The Most Important Decision of my Life

I enjoyed my new classes at BYU following Christmas break, but as for my social life, that was a different story. I had no desire to date, so I just concentrated on my studies. That quarter I took an archery class along with my academics. My dad was an archer and made all his own equipment including his bows and arrows. He had taught me how to shoot when I was pretty young, and even made me my own bow. So I was not new to the sport. I guess that gave me somewhat of an advantage, and I ended up being the intra-mural archery champion in competition that year. I still have my medal. I still enjoy archery and have taught at several girls camps and was a merit badge counselor in archery for the Boy Scouts for quite a few years.

I believe it was towards the end of February that I was tired of thinking up excuses for turning down dates. I definitely had not been having any fun up to now and had no desire to keep trying. In my next letter to Jim I wrote that I loved him and was waiting for him whether he liked it or not. Actually, it was the first letter I had written in about a month because I was trying to decide what to tell him about those dates, what not to tell him about them, and if I was being a little presumptuous about his feelings for me. I had no idea how his lack of mail from me had affected him until he later told me that he had gone out in the nearby woods to pray. He asked the Lord to help him forget about me if I was not the right one. The very next day he received my letter and felt that he had received an answer to his prayer. The next letter I received from him was a proposal of marriage. We were pretty young to be talking marriage...I just eighteen and Jim just barely twenty. But it wasn't like we had just met. We had actually known each other for over five years.

About two weeks later, on April 1, 1953, I received a ring in the mail. (Jim still teases me that it was all just an elaborate April Fools Day Joke... getting engaged that is). Actually, he sent the set of rings because he had no place to keep the wedding band safe on the base in the Philippines. I didn't know until later that Jim had been saving his money to buy a motor scooter to ride around the base and to do some sight seeing. He gave up that motor schooter to buy those rings. I was so excited that I took a bus home to show my parents who were about as thrilled as me. I expected that of mom because she so wanted to see her children settled before she passed away. She knew she was living on borrowed time. But my dad surprised me. Everywhere we went he would hold up my hand to show off the ring...even to near strangers. It was embarrassing at times. I knew that they both liked Jim, and from their reaction to my engagement I knew that they approved.

It would be a wait of over a year before I would see Jim again. I spent the time finishing that year at BYU and then home to work. I knew I wouldn't be able to return to school that fall because I would have to earn the money for a wedding, which I knew I would have to pay for. And I wanted to have a trousseau before I got married. For you "young'uns" who don't know what a trousseau is, it is a collection of linens, dishes, silverware, etc. that all newly weds need. But back then we embroidered everything...sheets, pillow cases, even dishtowels. AND we crocheted the edges of the embroidered pillow cases. I had a beautiful cedar chest which my parents had given me for high school graduation, and I wanted to fill it up. But first I had to find a job. That was my next task.