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Chapter 13: Jean

Before we get to the marriage of my life partner of 66 years, let
me provide some background on Jean. Jean’s parents were John Elkins
and Alice Davis. John had seriously dated my aunt Clara Hardy, but he
went on a three-year mission to Germany and Mr. Hardy moved in.
Ac-cording to the family story, John not only dated Alice, he had also
took her mother on many of their dates. John and Allie went to the
Colum-bian Exposition in San Francisco in 1915 on their
honeymoon. It was a big event and remembered always. Alice had a
lovely singing voice, and her principal activity outside the home had
been singing at friends’ funerals. John was a wholesale salesman for
ZCMI. He traveled through southern Utah, among other areas. They
had a son, Robert. Then Jean and her brother Steve were born (at
home) on March 17, 1921. Accord-ing to her, Steve emerged from her
mother’s womb and Jean’s grand-mother said, “There’s another baby
in there!” Jean emerged and always claimed that she kicked Steve out.
Later her mother was again pregnant, and this time, because of heart
problems, she was urged to have an abor-
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John was sitting in his mother-in-law’s home eating an apple when she
went into the kitchen. When she returned, he was dead from a stroke.
Jean barely remembered him.
According to Jean, her grandfather Davis wheeled the kids up
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Jean was four. When Jean was about seven or eight, her grandmother
Davis took the family and they lived on the beach near Los Angeles.
Jean remembers that place with delight because she and Steve would
hollow out bathtubs in the sand and water would come in. Her grand-
mother Davis was a sharp businessperson. The home where they lived,
45 East North Temple, was a very substantial one with a rock founda-
tion and brick walls. It had been built for the Lamberts, but they had
failed to maintain mortgage payments, and she took it over. She also had
an old home on 5 South near Pioneer Park and numerous investments.
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She allowed her daughters to grow up in the home and graduate from

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