While I was reminiscing over the years trying to figure out who impacted me the most while going to school, I remembered our librarian, Mrs. Heavner, in grade school who always celebrated St. Patricks Day in fun ways. Everything went green and the balarney stones came out. She had a whole jar full and all of them had the lucky rings around them. I remembered our exchange teacher we had in sixth grade who wanted to teach us the British way of school and what an adventure that was. I thought of my other sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Arrowhead, whose goal was to have us ready for junior high school and how she worked us to death. I had never seen so much homework, but when he left sixth grade we were ready for anything that junior high could throw at us. I thought of my business teachers that gave me the skills that I still use, of typing, shorthand, record keeping, and everything else. They told me that I would never have to use shorthand but it would qualify me for jobs. When I was out of high school, my first job was switchboard operator and then stenographer where I spent hours doing shorthand. I thought of Miss Levitree, and how she taught us to play volleyball which became one of my loves. She would have us do pushups on our fingers to strengthen them and volley basket balls to the gym ceiling. I inherited the name of "Twinkle fingers" because of the way I could flip the ball over the net. We got to do exhibitions to all of the PE classes and travel around all of the schools and do demonstrations on how to play volleyball. If we hit a ball with anything but our fingers, we were penalized. All of these teachers have impacted by life in many ways and I will always be grateful to them.
When I was growing up, school was challenging for me, especially math, and I would spend a lot of time sitting with my dad doing homework. As frustrating as it probably was for him, he never gave up on me and had the patience of Job. My mother would help when she could, but I was always very close to my father and he had a wonderful way of teaching me.
After much thought, I decided that my most influential teachers were my parents. I learned the power of the mastermind, of positive thinking, to serve others, work hard, and keep my name in honor so that people could trust me. These traits have carried me through life in a magnificent way. My father was a business builder and loved life. When we were born and were very young, they started the JoLene Company that made little girls infant dresses. My father took a few of the dresses that my mother had made for us over to Firmages in Provo, Utah. While he was showing the dresses and asking about what they would sell for, a patron walked up and asked if she could buy a dress. My father left the store with an order for as many dresses as they could produce and that was the beginning of JoLene. My father ran the business and my mother designed all of the dresses and worked the sewing crew.
One of the purposes of my father building the business was so that he could provide us with work and keep us off the streets in the summer. When we were in grade school, they would take us to work and put us on power machines. They would draw circles and squares on paper and have us sew on the paper until we could stay on the lines. Once we accomplished staying on the lines, we were put on the power machines to produce. Because we were young, the government told my parents that they could not have us on the machines until we were sixteen, so they pulled us over to tie bows and inspect dresses. My mother would have us draw pictures of baby dresses to design and if one of ours sold, she would pay us. Because I wanted to be my dad's secretary, I took all of the business classes I could and graduated ready to work but by that time, he had sold the business. I found a job working for the State of Utah as a stenographer for $1000.00 a month right out of high school which was good money back then and worked until I got married and had my first child.
My parents used their business skills to serve and help others. They helped a friend start a dress business, and later helped my son and a neighbor start a lock smith business, and helped teach a neighbor how to wire a house. While they owned the JoLene company, my mother would hear of someone who had lost a baby and would make a small outfit for the baby for burial and never charged them. My father also loved working with electrical things. My father became the handyman of the ward and would repair anyones home in their ward for free and did it until he could no long do it. If there were boy scouts that needed clothing in the area, he would buy it for them and no one knew where the money came from.
The one thing that my father left to all of his posterity was the power of positive thinking. He knew and practiced what Napoleon Hill stated "Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve." That concept took me years to learn but oh how true it is! My brother-in-law, Hal Hansen, came to me one day when I was working for him and asked me to build a database. I didn't even know what one was. He gave me a book and said, "Learn and build one" and that was the beginning of a wonderful adventure for me. I loved to see what I could do to help save people time and organize data in an amazing way.
When I began working for Mountainland Dept. of Aging I ended up building access databases for them in several departments. After a few years, the database I was using in the aging department was outgrown and I knew we needed a new one but I didn't know what. After talking with the MIS department they agreed that we would need to go web based and we could do it in PHP/MYSQL programming because it was free. I had no experience in programming but Jake offered to teach me and help program it. After a long hard battle with one of the employees over whether to build it or not, my boss finally gave me permission and we were on our way.
After about a year into the project, it was getting very difficult. The learning curve was steep for both of us and there were times when I didn't know if we were going to be able to pull the project off. I was too far into it to back out and yet I did not know how to go forward. It was then that I thought of the teachings of my father and I began to try and apply them. When Jake would come to me and say that he did not know to do something, I would cringe in fear because there was no one in the agency that I could turn to for help. Many times I would sit in my office and cry, "What am I going to do?" I would go home, say a prayer and then I would ponder the problem and sleep on it like my dad did. I would either be given the idea during the night, someone would say something to me during the day that would trigger a thought, or I would actually see the answer on my computer screen that I had not seen before. I would take my ideas to Jake, tell him "Here is the answer to your problem", and he would fly with it. After five years of struggling, we completed our database which was valued over $200,000.00. I learned, in a very real way, the power of the master mind; of not giving up; facing my fears; and plowing forward. I learned the importance of working hard, being honest and doing more than what was expected. It is TRUE "Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve."
My parents retired again and decided to buy and renovate homes and resell them. They would allow anyone in the family that wanted to work on the home to work and keep track of their hours. When the home was finished and sold, dad would take out the expenses and then divide the profits up among anyone that worked. He taught my boys how to do electrical work and build and remodel homes. He taught them not to fear the unknown, but to learn and to challenge it. He taught them financial management skills, how to be a good father, and an honorable person and how to have fun. His legacy will carry on for many generations and bless not only my life but my children's.