Teacher

Those of you who know Dad know that he has always been a teacher. He always loves to give someone a better insight into things that he is familiar with and enjoys.

For example, Dad, being a pioneer in the computer industry, really enjoyed teaching people about how computers operate. He went to the trouble of doing a mockup of a computer. It was a very simple arrangement that was just a black, rectangular box made out of plywood. He took it around to the every one of his kids' classrooms (and obviously there were plenty of those classrooms around) and would do a presentation. He talked to the kids about how a binary counting system worked and how the computer functioned on a binary, on/off principle. It was really very simplistic. He had two sets of four lights and the lights were just a string of Christmas lights. He drilled a hole in the face of the box and stuck the Christmas light through. It was also wired up so that he could switch each light on and off independently. As he switched the lights on and off he would teach the kids how to count in the binary system. I'm sure that that's the first place that I ever learned about the binary system and found it to be something that I've always remembered because my dad is such a great teacher.

I also remember times when dad, to earn a few extra dollars and to do something he likes, went and taught at LDS Business College and some of the other business schools in Salt Lake. He would teach one night or two nights a week. He taught computer programming to kids who were learning how to operate computers. He would always bring home a big stack of mimeograph handouts and we the kids were his collating machine. We'd start at the first stack and move our way down picking up one sheet out of each stack and then stapling them together. I remember a number of times working around a big table dad bought that used to sit down the basement. We would just work our way around the table, taking a sheet off of each stack of mimeographed copies, collating them and stapling them together so that he could use them at his class that evening at the business college.

--Mike

Power of Prayer

Being a man who loves the outdoors, my dad decided that he and I were going to have a backwoods adventure. Every year, we went on vacation to Yellowstone National Park. One year when I was about 11 or 12, Dad decided that we should go fishing at one at the wilderness lakes in the backwoods at Yellowstone. It was going to require a hike of several miles and when we got there we were going to fish and see what we could catch. Fishing was always free at Yellowstone so you didn't even need a fishing license and we had decided that we were going to set out on a fun adventure.

Dad decided that we could make a raft that we could lash together and float it out onto the lake which we did. We never got too far away from shore but nevertheless it just put us a little farther out into the lake where we could do a little bit more fishing. I remember the fishing particularly because I caught a 19 or 20 inch lake trout. It was the biggest fish that I ever caught. I was so excited that I had pulled in such a great big fish. In fact, it was so big that the creel that we had to keep the fish in was torn as a result of the fish being so big.

Anyway, we finished fishing and started to walk back to the road where we had planned to meet mom and the other kids. We must have gotten turned around somehow and found our way not arriving at the destination that we had hoped to. We walked quite a ways and it just started getting dark.

As luck would have it, not only did the sun set but the clouds moved in and the rain started. We were out in the middle of nowhere, soaked to the skin, and in fact we lost the trail. The trail led into a meadow that was overgrown with grass and we were couldn’t follow the trail in the darkness.

We had no compass and it was so dark we couldn’t see the map and didn’t think to bring any light because we had not planned to be out that long. Our only hope was prayer. Dad said we should kneel down wet and cold in the middle of the woods in Yellowstone National Park and pray that we would be guided to a location where we could find safety. We did that and when we were done, it appeared to us that we could see lights on the horizon. We walked through the woods toward that light and somehow or another we stumbled across what was a right-of-way for an old power line. We could not see the wires of the power line but we could see that the trees along the right of way had been cut down shorter than the rest of the naturally growing trees. In fact, it was so dark, that we could not see our hands held in front of our faces. We had to hold onto the end of each other's fishing rod to be able to stay together.

Having come across this right-of-way, Dad said he we sure that this would lead us to something civilized. We followed it for awhile until we saw headlights of cars through the trees. I set out at a sprint attempting to get to the roadway and flag down a car. Here I was an 11‑year-old boy soaked to the skin standing out in the middle of nowhere flagging cars that were driving on the roadway and I distinctly remember to my chagrin that at least two or three cars passed me by and didn't even pull over. I was baffled and I still am. Nevertheless, eventually someone pulled in. I had twisted my ankle in the process of trying to scurry to the road. They loaded us into their car and took us to where we were supposed to meet our ride.

I grateful for that time I got to spend with Dad. I know that our Heavenly Father watched over us that night to get us home safely and it is through instances like this that my Dad taught me the power of prayer.

--Mike