History of Jerald Wesley Glenn (1904-1991), Part 4: Addendum

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History of the Kimberly, Idaho Ward

My mission was in Australia, the land down under. It was all one mission at that time, mostly in the Eastern part, Melbourne, Sidney, Adelaide in Australia, and Hobart in Tasmania. I spent about six months in Hobart, Tasmania, and Melbourne, seven months in Adelaide and 6 months in Sidney. We went by ship, which took us 21 days. We stopped in Hawaii. The sea was awfully rough when we went out. We bucked an 80-mile gale for 4 days. We’d be steaming full speed ahead and make about 4 to 5 knots an hour. We were about 10 hours late getting into Honolulu. We stopped there at 6 o’clock in the evening and left at 10 PM. So, that’s all we saw of Honolulu on the way out. It wasn’t the resort area like it is now. We stopped in Samoa. The Samoans were all down there to meet us. Somehow they always knew when the missionaries were coming and they would be down there to meet the missionaries. Even though we were going to stop, they’d be there. We stopped in the Fijian Islands, the black people, but they are not Negroes. People wondered why some of those black people worked on the New Zealand temple. They are not Negroes, so they could work on the temple, and hold the priesthood. They are Melanesians. That’s about the same as your New Zealand people are, but somehow or other these people’s skin was black, just like a Negro, while in New Zealand they are a very dark brown. Then we landed in Australia 21 days after we left San Francisco. On our mission that is about all we did was tracting. There were no organized presentations. We just taught. I was in the mission field 2 years, plus the 21 days going and 21 days coming home. I came home on the same ship I went out on, the Sonoma, with one smoke stack. It was a big ship when it was built. It was mostly a passenger ship. It took some freight, but not much. When I went out it was on its 81st trip to San Francisco and back. They make a trip every three months. I landed in Sidney, Australia on the 10 January 1926 and started home 10 February 1928. I got home on the 10 of March.

I met my wife to be sometime during the summer. I met her at a dance hall in Twin Falls. The building is Blacker’s Furniture store now (corner of 2nd Ave. E and 2nd St.). George Miller is the one that got us together. We courted about 8 or 9 months. Our favorite things to do were take a ride in the car. That’s about all there was to do. We were married 30 August 1929, in the Salt Lake Temple. We went alone. For our honeymoon Dad let us have enough money and time to drive to Portland, Oregon, and back. We lived on the farm where Kevin Glenn lives now (l mile N, 1/2 E, and 1/4 N, of Kimberly, Idaho). The original farm that Andrew Glenn and Mary E. Tolman Glenn took out of sagebrush), in the house my Dad built. Dad was renting some ground so it seems to me we had about 240 acres to farm. Dad and my brothers, (Wendell, Calvin, and Kimber) and I tried to farm together, but it didn’t work. After my Dad died in 1933, Mother gave us each a share of the farm. Mine was the 40 acres l mile N and l mile W, NW corner, from Kimberly, Idaho, where we lived 33 years. We had a two-room house built there.

Dad and Wendell went to a sugar beet meeting in Twin Falls. Wendell was driving and they parked across from the courthouse by the City Park. Dad got out of the car, walked around and a car hit him right there. It broke three of his ribs and his lungs filled up with water. They didn’t have any way of getting it out then. Now, medically, they could pump it out and save him. This was in 1933. I was 29 years old.

It was hard to make a living. We raised, grain, beans for seed, some sugar beets, peas for seed, and alfalfa. We had milk cows, three or four, sometimes five. We had chickens. We lived on stuff we raised. The farm had a lot of Morning Glories on it that we used to salt them to kill them until we could find something better. Then we used to gas them to kill them. I got my first tractor in 1944. Until then I farmed with horses. We had a caterpillar to pull the plow and do the heavy work. It would pull a two-furrow plow. When I got the little Ford tractor, I had a plow built for it with only one plow, but it got the work done. The tractor would pull the small combines that we used then

A day’s work began by getting up about six in the morning. Before breakfast we took care of the animals and the irrigating... Then the rest of the day was spent in whatever had to be done. After supper it was taking care of the animals and irrigating again. In the winter time I spent four years of work in the bean (seed beans) house, spent a couple of years sorting potatoes which was done in a cold old ‘spud’ cellar. In 1940 I started working at the sugar factory.

J. Wesley Glenn working on machinery at the sugar factory.

I worked at the filters which filtered the impurities out of the beet juice. The last few years I worked on the generators keeping the pumps running. There were about 50 sets of pumps there. Each one had its job to do. So, you had to watch them, oil them when needed, making sure they weren’t getting too hot, etc. We didn’t have too much problem with them. I worked 20 campaigns (winters). I took a mechanic course by mail, which helped me repair the car and farm equipment.

We didn’t really want to leave the farm. Son, Derald, talked us into it. We moved into Kimberly, July 1968, but I still farmed with Derald (Derald Boyd Glenn). It was maybe ten years after we moved into Kimberly that I farmed with Derald. Derald came down from Seattle to work with us in 1957. I let him gradually take over and that was the way it was done. I still irrigate 80 acres. He won’t let me do any machine work anymore. In fact, the machines have gotten too sophisticated for me. Now days the tractors have cabs with heaters when it’s cold and air conditioners when it’s hot. Not like I used to do. I heard one farmer say, “It’s no different than you in your office. Don’t you think I ought to have the same?” Farming used to be hot and cold. In the Spring and sometimes Fall, you’d put on lots of clothes to keep warm while you plowed, in the Summer you wore a straw hat and the sweat would roll off your head and face. There was no protection from the weather. I always wore my overall jeans and blue shirt and still wear them. The thing I liked about farming was that you weren’t tied to anyone thing all the time. In the spring, it was preparing the soil and planting. In the fall it was harvesting the crops. In the summer, it was keeping it wet and weeded. You had to have crop rotation to keep your ground in condition. Derald has about the same rotation now that I did, except for sugar beets and potatoes. Potatoes and sugar beets take too much expensive equipment. When I started farming, the sagebrush had all been clear from the land. When this country started up in four or five years the sage brush was all gone. As we got heavier equipment more leveling of the ground was done. They build what they called a land plane. It was pulled by four horses. It would be about seven or eight feet long, just boards nailed together. If you wanted to dig a hole, you would hold it like this (demonstrating with his hands), it had a handle on it and a rope on it to pull it back and you would hold that so it would dig and when you wanted to dump it, you would just turn it over and the dirt would gradually spill out. The plane was not the same thing as the scoop we used pulled by the caterpillar tractor to dig the basement for the two rooms we added on to the house just before Derald was born in 1936. We had to dynamite the big rocks loose in digging the basement. We dug two or three basements for other people, as that caterpillar was the only thing we had to get in and out of basements with. The old Kimberly Ward building was built when we came here, but it wasn’t a ward yet.

Moena and Donald were born in the hospital. Patricia and Derald were born at home. I stayed at home and farmed when the babies were born. The cows had to be taken care of and the irrigation water had to be taken care of regardless. (Dad (Wesley) couldn't be around sickness of any kind. If he cut his finger and it had a drop of blood, he would faint. Patricia).

Velma and I traveled some after the children were grown. When the children were in school, (college) we traveled to Moscow, Idaho (University of Idaho) taking them up to school in the fall and home in the summer. Had to rescue Moena one Christmas when she was riding back with other students and had a car wreck. She telephoned and we drove up to the middle of the North-South Highway of Idaho to get them and take them on up to Moscow. Then drove back home to Kimberly. When Derald and Lois were in Seattle and Moena and Van lived in Tacoma, Washington, we traveled a different route each time we went so we’d see more country. We took a temple (the ones that were built then) tour, one back east to New York, etc for three weeks.

My second mission was different. Velma was my companion. We did no tracting. We spent our time in the Independence, Missouri Visitor’s Center. People would come in and talk to us. When they came in the Visitor’s Center they were on our ground instead of us being on their ground. It was much easier to talk with them. When they came in they were interested in knowing about the Center so they would talk to us. On my mission to Australia it was hard for me because I wasn’t a talker and we had no set outline to give. In a survey we did we found that about five percent of the people we talked to showed some interest in the Gospel.

J. Wesley and Velma Glenn

Independence Missouri Mission

1972-1974

The last six years I have been in the Church’s extraction program. That’s quite interesting. We read the films of birth, marriage, or death records of different countries and take the information that we need to identify a person and put it on cards We need his birth date, and place, his name, his sex, parents, etc. We have to be able to read (some in foreign language) enough of what we need. Then we put it on cards and these cards are checked for accuracy, then the cards go to Pocatello and are put on computer printouts and sent to the temple from there. The temples wouldn’t have anything to do if we didn’t do our work in extraction. Name extraction furnishes about 85% of names the temples use. I go about 5 days a week. I try to put 15 to 20 hours a week on it. Ordinarily, I try to leave home about noon, go to the Kimberly Stake House 1 1/4 miles north of Kimberly, and come back about 4 PM.

None of our children are number one. We love each one of them. We’re probably closer to Derald and Patricia because they have lived close. Moena has been back east for years (Wisconsin) so we only see her once a year or something like that; Don now lives over in Jerome. He is so busy that we don’t see too much of him. Of course, Derald, I’ve been working with him on the farm since 1957. Moena and Patricia could sing. They went into choral music in school. All four children were in band. Moena and Patricia were in percussion. Donald played the clarinet and Derald the oboe.

The one thing I would like to leave to my posterity is…Live Your Religion. That has kept me going in my life. The older I get the more I see that we need to Live Your Religion (The Gospel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints). My testimony is that I Know the Church is true and that comes by revelation. The more I study it and get into it the more I know about the truthfulness of the Church.