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.