GLENN CLINTON WALTERS A Life Sketch
Glenn Clinton Walters was born March 8, 1914 in Burley, Idaho. He was the fourth child and thud son of Francis “Frank” and Jennie Knapp Walters. He was blessed and given his name on April 5, 1914 by William C. Davis in Burley. He lived in Burley the first few years of his life, and then his parents moved to Pocatello, Idaho.
In Pocatello Glenn’s father worked for the railroad. This work caused him to be away from home much of the time, and Glenn’s mother felt that the father’s absence was not in the best interest of the growing children. So when Glenn was about four years oil, the family moved to Rexburg, Idaho, where two more sons were born into the family. Before Glenn reached his sixth birthday, the family moved again, this time to a farming community outside Rexburg called Hibbard. It was in Hibbard that Glenn attended his first year of school. A vivid memory for him of that first year was the burning of the schoolhouse. The rest of the year, classes had to be held in the church.
Before his second year of school, the family moved again. This time they settled in another farming community outside Rexburg, called Plano. In Plano a seventh child and second daughter was added to the family. Glenn completed his schooling through high school while living in Plano. His main interests during those growing-up years were sports of all kinds, Scouting, drama, and church.
The rural community of Plano had easy access to rivers and canals for fishing, and it had endless fields for hunting. Glenn and his brothers spent many long and happy summer days strolling the banks of the Snake River searching out the holes that would yield big fish. It was not uncommon for them to bring home several trout apiece weighing from three to five pounds each. Such fishing equipment as waders were unknown to the boys at that time; they just waded in their overalls, usually barefoot over the slippery rocks. But what difference could dripping trousers make to young boys on a warm summer day when they were in pursuit of the big fish in the deep holes? Often their fish poles were made from willows, but the boys still were able to catch fish. It was a carefree, Huck-Finn kind of life for Glenn, and he had brothers to share it with him.
At the end of the day “Ma” would be busy in the kitchen at home preparing a hot supper for the tired young fishermen. Often the main course of the meal would be fried fish from the boys’ proud catch. In those depression days meat was a luxury, so the fish was always a welcome addition to the usual fare of potatoes, fresh garden vegetables, and bottled fruit.
Not every day of the summer could be spent fishing, however, for there were chores for every member of the family.
There was a big garden to weed, and vegetables from it to be gathered and bottled for winter. Wood had to be chopped to keep the kitchen stove hot for cooking. The chickens and pigs needed regular feedings, and the cows must be milked along with being fed. During summer, the feeding of the cows was a pleasant task, since they were herded along grassy ditchbanks to graze. This offered the herder chances for diversions such as sleeping in the shade of willows, swimming in the ditch, or even trying some fishing in hopes the ditch would yield a
trout rather than the usual suckers. The most dreaded chore of all was helping on wash day. This involved carrying a steady stream of water from the pump into the house to be heated in a boiler on the stove and then poured into the washer. Rinse tubs also required many trips to the pump. The washing machine was run by hand, and all members of the family who were not working on jobs outside the home were required to take turns pushing the handle back and forth to make it rotate the paddles that churned the clothes through the water. Yes, there was work, but it was done as a family along with the playing.
As Glenn trotted along behind his older brothers while they hunted the Chinese pheasants, sage hens, and ducks that were plentiful in the fields during the fall, it seemed to him that he would never be old enough to carry his own gun and hunt. The first year he finally reached that long-awaited age he learned a lasting lesson in being honest. Glenn had worked all summer hoeing potatoes, weeding beets, and haying to earn enough money to buy a shotgun. When fall came, he had saved up $15.00. Enough to get his gun in time for the hunting season. He and a friend were proudly carrying home their bag for the day when they encountered a game warden. Unfortunately, both boys had two ducks over the legal limit. The warden confiscated their guns as well as their ducks and then issued them an order to appear in court the next week. Needless to say, Glenn was heartbroken over losing his precious gun that he had yearned to own for so many years and had paid for with an entire summer of hard farm work. After giving the boys a hard-boiled lecture on obeying the game laws, the judge relented and let them have their guns back. From that day on Glenn strictly obeyed the game laws, never once being guilty of poaching, going over his limit, or even keeping fish under the legal size. This adherence to the law applied in other areas of his life as well, such as traffic rules and agreements made in business. He learned a valuable lesson in honesty indeed.
Besides hunting and fishing, Glenn liked playing sports of all kinds. He played baseball with his brothers and boys of the neighborhood from as early as he could remember. For a baseball, they often used one his mother made from scraps of denim stuffed with cotton, and their bat was usually a board or stick from a tree limb. Glenn played on both school and community baseball teams, being valuable as a shortstop. His interest in this sport continued after his school days ended, and during the first five years of his marriage he was a member of a softball team in Montana that played in a state tournament in Helena, At this event Glenn was named All-state Shortstop.
Football and basketball were both a big part of Glenn’s high school years. He played on the varsity teams all four years in both sports, serving as team captain most of the time. His ability in football caught the attention of the coach, Lowell Biddulph, at Madison High School in Rexburg, and he invited Glenn to play for that school. Excited over the prospect of playing for the larger school, Glenn made arrangements to live with his married brother Jesse in Rexburg while he attended Madison High. His career there was short-lived, however, because the coach at Edmonds High, where students from Plano went to high school, brought up the illegality of one school recruiting from another, and the restrictions forced Glenn to return to Edmonds. Nevertheless, he had an enjoyable and successful season in sports.
During his school days Glenn participated in school functions besides sports. He was active in school government, and during his senior year he was class president and student body president at the same time. He also liked drama and had parts in many plays, those produced by the church as well as the ones at school. He usually had the leading part if the show was a musical because he had a fine baritone voice. Glenn’s dedication to his school activities is shown by the fact that he lived five miles from school and had to walk home after ball practice or play rehearsal. Many were the nights he trudged home alone after a late practice, often with hair, wet from an after-game shower, freezing to his head.
Glenn loved Scouting from the time he was old enough to join the program. His Scoutmaster for many years was Ernest Blaser of Plano. Mr. Blaser was an enthusiastic leader and took the boys on frequent camp-outs. One time he took them on a trip through Yellowstone Park in his Model T Ford. Each year he accompanied the group to Scout camp at Treasure Mountain, located at the foot of the Teton Peaks. A vivid memory for Glenn at Treasure Mountain is the climb he made up to the famous Table Rock Mountain. Mr. Blaser did not really push advancement, so Glenn did not become an Eagle Scout. This was an omission he regretted years later when he, himself, became a Scout leader.
In addition to school and Scouting, Glenn was also active in the Plano Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He attended church regularly on Sunday and M.I.A. on Tuesday. He was ordained a deacon in the priesthood on April 4, 1926; a teacher on February 1, 1930; and a priest on April 3, 1932. On May 10, 1936 he was ordained an elder prior to his temple marriage.
Glenn graduated from Edmonds High on May 4, 1933 in a class of thirteen, all of whom were still living at the time of their forty-third class reunion in 1976. After graduation Glenn wanted to attend college at Logan, Utah, where his two older brothers, Leroy and Jesse, were then going to school, He hitchhiked to Logan and tried out for the football team, hoping for an athletic scholarship, but he was not accepted. So he returned to Rexburg and that fall enrolled in school at Ricks College.
While attending Ricks, he shared an apartment with three other boys from Plano. They also shared food, mostly bottled fruits and vegetables and sacks of potatoes that they brought from home. This, Glenn jokes, was the only way they all kept from starving to death during those hard times. Since they were old friends, they were very compatible and enjoyed many activities together. They formed a singing quartet accompanied by Glenn’s guitar. Music had always been a part of Glenn’s home life. Crowded into one corner of the kitchen-dining-living-room of his home was an old pump organ, which his mother and sister, Donetta, played a little. A favorite family evening at the Walters’ house was to gather around the organ and sing. The boys learned to play guitars and harmonicas to add to the accompaniment. So Glenn’s part in the quartet at college came naturally for him. During his time at college he also tried out for and received one of the leading parts in a musical. The name of the play was The Count and the Co-ed, a comedy. For his part Glenn learned songs that he remembered for many years and sang to entertain not only his own children but also his grandchildren. Their favorite was a dialectical song called “The Delicatessen Store.”
Since those were the years of the Great Depression of the 1930’s, - Glenn’ s college career was cut short because he lacked the finances to stay in school. He went home to Plano and worked sorting potatoes in a warehouse for 15¢ an hour. While at college he had made friends with a Rexburg boy named DeVar Clark, whose younger brother, L, Richard, became a General Authority of the L.D.S. Church. The following summer Glenn lived with the Clark family and worked with DeVar and his father building houses. That was his first experience in the line of work that was to become his occupation for thirty-five years.
In September of 1934 Glenn was with a group of school friends at a dance at Riverside Gardens, a public dance hall located a few miles north of Rugby, Idaho. The hall was about the size of a standard basketball gym, was elaborately decorated, and featured all the big-name bands of the day. It drew crowds for the regular Saturday-night dances from as far south as Blackfoot and from Ashton to the north. On that warm autumn evening of 1934 Glenn saw a girl who attracted him. Before this time he had shown only passing interest in girls, always preferring to spend his time with boys participating in sports, His dating had been limited to a few high school functions. But he was attracted enough by this girl that he asked her to dance even though they were strangers. As they danced, he got brave enough to ask her for a date, and that night he went home and told his mother he had met the girl he wanted to marry. Her name was Lola Latham. She was from Montana but was living with relatives in Lyman Ward, near Thornton, Idaho.
Glenn and Lola dated with increasing frequency during the next two months, and their favorite place to go was the Riverside Gardens where they had met. Lola had shared Glenn’s instant attraction, and they soon knew they wanted to spend their lives together. They also knew, however, that they could not afford to be married very soon. In fact, after the harvest work was over, work was scarce, and dating became a problem because of Glenn’s lack of money.
About this time Glenn heard of the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC’ s, a government-sponsored work program for boys whose families were having financial problems. The boys were given housing, food, clothing, and thirty-five dollars a month. They were allowed to keep five dollars for spending money, and the rest was sent home for the parents either to save for the boy or use for their own needs. Glenn joined the program in October of 1934 and spent from that time until the next May building roads in a national forest near Grimes Pass, Idaho. He and lola corresponded almost daily during his absence.
A month after Glenn’s return from the CCC’s his brother, Leroy, helped him get work as a boat guide at Fishing Bridge in Yellowstone Park. Lola visited him there during the summer, and one evening as they stood in the moonlight by the lake, they made plans to be married, Glenn was ab1e to save enough money from his salary to buy a diamond ring to seal their promise to each other. He returned from Yellowstone in September in time to work in the potato harvest and then worked the rest of the winter sorting potatoes. By limiting their dating, he was able to save enough money to be married in the spring.
Glenn Clinton Walters and Lola Bertha Latham were married on May 14, 1936 in the Salt Lake Temple. Since they had no automobile, they traveled to their wedding on a bus. Both his mother and hers accompanied then to Salt Lake. After the temple ceremony, Leroy and his wife took the newlyweds and the mothers to their home in Santaquin, Utah where Leroy taught school. Glenn and Lola spent four days in Santaquin and then returned to Salt Lake for another temple session before traveling with their mothers back to Rexburg.