Snippets from REMEMBRANCES OF WANDA ESPLIN SNOW
A GREAT LADY
By Sheron Snow Hafen
May 20, 2006
Wanda Esplin Snow born December 4, 1906 to David and Hannah Hopkins Esplin in Orderville, Kane, Utah. Married Jeter Clinton Snow June 18th 1930 in the St. George Temple. Died March 8 1989 St. George, Washington, Utah
Buried next to Jeter Clinton Snow in the St. George City Cemetery
Children: Dexter Clinton Snow, Sheron Snow Hafen, and Brent Esplin Snow.
Mother was indeed a “Great Lady”. That was a very vital part of her personality. She had inherited the qualities of graciousness, poise, discipline, hard work and thoroughness. She was a lover of beauty whether it be her garden of beautiful roses which she loved and worked hard at maintaining, her home which she kept immaculate or her person which she carefully groomed perfectly for every occasion. She claimed she had inherited these qualities from her mother Hannah.
Mother was a disciple of Jesus Christ with a full knowledge and testimony of the gospel, a love for the gospel that she demonstrated in her everyday life. Mother loved to read and was a disciplined reader and had a great desire to learn the gospel to be capable of sharing with others. Her mother set this example for her and she followed her mother’s example in incorporating these traits into her own life.
When we were little youngsters we always wanted to get in bed with Mama and Daddy and listen to her tell of her childhood days in Orderville. She was a good story teller. She made the most mundane incidents sound so enchanting and we never tired of listening to them over and over.
She told us the “Bunny Brown Squirrel” story a million times I bet. Mother was the youngest of the eight children. Her eldest sister Hannah Irene died the same day she was born,so Grandpa and Grandma Esplin raised seven children. Her father was David Webster Esplin and Mary Hannah Hopkins. Her brothers and sisters were; Raymond David, Hannah Irene deceased, Ward Hopkins, Fernard Merle, Leprelete Joseph, Julia Ann, Grace and Wanda. Wanda was born 4 Dec 1906 in Orderville, Kane, Utah.
Mother told us the story about Grandpa Esplin having the first automobile in Orderville and not have Drivers Ed in those days he knew nothing about how to drive a car and promptly drove it off the Orderville bridge into the wash below. This created some mighty big excitement for all the townspeople to see Dave Esplin and his new car tipped off the bridge. Some of the fellows lifted it back upon the road and he did better after that.
She could tell us stories with morals that she hoped would help us to make better decisions and be better kids. One was about her sister Grace. When Grace was about seven years old she wanted to go down and play under the Orderville bridge with some other kids and Grandma Esplin didn’t want her to go. She begged and pleaded and begged and pleaded and kept it up until Grandma was finally worn down and against her better judgment she let her go. While they were playing in the willows and weeds she fell on a stick, lodging in her left eye causing her to lose the sight in that eye. Grandma was always sorry she had relented and let her go. Mother always used this story when she needed to make a point about us minding her and being obedient youngsters.
Mother loved to play dress up and loved to write and act in her own plays. They had a closet under the staircase and she created a theater there and would make all the family come in and attend her newest theatrical fantasy. She said they were very good!
In the summer time Grandpa and Grandma Esplin moved to their ranch at Yellow Jacket north of Kanab on the sand dunes. Mother said he ran cattle there in the summers and Grandma came to be with him. They had a nice stone house which was comfortable for them. Grandpa also had a ranch at Duck Creek on Cedar Mountain where he ran sheep and cattle and the family spent a lot of time at the ranch there.
There wasn’t a high school in Orderville, so when it came time for her to go beyond grade school she came to St. George and lived with Uncle Ward and Aunt Violet (Janice Ence’s mother and father). She and her sister Grace attended high school at Dixie and their pictures appear in the l924 yearbook along with Uncle Bill Snow, Aunt LaRue Snow Carter and Dr. Spencer Snow. The picture taken of her for the yearbook is a side view. I don’t know if she attended Dixie two years or just one. Elgin Morris had come to Orderville a few years earlier and taught school and married Aunt Julia when she was 16 years old. They went to Logan for him to continue his education and to teach and Mother went to Logan to live with them and go to high school. She could have attended two years there and only one at Dixie but she did graduate from Logan High School probably in 1926 but I’m not sure of this date.
Following her graduation from high school, she attended BYU, probably one year and received her teaching certificate. She said when she went to BYU her English teacher thought her handwriting was so deplorable she made her fill the blackboards on all four walls of a small room practicing until she could write respectfully. She always appreciated this teacher making her learn penmanship and she did indeed have beautiful penmanship ever after. While at BYU she lived with a group of girls that became her lifelong friends. Two that I can name were Clara Bentley (Knell) and Wavie Williams (Peterson). From time to time through the years they came to St. George to see Mother and she was always so happy to visit with each one of them.
When she finished at BYU she accepted a teaching job at the Parowan, Utah elementary school and roomed with Clara’s parents, the Bentleys in Parowan.( The Bentley’s were Laurene Brown’s parents.) I figure she taught there the winters of l927 and 1928. In the meantime her sister Grace had married William Snow of Pine Valley, Utah (16 May, 1928) and they were living in Cedar City, Utah where Bill and his brother Jeter Clinton Snow ran a grocery store called O. P. Skaggs System. While living in Parowan mother would go to Cedar City to stay with Grace and Bill, do her laundry and visit her family. It was during this time that she met Clint and she fell in love with him.
Grandma Esplin took ill in Orderville and was taken to the Cedar City Hospital. She had diabetics but she died of cancer of the liver on March 3, 1929. After her death Mother felt she needed to go home to Orderville and be with her father to help him with the house and his work so she took a job teaching at the Orderville one room school.
Mother took her school class to Zion National Park on a field trip. The kids were all excited to go to Zion, some had never been away from Orderville. She was always rather sorry she had taken them because while they were there a very tragic accident occurred. They had a tram that was bringing logs down off the mountain to the valley floor and as her little group of youngsters was watching this operation a cable broke sending a log flying down into the canyon killing a fellow right before their eyes. None of them were hurt but it was a terrible accident that really upset them.
While living in Orderville, Mother worked for Hans Chamberlain in his store which was just next door to their home. It was during the construction of the Zion mile long tunnel and the men doing the construction would come into Orderville for food and supplies. She worked nights as they worked around the clock on the tunnel so Hans’s store was busy all the time. She said she would fix big orders, give the men a shave, sell them food and the other supplies they needed. It was a busy time for the people in Orderville and economically a good time for business.
On October 5, 1929 Daddy opened his own O. P. Skaggs System store in St. George, Utah and continued his courtship of Mother in Orderville. On a trip to Grafton they were in the old Grafton Church when he proposed to her and she agreed to marry him. She always liked to see a picture of the little church as it stirred sentimental feelings and remembrances of their courtship days.
They were married in the St. George Temple on June 18, 1930. She always loved to show us the picture of the Nash convertible that Grandpa Esplin let them use to go on their honeymoon to the canyons. As I remember the story she and Grace and Bill drove down from Orderville for the wedding and Grace came down with the measles and was very sick, almost ruining the wedding for her. They honeymooned at the canyons, camping in a tent as accommodations would have been few and far between and probably more expensive than they could afford. Mother said Daddy only had one change of clothes as Daddy had invested all he had to get his store in operation and during those depression years’ cash was hard to come by.
They rented the south half of what she called Uncle Tom Gardner’s house for their first apartment. Grant and Eileen Harris lived in the north half of the house at the same time they were there. This is the house that Wayne and Bessie Gardner raised their family in at 165 North 100 West. Later they lived in the South couple of rooms of Grandma and Grandpa Snow’s home on 2nd West just straight West through the block. They were living there when Dex was born in 1932.
Sometime in 1933 Cal Dalton approached Mother and asked if he could build them a house as he needed work for his men and he felt they might be interested in building a house. Grandpa Esplin loaned them some money and work proceeded on the lovely home they built at 248 East St. George Boulevard. She told me the cost of the home was $6000 at the time it was built.
In December, l934 Mother and Daddy hosted Grandma and Grandpa Snow’s Golden Wedding party and pictures were taken then with all the Snow family on the front porch and a picture of Grandma and Grandpa Snow and their children was taken in the living room. Mother and Daddy lived together in this home the rest of their lives. It was a wonderful home holding lots of memories for all of us and was a great contributor to the security and stability Mother and Daddy were able to provide for us. It wasn’t just a house but a home, a special place made warm, and loving and secure for our family by our parents, a place we loved to bring our own children home to.
Brent and I have compared memories of our home and one we remember vividly is how many hours we spent playing in our large hallway. The hallway must have been a good four feet wide and very long and at the end of it were built-in drawers and a cupboard, Mother’s linen closet. We would pull the second drawer from the bottom out and take out some of the sheets and it would make a dandy receptacle to pitch a basketball in pretending we were making shots from the foul line. We got pretty good at it we though and Brent was especially good! We played dodge ball, imagine in those tight quarters, but when your small it can be done. On the west side of the hall near the kitchen was a cedar lined closet with large shelves. Mother stored bedding there and things she didn’t want moth eaten. We would take out the blankets and get up on the shelves and it became a wonderful hideout. Mother must have been a very patient woman to let us play in her house so much.
Another fun place to play in our house was the laundry chute. In the bathroom, (and there was only one in that big house ) Mother had designed a cupboard with a door that opened revealing a square hole in the floor that dropped into the laundry room in the basement. A slatted wooden cage downstairs enclosed the dirty clothes that were dropped from the bathroom above and contained them there until wash day. At one time we were small enough to get through the hole in the floor and loved to drop down through it into the cage. Mother also had a small chute in the kitchen that dropped into a closet in the furnace room and that was for the trash. In those days you had to take care of your own trash. Mother would drop her trash down the chute, into a large box and once a week she would haul the box out to the back yard and burn its contents.
Mother had an 8mm movie camera and took lots of pictures. She purchased some “Our Gang” comedies and a few Disney comedies and we loved to watch them as long as she would show them. She would set the projector up at the top of the hall way and we would all, including our friends, sit on the floor or on a pillow and watch home movies for as long as she would show them and beg for more. She had learned how to splice the film together onto large rolls so that the movie would last longer without having to stop and start so often. It was a great history.
When Daddy was a youngster growing up in Pine Valley he had Scarlet Fever which left him with a rheumatic heart. Many times through the years when we were little he would be sick for six weeks or more at a time and have to stay in bed. When they got married Daddy had an attack soon after and Mother was left to run the store alone as best she could. Grandpa Esplin came from Orderville to help her so she could work at the store and still take care of Daddy. It was during this time that Grandpa Esplin met Daddy’s oldest sister Ann Snow who had never married and they were married March 25, 1931. So Mother’s sister-in-law became her step-mother and Daddy’s sister became his mother-in-law. Grandpa Esplin and Aunt Ann lived with Grandma Snow in her home on 2nd West after Grandpa Snow died in 1936. Before that time they were living in Orderville or at one of his ranches. Sometime in the l940's Grandpa Esplin built a home for he and Aunt Ann around the corner from us on 3rd East. Grandma Snow lived with them also so all of our grandparents were in the same house and very close by. We had many
happy times visiting them, playing games and eating supper with them. Aunt Ann was a great
quilter and often Mother would join Grandma Snow and her in her basement to work on a beautiful quilt while we children played underfoot, or even under the quilt which served as a great hideout. Aunt Ann gave all the granddaughters a beautiful navy & white star quilt.
During the times Daddy was sick and had to be in bed, Mother ran the store. They bought a hospital bed and set it up in the Den by the living room so she could care for him easier and he could also receive visitors. He did the book work from the store there, figuring invoices, paying his bills and doing the other necessary things he could do from home to help her keep the operation going. The year Brent was born Daddy was sick in bed and Aunt Grace had Mother bring us all up to Cedar to stay with them so she could help with Daddy and the baby . Because the store demanded so much time there wasn’t time for vacations, trips or a lot of traveling therefore July 4th and July 24th were the highlights of the year when Daddy and Mother would take us to Pine Valley and sometimes we even spent the night at Uncle Levi’s house which was always such fun.
Later, when we were all in Salt Lake going to school, Daddy was on the Utah Grocers Board and began attending their monthly meetings in Salt Lake City, Utah. Mother kept her suitcase partially packed so it wasn’t hard for her to get ready to go with him. This made for a nice little get-a-way for Mother as she could shop and enjoy herself while he was in his meetings. They would call us to come in to Little America where they always stayed and take us all to Covey’s for dinner. What a treat that was for us. When the kids were small, Mother would arrange for us girls to join her for shopping down town and we’d get the baby strollers loaded up with bottles and diapers and make a full day and night of it.
Mother was always good to send us care packages via Daddy’s grocery truck which made a weekly run for groceries to stock his store. She would put together a box with things she thought we needed whether it was canned goods or clothes or toys for the kids and the truck driver would make a stop at our house and drop it off sometime during his run in Salt Lake.
Mother always cooked a lovely dinner on Sunday. Usually it was a cross-cut rib roast or a chuck roast. Mother always used her china and crystal for Sunday dinner and for as long as they were alive and could come she had our grandparents, Grandpa Esplin, Aunt Ann and Grandma Snow eat with us and most of the time when he was in town Daddy’s brother, Uncle Levi joined us also.
Mother was a good cook. Cinnamon rolls was a specialty that she was good at making.
Of the many behind the scenes responsibilities of Mothers that came from having the store, three I remember well. One was the roasting of pine nuts. I remember that wonderful smell of pine nuts that came from our ovens in the fall. Daddy would bring home 100# sacks of pine nuts that he had purchased from the pine nut pickers and then Mother would put them in #10 gallon cans and roast them in the oven so that he could sack them and sell them. Oh how good they were hot and salted right out of the oven. Another chore that wasn’t so hot and smelled worse was the store laundry. How I hated to sort through all those bloody meat rags, aprons and get them into piles for Mother to wash. There would be sawdust and bugs and the smell would sometimes be unbearable. But she did the laundry for Daddy, probably every week then we would iron the aprons on her “mangle” ( a machine that ironed flat pieces) and fold up all the cleaning cloths and rags to return to the store to have it repeated the next time. Mother saved the fat from the store and from the cooking at the house until she had enough to make homemade soap. She would get a large kettle and build a fire in the backyard and using lye and water and the fat that she had rendered, make a large batch of soap, putting it in a square mold to make bars which she stored to use for the store laundry. To use it she would put a couple of bars or more in a large kettle with a bit of water and melt it down then pour it in the washing machine. It did a great job on those bloody, greasy aprons and cleaning rags but what a lot of hard work went in to both the making of the soap and the laundry she used it on. It was a great day for her when Daddy finally took the store laundry to a commercial laundry. She didn’t make any more soap after that. The third responsibility that fell to Mother was taking a big supper into the store once every quarter when Daddy inventoried. That was a big event! Every item in the store had to be inventoried so all the employees were required to remain after work on that day to count every last item on the shelves and everywhere else. Because they needed supper before they started the huge task, Mother would prepare food and bring it to the store, setting up a buffet of sorts on the meat table just behind the blue doors. And oh! how good it was! She made a delicious macaroni and shrimp salad, had cold cuts and all the trimmings and cold pop and sometimes melon if it were the season. We loved the food if not the work of the evening. And that routine went on all the years we had the store downtown.
Mother served in many church callings, and paid her tithing and always had a temple recommend.
Mother liked to crochet and do handwork. I love the delicate little baby clothes she had saved that she made for Dex and Brent and I. Lace trimmed collars with rolled roses embroidered on them, table cloths and covers with beautiful embroidery, She could also sew clothing
Mother had a mechanical ability that amazes me. She was able to repair, fix, and keep running many appliances around the house. She could fix an electrical cord, she was knowledgeable about the old coal stoker and furnace and the vacuum was not a mystery to her. Daddy worked such long days that she couldn’t always rely on him to keep things in good shape so she got her own tool box and rolled up her sleeves and figured out how to make the needed repairs. She loved yard work or at least if she didn’t love it she worked in the yard anyway. She spent lots of time grooming her large rose bed, planting bulbs and other flowers, making sure the lawns were mowed and everything was fertilized and looking good.
Mother was right by Daddy’s side all the way through his surgery for a heart valve in 1965 which was still in the experimental stages. The Doctors felt he would survive two years and he lived eleven so we were all grateful for the extension of his life. Mother was lost and lonely after Daddy passed away December 1, 1976. She continued to live in her home, drive her car and carry on but she would say, “I never thought I would live this long without Daddy.” We are all grateful to Brent and D’On that when the time came and she could no longer stay alone they took her to their home to be with them and she was spared the dreaded “rest home” syndrome. We all took turns in helping to make life enjoyable for her but we thank Brent and D’On for they were truly angels in providing her this daily care. She died in the Dixie Regional Hospital on March 8, 1989 following less than a week in the hospital and was buried beside Daddy in the St. George Cemetery. Grandma Snow lived 13 years as a widow.
Mother was a genuine person, a caring and loving individual. She loved her children dearly and loved her grandchildren very much. As is always the case, each of them thought she loved them the most and what a great attribute to make people feel they are the most special person in their life. She wrote letters to her grandchildren with great interest in the things they were doing and always offered encouragement and love for them while they were away at school, on missions or newlyweds away from home for the first time, and they wrote to her, letters she always looked forward to receiving and that were dearly treasured.
Fall 1983
Closing of a letter from Grandma Snow.
I pray for each of you each day that you will have good health, be happy, have sound wisdom in solving all your problems. Be faithful Latter Day Saints and find success in your work. Be honorable people. I am especially proud of each one of you.
I hope and pray that the Lord will guide and direct each of us daily, that we might be able to do our best at what ever task comes our way. May we all live each day that we will be worthy of his blessings. It is the constant wish of your Mother, Grandmother and great grandmother. I love you dearly. Love Wanda E. Snow.