My father was Eldred Vinson Knight, and my mother was Hattie Madson. 

I had multicultural grandparents. 

My father’s father was Vinson Philip Knight. His family originated in Bristol, England and emigrated to New England in colonial times. My father’s mother was Mary Jane Hess. Her family originated in Zurich, Switzerland. They emigrated to Pennsylvania in colonial times. 

My mother’s father was Mads Jonathan Madson. His family emigrated to Utah from Denmark in the mid-1800s. My mother’s mother was Ann Amelia Clark. Her family originated in South Wales and emigrated to Malad, Idaho in the mid-1800s.

So each of my four grandparents were raised in a different culture, but they had two things in common. They were European and they were early converts to the Mormon church.

My great great grandfather, Vinson Knight, was one of the first converts of Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet. He was a prominent church leader in Kirkland, Ohio and in Nauvoo, Illinois where he was the presiding Bishop of the Church and a civic leader. He died at approximately the same time as Joseph Smith. His wife, Margaret McBride, became the plural wife of Heber C. Kimball a counselor to Brigham Young. My great grandfather, James Vinson Knight, was 14 years old when his father died. He was so upset at his mother’s marriage to Brother Kimball that it he left home. In the early years he survived as a freighter, cowboy, and Indian fighter. He was associated with the notorious Porter Rockwell. He later settled down and started farming in Southern Utah.

My great great grandfather, John W Hess, was Pennsylvania Dutch Even though his family originated in Switzerland. He joined the Mormon Battalion that was recruited by the United States government to fight in the war with Mexico. The Mormon Battalion marched from Nebraska to the Pacific Ocean. Later he became a bishop in Farmington, Utah. He is noted in Mormon history for starting the primary in his congregation. John W Hess had seven wives and they each had 10 children. I have a lot of cousins named Hess.

 My great-grandfather James Ephraim Madsen was born in Denmark, he joined the Mormon church in the late-1800s and emigrated to the Danish settlement of Salem, Utah.

My great great grandfather William Clark was born in South Wales. He joined the Mormon church in the early 1800s and emigrated to the Welch settlement of Malad, Idaho.

 My grandfather Knight grew up in southern Utah where he learned to farm and hang out with cowboys. He got a job working for a farmer in fielding, Utah that was located in northern Utah about 30 miles from the Idaho border. He was hired by John Henry Hess, the Bishop of Fielding, Utah and send of John W Hess and blank. My grandfather was attracted to one of Bishop Hess’s daughters, Mary Jane Hess. They were married.  My father was born in fielding, Utah. They moved to Mud Lake, Idaho and started a homestead. Their Homestead failed and they moved to a small farm west of Blackfoot, Idaho near a village named Rockfortd. M/y grandparents sent my father to Hinckley, Utah to live with relatives and attend  High school at Hinkley Academy.. Hinckley is in west central Utah near the Nevada border. The closest town is Delta.  I couldn’t find a picture of my father or even a mention of his name in the Hinckley Academy yearbook that is with my records except for one comment. In a column titled Wouldn’t You Be  SURPRISED if  one entry mentioned my father.
“Wouldn’t you be surprised if Eldred Knight had nothing to say.”

After high school my father attended Idaho State University and earned a two-year certificate to qualify as a teacher. This is where he met my mother, Hattie Madson.

 My grandfather, Mads Jonathan Madson, and four of his brothers left their home in Salem, Utah looking for work.They ended up on both sides of the border between Idaho and Utah. Some settled in Southern Idaho and some settled in Northern Utah. They worked as sheepherders and freighted wheat to the railhead at Corinne, Utah near Brigham City. They took honey and other goods back to Idaho and sold them to the settlers. This is how my grandfather got hooked up with a pretty little Welch lady, Ann Amelia Clark, from Malad, Idaho. They had 11 children—Earl, Hattie, Elva, James, Jack, Orville, Rex, Grant, Parke, Orlin and Amelia Ann. Earl was killed in 1928 in a farm accident and my grandfather died of a heart attack in 1930 when he was 55 years old. 

 My mother, Hattie, was the second child. Her older brother, Earl, was her hero. She idolized him. He set the pattern for the family. When he completed eighth grade at the little one room schoolhouse down the lane from their home he decided to go to Malad for high school. This was not trivial or even common at the time. During the winter their ranch was snowed in. In order to go to high school Earl had to figure out a way to live in Malad during the school year. My mother followed suit. She boarded with her  mother’s sister, Aunt Mable, during her high school years. My mother was interested in literature. She loved to read and she hated the farm. The worst thing she could think of was to have to pluck dead chickens and prepare them to cook. As a result she would never eat chicken. So chicken wasn’t part of our diet when I was growing up.

My mother was devastated when Earl was killed in a farm accident.

After high school mother attended Idaho State University and received a two-year teaching certificate. This is where she met father. The first year after completing her schooling she taught in the one room schoolhouse in Elkhorn near her home. She said that is was the worst year of her life. She said, “It was hell!” Never teach if a large share of your students are your siblings. Then she married Eldred who wooed her with his sharp, new convertible. They moved near his parents in Rockford and built a log cabin right next to them so Eldred could help with the farm. They both got a teaching position at the elementary school in Roberts that is about 2 miles from their new home.  They taught in a two-person school. Father was the principal and mother was his only teacher.  A few years after their marriage my father was called to serve an LDS mission in England. He left my mother to teach and try to pay their bills and went to serve in the Yorkshire area of England. During Eldred’s absence my mother learned that she could be the breadwinner and manage the affairs of their home. She is naturally an organized person but she worried and fretted until her husband finally return home. This experience prepared her for what was to come next in her life.  After six years of marriage I was born in  March of 1935.

When my father complained of chronic sore throat they decided to have his tonsils out when the school year ended in 1936. The operation was performed in the office of an MD in the small town of Rose, Idaho. father hemorrhaged and bled to death. It was a tragedy. Mother was devastated, but she had to carry on. She took over the school and realized that she couldn't make it on the salary that a barely certified teacher could get in the middle of a depression. She had two years of training. She needed two more years to get her baccalaureate degree. So she went to school every summer. 

 I remember stories I was told about the summer mother spent at the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho. I was a few months old. I was the cutest, smartest baby you have ever seen. At least that is what I was told. During this time we went to see an aircraft carrier in Seattle Harbor, and I was very well behaved. While mother was in school, a niece of Kate Bennett—another teaching friend of my mother—was my baby sitter. She really learned to love me. I know she love me because she told me so. She lived in Concord, California while I was on a church mission in Walnut Creek, California. She had my companion and me over to dinner several times. We taught her husband who was not a member of the Church a lesson or two, but he wasn’t interested enough to make much progress. He was a nice guy and told us a very funny story on himself. He was painting a house of a friend and a little boy stood and watched him while he stopped and had a cigarette. Finally he asked the little boy if something was wrong. 

The boy said, “You are going to die.” 

He said, “Why!”

The boy said, “Because you’re smoking a cigarette.”

So he put out the cigarette and asked, “Am I going to die now?”

The little boy said, “I don’t know.”

When I was three years old we moved to Goshen, Idaho where my mother found a teaching job. Goshen is a village about 3 miles east of Shelley, Idaho. Shelley is a small town about 10 miles 

south of Idaho Falls. The first things I remember are events in Goshen. Mother found an older couple named Christensen to take care of me. I remember the Christensens. They both had white hair and they were small. They were very nice to me and I enjoyed being in their home. The Christensen’s granddaughter was my favorite playmate. She was a cute little blond girl and we  liked to play pretend games.

One morning when my mother dropped me off at the Christiansen’s I complained of itching. They made me stand on a chair and stripped me down to my shorts. My body was covered with a red rash. The doctors diagnosed it as scarlet fever. Nowadays scarlet fever is not a big deal. They can be treated with antibiotics in 1938 it was a serious matter. I was quarantined for six weeks. That meant I had to live with the Christiansen’s for six weeks with no visitors especially not my mother. She was a teacher and scarlet fever is a contagious disease. It was a lonely six weeks. When my quarantine was over my little girlfriend suggested we celebrate by eating candy in her father’s country store after it was closed. We got into a lot of trouble.

The next year we moved to Shelley. Shelley is a small town--big town compared to Goshen. We lived with Mrs. bear, her son F. L. and two of mothers teaching friends. F.L. was about ten years older than me. He was my hero. He was a quiet kid but the greatest thing about him is that he liked to play with me. My mother stayed in touch with Mrs. Baer and I remember we stopped to see her on one of our trips to Idaho Falls to see my Uncle Grant. She was proud of F.L. 

because he was now a big time Chicago lawyer. She gave use a book he had written on 

an esoteric legal subject. I treasured that book for several years. I was proud of F.L. too, 

because he was my friend. 

My most vivid memory of that year was a visit to a church activity that featured a 

basketball game. I was so excited about the game that I went home, stripped to my 

shorts and pretended to play basketball much to the delight of my mother and her 

friends. 

Another memory was a trip to my mother’s girlhood home on the ranch in Elkhorn 

just west of Malad, Idaho. As we approached Malad pass in the mountains just 

north of Malad it started to snow. The further we went the deeper to snow and the 

slower my mother drove our 37’ Chevy. It was a winding narrow road and my mother 

was scared. It didn’t help because I complained every time we hit a bump or made a sharp 

turn and I spilled my drink. My mother was petrified, but I thought it was cool and 

exciting. This is when my mother told me I was going to spend the next year with my grandmother, my uncles and aunts at the ranch while she went to  Brigham Young University to finish her bachelor’s degree. At that point I think she was looking forward to getting rid of me.

Black Baptism

In the fall of 1956 I was transferred to Fresno, California to be district leader of the Central Valley district. The district covered the central valley from Modesto to Visalia. I served in this position for nine months until my mission was over. Of the many experiences I had one that stands out.

One of my duties was to interview candidates for baptism into the LDS church. It was a time of racial unrest in the whole country. In my first area in East Oakland we lived on the fringe of a black ghetto. This was where the Black Panther movement started shortly after this time. In knocking on doors, which is how we solicited prospects for membership in the church, we often encountered black people. We were instructed not to teach black people the gospel. This instruction bothered me. When one of the leaders of the church visited our mission, Apostle Delbert Stapley, I ask him about this issue.

Me:  “Elder Stapley, why are we instructed to avoid teaching the gospel to Negros?”

 Elder Stapley:  “Elder Knight, this is not the right time to proselyte Negros. The church is just not prepared to deal with the issue at this time. I’m sure this will change. If  Negro people come to you and ask to learn about the church of course teach them. Just don’t solicit black people as you knock on doors.”

I didn’t feel completely comfortable with the instruction but I followed it. So when I received a phone call from the elders who were working in Merced I faced a moral dilemma.

Me: “Hello, Elder Knight speaking.”

Elder Jones: “Hi Elder Knight. This is Elder Jones in Merced. We have a family ready for baptism. Can you come up here and interview them soon?”

Me: “Wonderful! We can be there at 7 o’clock Monday night. Will that be okay?

Elder Jones: “That will be great. Come to our apartment and we will go to the investigators home together. By the way just a heads up. The couple are Negroes. He is an airman from Castle Air Force Base near Merced. They are from Chicago.”

There was a long pause while I considered what to say next.

Me: “How did you meet these investigators?”

Elder Jones: “We met them tracting (going door to door).”

Me: “Do you know the rule about teaching Negros?”

Elder Jones: “Yes, we know the rule, but when we met them we didn’t realize they were Negroes. They looked white to us.”

Me: “okay. I will see you Monday night at 7 o’clock at your place.”

I met the family and interviewed them for baptism. They were a great couple and were accepted into the ward where they had many friends from the Air Force base.

Now there is one thing I know about the two elders in Merced after this interview. They will lie about other things or they experienced a miracle when they met this black family.

The only repercussion from this baptism was from the Stake President. After the next stake conference the Stake President took me aside and told me a story.

State President: “I want to tell you a story about a friend of mine. He received a note from a member that said he had an acquaintance who was interested in learning about the Church. The address was on the note so my friend set about making a visit. He ended up way out in the country, down a little lane where he found a small wooden house. He knocked on the door and a black man answered and said, ‘What can I do for you.’ He said, ‘I’m lost. Can you give me directions to the highway.’

Me: “Thank you. That was an interesting story.”

Shining

I gave a presentation to a women's group about writing personal history. I used Dad's blog posts (memoir chapters) as an example. He has written some really honest, tender things and I'm so glad he's doing it. One of my favorite lines in his entries is the one where they were at church with the queen and Mom made Dad sit on the back row. It shows Mom and Dad's personality so much.

One thing that the women commented on was Jack Nicholson's face on the side of the blog and it says: Mom's favorite movie. They were dying. Your mom's favorite movie is The Shining?
I said, uh yeah. That and Silence of the Lambs.
They were laughing so hard. And I told them about the time Mom recommended I go to The Ring. She and Dad were on their mission in DC and they had just gone to see it so then I went to see it and I was not surprised at how freaky it was.
But then I told them that she worked in the temple, double shifts. And how she slaved away at work, and read book after book after book (and recommended some to me that were good, yes, but had some graphic material in it and when I was like, Mom? she was like, oh come on, I don't even think about that stuff). I told them about the time I had the worst first day my freshman year at BYU so she picked me up and took me to GI Jane at Wynsong.

Today Cam made waffles and they said, Daddy usually does waffles and you make other breakfasts. I said, yep and they said, is that how it was in your house?

So I told them how Mom used to make breakfast but then she had to go back to work so Dad took over. We talked about all the breakfasts Dad would make (and how Sam really really didn't like one of them) and how I used to beg him to get us doughnuts and chocolate milk practically every morning. And when he did relent, how I let EVERYONE KNOW that we had them because of me. Dad made us a lot of cracked wheat, oatmeal, eggs, pancakes, german pancakes, etc.

Mom never made breakfast really for us because we were in the younger family but I know she made it for the older kids, right? I remember some of you talking about biscuits and other things she'd make. She did always make dinner. Always. And she made us eat it, even the fish casserole on Dad's birthday.

She also bought healthy-ish cookies, like those oatmeal ones with the raspberry jam in the middle that were only like nine to a package which we would eat fast even though they weren't oreos. Oreos we ate in about two minutes (I usually scraped the cream out of a bunch of them and made a frosting ball wrapped in saran wrap to keep in my pocket for secret eating. I did get in trouble when she found tons of the chocolate parts in the garbage).

I also told my boys about the dinners she would make. How every Sunday we had a roast, potatoes and gravy, rolls, two vegetables, a salad and a fruit. And then dessert. Like the chocolate cake with walnuts and chocolate chips on top and then pears and raspberries to go on the side. Van suggested we could have put the pears on top, which is true.

I loved talking about Mom at that group of women and with the kids recently. They didn't know Mom loved frosties. Van said, I DO TOO! We're the same!

I love Mom and I love Dad and I love our family.
Maybe we should all watch The Shining for Mom's birthday---or better yet, an entire film festival! Ha ha ha.

Prologue II

 Shortly after returning from two years serving in LDS temples in Mexico and England my wife, Jewel, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.  Soon after we settled in our new home in a condominium on the sixth floor of a building in downtown Provo Utah, We were asked to give a talk at a conference for several of the local LDS congregations. We talked about our mission service after our retirement. The local church leaders hoped to encourage others in our situation to choose to do missionary service.

The prospect to giving this talk caused Jewel a great deal of stress. We devised a plan. I prepared and gave the talk. Jewel stood by my side and interjected her contributions when she felt it was appropriate. She either corrected me, expanded the topic, or interjected new ideas. The talk was well received and Jewel felt very comfortable with her role. She did a good job.

In this book I will tell a story of our life before we met, our life together raising our family and our life and our golden years and our life with Alzheimer’s disease. Jewell will interject her contributions or she feels is appropriate in this book as she did in the talk mentioned above. In doing this I am presuming that I can speak for jewel. I think after 56 years together I know what jewel is thinking better than almost anyone maybe even Jewel herself. When Jewel is telling the story it will be indicated by a headline--Jewel.

 Russian Banquet

In the mid 1990s Larry was asked by a Russian colleague to cochair a scientific conference to be held a compound owned by the Russian Academy of Sciences. The retreat is near Moscow in a wooded area. The surroundings are beautiful but the buildings are austere. The compound center has meeting halls and accommodations. The rest of the compound is sprinkled with dachas provided for officials of the Academy and famous scientists. Notable among the scientists who lived there was Nicolay Basov, who won the Nobel Prize in 1964. He invented the MASER the forerunner to the LASER. The conference focused on x-ray technologies, X-ray lasers, and X-ray lithography. X-ray lithography is the next technology for producing microchips. Such microchips could produce smart phones as powerful as the biggest computers.

 Larry was assigned a small room.  His next-door neighbor was Grigory a close friend of  Nicolay Basov. He was of average height, husky with a robust personalities. He gave me a bear hug and his slap on the back every time we met for breakfast.  Every evening Grigory would visit his friend Nikolay Basov at his dosha. They drank until the wee hours of the morning. Since the walls of the rooms were paper thin Larry could hear everything that went on in the halls and in the room next door. Being awake most of the night because of jet lag he heard Gregory come bouncing down the halls, bang, bang, bang. He stumbled into his room and fell on his bed. He was dead drunk every night. Then he appeared at breakfast first thing in the morning looking like he was ready for a big day. 

Participants came from all of the world.  Larry and his Russian colleague Alexander Shevelko presented  papers on plasma diagnostics and a novel plasma source for X-ray lithography. The Conference lasted five days and several hundred papers were presented. It was a success.

Every conference has a closing banquet. Everyone seemed excited to go to the closing banquet for this conference. Larry didn’t understand why because banquets are boring and if it wasn’t for the fact that he was cochairman he have skipped it.

 He was assigned to sit at a long head table, surrounded  by Russian dignitaries. Tables filled with food and drink were set out in front of the head table. The first row tables was filled with every kind of food you can imagine ––caviar, salmon, ham, turkey, pork, vegetable plates, fruit plates, breads, and rich desserts. The second row of tables was filled with liquor. 

 There were no speeches. Everyone started eating, drinking and talking. Later when they were all––almost all––drunk. There was some singing and dancing.  The meeting started at seven and Larry left at midnight.The party was still going strong. 

He asked his friend Leonid, “How can people eat so much and drink so much. 

Leonid answered, “You eat until you are so full you can’t stand it. Then you drink enough to burn out all the food. Then you eat some more. Larry, you just don’t understand. We have to do this in Russia to survive. You have a good life in Utah and we have a rough life in Russia.” Leonid lived in Utah for a year.