Birdie Isabella Robison Swasey

		Written by Birdie Swasey edited by Angela Rockwood
Husband Sherman Martin Swasey Children Richard D. Swasey Virginia Swasey Eva Swasey Patricia Swasey Samuel Lucius Swasey Afton Swasey Mary Jennette Swasey Merrill Alma Swasey Douglas Sherman Swasey Grandchildren Troy Dean Rockwood Great-Grandchildren Anna Celinda Rockwood Back to The History Place		BIRDIE ISABELLA ROBISON SWASEY I, Birdie Isabella Robison, was the warmly welcomed daughter born to Alma Pratt Robison and Lillie Lang Robison. I was named for my Grandmother Isabella Eleanor Marden Pratt Robison, she was also called Birdie. My Father Alma met my mother, Lillie, and wooed her down in Buckhorn Springs, Iron County, Utah. He was a handsome curly haired, brown eyed young man that Lillie looking out seeing him for the first time, announced that he was to be her future husband. Her sister was still unmarried, so the family expected her to marry before Lillie. But he wrote his mother that it was wonderful marrying a pure girl. He used to sing a song about red roses for love and white for purity. Anyway they went to the St. George Temple and were married 23 April 1912. That day back in Fillmore his mother died of a stroke. They didn't understand why they attended a funeral of a woman the same day that his mother was laid to rest. When they returned to Buckhorn they learned of her passing. The following June they went to Fillmore to visit, but stayed and farmed for Uncle Almon D. Robison. My father raised alfalfa seed and made enough to buy Mother's Vertical Feed sewing machine and their Delaw Separator. Uncle Harmel took all of us to see where I was born down on the Sink as we were on our way to the Lang Reunion in 1952. Mother has told me about my birth 12 January 1914. I was born in a rock house down on the Sink. Mother snuggled me to her that night and we were cozy and warm. Two very proud parents welcomed me with love and appreciation. My father was so glad that I was a girl as all his brothers had boys first. He named me Birdie Isabella after his mother. I grew up knowing that I was loved and special, feeling a great longing to grow up worthy of being named after a noble woman. My parents homesteaded a place in Buckhorn Springs. We lived in a one roomed log cabin. It was north of Grandpa John M. Lang's place, Aunt Ina lived south of Grandpa's and father's sister Isabella's family lived to the east of us. She was dead and Will Keith had remarried. We stayed all night there once, a flood coming between our house and theirs. Next morning lying in bed, Bessie and the girls taught me to count to 100. I was three years old at the time. The homestead had a flowing well, artesian, and we grew water cress in a pool. I recall seeing mirages caused by heat waves across the flat in the summer. I remember badger holes under some brush and I thought it would be terrible. I met a badger. With all this ranging, I was always with someone, so I needn't have feared I went on an overnight trip with my dad by horse and wagon. I felt so good going with him alone. He stopped at night and we ate, but I was quite surprised when he put me to bed in my dress. Another time when Mother's 19 year old sister, Artimicia was killed and we had to go to Beaver to the funeral, They hired someone to drive a Model T Ford to the funeral. After going too long and too far with so much dust and noise, I told them to stop all that noise. I wasn't four while living in Buckhorn. Four other incidents stand out in my mind: Melbrum, Wallace, and Verda Limb Aunt Ina's children were my playmates. We used to play a game saying,"If you don`t say what I say, I won't say what you say." I know my cousins initiated this. Then we'd go down to the road at any traffic passing. This would be some wagoneer or pedlar. The boys would ask them to bring a train to our town. (The closest train was in Hinckly in Millard County to the north.) We were so hungry for fruits and vegetables before anything grew in our gardens, I remember going to the potato pit and eating raw potatoes one spring. My mother thought it gave me sleeping sickness. We made one trip down to Utah's Dixie for fruit in our wagon. It was covered like the pioneers so that we slept and rode along in the shade. We gave some man a ride and he infringed on my territory, and I didn't like him as he crowded me and made smart remarks. We got melons, almond nuts and figs. I didn't like the figs. They are better dried than right off the trees. I remember we dried fruit from this trip. I also remember how angry my father was as someone in a car nearly crowded us over a precipice by forcing our team to take the outside of the roadgoing down a steep canyon south of Cedar City. We went to a family get together on Panguitch Lake with Grandpa Ipson. I poked my fingers into the fishes eyes. They were open and staring at me. After dinner one day in the cabin on the homestead, I got down from my place at the table and had such a good time mashing some potatoes in some potato water. I did this on the oven door. This was used in making a start of yeast for bread making. Mother let me enjoy this pleasure. I made the yeast water. I was really a big girl. It was on the corner of this oven door that I fell, and cut a gash above my right eye. My father took me to Paragonah to get it stitched back together. He came home telling mother that I had been a brave girl; I didn't think so; I had cried. Going to Paragonah to shop, my eyes had plenty of time to take in the scenery. I longed to ask Mother to stop and get me some red dirt for making mud cakes. What good devil' food cakes that would have made. I remember living in Minersville one spring and being out with Mother gathering dandelion roots for making root beer. We must have moved into Beaver when Willis was expected. I'd soon be four. We lived in part of the same house that Aunt Ina did. She was expecting Vestel and Mother waited ten months for Willis. He was born breech and tore her outwadly as well as inwardly. The doctor never repaired her injuries so that she never had any more children even though when she had her appendix out, they did what they could to repair these old tears. We visited with my Aunts Sarah Woolsey and Dorothy Baker. Their mother Georgina Keller Ipson was with them. She poked me with her cane as she thought I was the cat. This was just before my Great Grandma Ipson died. I never saw either of my grandmothers as one died the day my parents were married and Grandma Lang died when I was just two weeks old. Another Paragonah experience while I was yet three. We used to visit her brother Martin's family. There were Nina and Norene just younger than me. We were walking along, she so fast I'd get a pain in my side, when I jerked at her hand to stop her. "What is it when you talk but you don't talk?" "Oh that's thinking, dear" she told me. When Willis was learning to walk, Mother was still nursing him, we went to visit Aunt Carrie and Uncle Alvin Despain, then living in Granite. Dad must have driven us up to Hinckly, for we waited in a hotel until train departure time. I was very sleepy when pulled out of bed, and we got on a train going north. It was morning when we arrived in Sandy, and I was quite astonished that there was a toilet on the train. Uncle Alvin was there to meet us in his new Model T Ford. After he got Mother and the baby and me in the car and fastened some ising-glass side curtains , he went out front, took the crank, came back to push the throttle lever to start, and went back front and industriously turned and turned the crank. Then the awfullest roar started and the car shook all over. Uncle Alvin ran to the driver's side of the car, grabbed the throttle down a little, turned over the door on his side, sat in the driver's seat. Then we all shook and rattled all the way over the five mile stretch between Sandy and the Mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon where the town of Granite lay. Aunt Carries's little frame house is still in my dreams. What an adventurous life opened before me now. I found the nearest to what was a sister to me in life, Birdie Despain. She had been named for Grandma Robison too. She was my age and while I had one little brother, she had three, Marden, Orrin and Parker, who was Willis' age. My daddy came up to Granite to visit and to take us home, but hearing What good schools Jordan District had, he made arrangements for us to live there. I did very well in school. Miss Hardy and Miss Reese were my two first teachers. They taught me phonics right from the first. But my education wasn't entirely in their hands. You see I'd be reading away and my father in substance told me to stop reading word by word, but to read a whole phrase at a time. He had an excellent opportunity to teach me too as Willis and I had the whooping cough and I was out of school for nine weeks, while between spasms of coughing, I would read out of a little reader that we had about: "Daisies dot the meadow sod, and they nod and nod and nod." I loved the pictures and stories in that little book and I learned to read very fast, from reading it over and over. I. turned the pages of their big, black Bible, and saw the pictures of David playing the harp to soothe Saul, and of his killing Goliath. (I have this Bible.) I had a little notebook to write in while I was having whooping cough. I wrote a story of a hen and her chicks, inspired by the chickens out in an old barn. At first we lived across the road from Henry Beckstead and across a field from Aunt Carrie's Mr. Beckstead worked up the canyon for Whitmore Oxygen Plant. We played with the Beckstead children. Father worked in the silver mines in Alta or in the smelters in Midvale. We found a farm across Granite to the south and west. We were buying it. My folks could really make berries and small fruits grow. We had many fruits here. I got a good start in my education here. I took the ride from Granite to Sandy many times in our little black buggy with Old Bess or Queen hitched to it. One ride was to go to Sandy to catch the street car to go to the State Fair. Both Willis and I went with my father. I asked my dad for some money to get some candy for us. He thought my black licorice a bad choice. We both got very dirty. Another ride was when they took me out of Sunday School to go to Sandy First Ward and Stake House to get baptized, 2 April 1922, Baptized by Carl O.W. Pearson. I was confirmed in Sacrament Meeting by Henry Beckstead the same day. When half way through the third grade, I was told to take an arithmetic lesson home and learn how to do long division, and I could go into the fourth grade. So I skipped a grade and Birdie and I although still in the same room were not in the same grade. She was still my best friend however. I didn't like making her feel bad, but I was anxious to be challenged more in school, and I was still at the head of my classes from then on too. Aunt Carrie had a piano. I played it every time I went over there, which was often. Our families were really close. I didn't take too long to play "Listen to the Mocking Bird" with chords and trills. I remembered I loved music. Aunt Carrie thought I was talented, so that could have helped. Then one day at recess at school, I was playing away on the piano in the hail, when I overheard two boys talking not too kindly, "Who's playing that piano?" "That's red headed gingerbread, five cents a loaf." That cooled my public demonstrations for a while. We walked to our church meetings, cutting through the cemetery. Mother was secretary to the Primary. We lived a mile or so from church and school. But one day walking around the road, just as the trees met overhead shading the road, I bore my first testimony. Peggy Riley, John Leyland's cousin who came out to visit summers ; she was 16, John, 12; I was 8; and Willis,4. But we were really good friends. Peggy said, "I don't believe there is a heaven or any life after this." "Oh, I do. You just wait and see." I assured her. I was taught a lesson about the prayer angels coming to earth with their baskets to take our requests back to heaven. The ones carrying requests were loaded down, while the ones with the "thank you" baskets went back nearly empty. This had a profound impression on me very early in life. On our little farm was a bungalow, painted rust brown trimmed with white window and door casings. It was surround by Box elder trees and a lawn and flower beds and garden and crop land. Then there were some sandy hills with wild oak brush where the cows and horses could graze. We had sheds for cows and horses and pig pens and chicken and duck houses. We enjoyed swinging from one big tree. Stretched between two trees west of the house was a springs and mattress used as a hammock in the summer. The house had a front room, unfurnished, a kitchen, a back porch, both screened and glassed, and three bedrooms and a basement. My room was the middle bedroom going off from the family room or kitchen. The kitchen range was our only heat in the winter so it was the family room all right. We had been taught the Joseph Smith story and it had really impressed me. My room had a bed, my doll cradle, a trunk for my belongings and a window that opened into the room. Well, one night I had retired and lay thinking that an angel could come into my room with a light surrounding him as the Angel Moroni had done, when through the open window, the most unearthly cat scrawling came in through the open window, and startled me back to reality. I had many visits with fairies in this home too. My fairies lived behind the waterfall that I could make out in the face of the mountain east of Granite midway between(Granite and Draper.) I told my brother all about my visits with them, and we played that I had an iron broom that came to clean all the dirt out of our city (my mother's kitchen) so that we could bury the bad faerie's city. So as me and my broom would sweep, my little brother had to move all the furniture so that I could sweep faster. Then I would do a dance around the room at dusk in my nightgown and tell him that he was seeing my good fairy. He was quite convinced of the veracity of all this, but one day I nearly convinced myself. I had on my navy blue, faded to purple, sailor hat with a ribbon hanging straight down the back. I was hunting the cow. I walked west to the dry farm. Of course I was visiting with my fairies, and alone with no one around. I was speaking out loud to one. Taking my hat from my head, I held it upside down in front of me and said out loud. "Hop in, I'll take you with me." Just then a grasshopper hopped into the hat, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. This startled me into finding the cow and getting her home by milking time. My Grandfather Lang had married Olive Stevens, Uncle Carlos Stevens' sister and they had four children before she died. Grandpa Lang and his two oldest children by Aunt Olive and Uncle Bill and Aunt Mary, still single came to live with us. It was an adventure for a while, but it ended in Mother and Father losing the, farm. They couldn't keep up the payments on the place, so one day we received a letter to vacate the place. We moved to a house to the southeast of Sandy. We rode a covered wagon school bus. I was in the 6th Grade, Willis in the first. At the first recess everyone rushed out then came back to invite me to play soft ball. Softball was my specialty. In the classroom I could throw some good balls too. All went well until an assignment was made to write a letter that George Washington would write telling the settlers to get out of the Forts during the French and Indian Wars. I wrote the letter very well, I thought. "You will vacate the Fort by...and I finished and signed, George Washington. I was kept in at recess. I had copied a letter. This was not my work. Well, I just couldn't take this unjustified criticism and my tears began to flow. You bet, I knew the verb "to vacate." In the fall of 1926, we moved to downtown Sandy, Main and Second West. The Christmas that I was in the 8th Grade, Dad got me a parlor reed organ, an Estley. I could play "Catch the Sunshine" by Christmas day. Because I had learned to read the lines and spaces and had learned the Do Re Mi's of music I could play the treble clef well enough, I asked my Friend, Fleda Jensen, Why I couldn't manage the Bass clef. She offered to teach me. I took a year of instruction from her sister, Callie Jensen before leaving Sandy. We lived in the Sandy Second Ward, and I was chosen to carry the Stake Banner at the 75th Birthday celebration for President Heber J. Grant held in Liberty Park. Birdie Despain was still a best friend. I had two good friends: Irene Hill and Fleda Jensen. But if I was with Fleda, Irene was mad, or if I was with Irene, Fleda would have nothing to do with me. Lavern Smith was a girl that Fleda and I could share a good time with. Good times meant getting together at anyone's house. We liked to tell shows to each other. Fleda saw more than we, so if we hadn't gone to a show at the Stake house for 10 cents , we'd do our embroidering while she'd tell us about this good show starring Rudolph Valentino or Mary Pickford. Fleda arranged to have us royally entertained at her house every time she could have our parents agree for us to stay with her as her father was an MD and he had to answer telephones. She squeezed lemons to make lemonade, or made a batch of candy, or gave us a plain soda fizz (vinegar in Plain soda and water) , or open a can of pork and beans to eat with cheese and crackers. She never ran out of ideas. If we had to stay upstairs to answer the phone we'd dramatize plays, the Prince who turned into a frog and back into the prince, or something else that we'd decide on. Or we'd sing songs while Fleda played, and she had all the popular songs. Later when I learned to play the piano, we could play duets. Or we'd go into ecstasies over talking about our beaus. No kidding, we learned to embroidery, we ironed, we helped to can peaches, we lived, we curled each other's hair on her electric curling iron, we made up our faces, we dressed in exotic clothes; We had fun, fun, fun! As we moved from Sandy, Callie and Fleda gave me a couple of music books and I went on giving myself assignments for the next three years while I was in high school. I learned to play well. I was a compulsive musician. To learn a trade one must train the head and the hands, but in the arts; one must train the head, the hands and the heart. My heart was in it. When we got to Kaysville, the farm house wasn't empty, so we camped for the rest of the summer in a cabin on Harvey King's place, storing our furniture in a granary. We picked fruit or string beans and we worked in the canning factory getting paid 5 cents for a large dishpan of tomatoes. If you really strained, you could get $2.00 a day. I got my tuition this way and entered Davis High School as a sophomore. It was easy for me to find an accepted spot in "Dear Old Davis High School" and I graduated as one of the honor students in 1931. I was in the same classes Maxwell E,. Rich and Governor Calvin Rampton. I sang in the choral group under the direction of Hugh Dougal and had a lead in the operetta, "Belle of Barcelona." My best friends were Rose Alice Prigmore, Ruth Clayton, Helen Peterson and Ethel Lloyd of Cherry Hill in Farmington. I was .organist for the MIA with Sister Thornley. There were many more experienced than I, but I was asked, and I must have done all right. I took my 1st chorister's class traveling up to Ogden through the fog Saturday nights and was chorister in the Kaysville Ward Sunday School while still in high school. I worked two summers for Dr. C. D. Rutledge, and the year I was a Senior I worked for Mr. Bowman in the Golden Rule Store. I also raised a calf to sell to help with my. college education. I paid my tithing and allowed myself 25 cents a week spending money and placed all the rest in savings. When I graduated from high school, I expected my folks or someone to tell me what to do next. No one did. I thought I'd go to the BYU to study journalism. Mrs. Rutledge told me to go to Logan with her friend, the high school Home Economics teacher. So I rode to Logan with Evelyn Gailey. She was a friend of the Dean of Women, and she got me a place to work for my room and board at 619 East 4th North. I rode in the rumble seat all the way to Logan and back. But I had a place to stay and I had money in the bank for tuition and books. This was the depth of the depression, and it was miraculous that someone took me by the hand and helped me to get started. I had been going with Brig Harvey for six months. He took me up to school and wrote to me all winter, but I was too young, being but 17, to settle to going steady. It is painful to break off with someone who thinks quite a bit of you, but I decided and followed through on this. As school let out I was going with Max Smith, but that petered out, so as school let out for me in June 1933, I graduated with a Normal Teaching certificate, obtained a job to teach school in Moneta, Duchenne County Utah. I was to teach six grades and had 24 students. As their 19 year old teacher, I loved every one of them and they loved me. I diligently prepared the work they must do to advance their learning. We had happy times together. And we all worked hard. And for all the years that I taught, I believed the "role of the teacher was to guide their practicing: Each must work to learn." I worked for $65.00 a month for eight months. The second year I was paid $65.00 a month also as I was not the principal that year. And school was nine months long that year. That fall I was escorted to many rural social events by a young, handsome, dark haired youth named Sherman SWASEY. He was fun to go with and was always telling me some interesting experience that he had. I never really considered him seriously until after he told me that when he married it would be in the temple. By spring when the basket dance came around, everyone in town bid against him for my basket, but he managed for us to eat that lunch together. (Each young lady in the ward made and decorated a basket, and filled it with a lunch for two.) We were both delighted to be together! Later when the school year closed a month early with the trees just coming out in green leaves on the river bottom, on the 1st of May 1934, he took me home to my folk's home in North Farmington. Needless to say he visited me frequently and brought wool out for our quilt making. I washed and corded the wool and made many quilts that year. In the fall he took me to Tabiona where I taught 3rd and 4th Grades. Going home for Christmas holidays as we were driving up the old road into Strawberry Valley where the Million dollar cut is now, as we looked out at the silver moonlight, we decided that we would be married at the close of the holidays. We were married by Bishop Charles Frost at Coalville, Utah, New Year's Eve Day, 31 December 1934. Next spring when school let out, we bought some furniture and moved to Moneta, the beautiful. We milked a few cows and had a small cream check to live on. But when the Harvest Moon shone that fall, I could go out with Sherm where he milked the cows by moonlight in the fields, and it was the first time I wasn't going back to school. Do we need to say those first years together were thrilling! We farmed from then on, living at Moneta, Bridgeland, and back to Moneta. Here I learned that Sherm was a very good as well as a hard working farmer. We had four sons and five daughters born to us. They have said it was a good place to grow up. They have all left to make their places in the world except Douglas. I have accounts of all their childhood days that I will publish later. It took me 25 years to complete my Bachelor's Degree. I taught from the time Douglas was 2 years old until I retired in 1979. Sherm, during our lifetime here together, demonstrated that what he knew or had, he'd gladly share with others. I never knew a son, nephew, neighbor relative or friend to find him too busy to visit or chat, or help with fixing things, or make a new piece of equipment. Everyone counted in his life. The highlight of our lives was when, after Virginia was born, that he came out to Bountiful where I had been with my parents for her birth, ordained an Elder and with our Temple recommends asked me if I was sure that I wanted to spend time and eternity with him. So kneeling over the altar, Richard and Virginia dressed in white joined our hands and were sealed to us. Returning to Bridgeland Sherman was a 100% Home teacher. When we returned to Moneta in 1939, he was a home teacher, Aaronic Priesthood Secretary, Sunday School Counselor and worthy father, ever watching over his family. He has upheld those in authority, attended his meetings and paid his tithing always, remembering the missionaries and helping to build chapels. He served on water boards and has done much custom work with his farm machinery. Sherman my tender hearted one! After we came out of the temple, I knew that "God is Love" Matthew 22: 36 40. "Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment and the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." It is by living this that we can have his spirit to be WITH us because we will keep all the commandments. I also have a knowledge that what we ask of Him, submitting to his will, asking in faith, we can receive. I am grateful for goodly parents who always took me regularly to church Se that I could grow from the inspiration of the scriptures and the leaders. The Holy Ghost has been near to guide and teach me. The Lord has been kind in allowing me a long life to learn better how to live and repent of my weaknesses. I have ever been one to love others and withhold judgements, but I have needed to learn patience and self control in reacting to frustrations of my busy life. I pay rent for my space here on earth by service to God and his children. So I have regularly taken my family to church and served diligently in my callings. I have been able to attend regularly all my life with the exception of when my twins were little.