Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Family pictures in Olympia in 1981



Tanner family

These pictures are the end of the pictures I took in Olympia on the day of Mother's funeral.  We all searched within ourselves for a shred of humor and lightheartedness to ease the burden we all faced that day.  I had to fly home immediately afterward because I had to start teaching at BYU on the first day of school the next day and we had just barely accepted the position there and moved to Utah.  I still have many questions to ask Mother and even a gripe or two.  She wrote me a letter every week of my struggles to get through college working nights and going to school days.  These letters bolstered and supported me more than any financial help they might have given me but were unable to do.  Some times her pen or pencil drifted off the page of the letter late at night while she was writing but it was always waiting for Ezra the mailman the next day to begin its journey to Laramie and help me keep going another week.  And then another.  And then she came to my graduation from the University of Wyoming in 1953 a degree she earned no less than I.

5 comments:

Elizabeth said...

That was a wonderful tribute to our mother's love and protective feeling towards her children. As we went through her papers after everyone had gone home back to their lives, we found all the clippings she had saved pertaining to the lives and careers of her children. The most were about Dwight, who certainly always had more than one iron in the fire. Daddy said once that Mother was a little like a mother bear when it came to her six children.

Lani said...

Um, you were starting at BYU not CSU. Your mom passed away the day Ron and I were married which was September 5, 1981.

Judy said...

Because Dwight posted these photos, there are several gems I saw for the first time.
Perhaps the scripture: "All things work for good to those who love the Lord." fits this period of our lives. Much good came out of hard times.

Ann said...

This has also been a time of refreshing the emotional ties that have continued to bind the six of us together. At times I have struggled with the tender reminder of that day that now seems so long ago, and at other times I have appreciated the reminder of the strength we have all been blessed with because of our parents, their love and devotion, and the memory of those days. The scripture Judy quoted is perfect.

Louise Blood said...

I don't like this to come to an end. These pictures are all so wonderful and we owe you a lot for taking so many, many of which I had never seen, and giving us this pictoral record of family members, and the support we felt from each other, that we may be ever mindful of how much family means to us.