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."