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My childhood home was a happy one with five children, Beverley, Aubrey Ronald, Jay, Dennis, myself and parents Myra and Reuben Thelin. We lived on a farm in Orton, Alberta, Canada in the middle of the southern Alberta prairie. Everyone worked very hard. Life on the homestead was not easy. There was always hard work to be done in a farm atmosphere. Chickens, pigs, sheep and turkeys needed to be fed. Cows were to be milked morning and night.
Crops needed to be planted, harvested and then planted and harvested year after year. Too many a spring saw the wheat or barley crop flattened to the ground by an insidious hailstorm buffeting the fields. We had no running water until I was three years old and washed laundry with an old wringer washer .

We heated our small three room farmhouse with a large pot-belly coal stove in the living room/master bedroom. The wood-burning stove in the kitchen was always lit, making home-made bread, cooking large amounts of food for the threshers during harvest time. The stove heated water on Saturday night for the metal bathtub. The youngest of five bathed first. Mother and father bathed last. I always wondered how my father ever got clean!!!

One of my fond memories was during a late spring snow storm a baby lamb was born. My father tenderly carried the lamb into the house. He filled a glass pop bottle with warm milk, attached a big nipple and I was given the opportunity of feeding the baby lamb. Then as the fire in the stove died down the lamb had a warm place in a basket on the open door of the stove.

A small bedroom added on after the house was built was where I slept. In the winter the wind blew the snow under the window sill into the room during furious blizzards. Because of the cold I slept under many heavy quilts and my head underneath to keep warm.

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Next to the farmhouse was a two-seater outhouse,(probably the only excuse our parents could use to be alone). Toilet paper was the Sears catalog. I have a vivid memory of our small black dog accidentally falling through one of the outhouse holes. That dog smelled terrible for weeks!!!

At age four, when my parents were gone, I climbed our windmill without permission (what a little rebel). My older sister, Beverley was baby-sitting. When I climbed to the top I suddenly was overwhelmed by how high I was and lost my balance. I fell onto a pipe sticking out of the ground. Six stitches were eventually administered to the under-side of my little chin. I have often thought how close that pipe came to my vocal chords. At an early age God was aware of me and blessed me to only have minor injuries.

I’m told that my mother, Myra Elizabeth Helton, sang to her children in our home. Sacrament meetings and other venues were also graced with her beautiful voice. From a young age I loved to sing also. When I was in fifth grade I competed in a school vocal contest. My school teacher was a beautiful teacher Mrs. Asachuck (she needed to be good-looking with a name like that!). She gently encouraged me to enter the contest and sing “The Child and the Snowdrop.” I was very nervous. The words were:

“Pretty white flowr’t where did you hide
When the winter storms raged far and wide.”

At an early age I became acquainted with death, and the pain and anguish associated with it. When I was six years old my mother passed away of an embolism in the lungs.

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She had entered the hospital with a blood clot in her leg. Overnight the clot moved and entered her lungs, killing her. This was in the days when there were not blood thinners available. My father was forced to return home to inform us she had passed away. At the funeral I remember sitting in the front row with my family. I was puzzled why everyone else was crying so I cried too. My father took a picture of Dennis, Jay and I at the cemetery. They had sad looks on their faces and mine was wreathed with a broad smile. That fall I was sent to reside with my Aunt Arrilla and Uncle Ron Wright in Charlo, Montana. They took great care of me and loved me and I loved and adored them. I attended first grade there.

I missed my family so much. Aunt Rilla wrote to my father. She mentioned there was a lady divorcee living in her rental house next door. She felt Mary Jessen Smith would make a great wife for Bob, my father. My father came to take me back to the farm and at the same time asked Mary if she would consider coming to the farm for the summer as a housekeeper. She said yes. At the end of the summer my father proposed and they were married in September 1959.

Two years after my mother passed away my father re-married Mary Jessen Smith. I sang at the lovely wedding in Ronan, Montana. I sang the song

“True Love” and “Love and Marriage, Go Together like a Horse and Carriage.”

The friends I made in first grade in Montana were the Maughan girls. They were Mary’s grandchildren! What a small world.

Our “Little House on the Prairie Life,” saw blowing and drifting snow. There were no mountains to stop the wind. My father visited southern Alberta later in life and said,

“I don’t know how I lived in such a windy place for fifty years!”

The temperature on the prairie was often minus zero down to fifty below; biting cold for Dad and my older brothers to do chores.

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Our family owned a six-man toboggan and used it for tons of winter fun. I seemed to always be the tag-along with my older brothers up to the foothills by the river. It seemed like a dream as we zoomed down those hills a hundred miles an hour!!!. It was so very cold but we never noticed. We were having too much fun. Jay and Dennis flooded the pasture with water close to the turkey coops. Overnight the water would freeze into a gala hockey rink. We played hockey (they played, I watched). "Bullet" was our German Shepherd dog who loved to play goalie. I was always puzzled how that dog could stop the puck every time with his teeth and not break them.

Old Man River beckoned all of us in the summer. It was fun to splash and swim in the clear water. It sounded like this:

“Let’s see how much we can splash Julie!"

A deep water hole on a bend in the river was our favorite. Jay and Dennis jumped off the steep cliff over and over again. I was too chicken to jump off! I happily watched from the sidelines.

We did not have a television, but we walked a half mile to Lee Orr’s house to assemble ourselves in front of his T.V. When our father married Mary Jessen Smith in September of 1959, she brought with her a TELEVISION! We liked to watch anything that emanated from that blue, glaring screen. We were transfixed.

Because my father still needed to send his youngest two sons on missions we moved to Beaverton, Oregon for a better financial life. We had a farm auction, sold all our farm machinery and rented out the land to the neighbors.

We must have looked like the Beverly Hill Billies as we crossed the line from Canada. Our half-ton GMC truck was loaded to over-flowing with ALL of our possessions. We were required to register as legal aliens and required to keep our green cards with us at all times. It was funny to tell people that I was an ALIEN!

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My sixth grade teacher in Beaverton, Oregon was Mr. Bray. He was very strict and demanded strict adherence to his class rules. Moving from Southern Alberta to Beaverton Oregon was unquestionably a culture clash. I asked Mr. Bray for an elastic and he promptly aimed and threw his chalk eraser at my head. I learned to keep my mouth shut after that. Kids in class made fun of me because of the way I talked.

I wore glasses for a year and expressed an interest in contacts. My parents said I could not get contacts. I told them I would save up all my money to buy them myself anyway! (a little rebellious streak). They weren’t happy. Three hundred dollars later I was wearing contacts and loving them. Doing janitorial work with my Dad had been worth the price!

I tried out for summer stock theater after my freshman year. The play was "Little Abner," and I was just part of the chorus. However, I gained the confidence I needed to tryout for plays my Sophomore year.

At sweet sixteen I started going steady with Mark Houglum, a Lutheran boy in my high school choir. He had a deep baritone voice that impressed me, along with his kind and giving nature. When Mark went away to college at Pacific Lutheran University, I still continued on with my senior year of high school. It became my most memorable year.

I tried out for “The Sound of Music” and was pleasantly surprised to get the lead part Julie Andrews played in the movie. Working with eight children from the community was so very fun and convinced me that I wanted to have a lot of children. Long practices were every night of the week until 10:30 P.M. Tedious hours of practice paid off in the spring when we played to packed houses for four nights in a row. I wore a nuns habit; strange for a Mormon girl!. I wore a wedding dress and walked down the aisle to get married at age sixteen. But most of all I loved the singing and the acting. It was a very thrilling experience, one I will fondly remember!

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As a result of my leading role in The Sound of Music, everyone in school knew who I was. I was nominated to the Spring Prom Court. I chose Hal Reiter to be my escort. It was held at the Masonic Temple in downtown Portland. Our dresses were made of white cotton material with tiny red cherries as accent. I was so grateful that my sister-in –law Betty Thelin sewed the dress. She did a lot of sewing for me since my step-mother did not sew.

My parents were always very supportive of everything I did; my voice lessons, my Young Women’s activities, dating, sports. I did not participate in any organized sports during high school. It is something that I regret.

I attended Seminary for three years until my senior year. I enjoyed Seminary a lot. I loved learning more about the gospel and never went to sleep in class. Two of my three years my teacher was a man. I learned so much from both of them.

Because I was so busy with drama my senior year I felt it would be too taxing to arise so early in the morning. I was right. Some of the play practices were until 10:30 night after night. I do wish now that I had taken all four years of Seminary. However, at Brigham Young University I made sure to take Old Testament, the subject I missed in Seminary.

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I applied to BYU and was excited to be accepted. I majored in Applied Music the first year. I also thought a lot about what I would do with that major when I graduated. I didn’t like the prospect of performing in night clubs where there was smoking and drinking. I did not want to be around those kinds of negative influences. I changed to Elementary Education. I did well and enjoyed my classes tremendously. Looking back, it was the best decision I ever made because it prepared me to become a better mother.

The summer of my freshman year I worked as a waitress at a coffee shop in Beaverton, Oregon. I liked schmoozing with people and listening to their problems. I did not especially like serving coffee. I could not stand the smell of it but always thought of that paycheck. I felt at ease talking and interacting with adults.

The late 1960’s was the era of mini-skirts. I had been forbidden to wear them in high school. My step-mother (bless her heart) used to touch the back of my knee to see if my skirt was long enough. Otherwise I had to wear a different skirt that was longer. I obeyed. When I went to college my skirts became shorter and shorter because nobody was measuring behind my knee. I rebelled a little. I never was into the extreme mini-skirts but my skirts were short. (Two to three inches above the knee)

The second and third summers I worked at a discount super store. The first summer I worked as a checker and the last summer in the paint department. (I felt so qualified. Not!) I had to pretend I knew more than I did about paint. That last summer I met Frank Reuben Marchant at M-Men and Gleaners. He was tall, dark and handsome. Our first date was tennis. Boy did he have a killer serve. Even though he won the match I still accepted a second date and saw him every day through the summer. He asked me to marry him at the Oregon Coast on a singles bus excursion.