Sometime between Paul and Jenny being born (1957 to 1958), my parents joined the Church. I know this, because Jenny was the only one of our four siblings that was born into the church. We were living at 9 Nectar La, Levittown, Pa, Dad was commuting to Philadelphia, he worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad as a purchasing agent, Mom was a stay at home mom. Her college, teaching, and dormitory director experiences were years ahead of her.
One of my first childhood memories surrounding the church was going to Sunday School in the Trenton NJ YMCA with Dad. Mom didn’t come. But eventually she did, and they joined the church. I remember their baptism, and I remember getting a child’s blessing, even though I would have been between 4 and 5 years old at the time. Don’t ask me what was said, obviously one of the missionaries probably gave the blessing. Not many people can say they remember the child blessing they were given, it usually happens to newborns. But with convert families, they’re given to children in those families who haven’t turned 8 years of age. I remember the Trenton Chapel being built, but it would have had to be before I started school the fall of 1958.
It wasn’t until after my mission that Mom told me her conversion story at Christmas one year. We had the missionaries over, something they started doing when I went on my mission. And she read her conversion story to them. Ken read it again years later when we were visiting Buffalo to Elder Mortenson, one of a pair of elders who had stayed in our home at 3223 Brunswick Ave. between 1959 and 1963 (+/-), who was then the President of the Rochester, NY mission, I believe. I’ve looked to see if
anyone has a copy of it, and I haven’t any luck, so this is the second-hand version.
Dad was the first to want to join the church. He had heard the missionaries on a street corner in Philadelphia, and had the discussions. Mom I think sat in on the discussions, but didn’t want any part of joining the church. Dad did, and I think this is when he took me to church in Trenton when Mom didn’t want to go. And Dad would not join the Church without Mom.
Mom had told us what she knew about the church was what she learned from Mr. Spears, a history teacher at Collingdale HS who was also my Problems of Democracy teacher my senior year. He had summed up the church rather succinctly: “Old Joe Smith wanted more than one wife, so he started his own religion.” That’s her version, I never did hear that directly from Mr. Spears.
Mom’s stance was radically changed about joining the church after an experience she had while in the hospital as I said, sometime between when Paul (April, 1957) and Jenny was born (June 1958). She was having some sort of surgery, I can’t remember what the surgery was for, but while coming out of the
anesthesia, she said she had a dream where the Savior appeared to her, and asked her why she wouldn’t join His Church. She said she didn’t really believe it was the Savior, but he asked her several
times, and she said she thought it was just the anesthesia.
You know how you are when you’re coming out of surgery, you’re in and out of consciousness, so she came out after this “dream”, thinking she had been having delusions, seeing Jesus. Come on, who would really believe that, right?
It was then that her roommate in the hospital came in and asked Mom, “Who had been in the room?”
Mom was startled. “What do you mean, who had been in the room?”
The roommate replied, “Oh, I thought the doctor or someone was in here, and felt something important was going on, and I shouldn’t disturb whatever was happening, and you needed your privacy for a few minutes. So I didn’t come in the room, and waited until I was sure they were gone.”
She had Mom’s full and immediate attention. Something important had been going on, and Mom dwelled on what she had experienced, and got the feeling that she had actually been asked by the Savior why she hadn’t joined the Church. So, if that was the case, then she wasn’t going to have much of an excuse come Judgment Day if she didn’t go ahead and join. After all, what would you do if you knew the Savior asked you something, and you didn’t thereafter go out immediately and do it?
Needless to say, they joined the Church as I stated, they both served in various positions throughout their lives. Dad was either Financial Clerk or Ward Clerk for any number of years, and Mom either taught Primary (I remember her being my Blazer leader (forerunner to Webelos / Valiant, I think) when I turned 12, did stints as Relief Society teacher or President later.
I can’t let this story go without also telling of our trip to the Temple. Prior to the Washington, DC Temple being dedicated in 1975, the nearest Temple to Philadelphia was Salt Lake City. The DC temple had been announced probably in ’68 or ’69, so we knew it was coming, but didn’t know when it would be built, nor when it would be completed. I can probably count on one or two fingers the people I knew a half-generation older than I was who made that trip to Salt Lake, either for their own endowments or
to get married. Tony March and Richard Lindsey were the only names I remember.
We had a family home evening the fall of my Senior year, which would have put that in 1970, where we committed to going to the Temple. Mom said it was the one wish she had, and that it was going to take a lot of work on their part to be temple-worthy, but she was committed to doing it.
Up until that time, Dad had been driving a VW Beetle, if you can believe it, and that car was obviously too small for four teenagers to make such a trip (it was too small to go to Church in, too, but that’s another story). Sometime that winter, they bought a VW bus. The following summer, we made plans to drive to Salt Lake and onto Logan, Utah for my parents to receive their endowments and for us to be sealed as a family.
We were planning to leave on a Friday afternoon. Mom was going to drive to a convenient location, meet Dad after work, he was getting dropped off by a co-worker, it would save time and give an early jump on traffic. So the car was loaded up the night before, and off we went on the first really long vacation of my childhood. July 16, 1971.
Mom didn’t realize it but somewhere between home and picking up Dad, the VW threw a fan belt, and overheated and literally destroyed 3 of the 4 cylinders of the air-cooled engine. Because of the orientation of the dashboard and driving into the afternoon sun, she hadn’t seen the engine warning light come on, and had continued to drive. When we finally noticed something was wrong, we stopped about a couple miles short of where we were picking up Dad. Mom was beside herself. Ken and I hitchhiked
up to where Dad was waiting, told him what had happened, he hitch-hiked back, Ken and I started walking back. Dad called Grandpop Knick, he came and got us all, and took us back to the house in Collingdale.
Mom was beside herself. She had ruined the car, she had ruined whatever chance we had of going to the temple. She sobbed the whole way home and went upstairs to her bedroom, and spent the night there. It was ONLY time I had seen Mom where the world had appeared to beat her. Never before, never again since. Even through her bout with cancer, she wasn’t that type.
Dad did the only thing he could do. First, he got the car towed to a VW dealership, and got the repair work started. Meanwhile, he started to look into ways we could get to Salt Lake and Logan, everything from planes, trains, buses, etc. But in the end, he said, the car still needed to be fixed, and that any other expense would put the Temple trip out of reach. So, the plan was to wait for the repairs to be completed in 2-3 days, and then hoof it to SLC in it.
Four cylinders had to be replaced. Three of the pistons were toast. Dad patiently told the dealer’s mechanics to hurry, but do it right. And we set off for SLC sometime Tuesday or Wednesday, at the latest. I don’t know how we did it. In order to break the repaired engine in properly, we had to drive at 55 mph when the speed limit in those days was 80 mph. It took forever.
Intermediate stops were deleted, remember driving past the Arch in St. Louis (instead of stopping and going in it), driving by
Kaufman Stadium during a night ball game, staying in a hotel west of town, and in Denver, before arriving in SLC on Friday. Saturday was July 24, Pioneer Day, the parade, and on Monday, July 26, 1971,we went to the Temple in Logan, Utah, and were sealed as a family.
Mom’s tenacity to get us headed to the Temple in the first place was never questioned. But what she didn’t realize the trial of her faith that would come in order to accomplish the goal. Thanks to my Dad, he was able to see a way around a pretty big hurtle. When you join the church as young adults, with young children, both the first from either side of their families, a lot of change is required.
Mom’s experience in the hospital in all likelihood had something to do in effecting that change. It takes that kind of fortitude and will power to follow through onto eternal goals. Something had to be behind the motivation, right?
But one thing I do know: I, too, have been born of goodly parents. And Mom’s conversion to the Gospel of Jesus Christ never, ever waivered, even under some intense challenges.
Written by Chuck Knickerbocker (my father)
