The Leopard's Spots

We have always heard that a leopard cannot change his spots, and that the only person you can change is yourself. These are bits of advice people will give you, if they think you are getting into a bad marriage. I suspect there is a lot of truth in these words, and I am sure Momma had no hope that Daddy would ever change his ways. He farmed tobacco until I graduated from college and was working as a dietitian at Duke University Hospital. It might have been because the farm work was done that he was managing a seafood restaurant just across the Neuse River Bridge in Swansboro. It was called The Harbor Lights, just a small place with very little business. There were a couple of seafood restaurants in town with long standing reputations, but I suspect that the fact that my brother walked in one day and caught him in a clinch with the only other employee had something to do with the restaurant's demise. Momma wrote a letter to the woman and asked her to consider that she could destroy two families. Her children opened the letter and read it before she did. The restaurant closed soon after that.

As far as I know my dad did not react against my mother, although it was the first time she had ever done such a thing. I was so afraid for her when she told me, but perhaps he was not aware of all the subtrifuge. Mama was having a terrible time with menupause at that time and was not
herself. She had written that she wanted Daddy to buy her a nightgown she had seen in a store window for Christmas. Of course he didn't buy her anything, as usual. Probably didn't even remember her mentioning it. She had written in one letter that they were having a big dance in the new chapel at Harker's Island and if I could borrow a formal to fit her, she would like for us to go. I had just become engaged, and Tedder was in New York, but I saw no reason why the two
of us shouldn't go. She looked beautiful. Daddy was embarrased for us, but I felt like it was important. We had a good time. I didn't get asked to dance, but she did, by some old friends, husbands of old friends, rather, and she had a wonderful time.

When we came home from the dance all the lights in the house had been turned off. Daddy was in the hall waiting for us and explained that he wanted to tell us what had happened before we saw him. He explained that they had a grease fire at the restaurant, and without thinking he grabbed the fryer and ran out the back door, the strong wind blowing the flames right in his face. He looked like a mummy, but there were no scars. That experience dampened his enthusiasm for that job and it was not many months before he sold it.

Momma was working at the shirt factory in Beaufort. They were renting the front bedroom to a very nice marine and his wife. Times were tough until Daddy finally decided to look up his old friend in the dredging business. He wanted Daddy to supervise a rig working in Cheasapeak Bay, so they moved up to Washington,D.C. suburbs where they rented a small apartment and Momma enjoyed just staying home for a change. Miss Helen was still in the Swansboro house, and Bill was there to look after things. I think the marine and his wife were there for another year, too.

They were still in Washington when we had been married four years and went home for the first time with our Katy who was a year old. When the job in Washington was over they went back to Swansboro and she went back to the factory. The rig had moved back near Swansboro and he was paid well to sit and watch the dials and boss the deck hands.

They visited us twice in Albuquerque and came to see us in Provo as soon as we moved here. Daddy loved to drive, and he had bought a Mustang. They went sight seeing in Salt Lake where he was exposed to genealogy, even went to see the vault in the mountain. Still he never became interested in driving the 20 miles to Jacksonville where she went to church every Sunday.

When Katy was ten they drove out again. Bending over the sewing machine all day at the factory had caused her shoulders to develop terrible arthritis and she was on steroids for the pain. I suspect that shortened her life. Her face was very round, and she did not look like herself. However, she was ecstatic! Since he preferred taking the back roads where you see more interesting places, she had suggested that they drive through Nauvoo and Carthage where they were given a tour at the jail by the first missionary couple to serve there. The sweet litttle sister from Bountiful, UT, took my dad's hands and asked if he were a member of the church. He answered, "No, Maam, but my wife is."

Her next question was, "But you know it's true, don't you?" to which he answered in the affirmative. She then challenged him to call the missionaries as soon as he reached home and tell them he was ready to be baptized. He said he would!

When Momma related it to me she was trembling, doubting that he really meant it. We didn't talk about it again, but sure enough he did just that and was shortly baptized. He became a different man. He was never a swearing person, but after his baptism he wouldn't allow the sailors to swear in his presence. We never were allowed to have a blessing on our meals, but that changed. He would not eat even a cracker without blessing it. All he talked about was the Gospel, and he accumulated a sizeable library of church books which he read, and left to the ward library when he died. I hope I have not repeated this, because my Mother's story did have some of what I have just written. Sadly he did not convert anyone but himself. He was able to go to the dedication of the Washington Temple, because he had been endowed, and he took the bus trips from Kinston with the members for temple excursions. I cannot imagine him praying in church, or giving a talk, but I was with a tour group we were directing in Paris once when we spotted two missionaries, and when we stopped to chat with them we discovered one was from my dad's ward, and Brother Stroud had given the closing prayer at his farewell.

I have to say that having the privilege to do my mother's temple ordinances and take part in their sealing has been the most important, significant, unexpected thrill of my life, not that my own marriage was less terrific, but Ted, being with me on both occasions, knows why I can say this. If anyone reading this is ever in a temple with me, just ask me to go to a sealing room with you and I will tell you what happened that night. It is too sacred to write any more.

Daddy had never been in a hospital as a patient until he began sufffering from acute constipation and the pain became so severe he was in a coma for a week before he died of what they finally determined was a stroke in muscles of the colon causing all functioning to cease. The doctors were apologetic about not rushing him to Duke, less than a hundred miles away, where they could have saved his life. It was such a rare condition, but his father died the same way, at about the same age. I have passed that age long ago, but any stomach ache does give me some worries.