The Stoneman summer

Recently, the back page of the Church News had an article titled “The Sanctity of Labor.” President Eyring told a story about his father, who after working all day hoeing weeds at the church farm, was informed that the weeds he hoed had all been sprayed and would have died anyway. President Eyring said:

"Dad just roared," …. "He thought it was a great joke on himself." Asked later how he could have taken the matter so pleasantly, he replied to his son, "Hal, I wasn't there for the weeds." (Henry B. Eyring, "Waiting Upon the Lord," a speech given at BYU on Sept. 30, 1990.)

I think that same statement could have come from my father. His father, also Henry, taught him the value of work and the need for productive work in his life. Dad expanded on his father’s philosophy in every way imaginable. Rarely a day went by that he wasn’t working for something. I think that he loved physical labor.

He helped put the shingles on the steeply-pitched roof on the Pittsburg Chapel even though he was very afraid of heights. He remodeled our house on 15th street so that the floor space was doubled – I well remember a circular saw cutting through the wall of what was then my bedroom at 6:30 on Saturday morning because dad wanted to expand the kitchen dining area and open up the floorplan for the living room. He saved the wall he took from my bedroom and put it where the entrance to the dining room had been to create a hallway. He opened the wall between that bedroom and the family room he built to create an office that opened on the main living area.

I still like to brag that he planted the large bushes (they were small when he planted them) in the median of the freeway between Antioch and Pittsburg (5 miles) largely by himself as a summer job to supplement his salary as a schoolteacher.

He offered his carpentry skills to anyone who needed them free of any charge. He remodeled kitchens. He added rooms. He painted Uncle Howard’s home to pay for dental work for his children. He built (with the help of others) his dream home in Virgin.

What first came to mind when I read the Church News article was dad’s almost unimaginable effort the summer of my 16th year. He decided that he needed to add considerable floor space to our home on 15th Street. The problem was that he didn’t have the money to do what he wanted to do. About that time, Camp Stoneman (a World War II Army Camp) in Pittsburg auctioned off many of the World War II era buildings. They were well constructed with clear pine beams and floors and heavy plywood roofs. Wood like that could only be bought at considerable expense, even then. Dad partnered with Doyle Hawkins (often his cohort) and with another man to purchase a 2 story barracks and a chow hall for $500 each.

We spent that whole hot summer working on the barracks and the addition to the house. Dad decided he wanted a basement under the new master bedroom he was going to add, but he couldn’t afford to have a backhoe come and dig it. So we got up every morning at 6:00 AM (me reluctantly; him so cheerful it drove me crazy), and he dug a 14 foot by 14 foot basement with an 8 foot ceiling with a pick and shovel. I was the pack mule. We had two wheelbarrows that I was to keep constantly moving – I dumped hundreds of wheelbarrow loads in the vacant lot next to our house (dad had permission for this). The way it worked was this: We had a 2 by 12 pine board laid across the pit. At the start of the day, I parked a wheelbarrow in the middle and dad filled it up with dirt. I moved it off the board and parked the next one. After that I just had time (on the run) to dump one, put it back on the board, and dump the next one. Dad could fill up a deep wheelbarrow in just the few minutes it took me to dump and return. He had a true rhythm with a shovel that I have never seen another person duplicate. Every night, dad had to soak the next layer of dirt with water – it was clay and hard as a rock. Even then, he often had to use a pick to loosen the dirt.

About 9:00 every day, we stopped moving dirt and went to Camp Stoneman where we worked at tearing down the barracks and the chow hall. We hauled loads of wood back to our house and stacked it until the basement was poured (dad built the forms but had to pay to have the cement delivered). We could then begin construction in earnest. We got up every morning and worked on the barracks, brought lumber home, and worked on the addition, which consisted of a new master bedroom, a large family room, and a new laundry room. We worked until it was too dark to see – or at least dad did. I always ran out of steam before he did. He was also understanding about my desires to have time with friends and do summer things too, but he worked every day on that addition, even while serving as Bishop of the Pittsburg Ward.

When he wanted paneling for the family room, some of the plywood from the barracks got sanded and refinished because he could not afford to buy ready-made paneling. When he wanted tile for the floor of the family room, he was able to salvage tile (in two-inch squares ) from a new school that lost the tile from the walls. We cleaned the grout from it and re-laid it on the new 15 foot by 20 foot floor one small square at a time. When he needed windows for the new bedroom and family room, he salvaged the windows from the barracks, cleaned the old paint off, re-puttied them, (teaching me how to do that in the process – now a lost art) and painted them. We got a lot of red subway tile from the chow hall that dad wanted to install on our front porch, so he set up a jig for me to use to clean the cement off the bottom of the tiles so he could re-lay them.. Those tiles were still there when we drove by that house this summer.

Finally, when the project was nearly complete, about 1: 00 AM dad had to be called down from the new roof by the local LDS policemen because of the noise he was making laying shingles. Dad had no idea what time it was. When it got dark, he just took a light up there and kept working. He just wanted to finish the roof.

This story is, of course, not about me. Dad was, and no doubt still is, a builder. A builder of structures, but even more important, a builder of people. His selfless efforts improved the lives of all around him. As a teacher, as a stalwart in the gospel, as a tireless worker on the church farm, as a volunteer worker who took me with him to aid flood victims in Marysville, CA, as a bishop (three times), as a scoutmaster (while he was Bishop), and most important, as my father, he built people and character at every turn. Even after he retired and moved back to Virgin (the dream of his whole working life) he continued to work to improve the city and the lives of the people who lived there. He served as City Manager without pay, obtained grants, was instrumental in building a water purification system, created a central dumping point for garbage, served on the Washington County Waste Disposal Board, and received the Governor’s Cup for his efforts.

I can’t pretend to have my father’s work ethic, but he taught me the value of work on many occasions. I suspect that the Stoneman Summer was as much about teaching me as it was about improving our home.President Brigham Young said on one occasion:

"Of the time that is allotted to man here on the earth, there is none to lose or to run to waste. After suitable rest and relaxation there is not a day, hour or minute that we should spend in idleness, but every minute of every day of our lives we should strive to improve our minds and to increase the faith of the holy Gospel, in charity, patience, and good works, that we may grow in the knowledge of the truth as it is spoken and prophesied of and written about."

President Young also said:

"Everything connected with building up Zion requires actual, severe labor. It is nonsense to talk about building up the kingdom except by labor; it requires the labor of every part of our organization, whether it be mental, physical, or spiritual, and that is the only way to build up the Kingdom of God" (both passages quoted in Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young, p. 225)

President Young could have been speaking to us about my father. I am sorry to say that on many occasions, I balked at the work ethic that he tried to instill in me. I am not sorry that I can recognize his example and do my best to emulate him.

Dad wasn’t there for the weeds either. He left us a great heritage and an unspoken challenge by example: Live a life that is full of service and love for others. May each of us be worthy of that challenge.