What are you thankful for?
Recently as I reached to
arrange wrapping paper in a closet, my eye rested on a small copied journal of
a great grandfather, William Erastus Gee who, in his early 20’s was at asked at a dance to
prepare himself to serve a full-time mission in the Western United
States beginning in 1898.
Young adult, William, traveled to Denver, Colorado and often walked up to 25 miles at a time without purse or script. Or a place to stay. Or meals to eat. A blessing he received there offered encouragement to help him understand who he was, to help him complete a fulltime mission and a lifetime of service in his community. I remember stories of how this grandfather became a teacher, eventually inviting a young woman (in Anne of Green Gables fashion) to conjugate the word “LOVE.” He married her.
He later served as tithing clerk when tithing was received and issued in kind -- chickens, eggs, wheat, and hay. As counselor to a bishop and Sunday school superintendent, he counseled with Sunday School David O. McKay, then general superintendent of the Sunday schools. As welfare coordinator, instrumental in helping to clear debt during difficult times. He also served civically as chairman of the Red Cross in World War I, deputy county treasurer, city clerk, and county assessor.
My mother regularly points to the Rubaiyat painting hanging in her home, explaining that Dad inherited this lovely art piece from his Gee grandparents. My Dad’s roots were rural--a town of barely over 3000 in the 1950s--Lander Wyoming. Yet, possibly due to such a heritage, our Dad was taught to chase and cherish culture. Son to a weatherman in a Cowboy state, with records and radio, Dad’s youth was laced with opera, art, and good music.
I remember sewing with his mother, my Grandma Gee, an oh so lovely blouse during a college summer in the spacious bedroom of a pioneer home in Paris, Idaho, listening to a long-playing phonograph of Grandpa Gee’s Tannhauser’s Pilgrims Chorus. I also remember in junior high, traveling one on one, with Grandpa and Grandma Ivin and Pearl Gee, to witness a South Dakota Passion Play. Even with a struggle with hearing in later years, Grandpa Gee continued to pursue "anything virtuous, lovely [and] of good report."
In a wood shop of a local high school, Grandpa carved banisters to line a porch of what we affectionately call the Paris House. Here we continue to appreciate generations immigrating from oceans away to cultivate a virgin valley with lives and livelihood--honest, God-fearing families valuing work, study, integrity--pioneering new horizons.
Was it Grandfather and Grandmother William and Mary Ellen Gee [or his son?] who offered my parents help with the down-payment of Mom and Dad’s first "clapboard cracker box" home in Somersworth, New Hampshire? My parents also crossed plains--this time going the other direction—elementary children in tow, with Mom in bed rest to carefully await another sibling to be birthed in the promised land of a new adventure.
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This Grandfather to my dad raised children who loved to learn--an attorney son who was involved in trying war crimes at the end of World War II. An English professor. A cardiologist. A biologist. Great grandchildren including women physicians, a Yale templologist. And those with simple covetable aims—such as a close cousin to me, racing toward a retirement goal to visit each national park. Another prolifically reading countless historical volumes.
Is this not what Gees do? Is it not inherent to seek beauty? To wrestle difficulty? To participate in bettering one’s community? To sort through sources to discern what’s real, what's correct? Which direction to head next?
One such, reviewed recently,
included papers of Grandmother Mary Ellen Kerr Gee.
in extending kindness,
Love, Laurene and Val
