Jewel II

Jewel and Tootsie became life long friends with the exception of a short time that was foreshadowed by their theme song. When they were in second or third grade a new little girl came to town. Her family seemed to be well off and it was clear that the little girl always got what she wanted. What she wanted then was to replace Jewel as the social focus this of her class.  one by one Jules friends started going home with the new zero play after school and finally Tucci join them left you allowed. When the little girl held a big party and invited almost every girl in the class except jewel to see was mortified. She didn’t go to the party. She went to Jewell interiors and said she was sorry. The reason the little girl had so many friends all of a sudden is that she bribed them with candy and other presents. They hugged and made up and there friendship continued without further interruption.

Jewell and Tucci were inseparable. They played together when they were little. When they got a little older they were allowed to make an annual excursion to the big city of Provo, Utah. They took the bus from Pleasant Grove to Provo which was 20 miles away. They had soldiers at Walgreens in the town center at University and Center Street. They shopped in all the big stores — Woolworth’s, Kress, Firmage’s and Taylor Bros. Woolworth’s and Kress were national 5-and- 10 cent stores. Fimage’s and Taylor Bros. were locally owned department stores. Kress was owned by the S.S, Kresge Company. The company is now called Kmart. Rumor had it that Kresge changed their name in to Kress because they wanted to avoid being known as a store with Jewish ownership. If that’s the case they miss the boat. Mormons identify with the Jews. Jewish owned stores were successful in Salt Lake City.

Other notable accomplishments in elementary school included being the fastest runner in the third grade including the boys, and taking piano lessons. The children in the open family were encouraged to develop their musical talents. Prominent in their home was a beautiful baby grand piano. The children were all encouraged to take lessons. They promised that the child who became most proficient on the piano could have the piano when they had established their own home. By the time you’ll got to high school she was winning competitions on the piano. She played for church a Sunday through high school and college. When her folks retired and moved to a smaller home Jewel was given the piano.

Jewel and Gayle continued their friendship through high school. They roomed together in college. During her junior high and high school years Jewel kept busy. When she was 12 she started picking fruit in the summers to learn extra money.  Being a fruit farmer at heart Lew  OLpin strongly encouraged his girls to pick fruit in the summers.The boys worked in the lumberyard. Jewel made it sound like he was a match for the overzealous Little League fathers of today.

Jewel:   Nothing made my father happier than getting up early in the morning to wake me at   5:30 AM to pick berries. When I got home he would interrogate me.

Dad: “How many boxes did you fill?”

Me: “6 1/2.”

Dad: “Who picked more?”

Me: “Nobody! I picked more than anybody else.”

Dad: “How much money did you make?”

Me: “$2.75.”

Dad: “Not bad. Keep it up.”

A paper route was a prized economic opportunity for boys 12 to 15. Dee got one of the prized afternoon paper routes when he was 12. By the time he was 15 he had better things to do with his afternoons. It was not cool for someone his age to still be delivering newspapers. So in order to preserve the paper route for Gerald, Jewel became the afternoon papergirl. For three years jewel rushed home from school, changed to blue jeans, put her hair in a ponytail and hopped on her bike and rode downtown to pick up the papers and deliver them. By the time she was 15 she was dating. She told me how undignified it was for her to hurry home after delivering her last paper, hop off her bike run in and get ready for a boy to pick her up and take her to Salt Lake to the Rainbow Rendezvous to dance to the music of one of the big bands and listen to the singing of Nat King Cole. Nat was her favorite. Finally Gerald took over the paper route when Jewel was 16.

Now Jewel was old enough to work her kumu off on the midnight shift at the Pleasant Grove cannery. The word kumu, pronounced Kumy by Jewel’s family is a Maori word meeting backside — Lew’s gift from New Zealand in addition to Dick Marsh. Now Jewel has to tell her dates to get her home by midnight so she can run in change into Jeans and hurry the few blocks to the cannery. Jewel’s competitive drive was demonstrated again in the cannery. She was such a fast and accurate worker that she had the honor of being on the end of the line to finish up all the produce that made it that far. Her partner at the end of the line was a middle-aged woman who could give her a run for the money. She spent the night telling Jewel about the joys and pitfalls of marriage.

In addition to working her kumu off she had an active social life. She dated most of the hot guys between Orem and American Fork — Jerry Pulley from American Fork and David Harvey from Pleasant Grove for example. She did well in school. She loved Stell Fenton’s English classes. She was a student leader. In fact she was so popular she was one of the cheerleaders. The first time I saw Jewell was at a football game.

It was the first game of the season. BY High School was playing Pleasant Grove High School on the Pleasant Grove field. I played both offense and defense at end for BY High School. The Daily Herald sports page hyped it as a big game because they predicted BY High School and Pleasant Grove High School were the two best teams in the region. Of course BY High won 28-0. We won so easily I sat out most of the fourth quarter. I noticed the cute little Pleasant Grove cheerleader who like to show off her pretty legs by spinning so hard that her long skirt came up to her waist. 

Jewel and Gayle joined other high school friends to live together in Provo, Utah while they attended Brigham Young University. Jewel admitted that most of the girls thought of Brigham Young University as a good place to find a husband. Most of them figured on being there two years max. I suspect that jewel considered that option. She was popular. She joined the top sorority. She joined the cougarettes who did synchronized dancing at the football and basketball games.

She initially studied to become a secretary. She struggled because taking dictation and typing fast with stressful. I suspect Jewel didn’t like having incompetent men bossing her around either. After two years she changed her major to elementary education. As far as she was concerned she had hit the jackpot. She loved learning and teaching and helping others, especially children. She had plenty of chances to leave school and her frustrations by getting married. Many of her friends did just that. Jewel had lots of boyfriends and revealed to me before I proposed that she had already had five proposals.

I think Jewel’s low-key competitive drive and her good judgment kept her in school until she found a career she loved and  a partner she loved. Between her junior and senior year she spent the summer helping her sister Catherine with her seven children. She also found a job in a savings and loan in Walnut Creek, California. She finished her senior year by doing student teaching at an elementary school in Brigham City, Utah.

After graduation she signed a contract to teach fourth grade at Westmore elementary school in Orem, Utah. She was excited and eager to get on with her next phase of life. She had graduated from college and found a career that she loved. Now she needed to find the man she loved.

Jewel

Jewel’a Grandma Ine’s father was Lewis Robison. Ine’s mother was Mary Jane White, Lewis Robison’s third wife. Lewis had four wives and 23 children. Ine lived with herr mother in Pleasant Grove, Utah. She was a feisty little girl who worked to help support her family from the time she was a little girl.  She washed clothes on a scrubbing board and worked in the orchards for long hours to earn 50¢ a day. She was less than 5 feet tall and full of life and energy..

Her husband, Edwin Dee Olpin, was a fruit former before he went into the mortuary business. He took his wife, Ine, with him when he traveled to Salt Lake City to peddle fruit. She was fun to be around and she was good at selling fruit. Edwin took her with him every place he went if it was possible because she was fun to be around. Sounds a lot like Jewel to me.

Edwin and Inez had eight children, Lacy, Lewis, Ann Belle, Joseph, Mary Inez May, Emma, Roy and Donna. They also had a Maori foster son from New Zealand who lived with them for 11 years. His name is Dick Marsh. Family tradition has it that when Jewel’s father Lewis was 17 years old he got in trouble in school. His father, who was his Mormon bishop, decided to straighten them out by sending on a mission for the Church. He spent three years in New Zealand teaching the Maoris.

He learned to love the Maori people. One family felt so close to Lewis that they told him they were going to give him their son Dick when he returned to Utah. Lewis wrote his parents and asked them if they would be willing to raise Dick if he brought him home. Before their answer could reach him he had finished his mission and boarded the ship for home. The Maori family showed up at the dock with Dick holding a little bundle that contained his possessions. So he got on the ship and became a member of the family. Dick was 10 years old at the time.

Dick became Roy’s big brother. They became close friends. How and why Dick returned to New Zealand is a little fuzzy. I have heard several versions—some in print and some by word-of-mouth. Dick was popular. He was handsome, friendly and a talented musician. I was told that he was also a good dancer. He liked the girls and the girls liked him. Dick was not black. He of course was Polynesian. But apparently at that time people made little distinction between African Americans and Polynesians. People discriminated against them equally.

Edwin took his family to Salt Lake to go to the theater. When the cashier at the box office saw Dick he refused to let him in the theater because he was black. Edwin angrily said, “I’ll take my business elsewhere.” So they sent Dick on a mission to New Zealand some say to avoid the possibility that he would marry a white girl. According to written accounts when he finished his mission church leaders advised him to stay in New Zealand. Verbal accounts say it was a little more complicated than that. Dick was not a US citizen and apparently didn’t have the proper documents to return to the United States.

Some accounts say that he was very disappointed, frustrated, angry tand fet hat he had been tricked. If that was the case he got over it quickly. He married a Polynesian girl named Polly and had a large family. He named his children after his American family, i.e. Roy, Emma and so on. When he was in his late 50s he and Polly came to Utah to visit with his Utah family. He was warmly welcomed.

Lewis met a missionary couple named Chase and Delle Murdoch. They were together on the ship returning to the United States for several days. They got to know each other well. Chase was from a small town in southern Utah named Beaver. Della was from an even smaller  farming village west of Beaver called Adamsville. Adamsville is about halfway between Beaver and another small town called Minersville. There is a lead mine at Minersville.

 Della is the oldest of the seven children of Joseph Hiram Joseph and Catherine Elizabeth Griffiths—Della John, Margaret, Mary Ann, Ruben, and Lewis. Dello was 14 years old when her father was killed in a mining accident at the lead mine in Minersville. Catherine was given the job of postmaster and her brothers helped her on the farm.

On the trip home Della invited Lewis to come to Adamsville and meet her little sister Margaret. In the next few years Lewis found lots of excuses to make business deals in southern Utah. While he was there he courted Margaret Joseph. Finally he won her over and they were married. Lew’s brother Joe said that the key was a new Buick convertible that Lew drove when he proposed.

On December 21, 1921 Lew and Margaret joined Lew’s brother Joe and Joe’s bride Violet and traveled to Salt Lake City where each brother married his bride on the same day in the LDS Temple. They made their home in Pleasant Grove, Utah. Margaret thought she was in heaven. She told her children that Pleasant Grove was the Queen city of the West. It is a lovely town set 

at the foot of a rugged, beautiful mountain. Mount Timpanogas dominates the Valley.

Margaret and Lew had six children—LuJean, Katherine, Elaine, Dee, jewel and Gerald. Jewel hated being born between two brothers after three sisters were born first. She felt like Dee was her dad’s favorite and Gerald was her mother’s favorite. Margaret told everyone that he looked like a Joseph to Jewel’s chagrin. I don’t know why Katherine spells name with a K instead of with a C like her grandmother whom she was named after. Mysteries abound.

Lew followed in his father’s footsteps. He and Joe took over the mortuary when his father died in 1926. He was elected mayor. He replaced his father as Bishop. He was a partner in a lumberyard,and a director of the Pleasant Grove Bank. He worked hard and he worked smart. He was financially successful, but was careful with his money. His daughter Katherine applied for a job at the PG drugstore. The proprietor told her, “Yes there is an opening but I won’t give you a job because you are Lew Olpin’s kid. I’ll give the job to someone who needs it” She hadn’t known she didn’t need a job until then. 

Lew’s one extravagance was cars. He felt he needed a nice car for his business. So he bought a new car every two years. His favorite was a Packard which he would drive for two years without changing the oil or doing any maintenance because he knew he was going to trade it in soon. Every two years he would drive his beat up Packard back to Detroit and pick up a new one.

Jewel resented the attention her two brothers got, Gerald from her mother and Dee her father. So she picked on Gerald and made him cry when she thought she could get away with it. When Dee picked on her she fought back. One of her favorite tricks was the sneak up and pour water over his head and then run as fast as she could to the only bathroom in the house, slam the door and lock it. If the house hadn’t burned down you could still see the marks that Dee made on the door by beating on it.

Jewel was much younger than her sisters and she was really cute. Her sister’s felt like she was their favorite baby doll. They liked to dress her up and curl her hair .They discovered that she had nearly perfect pitch.and loved to sing and dance. When she was five years old her sisters decided to make her into a Shirley Temple clone. Shirley Temple was the big rage when Jewel was born in 1935. That’s why she was named Shirley Jewel Olpin. She dropped Shirley and added Knight when we were married.

So when their mother was worried about holding her Mother’s Club meeting in her home the girls suggested that they could help Jewel and her best friend, Gayle Thorne (Tootsie), who is also a cute little girl with perfect pitch, provide the entertainment. It was a huge success and evolved into the traveling Jewel and Tootsie show. They sang and danced in church and civic events for the next couple of years with Jewel’s and Gayle’s sisters acting as producers, directors and publicists. Their signature song was I Don't Want to Play in Your Yard.

Once there lived side by side two little girls, 

Used to dress just alike, hair down in braids, 

Blue gingham pinafores, stockings of red, 

Little blue bonnets tied on each pretty head. 

When school was over, Secrets they'd tell, 

Whispering to themselves, down by the well. 

One day a quarrel came, hot tears were shed: 

"You can't play in our yard," 

But the other said: "I don't want to play in your yard, 

I don't like you anymore, you'll be sorry when you see me, sliding down our cellar door, 

you can't holler down our rainbarrel, you can't climb our apple tree, 

I don't want to play in your yard Iif you won't be good to me." 

Next day two little maids each other miss, 

Quarrels are soon made up, and sealed with a kiss, 

Then hand in hand again, happy they go, 

Friends all through life to be, loving each other so. 

Soon school days pass away sorrows and bliss 

But love remembers yet that quarrel and kiss, 

In sweet dreams of childhood, 

We hear this cry: "You can't play in our yard," 

And the other reply: 

"I don't want to play in your yard. I don't like you anymore, 

You'll be sorry when you see me, Sliding down our cellar door, 

You can't holler down our rainbarrel,. You can't climb our apple tree, 

I don't want to play in your yard if you won't be good to me."