Changing Times

It's okay. Thanks for letting me know.

Yes you may share the pictures. Thanks for the message.

I don't have any stories. Sorry. I was only 3 during that time.

Thanks for the comment. I'm happy that you like the post.

Yes Claude DuBoc is that man in prison. I have corresponded with him and with a girlfriend who still knows him. He was entrapped and his lawyer stole some of his money. The whole case was about the DEA wanting to confiscate his wealth.

The picture of my mother and I sitting at the outdoor table is at the Villa Weisshaus in Trier. 

No I do not know. I tried to find the location, but I could not. There are new highways that by pass the towns so it’s not possible to know which way we went. 

Perhaps mining presents more legends than any other source.  In our chapter on mining in Utah, we told of a religious man who came into a mining camp, claiming he possessed the power to resurrect the dead.  How alarm spread the camp as the miners considered the many embarrassing triangles that would be exposed.  How grudges would be revived and perhaps men would be killed if the resurrection took place.  The prosperous miners panicked. They collected 2,500.00 and gave it to the religious fanatic on condition he leave Alta’s grave yard intact.  In our files are many such incidents.  

This is not a short biography of my father because I have not been able to collect sufficient data on his long and eventful life to do it justice. What I have recorded here are a few of my most vivid memories and anecdotes and some reflections about his impact on my life over a period of approximately 37 years from 1926, when I was slightly over three years of age until March 1963 when he died.

My father was born and raised in Kamas, Utah. He was a kind man, hard—working, dedicated to his family - working really hard to see that we had the food and clothes we needed. My mother was a native of Price and lived there nearly all her life. She was a very strong personality, with a great deal of good common sense. She was a competent planner and could get things done that needed to be accomplished. Mother and father always kept our home very attractively, as it was one of the nicest homes in Price at that time. 

Although I had many a licking and grabbed by the hair of the head when I tried to get away from my mother, it was because I did not do what I was told to do at the time. Playing came first with me, as it does with all kids, and when a woman has a baby every two years her strength and nerves are not in the best shape. Dad was more easy going, and was a good provider, but mother was the money manager. When I was a teenager and would have a run in with my mother, I would go up and stay with my grandmother Powell. My mother was the 8th child of Sarah Jane and John Powell, born December 6, 1887. She met Leo P.  Leonard at Sunnyside. Utah while working at her sister Florence's Boarding house. They were married June 17, 1904 and had nine children - seven boys, and two girls.

Emmett was born in Price, Utah, on April 22, 1907, to Zoe Ellen and Leo Leonard. He was the second of nine children. They lived in Peerless, Utah, a coal mining town and the children were bused to school in Price, Utah, about 25 miles away. I was born in Orangeville, Utah, August 12, 1908 to Annie and John Irving Jewkes. l was the second of five children. My father and mother moved to Wattis, Utah, a mining town where Dad worked in the coal mines mining coal. I finished high school in Wattis. The family then moved back to Orangeville and I stayed there and worked in an ice cream and candy store and also went to beauty school.

(My Great Grandmother) Jemima Wimmer Powell was born 14 March, 1814 in Lisbon, New Castle, Henry County, Indiana. She was number 5 in a family of 11 children, born to Peter and Elizabeth Shirley Wimmer. The group sheet lists her brothers and sisters as Robert, born in Penn., all the rest who were born in Indiana were as follows: John P, Jacob, Polly, Susannah, Peter Martha, Elisabeth, Ellen and William. Only four out of this large family grew maturity and married, these were Robert, John and Susannah and of course Jemima. We have no death dates recorded for the other members of the family with the exception of Susannah, who married Simeon J. Comfort, no doubt in Hancock County, Ill. She was just 22 years old when she died, 2 April, 1840.

Popular mythology conjures up images of Puritan New England as a pious, homogenous, agrarian community, a "Citty upon a Hill" intended to inspire the English homeland to turn to Puritan ways. (1) However, Puritan New England was more than a collection of small, agrarian communities. The harbors of New England supported shipping and fishing industries, and abundant timber and ore supplies inspired the Puritans of North America to pursue a colonial version of the English iron industry. These new American Ironworks required skilled labor; it was not possible simply to take the offspring of Puritan farmers and merchants and turn them into iron workers. The experienced, skilled laborers needed were mostly recruited from England and, generally, were not Puritans. Stephen Innes describes these iron workers as having "had a long, and apparently well-earned, reputation for stout-hearted truculence and profane living." (2) How, then, did these most un-Puritan individuals function in Puritan Society?

The earliest thing I remember about Max was that he had polio at an early age.  It was something that none of us wanted to get but Max was the unfortunate one.   I remember how there was no cure at the time we were growing up and they did not know how to treat it for sure.  I remember the ‘Iron Lung’ that kids would have to go into for hours or days at a time.  This was the so called cure for polio but it did not.  The doctors didn’t know that exercise and heat would be the best things to save the legs and body from the deterioration effects.  A women Doctor or nurse was the first to prove this and she had to convince others of the correct treatment in the early days.  Max did not get the treatment he needed and lost most of the control of his leg.  I don’t know if it is correct to mention all of this but it was a very tough thing for Max and his parents to deal with at the time.

After seeing this picture I realized that the pillars were stone barricades and the frames were for posters. 

The school on the American base in Shaftesbury England burned down in 1951. My father school Principal Max G. Leonard looks at the site of his burned down school. Students come to school and find it burned down. English firemen are leaving the scene after putting out the fire. American GI’s come to clean up the mess.The ruins of the school are a sorry sight.