certainly didn't cooperate in this regard and we may yet have Merrill Cook -- Republican, Democrat, Independent, and again (putative) Republican, with every possible position on every possible issue depending on the audience he's speaking to, during seven different candidacies for virtually every possible office over the past ten years -- Utah's Harold Stassen. I have yet to read an analysis from any local media pundit explaining how this happened when everyone was not voting for me specifically to make sure Cook didn't win! As (Dem, but good friend) Gunn McKay told me when he called to wish me luck and share experiences, "Don't forget that Delegates lie to you".
And I believe my campaign made a contribution to the contemporary political debate. My positions on several issues -- centrally related to my proposal for the formal readoption of the IXth and Xth amendments in the exact same language as at present to send the strongest possible signal to the White House, the Congress, and every level of the federal court system that We the People still mean it: Feds keep out of territory reserved to the States -- thus providing a solid legislative, legal, and constitutional basis for restoring state sovereignty in areas not specifically delegated to the federal level, including local control over education, medical standards (abortion), gun control, and other moral-issue-related legislation -- was picked up by Todd Neilson. Which is why I was happy to support him and what gives me hope that even out of the race, my influence and thinking had some effect.
The Great Caribbean Cruise
Apart from the fun of the campaign, we had even more fun at the end of our home leave. Lola insisted we join my two sisters and their husbands on a Caribbean cruise to decompress from the campaign -- a trip which cost as much as my entire campaign -- giving some idea of Lola's notion of financial priorities. But we did have a good time). We stopped in Haiti, the Virgin Islands, and the Bahamas, ate ourselves half to death, and saw Bob win the trophy for passenger talent night. And, above all, had a glorious time with my two sisters and great brother-in-law.
Geneva Switzerland
Arrived in Geneva hoping we could use this last assignment (for Lola) to apply our housing allowance to buy an apartment for use during retirement visits to Europe. But we found the legal impediments to buying even in Geneva presented problems. And we almost immediately lucked into such a nice apartment being vacated by a departing US Mission officer, that we ended up signing a lease to rent. Place is among the nicest we've lived in, close to the Mission, close to the Botanical Gardens, and with a terrific view of Mont Blanc in the distance.
Our first Sunday we sat next to Mission President Glen Lund and his wife Ann. They invited us home for lunch and then to accompany them to a baptism in Lausanne. Found our President Lund had been LDS Servicemen's coordinator in France while serving as Flight Surgeon, just before John Montrose, to whom I was Counselor, took over. So we had many memories in common.
Soon after our arrival Lola's niece Kayleen and her two daughters Libby and Abby, and her brother Perry, with his wife, son, and three daughters all came to see us. Took the bunch on the grand circuit -- Interlaken, Lucerne, Bern (where we again visited Kappelen where the Gygi great grandfather came from), and back to Geneva. On our way to Interlaken we drove over the Jaun pass, a sort of back route high Alpine pass tourists never see. Fantastic! Drove down the Emmental to Lake Thun and the Brienzersee.
Following week we drove to Paris so Kayleen and Abs could fly home. Perry and his family had independently also gone to Paris. We stayed with former Stake President Daniel Pichot and his family in the Paris suburb of Lagny. The Pichots put us up in the room they'd christened "The Timmins Room" when we'd been entertained at a farewell dinner twelve years before, while they were still in the process of moving into their new home. We linked up with the Perry Gygi family and did all the main sights together: the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the new Musee d'Orsay, the Rodin and Monet Museums, Mont Martre, and the night Bateau Mouche on the Seine. Fun. Kayleen and Abs flew off two days later and we drove back to Geneva with Libby, who stayed with us for a few more weeks until school started.
Kept myself occupied in Switzerland teaching at the Geneva Campus of Webster University, whose home campus is in St. Louis. Taught courses in Business and Society (essentially an ethics course), and International Business Law. Small classes, good students, about a third European, a third American, and a third from Third World countries.
One of the trips we took with Libs was to the Verona Opera Festival. We left right after work on a Friday and drove via the Grand St. Bernard pass to Turin and on to Milan (couple of days later the radio announced the Grand St. Bernard was to close for the winter on Sept. 28. There is already snow on the Susten and other high passes. So Abby just made the Grand St. Bernard crossing in time. We arrived fairly early in Milan where we stayed the night and saw the Sforza Castle, the Cathedral, and the oldest shopping mall in the world, the Galleria -- which just celebrated its hundredth anniversary. Had a terrific meal in a restaurant in the Galleria. Thought of our trips with Cathy around the passes of the Swiss Alps. Unfortunately, 'cause it was socked in we didn't bother with the side rip to Zermatt with Libby. But maybe we'll have another chance before Libby leaves. Cathy mentioned in a recent letter that she and Patrick were planning to come maybe next year. We're looking forward to doing Europe with them and have invited her to do some of the detailed planning she's good at. We also hope we'll be seeing the Dunn family (many or all, or maybe just the two of you) while we're here.
We found Verona crowded for the festival. First night we saw the Barber of Seville. Next day, Sunday, we hurried over to Venice (only an hour's drive at Lola velocity) to show Libby the Grand Canal, the Doge's Palace, and the Basilica. Turned out they were also having a regatta on the Grand Canal and all vaporrettos were stopped. We had to get back to our car and do the drive back to Verona for the evening's opera -- Carmen. So we had to hire a motor launch to take us the long way around the outer islands. Cost us fifty bucks. But there was no alternative. Then Carmen was rained out after the second act. But it was impressive. Two hundred and fifty people on stage for the crowd scenes. Voices were good and costuming outstanding.
On our way back we drove through a Lombardy town called Pescheria and thought of Mark's period as a missionary in Pescara. We'd have enjoyed having him with us. With him along we wouldn't have had to struggle with our half dozen words of Italian eked out with a little Spanish (which actually goes a long way).
Had planned to drive back via the Brenner pass which I'd never done, and then do the Romansch part of Switzerland -- which I'd also never seen -- visiting Davos and St. Moritz, with a side trip to Zermatt. But when we woke up Monday (Labor Day morning) the weather was socked in and we decided it wouldn't be worth the trouble of driving over the several high passes and just zipped directly back via Milan, Turin, and the St. Bernard tunnel. It was a fun trip. Bought some delicious apricots near a high pass in Valais on the Swiss side.
To travel in Italy, we had to get a CH oval to put near our license plate -- as per all cars in Europe which travel outside the country they're registered in. Lola bought the biggest CH possible and stuck it on the painted area of the trunk instead of on the bumper. They don't come off easily, and stuck on the painted area means it's on there for good, whether we bring the car home or not. Made me so mad! I'd always wondered why Switzerland uses a CH. Logical. It stands for Confederation Helvetica , Switzerland's legal name.
One of the nice things about having our grandchildren growing up is that we get to enjoy their developing talents -- and wit. Both Davey and Stevey Brown are talented pianists. And both are computer mavens. One of the advantages of being in Geneva is that the headquarters of the International Telecommunications Organization is here. And it accords members of the U.S. Mission free access to its overseas communications facilities. So we can e-mail friends and family all over the world. I only wrote my Grandmother Timmins a couple of postcards in my life. Already Steve Brown is telling us all about his affairs and send examples of his wit, which Lola's co-workers have found side-splitting. So far the granddaughters seem not to have developed the same interest in computers -- though Kristen sent us a nice e-mail note of thanks for attending her baptism and for the birthday gift we gave her. And while Brighton is clever enough about computers, he's apparently not much of a correspondent. He prefers snowboarding -- at which he's as expert as his dad was at skiing. By the way, his little brother Holland is truly an authentic grandson: he was born with the same button on the side of his left little finger which I have -- though his parents wisely had it surgically removed, whereas mine is still there to get snagged and bleed a little from time to time.
Closing Word
The first volume of my personal history was written to cover my life from recalled pre-natal memories through collage and mission. Volume Two covered graduation, marriage, entry into the Foreign Service, the birth and upbringing of my four children, career until my divorce, meeting with Lola, and senior Foreign Service assignments until my retirement following service as Charge in Guatemala. Volumes I and II thus cover the first fifty years of my life. This writing, Volume III, treats the following sixteen years -- in effect, the third quarter of my anticipated life story. As those close to me are aware, the great disappointment of my life (other than losing Laurel -- life's major tragedy), has been failure to conclude my career with an ambassadorship -- possibly owing to the steps I took In Guatemala in an attempt to hurry things along. But I was actively engaged in the Dole campaign at the time of this writing (the outcome of which proved another disappointment). But who knows what may yet transpire. Current plans are to wait to see what the next few years will bring, penning Volume IV perhaps in my late 70s or early 80s, if sufficiently interesting events occur to make the effort worthwhile -- and if my health and mind hold up.
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