Comment

“What Every Freshman …”

Elder Boyd Packer’s Utah State University Baccalaureate address is magnificent (September)! It should be read to every high school graduating class. I hope every young person in the Church will read it. Our Church publications become more outstanding each year.

Ida M. Ward
Lakeside, Arizona

The department of seminaries and institutes of the Church school system has reprinted Elder Packer’s article so that it may be given students throughout the Church. If you need a copy for such usage, write: Distribution Center, 1999 West 1700 South, Salt Lake City, Utah 84104, and ask for catalog number PLSI0229.

The Village Photographer

I’ve never been so impressed as I am with your September issue. The article by Nelson Wadsworth, “A Village Photographer’s Dream,” is just terrific. I’m very proud!

Mrs. Toni Wilcox
San Diego, California

The photographs took me back into such beautiful and eventful history. As I studied each picture in detail, I couldn’t help but ponder over the past and try to visualize the life of the early Saints; particularly, those pictures associated with Joseph Smith. Most rewarding for me was to see the beauty of the earth where our Heavenly Father chose to restore the most heavenly miracle of this dispensation. I was able to visualize Joseph Smith working in the fields with his father, and then going to the beautiful grove to pray to Heavenly Father for light and truth. The feelings I received from looking over the pictures brought deep emotional reactions. I shall review them often. Just magnificent!

Donald E. Evett
Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii

On page 55 of your September issue appears a photo of old Carthage Jail. Since there is no explanation about this photo, one gets the impression that the picture was taken by Bishop Anderson. Actually, this photo was taken in 1866, the year in which Hancock County sold the old jail at public auction for $1,100. The original is in the possession of a Mr. Califf of Carthage. In the early 1900s when Bishop Anderson would have been here, the old jail had a glass-enclosed front porch and a much larger frame annex than the one shown in the photograph in the Ensign. The September issue is excellent, appealing to a wide diversity of interests.

Henry H. Rampton
Director, “Old” Carthage Jail
Visitors Center
Carthage, Illinois

Many readers have asked where they might see more of Bishop Anderson’s photographs. Those used in the September issue came from several sources. Twenty-three belong to Rell G. Francis, Springville, Utah; seven belong to Robert W. Edwards, Salt Lake City; and the balance came from the Church Historian’s Department and the Utah State Historical Society.

Home Storage

A point was raised in your article, “How to Get Started with Home Storage” (September) concerning what to do if the power goes off, as it affects deep freeze items. Many meats can be cut into thin strips and made into a form of meat jerky. A good marinade is half soy sauce and half Worcestershire sauce. Bake in a 250 degree oven until the meat is fully dry. I have used this on leftover turkey, roast beef, and meat that isn’t too fat.

Ellen Blue
Quartz Hill, Lancaster, California

Zucchini Soup!

Help! My mail is overflowing with letters from readers who have Zucchini soup instead of relish (see “Comment,” September). My recipe should have read six cups of sugar instead of six cups of water. Sorry this happened.

Joyce Pugh
Lynden, Washington

Brazilian Stakes

The October “News of the Church,” page 87, carried a news story on new stakes created in Brazil. The total number of stakes now in Brazil is nine: Campinas, Curitiba, Pôrto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro, Santos, São Paulo, São Paulo East, São Paulo West, and São Paulo South stakes. This map identifies their correct geographical locale:

map of Brazilian stakes

Boston

The articles on Boston (February and November, 1973) brought nostalgic memories of the four and a half years Brother Maughan and I spent with more than 400 missionaries in New England. We thrill with excitement at the growth that has taken place in the last two decades. President Clarke’s statement that “we reach a point where conversions begin to snowball,” recalls a different picture 20 years ago. A “referral” was a rarity and was pounced upon with avidity. Those who would listen were hard to find and those who inquired about the Church were novelties. Stake President Richard Bushman will recall this, for he was a counselor to President Maughan in 1953.

Readers might be interested in an elaboration on the moving of the mission home and the erection of the present Cambridge chapel and New England Mission offices. President Levi Edgar Young envisioned a chapel on the part of the original Longfellow property not occupied by the mission home, but that was quite inadequate. To accommodate the present structure on that site the mission home had to be moved or demolished. And the adjacent property had to be cleared of a building at 96 Brattle Street which had housed the Cambridge Branch since its purchase by President William Reeder in 1942.

Under the administration of President S. Dilworth Young, all the branches had been collecting money to build chapels. Cambridge’s need was becoming urgent when we arrived there in 1951. Immediately President Maughan and his counselors began searching for an adequate location for the Cambridge chapel. None was found. The Longfellow property was ideal, but what was to become of the Mission Home? Reluctantly a search was instituted to find another home; however, nothing comparable could be found. Then almost providentially a house on Hawthorn Street was placed on the market.

It would have been a simple solution to use the house at 15 Hawthorn Street as a new mission home and allow the house at 100 Brattle Street to be demolished to make way for the proposed Cambridge Chapel. We shuddered at the thought. The Hawthorn Street house did not have the same charm, beauty, or graciousness of the home at 100 Brattle Street.

In contrast, the mission home had more than its tangible assets. Since 1941 it had housed mission presidents and families, a staff of office workers, and hundreds of missionaries. Each had left a bit of his dedication, the imprint of his knees kneeling in morning and evening prayers, the echo of his testimony in conference sessions, the laughter and singing around the piano. Memories, mostly joyous, but some sad, lingered in every room.

But, if the house at 15 Hawthorn were wrecked, the lot was large enough to accommodate the Mission Home if it could be moved. Professional house movers were contacted. Some shook their heads. The house was much too large. No house that large had ever been moved in all New England. It was not just the engineering problem of jacking up the house and inching it forward on giant rollers that concerned them. The movers assured us that could be accomplished without damaging the interior or removing any of the furniture furnishings. But the house was larger than the street it had to traverse. So it was decided to cut the house in two and move each section separately.

In the January 1955 issue of The New Englander, the official mission publication, I wrote: “It is a weird sensation to look out of the same familiar windows onto strange and unfamiliar scenes but this entire house moving enterprise could be viewed either as a vision or a nightmare—

“Certainly it took vision to conceive, plan, and carry out this undertaking and certainly there have been nightmarish aspects when things seemed to be headed for disaster. Also, there were many humorous incidents.

“Hurricane Carol ripped off a section of the roof. Then Edna (a second hurricane) came and poured a deluge through the damaged roof into bedrooms and President Maughan’s office.

“When the back section of the house was cut away and that section moved off by itself with its open side swathed in dingy canvas, Elder Watts was elected or volunteered—we’ll say volunteered—to sleep there as night watchman.

“As the house was jacked up, the plumbing was cut off from all save one bathroom situated between Sister Maughan’s study and bedroom. This called for some regulations involving procedure, protocol, and patience, but little privacy.

“The mission family stayed on in the home until the water, electricity, gas, and heat were disconnected, then President and Sister Maughan and Sister Jones and Sister McFarlane accepted the hospitality of the Hinckleys for six weeks. The hardy elders stayed on without heat, gas, water, and electricity as the house was jacked up higher and higher as it started on its journey toward Hawthorn Street.

“The nearest bathroom facilities were at a service station some distance away from the home. During a particularly restless and uncomfortable night, Elder Sandmire adopted as his theme song, ‘If I Had the Wings of an Angel, Over These Prison Walls I Would Fly.’ The next morning, in his haste to reach the service station, he evidently thought he had the wings of an angel for he launched himself out of the kitchen door into eight feet of sheer space.

“The night after ‘Hazel,’ the third hurricane, with the house completely filling the street, a cab driver dashed past the barricade and came with a screech of brakes up against the house. He got out, walked around the house, then climbed from the basement into the kitchen. Here was something to report to the police, a hurricane story to top all others. He walked through to the front room. There sat Elder Sandmire playing ‘Home Sweet Home’ on the piano while the other elders were reading their scriptures by the light of their flash lanterns. He crept out muttering, ‘They’re nuts—or I’m nuts!’

“Two spectators stood on the sidewalk watching the house move forward on its rollers. ‘Where are they taking it?’ said one. ‘To Utar (sic), I guess,’ said the other.”

This is the humorous side of the story; during the moving we also had many faith promoting experiences.

The year 1954 will be remembered by all New Englanders as the “year of the hurricanes,” those devastating storms which annually threaten the Gulf States and Atlantic seacoast. Most would usually sweep out to sea without hitting New England. But during the house moving, three brought devastation to many parts of the area. Providence, Rhode Island, was partially inundated by the ocean and was under martial law when we held a conference by candlelight there. That storm had struck Boston with such force that the steeple on the old North Church of Paul Revere fame was blown down.

The first hurricane struck while we were in conference in the newly completed Hartford Chapel. An enormous elm crashed down within inches of the church and its testimony-bearing missionaries without harm to chapel or occupants.

In the Connecticut Valley, the crops were flattened and beaten to the ground. The lovely trees were uprooted and many crashed down on buildings, shattering roofs and windows. Overturned signs littered the highway.

We shuddered to think what might have happened in Cambridge where the mission home had just been cut in two for moving. The Connecticut storm had struck Massachusetts but our home and trees stood unscathed in the midst of the destruction.

A few weeks later, as the large section of the house stood in the center of Hawthorn Street, we listened all night to the radio reports of a second hurricane headed our way. Toward morning in seeming answer to our prayers, word came that the storm was not following the course of the previous one but had turned. For the beneficence of our Father’s mercy in sparing our home and our lives we bowed our heads in grateful appreciation.

Hattie B. Maughan
Logan, Utah