LaPRIEL IN LOVE

We never had much contact with our Riggs family after Grandma died, for some reason, which always made me sad...

LaPriel died of cancer when I was just about 2-1/2 years old.  Just months before Steve was born.  You wouldn't think I would remember much about her, but I do.  Just a few memories.  Little girl memories.  I'll share those another day.

In my teenage and young adult years, I often was filled with the wish to know more about her--to talk to someone that knew her well when she was the age I was then--the years before even Dad knew her.  I wanted to know about the girl before she was a momma--before she was a grandma.  There was only one person I could think of to talk to--and that was her sister, Veon.  A woman that I don't remember even meeting before.

I would forget about this desire during these busy years of my life--but, once in a while, it would pop up again with great force.  Until finally, one day, I did something about it.

We were visiting the Phoenix area in the summer of 1998, when all three of my girls were quite young.  Before heading to Phoenix, I'd found Veon's phone number somehow and called her.  She called me back and we set up a time to meet in her home.

I was so nervous--but I just felt this great excitement that I can't even express!  I didn't want to mess up this perhaps once-in-a-lifetime-chance, so I even had prepared questions to ask her--brought a pad of paper--and just prepared to ask her everything and capture each and every word.

She opened the door to greet me and I was just flooded with feelings.  She looked like LaPriel.  I just felt for a second as if it was my own Grandma that opened the door so warmly to me.  She hugged me and we sat down in her cozy living room.

She knew what I had come for, and said--"Just ask me whatever you'd like, my dear."

And so, I did.

They had been so close growing up, these two sisters.  So many memories.  I'll share more another time--but a couple of you asked courtship questions--so today we'll meet the young LaPriel just before and during the time she met Rudger... Veon shared with me a couple of fun details!

"When she was seventeen years old," Veon told me, "she was named 'Miss Boise Idaho'.  She had shoulder-length, dirty-blonde hair--she was really beautiful.  She was always very popular with the opposite sex.  I always wanted to grow up like her."

"Star Valley, Wyoming--one summer (while their father was doing business there), she left a whole string of broken hearts.  Lots of boys adored her.  One night, she was serenaded by one boy, singing 'Red River Valley'.  She was about seventeen then.

"Pauline (Rudger's mother) and our mother, Mary, were girlhood friends.  They used to lay on the bed and chat about when they each got married, and that one would have a boy and one a girl--and they'd get married.

(I'm going to add some of Great-Grandma Pauline's account of their meeting and courtship here--she gives even more details in her written memoir--thanks Grandma Pauline!)

"On a Saturday evening, 11 October, 1933, our friends Don and Marie (Mary) Riggs came over with their daughters, LaPriel and Veon.  They were now living in St. Johns engaged in the hotel and restaurant business.  LaPriel and her mother were working beyond their limit...

"We invited them to Sunday dinner.  Our eligible sons were both home.  Rudger was giving his dad a big boost in gathering the big corn crop for our three silos.  All our family members were home on this day, except David.  What a good, happy time we did have with our old friends!  It was suggested LaPriel should remain a few days and have a rest.  She had brought no change of clothes, but she could wear mine or Ida's, which she did.  Her parents and Veon went home without her.  LaPriel and Ida slept over at Aunt Sophronia's, in grandmother's (Augusta Maria Outzen Smith) old home.

"The next day, when LaPriel came in to put on some work-a-day clothes, just before our noon meal was ready, I asked which were her choice.  'Why, overalls and shirt,' she said, with her sweet, charming laugh.

"Then, where would she sit at the big, well-filled kitchen table?  I assigned her to sit in Andrew's place by Rudger at the east end of the table.

"How would she choose to spend the afternoon?  With his adorable twinkle, Rudger bid that she could make a hand on the big wagon hauling loads of corn stalks to be chopped into silage.  LaPriel accepted at once!  So it was that she spent the two afternoons of her stay.

"In the eyes of the harvest gang, Rudger Smith surely had found his 'Lady Fair.'

After the hard day's work, showers and supper, Pauline continued, "they HAD to take the horses to the field in the twilight.  This was down the cedar-lined 'lover's lane', the same lane down which Asahel and I had strolled twenty-five years before, as well as many other couples.  It was a perfect setting, was it not?

"Her mother later said that LaPriel announced to her as she came into her arms on her return home, 'Mother, I am engaged!'"

Back to Veon's memories:  "LaPriel and Rudger fell in love the first weekend they met.  Aunt Pauline and Mother were SO happy about it!

"I remember the night she came home from Snowflake saying she was in love with 'Aunt' Pauline's son."

"'I know it's love', she said, 'because he doesn't dress the way I like--he wears "speckled" shirts!'"
(Veon then explained  that "speckled shirts" were plaid flannel shirts!)

We'll let Pauline's precious words written about this exciting time finish up our story:

"By Thanksgiving, Rudger had earned enough cash on a road job right in Snowflake to buy a simple little diamond ring, which he took to her on his first visit (taking a thirty-mile horseback ride to Vernon) to get her parents' consent.

"His youngest brother, Richard, had spied the ring (in Rud's dresser drawer--which Henry showed to him!), and announced to his 3rd-grade teacher, 'Rudger has bought LaPriel a diamond ring!'  The teacher shared the news with the 4th-grade teacher, and so on and so on!  The announcement party was all over before it started!  Rudger was furious!

"Years later, when Rudger was more prosperous, he wanted to provide LaPriel with a more suitable ring.  But LaPriel continued to wear the small diamond because, she said, it had so much sentiment for her."

Well, there we go, my dear family.  Just a few words shared about a very important time in our own history.  Don't you wish we could have witnessed that twilight walk back in 1933?  Maybe--just maybe, we did.

A BEGINNING

She would be 103 years old today.

February 18, 1915.  Amazing.

She was there the day I was born.  The mother of my mother.  One who I always loved to learn from.  To please.  It gave me such joy to make her proud of me...

And I love her.

She taught me to make a house a home--just as she taught my mother.  She taught me by her actions that cleanliness truly was next to Godliness.  

She taught me the lovely, quiet arts of knitting, crocheting, needlework--and I loved sitting next to her as she worked on a project of her own--it was never too much to stop her work and correct my fumbling, young fingers.

She was also one of the first ones who deeply instilled in my heart the love of family history.

She was rather immortal to me--such a presence in my life.

And then, one day, a phone call.  The voice of my Uncle Glenn, her son.  "Mom and I have been talking about her funeral.  She would like you to give her life story."  Nothing I wanted to think about.  I knew she was aging, fading--but planning her own funeral?  I hated the very thought of it!

But, not too long after that call, I was standing at the pulpit during her service; sharing with the overflowing chapel the life of this glorious woman.  My grandmother.

Velda Ellen Stapley Ostlund.

How do you encapsulate a living, breathing life to a series of letters and keystrokes?  You can't do it justice--but you can try.  And so I will.

This is a first of what I hope to be infinitely many attempts to capture the lives of those I love.  Some I have seen and loved and hugged and touched in this life, some I have not--but I know them and love them just the same.  Some were born in our century--some were born far centuries back.

I will try to be their voice.  I will try to speak to you for them.

I will try to somehow capture their stories for our family right here on these pages.  Hopefully we can feel of their love for us together as we do so--because their love for us is so very real.  I have felt it--and I know that you have, too.

My hope is that you will let me know which of our ancestors you'd like to know more about, and I will tell you their stories, share their pictures--anything I can--so that we can get to know them and love them more--together.

I chose the title for this blog from Malachi 4:5-6:
"Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:

 "And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse."

This turning is a real thing, my friends.  It is oh, so very real!  I have felt it too many times to doubt it.  When our hearts and thoughts are turned to them, theirs are turned to us.  The veil can be very, very thin when it needs to be.

But for this first story, I will keep it brief.  A birthday love letter to Velda from my heart to hers.   I will share one very special moment I had with her a few months after she passed away...

Velda--Grammie, as most of us called her--since the very first I can remember, would sign her letters & cards to her loved ones with as many XOXOXOXOXOXO's as they were old.  I loved this.  Sometimes I would count them with great joy, when I was young--making sure she didn't miss any!  As I grew older, my love for those X's and O's intensified as I saw them being painstakingly written by older, wrinkled but loving hands.  The letters shaky, but constant.  The intent the same...

We'll talk more about her death another day.  But on this one occasion-- about 4 months after she died--I woke up in the middle of the night.  Nothing had jostled me, no noises, no needs to get out of bed.  And so I just laid there........

And suddenly, running through my mind was this thought/image--almost audible.  Almost physical:

"XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO"

It was so present--so odd.  I kind of laughed quietly and wondered why.  And then it hit me. 

 It was early in the morning of February 18, 2002.  Velda's birthday.  I had been thinking of her so much the day before.  And I felt this was her loving, sweet message back that she was also thinking of me.  That she loved me.  That she was--in every way--still HER.

I smiled.  My eyes were a little teary.  And I said, in an audible whisper; "I love you, too, Grammie."

I very strongly felt that she heard me.  I smiled again.

And I fell asleep.

Thank-you, my dearest Malinda, for setting my feet on this path.  You were right--it needs to happen.  And here we go.....

I love you all.

Julie

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO