I feel like Nephi when he said “I, Nephi, being born of goodly parents, therefore I was taught,” I too, was born of goodly parents. My mother and her parents came to Zion from Denmark because they believed the gospel was true.
Walking in Obedience
My grandmother on my father’s side, along with her parents and a brother and two sisters, came to America where they arrived in St. Louis, Missouri with no funds. They were able to purchase only a handcart to carry their possessions. They were with the Willie Handcart Company, and left late in July.
We know of the trials suffered by the handcart companies; but it is special to me because I heard about it from my grandmother. She told me how sad she felt when her father died suddenly in the night and was laid to rest with twelve other persons. The ground was frozen so hard that they could not dig graves, so they piled the bodies together and put rocks and brush on top of them to keep the animals away. She had to leave him and go on. Today there is a marker of those who were buried there.
She told us of a blizzard, how they huddled up against a cliff at Martin’s Cove, waiting in hope of rescuers from Salt Lake City. She told of cold and hunger and how they would chew their fingers hoping to curb the hunger pains.
Early Years
I remember when my Grandmother died. In those days the casket was placed in the living room at home. Opal, my older sister and I were in the orchard with a friend and asked if she would like to see her. She said that she would, so we pulled a chair up to the casket. All three of us climbed up on the chair. As we were looking down on Grandma, one of her eyes opened. We fell off of the chair and ran as fast as we could, calling to my father. He came and put a silver dollar on her eye. We thought that for sure Grandma has come back to life.
I am the twelfth child born to Christian and Annie Jensen Ericksen, in Mt. Pleasant, Utah. After naming eleven children, you would think they might have run out of names, but they had plenty left over to name me Beatrice Christie Annie Ericksen. You might think there would be lots of noise with twelve children, but older sisters and brothers were either married or away from home working. It was just one sister, five years older, and I.
My mother was always singing church songs. When my sister and I would start arguing, Mother would sing “There is Beauty all Around“
Love at Home 1. There is beauty all around when there's love at home; There is joy in ev'ry sound when there's love at home. Peace and plenty here abide, smiling sweet on ev'ry side. Time doth softly, sweetly glide when there's love at home. Love at home, love at home; Time doth softly, sweetly glide when there's love at home. 2. In the cottage there is joy when there's love at home; Hate and envy ne'er annoy when there's love at home. Roses bloom beneath our feet; all the earth's a garden sweet, Making life a bliss complete when there's love at home. Love at home, love at home; Making life a bliss complete when there's love at home. 3. Kindly heaven smiles above when there's love at home; All the world is filled with love when there's love at home. Sweeter sings the brooklet by; brighter beams the azure sky. Oh, there's One who smiles on high when there's love at home. Love at home, love at home; Oh, there's One who smiles on high when there's love at home. Text and music: John Hugh McNaughton, 1829-1891
I had five older nephews and when the grandchildren came home they could get away with things that my sister and I never could, such as playing in the hay barn or climbing trees.
We had a great time when my sisters and brothers came to visit, usually the 4th or 24th of July. It was like Thanksgiving. We always had a big garden and fruit trees and a berry patch, so there was plenty to eat and lots of work.
We had little in the way of material things. I got my first “store bought” dress when I was in high school, and it was to wear on Sunday. But we were rich as far as love and caring were concerned.
I remember the depression, but we were never hungry. I remember when tramps would come begging for food, and my mother would feed them. We had cows, pigs and chickens. Mother would sell eggs to get money to buy cloth for clothes. I had $25 in a savings bank when the bank closed, and I thought how unfair it was for them to keep my money. It wasn’t much, but it was a lot to me.
My brother, Milan, went on a mission to Northern California in 1935. He gave me a Book of Mormon. Later, my parents and sister and I went to California to visit him. I was so proud of him, and have always looked up to him.
My father died the 21st of December 1937. Right after the funeral, my mother went to Salt Lake City so she could meet the train as my brother returned from his mission. He did not know that his father had died.
In the spring of 1938 I went to Salt Lake City to live with my sister, Evinda, while I went to high school. After I graduated I got a job in a restaurant, saving enough money for a $25 a month apartment. When my mother found out, she came to live with me to see that I was doing the things I should.
Difficult Teenage Years
I gave my mother grief when I was a teen-ager, but I worked hard and life was difficult after Dad died. He died on the 21st of December and the funeral was held on the 24th. I was twelve years old. That same day, December 24th, my brother was arriving home from his mission. After the funeral, Mother went to Salt Lake with my sister, Evinda, so she could meet my brother’s train. Mother stayed with Evinda for a while. She never returned to Mount Pleasant. Because of the depression, my brother had lost his job, so he and his family were living with us. The farm was left to him to take care of. From that time Mother just went from one family to the next, staying a month at a time, and helping when their children were born. With twelve children, there was always someone who needed her help. I stayed in Mount Pleasant until school was out, but then moved to Salt Lake. Even then I seldom saw my mother.
With the depression, Evinda was the only one who could afford to feed me so I stayed with her to finish school. She was a tough taskmaster, a fanatic about the church. If a salesman knocked on the door and she could smell smoke on him, she would shut the door in his face. I kept saying, “If I ever get out of this place, I’m never setting foot in the church again!“
Before I turned sixteen I got a job, and as soon as I could I got my own apartment and moved out. Evinda wrote Mother and told her I needed supervision, so Mother moved in with me. I went to school during the day and worked nights, and I turned every paycheck over to Mother who then paid the bills. I never had a penny to myself. I remember one time when she gave money to my brother’s wife to buy a new dress. Their son had been killed and Mother wanted her to have something nice to wear to the funeral. At the same time, I had been invited to the Prom. Mother wouldn’t let me spend the money for a dress because she said we couldn’t afford it, so I couldn’t go to the dance. I was really upset because I had earned the money and I had no say in how it was spent. Finally, my sister Ruth suggested that I keep the money and pay the bills myself. That way I could control my own money a little more. I followed her advice and finally I started to be able to save something.
I always put my extra cash behind a picture frame for safekeeping. One day Mother received a telegraph from my brother, Merlin, saying he needed money right away and asking her to send it to him. She took my money from behind the picture frame and sent it to him. It turned out that he wanted it for a new car. I didn’t have a car, and yet Mother had sent him my money to buy one. I was so mad! I wrote him a letter and I told him I had worked hard for that money and I wanted my money back. I was even more mad at Mother than him.
By this time, I had already met Bill, and by then he was in Nebraska. I decided I needed to get away. Once I had enough money saved I wrote him asking if I could go there. I left a month’s rent for Mother, took the train to Kearney, Nebraska, and rented a motel room. When I started to get low on cash I got a job so I could stay.
One day it was raining “cats and dogs” when Bill came to pick me up. He said, “Go get changed we’re getting married.” He had his lieutenant with him to serve as a witness. It wasn’t a total surprise because we had already discussed the possibility of marriage and, had even tried to get a marriage license, but I was just twenty years old and underage in Missouri. I had written to my Mother to send a notarized letter giving me permission to get married. I didn’t know if she would cooperate, but she did. Anyway, I changed into my Sunday dress and we were married by a minister. we came back to the hotel and I checked out of my room and we got a room for the two of us.
Marriage
In the fall of 1942, during World War II, a young Air Corps soldier came to the restaurant. He asked to take me home when I got off work. That was the beginning of a wonderful relationship.
I remember the card I received from a buddy of Bill’s when Bill went with me home from my weeks stay in Pocatello. He thought we were going to get married.
I saw Bill whenever he could get a three-day pass and could some to Salt Lake, until the last of January 1943 when he was shipped to Denver to go to Bomb-sight school. When he was through school we through he’d be sent to Salt Lake for replacement and we could be married, but as misfortune would have it his class mates were sent to Salt Lake and he was sent to Kearney, Nebraska. It was quite a disappointment.
June 1st, 1943, I left for Kearney, Nebraska. It had quit my job and had gone to marry Bill, but misfortune struck again. It was the day we went to get our marriage license, they told us that in the state of Nebraska a girl had to be 21 unless she has the consent of her parents; I was only 20 and no consent.
We went down town and sent a telegram to my Mother asking her for a written consent to our marriage. While waiting to hear from her I got a job at one of the cafe’s in town getting only $14.00 a week and my meals. A couple weeks later the written consent from my Mother arrived and we obtained our license.
June 27th, 1943 was on a Sunday and it had rained all day. Bill met me at the Cafe when I got off work at six-o’clock. He told me to go change my clothes, he had made arrangements with a minister to marry us that evening. At nine-o’clock we were married by a Methodist Minister names Roy N. Spooner. Our only witness was Bill’s lieutenant and his wife Mrs. Robert W. Schlotte.
We were married June 27th, 1943 in Kearney, Nebraska, honeymooning in Carthage, Illinois where I met his family. I don’t think they were too happy to see their son married to a “Mormon girl”. They wondered if the marriage would last. My family wasn’t too pleased to see me marry outside of the Church.
Family
My husband, Bill was transferred to Herrington, Kansas and in March 1945 a little girl came to bless our home, Charlene Kay. We thought she was the most beautiful baby ever.
In the summer of 1945 the war ended. Bill was discharged in October and we moved to Salt Lake City. We cashed in our war bonds to make a down payment on a house. We didn’t have enough money to furnish it, so we borrowed furniture from my mother. On the 21st of December 1946 our second child, William Elmer, was born.
Bill worked days and went to school nights, learning neon tube bending. We sold our home and moved to Kirksville, Missouri where Bill went into partnership in a sign company. In Kirksville, we were only about 100 miles from Carthage and Bill’s parents. The kids loved to go visit Grandpa and Grandma on the farm and see all the animals.
Shortly after we moved to Kirksville, I got asthma. I went from one doctor to another trying to get something that would help me breathe. I didn’t want to take drugs because I had two children to care for. I decided to contact the Church and have someone give me a blessing. There wasn’t a branch of the Church listed in the phone book. I prayed to my Heavenly Father for help. One day while I was on my knees praying, a knock came on the door. I answered it and there stood a man and a woman. The man introduced himself as branch president Leavitt of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Kirksville Branch. The woman was his wife. I could not hold back the tears, as I knew it was in answer to my prayer.
President Leavitt told me the time and place where the branch met and that the only members were he, his wife, mother and sister. I told him that I would be there on Sunday. On Sunday I got myself and the children ready, and since I did not drive, Bill got ready and went with us. It wasn’t long until President Leavitt asked Bill to be the Sunday School Superintendent, and Bill wasn’t even a member.
We held our meetings upstairs over a store on the town square. Brother Leavitt lived five miles out in the country on a farm so when the missionaries were in town they stayed with us, and in the evenings, they taught the gospel to my husband.
My asthma seemed to come and go, and when I got pregnant with our third child it seemed to go away until the beginning of my ninth month, and then it came back worse than ever. I got so weak I couldn’t walk across the room. In August our third child, Joy Jean, was born. The doctor advised that we move back west as my life depended on it. We moved to Spokane, Washington where Bill took a job in another sign company.
God Knows
After the war, we bought a home in Salt Lake City, but Bill was still deciding what he wanted to do with his career. He got the opportunity to buy 50% interest in a sign company in Kirksville, Missouri. We sold our home and everything we had so we could scrape together the money to buy into the company and moved back to Missouri with our two children, Charlene, age two, and Billy, who was just a baby.
We hadn’t been there very long when I developed terrible asthma. The doctor gave me some medicine, but all it did was knock me out. I would take it and then fall on the bed and be out cold for hours. It was nothing but dope, and it made me want to climb the walls. I knew those babies needed me and I couldn’t do that. I had to throw the pills away, but the doctor said the only other solution was for me to move back to the west. All of our money had gone into the business and it didn’t seem possible that we could pick up and leave again. Besides, I reasoned, we were living close to Bill’s family and maybe I could be a positive influence to help them accept the gospel.
I thought if I could only find someone in the church to come and administer to me I would be okay. I looked in the phone book and everywhere I could, but there was no church listed. I got my Book of Mormon out and read and read and I prayed night and day but I felt very much alone.
One day I was mopping my kitchen floor when a knock came to the door. There stood a man and a woman and the man said, “I’m President Leavitt of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.“
I just cried because there stood the answer to my prayers. I don’t know how they found me. I never did ask. He lived on a farm five or six miles out of town, and so when the missionaries came by they always stayed at our place. That’s when Dad became interested in the church and was eventually baptized.
The branch was small with just President Leavitt, his wife, his mother and his sister. Every Sunday the Leavitt’s would come to our house and I would fix pancakes for everyone. Even before joining the church Dad was called to be Superintendent of the Sunday School. The meetings were held in an upstairs room above a downtown bar. There wasn’t even a sign to advertise that they were there.
Having the church there was a great blessing, but the asthma attacks didn’t go away and we finally decided we had to leave. We left the house unsold, and with all of the furnishings, even the dishes still there.
We came back to Utah and Bill saw an ad in a magazine called, Signs of the Times. The ad was for a sign company in Spokane, Washington. He was going to sign school at the time and he decided to give them a call. The response was cool. “We haven’t filled the position,” they said, “but we aren’t sure we’re going to.” Still, they took his name and other information. An hour later they called back. They had talked to his partner in Kirksville, and he must have given high praise because they hired him on the spot.
I was really hurt when God didn’t answer my prayers the way I wanted them answered. I had pleaded with him. I could think of five thousand reasons why we should stay in Kirksville and none for leaving but I have learned that you don’t counsel the Lord. If we had stayed there, that business would never have come to much. We wouldn’t have been able to pay for our children to attend BYU and we wouldn’t have traveled as we did. Dad would never have enjoyed the success he did with American Sign.
Divine Intervention
Once when Ray Roden, Opal and Mother were visiting us in Spokane, we decided to take a trip to the Cardston, Alberta temple. It was a long trip, but we wanted to make it in one day since we would be leaving the children at home, so we left at one or two in the morning. We decided to drive through Montana, and because it was winter the shortest route, though Glacier Park was closed. It was November and the roads were snowy. Ray drove for a while but slid off the road into a snow bank. After we got the car out of the snow bank, Ray turned the wheel over to Bill and he drove the rest of the way into Cardston.
At that time, when you went to the temple you completed the Initiatory Ordinances before doing the Endowment work and with the live sessions it took many hours to complete a temple session. At the end of the session the temple president, President Wood, asked if we would be willing to do some sealings and although we were anxious to start back home we agreed to help. After we completed the sealings he asked us to bear our testimonies and then he asked us if there was anything we wanted to ask or discuss while in the temple. We said, “No,” and were really anxious to get started on the long trip back home.
After finally leaving the temple we decided to drive back on a different route through Canada and down to Bonners Ferry, Idaho. We hadn’t eaten all day but decided we would wait to stop when we reached Bonners Ferry. Dad drove for a short time but was really tired so he asked me to drive. I was not an experienced driver and was especially nervous about driving in snow but I agreed to drive and I immediately started praying for help. I continued to pray as I got behind the wheel and pulled out onto the road. Almost immediately I felt a strong presence and knew I was receiving some kind of special help. I kept praying and driving and it was like someone else had his hands on the wheel and was steering the car. I drove all the way to Bonners Ferry feeling that someone was sitting beside me.
When we finally got to Bonners Ferry we pulled up in front of the only restaurant that was still open. Bill, Ray and Opal climbed out of the car but I didn’t want to move because I could still feel that spirit so strongly and I didn’t want it to leave. I knew when I got out of the car the Spirit would be gone. Mother also stayed in the car. Finally, Opal came back outside and said, “Aren’t you two coming in?“
Mother said, “I’m waiting to see if that man who has been sitting between Bea and Bill is going to leave now.“
She could actually see the personage who had helped me drive the car and it confirmed for me what I had already known that I had divine help as I drive home that night.
This experience has always been hard for me to talk about but Opal and I always remember when we are together. And it is special to know that my mother was privileged to see him.
Latter Years
On July 7th, 1952 we were sealed together with our three children. Three more children were born to us in Spokane, two girls and a boy.
By 1983 all of our children were grown and had left home. We sold our home and bought a motor home and became “snowbirds”–winters in Arizona, and summers in the northwest.
In 1986 our bishop asked us to go on a mission, and at the end of July we got a call to the West Indies Mission. I could talk for hours about the wonderful time we had on our mission. It was the most spiritual time of my life.
In November 1992 we were called to a 12-month Family History Mission in Salt Lake City, Utah.
