Dover Stories

Dear Families (especially grandchildren who may not have already heard these stories!)

When we lived in Dover, Delaware, one of the members was a lady named Marion Tracy. She and her husband were quite wealthy. I worked for awhile at their publishing office, using a varityper (Now not to be found anywhere but in museums!)to print the original of some of their publications. Marion was my visiting teacher, and one day she invited me and another sister who was on her VT route, to come to lunch at her house. Anyone who was ever in her house noticed that she was a the perfect hostess, i.e., she fixed nice, semi-formal tables with centerpieces and everything, and her house was perfectly kept. We had our first 5 small children at the time, with only one of them in school, so I had to take my four little boys with me to lunch. My boys were very polite and I had told them to not be roudy or anything, so all was fine until we sat down at the table, my boys with wide eyes looked at the beautiful flowers at the center of the table, the silverware placed perfectly, the beautiful china.....and the napkins! In a quiet but very audible voice, my 3 year old asked, "Mommy what are these for?" holding up his nice CLOTH napkin! I was a bit embarrassed, not much, though. I explained to Marion that the 'napkins' at our house were two washclothes...one at each end of the table, or paper napkins if we wanted to be extra fancy; our dinnerware was durable Melmac (anyone remember that?) the glasses were plastic because we couldn't afford any breakage, and the centerpiece was a large bowl of the main course and/or a salad, because I didn't have a big enough energy or a big enough table to allow for the extra time and space that it would require for a centerpiece!

Another story that turned out to be funny after it was all over: We had five children that we took to church, and of course, the Heeshes had five also. We would have been in trouble if there had been a seat belt law at that time! We had a small station wagon that we used for these 12 mile trips to church and Primary. One Sunday, we visited out on the Green for awhile, as usual, and then loaded everyone (we thought) into the wagon and returned to Bowers Beach. When we let the Heesh children out, we were shocked to find we only had 4 Whicker children left! It was no surprise, though, to realize that the missing child was our 6 or 7 year old Chuck, who had always been (and still is) our music maker and had/has the unique mind workings of an artist/philosoper....creative, but absent minded, and often not aware of anything going on around him if he was involved in his own thinking! I was panicked, and we hurried back to Dover to find him. When we got to the church, everyone (except our Branch President and his wife) was gone and the building was locked up! Now I was really worried, because there was no sign of our Charlie outside anywhere! The Branch Pres. hadn't seen him, either! We called and called him, and there was no answer. As we stood there, thinking what to do next, we suddenly heard singing....coming from INSIDE the building! They unlocked the door and we located him -- in the bathroom -- totally unaware that church was over and everyone had gone home, and that it was almost an hour that he had been there, probably composing his own song, which he did often! As we all know, he now has many original and powerful songs. He also remains a thinker, along with all of our children, and we have enjoyed lots of family circle discussions after church as the kids grew older, because all of them were very interested in learning about the gospel.

Love,

Mom/Gma