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Chapter 1: Background



                   My children have asked me to write the story of my life. The
            task has been more complex than I envisaged. Where does one stop?
            How much should the writer tell about the lives lived by his partner/
            wife, his children, and his grandchildren? In reviewing the draft of my
            life story, it is quite long.  A fuller story, including more about my wife
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            what I saw, thought and did. What others saw, thought and did is another
            set of stories. Therefore, this is my story, and I earnestly hope that others
            in the family will write theirs.
                   So many things change with time. Enormous changes have oc-
            curred in the world during my lifetime – beyond anything I could have
            imagined. In order for later generations to understand my life, I am in-
            cluding some data on the conditions prevailing in my lifetime. So – let’s
            begin.
                   I was born in the old St. Marks Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah
            on June 20, 1921. My father was Ernest Samuel Holmes; my mother,
            Ida Eldredge Holmes. As Nephi wrote in the Book of Mormon, “I was
            born of goodly parents.”  Their heredity and their teachings, by example
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            am forever in debt to them.
                   At the time I was born, and through the 1920s, Salt Lake City
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            the largest center of non-ferrous smelting in the entire world. Mines in
            Utah, Nevada, and Idaho shipped their ore by rail to the Salt Lake Valley.
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            the corner of the Oquirrh Mountains, in Tooele. Smelters operated day
            and night, seven days a week. While there were farms in the valley,
            especially fruit orchards, mining and smelting were the economic core.
            There were silver, lead and zinc mines in Park City, Tooele, and south-
            west of Provo; the Bingham Canyon copper mine was a major source of
            employment and the low-grade copper ore from there was processed in


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