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A banner with an image of the Provo Historic Courthouse and the text Historic Provo.

Oral History of Carol Lambert

ORAL HISTORY TRANSCRIPTION


MEYERS: This is Sharon Meyers. I'm interviewing Carol Lambert and Carlyle Lambert of Provo. The date is May 17, 1999.


LAMBERT: I'm Carol Lambert. Since I was not born in Provo, I'll start when I first moved to Provo about 1926. In elementary school we didn't have kindergarten then. My father had been a principal in Pleasant Grove. We came to Provo and he became a principal at the Page School which is next to the Earth Sciences building. There was a road at that time which went up past Page School. On the east side, which is the stadium now, there was a two lane road with deep barrel pits on each side.


I remember this well because my father always loved to get new things. One day he appeared in front of our home which we were renting. My mother also took in renters and boarders. We were at 60 East 400 North. All of a sudden there was this Ford car out in front of our place. My mother tried to learn to drive on this two lane road to the Page School. We were almost scared to death, but we laughed so hard because she went off into the barrel pit and didn't know just how to get it around or shift. That's a vivid memory.


I always loved school. My mother and father were really pushing education, almost to the point of leaving some other things out. My mother was very forward too. During elementary school when the small pox vaccinations first came in, my parents volunteered me, and gave their okay for me to do it.


MEYERS: What was your maiden name?


LAMBERT: My maiden name was Ement. My father was a school teacher from Millard County. My mother was from Fillmore in Millard County. I could say lots of things about Kanosh, where my father came from and the Indians associated with it. That isn't particularly school, but we spent our summers down in Kanosh and Fillmore. I was really fortunate to get in on a lot of information about Indians and farming and things of that kind.


I loved my elementary school teachers. Daisy Newman was the first one. Daisy Newman only died a couple of years ago. She was over 90. I can see that teacher now. I called her daughters and they were so glad to hear from someone who remembered her from way back. She was a beautiful woman. I learned since that her husband was an alcoholic and the whole community knew it. Daisy Newman was so beloved and everyone wanted to help.


I remember also going to school. I only had to go two or three blocks to what was called the Puffer School. Fred Strait was the principal. He ultimately became principal at Joaquin School when our first two children were going to Joaquin. Fred Strait was our principal and there was nothing but gravel on the school yard. We had one of the very old metal fire escapes that we rehearsed. We'd go down around the side of the school.


I also recall how important we felt when one day every class was marched out on the gravel school grounds and we stood in line. Principal Strait taught us the pledge of allegiance. That was memorable.


My second grade teacher there was Anne Morgan. She lived just across the street east where the McMurdy Doll Museum is now, run by some friends of ours, Shirley Paxman and others. In our family we didn't have brown eyes and that lady had lustrous brown eyes and brown hair and was so kind.


I loved school. It was such a good experience. I wouldn't have dared not try to excel because my dad was kind of forbidding. He taught science and math when he was a principal. He and one of the teachers had a friend and I take part in a musical. I can still remember parts of that song. My mother made a costume for me, which I still have. It was pantaloons and the little song was about a boy and a shepherd's crook.


When I got into third grade there was a Mrs. Williams who was very kind to me. She was a more portly, slightly overweight woman. I have lost track of her. I had been given, what I believe now very mistakenly, a double promotion. They really, in my opinion, shouldn't do that because socially the kids can't keep. When we went to the park for an outing one time, Mrs. Williams held me in her lap and the little kids came over and called me baby. I didn't enjoy feeling like a baby even though I was in Mrs. Williams lap. I think she was being kind and mothering to me.


Another outing when we went up on what was called then Temple Hill, University Hill now. I have vivid memories of that area because in the spring time, the time which has just past, my mother sent us up on the hill. There was a ditch that almost went around University Hill. She sent us up there because the asparagus was free for picking to anyone.


Also, back to Mrs. Williams, we made a trip to what was called Temple Hill. We sat at the top and she pointed out to us. We were probably on the grass at Maeser Building. She pointed out to us how we were like in the bottom of a mist and that the whole valley was surrounded by mountains and we could consider ourselves in a bird's nest being taken care of. We were in a very precious and important place surrounded by the most beautiful scenery and mountains and in a nest of learning and getting along with life in a very good way.


I don't remember my fourth grade teacher as well. It was a terrible thing because I was so scared of not responding. I didn't even know. My memory about that is that in that room I wiggled and for the first time the teacher had to call me and make me come up and sit on the front seat. I needed to go to the bathroom and I wet my pants. I went outside and slid down this fire escape to run home and change my clothes. That was what I remember about fourth grade.


In fifth grade I had good teachers. My folks were always urging us to do our very best. We were getting prepared to move, which broke my mother's heart.


By that time we lived over on First West just above Fifth North. That whole area at that time was many, many homes, but still a partly rural area, because people could have cows and chickens and pigs in their back yard and barns. I ran with my older brother and climbed the fences and ran all through the back yards for fun. The thing that was wonderful about that was that kids of all ages were friends through families or connected with school. When we played together if we were in the summer down in Kanosh or Fillmore or up here in Provo going to school, the older kids took care of the little kids and we all played together. Even my younger brother was allowed to play.


Then when it was dark and the little ones had to go in, we got to play by ourselves. Then we had to come in and do our studies or our practicing if we had to practice the piano. That place was called kid alley. We were allowed to build a fire in the back and roast potatoes. I took a big bite out of a potato that my brother gave me and pulled my tooth out. That was memorable.


Elementary includes sixth grade now. By that time we had moved to Price. There was a fine man, Mr. McAllister here, who lived on University Avenue, and he was called out to Price to become a principal there of what was then the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. High school started with ninth. We had a four year high school at Carbon High.


Mr. McAllister was seeking a science and math teacher. He convinced my father to go. I remember the day we moved. We've taken pictures since of all the places I lived. We lived in what we called Moon's place, always renting. I followed my mother around. She was a brave woman and she would not fight out loud, but she was just broken-hearted. She was crying. I followed her around crying. I remember my dad talking to the man who was going to help us move about how bad they felt, but how we would go.


To begin my sixth grade, we had moved to Price by then. I was scared to death, because we had heard that the Italians would stab you in the back. What a marvelous experience it was to live out there. Largely I had very good teachers. That's out of the Provo area.


I left Provo for a while. I mentioned classes, favorite teachers, activities and school buildings. We did have recess in the elementary school. We could play jacks and in bad weather we had to get permission and play indoors on the floors. I loved the classes. I don't ever remember in elementary school of having a teacher whom I didn't like. We were taught to respect and almost revere the principals and the teachers. I wouldn't have dared disobey. That's why I feel so terrible now. I know what some kids who somehow don't have an emotional intelligence get to do.


I think I've mentioned the school building too. They were just a square. The old Parker School was at least three stories high and it had that fire escape and gravel grounds, nothing to play on that was organized.


Some of the paramount memories I have are in our efforts to return to Provo. Much as we valued our experience in Price and our nine years there, my family learned to really adjust. The Mormons were in the minority there. We took part in operas. We met wonderful people. We have never regretted for a second having been there.


But the great effort was to come home to Provo. My mother thought it was green and God-blessed. When we came back to Provo, coming over the mountain the roads were really treacherous. Coming down Spanish Fork Canyon, the roads were dangerous. When we came into Center Street in Provo and this is mentioned and pictured in the two tabernacle and histories of Provo, there was this big fountain. That was like coming home to heaven. There was a big fountain right in the center of what is now Center Street and University Avenue. The fountain was three-tiered and had three different colors, red, blue and green. When we saw that is was like coming into heaven.


However, in order to come back I had won a scholarship which I didn't know about for a year. But my folks couldn't afford to move back to Provo. I stayed and got my first education in seminary and another post graduate and dreamed of coming back to Provo.


So, with my mother's determination, even though my dad stayed in Carbon County to teach, we moved back to Provo. My mother was in surgery in the hospital and we found a house back on kid alley where we had lived before. My younger sister promptly fell through the front door and was about killed. She was a student at the old Provo High School. I think that is something memorable for Provo people. Most who live here now other than my husband and his contemporaries, don't know that the old Provo High School was down where the Provo Police station is now. That's where Carlyle and his family went. My sister went there and she loved it. We were very happy there.


When my mother came to Provo from the high school, she immediately looked around and found another place for us to live, which was on First East and 800 North, kiddy corner from what is now the Brick Oven. There was a small grocery store there and a barber shop. We loved that place.


Harold R. Clark, a professor at BYU, who lived quite a way down in the southwest of Provo, walked continually to school and he greeted every one whom he met. The students all really did love him. I don't know how great a teacher he was, but they loved him. If my mother was out of doors on our step or front steps, he greeted her as if she were a long lost friend.


That was a very small hop, skip and jump up to the steps leading up on university campus. At that time cars could go up the hill where it's blocked off now. The little old tin lizzies went up the hill and the students walked up the pathway. That's all changed quite a bit and a lot of the ditch is covered.


Starting college was a thrill for me. We walked a lot in Provo. After I was engaged we went down to Utah Lake. I also went on dates before then to the dances, and things of that kind. A very interesting thing happened. I saw my first real drunk when I was a freshman in college here at BYU with some BYU students. And although I knew that existed in Carbon County I had seen very little of it.


Life was beautiful. I loved school. I started in dancing, although there was not a major in dance then. It was called physical education. I strongly believed in that kind of training and that kind of activity. It opened up a wide world of connections with the city. We'd do city programs at Christmas time. I remember racing up and down with only a coat on over my leotards to race downtown to do something and back to the old women's gym. Most people know it as the old women's gym. I spent half my life there.


At that time people had to make it to classes. We only had fifteen minutes to get from the old women's gym or the lower campus, down in the bottom of the building that's now being saved, with the stinky chemistry classes. The physics class there had tiers of seats. I had the great blessing and fortune to have Dr. Carl F. Eyring as a physics teacher, which was wonderful. By the time we got into class, the smells in the building didn't bother us at all. We'd have to run from that lower campus or the women's gym and get clear up on top of temple hill to get to classes up there.


I had a shorthand teacher at 1:00 in the afternoon and she was a spinster. I think she must have tried to be very patient with me, but with all the running, we ate healthy. My mother was not a fanatic but she was far ahead of her time in food. I think this is one reason why I've had good health. I would run and get to 1:00 class and promptly fall asleep. Ilene Washworth Cross would have to come around and move my hand to get me going again.


I also took type from a man I admired very much, Evan Croft. His widow is still alive, though she has remarried. Evan taught nearly everybody at BYU. He taught type.


Our favorite hang outs at that time were downtown in what was called Sutton's Cafe. How the downtown stores have changed. Just to go back a bit earlier, when I lived in Provo down what is now University Avenue there were markets. There was Piggly Wiggly. Just around the corner on Center Street before First West there was a meat market. There were several markets where the China Lily Cafe is now, there was a pool hall. There was Bullock's Pool on the avenue, too; so many stores. I'm thankful that I knew that. There was a store called Butler's between University Avenue and First West. At that time those old pulleys were used. The clerks would put something in a pocket of something and make a pulley and it would go up to the head deck. Then that store moved over on to the avenue and became Thomas'. There is much more detail than that. Much of it can be found in a book.


Coming back to the college hangouts, I loved to dance. I had been introduced to some of the older students at BYU that were very good dances. I can remember a few of them. We always had our matinee dances in the ladies gym. College Hall was a performance center. It now has been demolished. I remember that a professor named Elmer Miller used to walk around that dance hall and made sure that none of us were dancing too closely. He'd actually move out on the floor and separate you if you were too close.


A friend of mine, Mac Allred also was a great dancer and how I looked forward to those times. I thought I studied hard too. One of the downsides and the professor who had me do this is still alive and I don't know how much he was aware, but my first job was reading the stacks in the library. I could do that but I had to copy down the statistics from Wall Street Journal's up in the library stacks.


I also learned to know Haddie Knight then. She was a great person at BYU. That was also where when I was gaining my notes for my freshman research paper, as we called it and I had Orea D. Tanner for an English teacher. She was marvelous. One night my husband to be was standing over there. I had never seen him before, but he had seen me. He stared at me until he finally came over and started a conversation, and quickly informed me, being much further along in his education than I, that freshman did not write research papers, they wrote compilation papers. I let him walk me home that night with his friend.


I was going to mention one of his cousins that ultimately became a good friend of ours at these mat dances. It seemed to me that everyone, whether they liked to dance or not came because it was a good social exchange. It was a good meeting place. Sarah Maybe Grow danced up on the stage. They had a stage in the women's gym. She and her partner would go up there and dance. She was a fine musician. I had the opportunity to be with lots of good musicians, many of whom are still around.


Maurice Lambert was a brilliant man and a cousin to my husband. I didn't know him then. I had visited with him because he was at the piano. I didn't know what he was doing until later. He played the piano with the most wonderful rhythm you could imagine. I found out later what I thought was music was not music. It was study notes. He could study and play at the same time. That was a phenomenon.


I did enjoy dating, but at no time did I want to become an MRS, absolutely not. I was there to get an education and I would not get married. My mother wasn't married.


I attended a ward only a block or two from where we lived. There's a new edifice there now. Eventually the bishop there happened to have been the principal for our children in elementary school up here at Wasatch. I do remember that Victor J. Byrd was our bishop and Royal J. Murdock. Both of those men lived on University Avenue. Victor J. Byrd and his wife were very contributing to the Provo arts and things of that kind. He was my bishop.


We were in what was called the Provo 4th Ward which was just a couple of blocks west of where we lived. That is now on Fourth North and First West. It's a wedding catering center. Coincidentally, that's the ward we went back to have our first child blessed and named.


I also did seek out whenever there was an opportunity, non-Mormons, because I had had this marvelous experience out in Carbon County of having very dear friends who were Italian and Greek. My father had taught almost a whole school of Finnish students. I learned to ski. I was scared to death when I found out later I had skied. There were some Slavic people out there who had been my friends. But I sought these people out in college. If there was anyone who was there who was different I sought that out.


Activities in the Church, I always gravitated towards dance and was called on to do that kind of thing. I always had a job in the Church besides teaching the dancing in mutual or teaching the young people.


I remember Mr. Robinson who at that time travelled out from Salt Lake City was on the general board and he was the dance director for all of the church. He had even travelled out to Price. I felt very special. He was a marvelous dancer and an engaging personality too, very autocratic. When he came to teach the Provo people the dances for the Gold and Green Balls and dances, we met in the old women's gym. I was always selected as his partner when he came to Provo, even after I was married. I also had a beautiful hat after I was married, with feathers that I left on the bench in the women's gym. While I was practicing and prancing around, somebody stole it.


In community life, we always had a strong sense of neighborhood. My mother no matter where we lived was always finding out who needed what and how we could help. She sent us without pay to go out and worked and helped with anything we could do.


That calls to mind how the ditch banks were then. They were grassy banks with water running, no paved culverts. There are a few places that still can be found where we lived on Fourth North where Gerrit de Jong lived next to us. There were iron poles for the fence rails in front of the homes. They had hitching posts on them for horses too.


At that time, before high school or college, we had Cherry Hill Dairy. There is still an area west of Provo called Cherry Hill area and a Cherry Hill school. That was the Cherry Hill Dairy. That was wonderful milk. I loved horses. The horses came around to bring the milk. We also had ice boxes then. We didn't have fridges. We had an ice box that you had to put huge chunks of ice in the top. It was called an ice box. We had that in the summer time too at my grandmother's place.


The sense of neighborhood was extremely close. Clubs and organizations were predominately church related, although there were social things. At one time in college I was approached and asked to start a new social club. They weren't called sororities then. But I declined because my life was so active and I felt it was so unfair. There can be things said for these organizations but I refused, even with a lot of imploring, because I thought that it created too much heartache for people. Also my life was full. It was just as full as it could be with what I carried on at home and all of the dance practices and I was a fairly good student.


I had the good fortunate to have C. Lynn Hayward who has only been deceased a year or two. Widow Hayward is still around. He was an outstanding teacher, kind and gentle, but thorough. I took zoology from him. He was very encouraging. I probably cheated a little at the time too, because I didn't know it, but I would help the student athletes, make their drawings and pictures and help them with their exams. That was a great experience. I had no idea. One of those students was Stan Nielsen and the father of Giff Nielson. Everybody here knows who Giff is.


My mother became a principal over at American Fork. The social feelings were good with my friends. I worked in college to help elect people. I couldn't have phrased it then, but a person had to do something to earn their two cents' worth on this earth. Ben Lewis was running for student body president. Ben Lewis wore a bow tie every day of his life and he still does. He and his wife are still alive. They live just north of the Marriott Center. I campaigned hard for Ben Lewis and was thrilled when he won.


There weren't very many homes being constructed that were new. I knew that the de Jong's home on the avenue just a block north of old lower campus was a very beautiful home, not elaborate, but very beautiful and functional. It was a great tragedy, when his wife, the mother of one of our friends Velda Van Wagenen, who has since lost her husband. The Van Wagenens were a prominent family with a large elegant home that still stands on Center Street. They contribute a lot. One of the fathers was a mayor and the sons each went into singular businesses. De Jong married the youngest Van Wagenen boy and we became friends, although they had much more money than we did.


For celebration and fairs and holidays we always entered with full energy. There was never any disdaining or that. We did whatever we could do; even if it were the poorest fashion. I remember making paper crepe flowers for what was called Decoration Day then, Memorial Day now. I was the oldest girl and we would stay up nearly all night making paper flowers and fashioning them just to honor the dead and the departed for Decoration Day.


I already referred to changes in Provo over the years. Fairs didn't start too much, but the Fourth of July parade was even touted then as one of the best and biggest in all of the United States. That gave us a lot of reason to be proud. That's when all of my mother's family or our relatives or cousins who lived close by came to Provo. We made homemade root beer and ice cream. We watched the parade. It was a thrill. There was always a goddess of liberty. Whether we lived in Provo or down in Millard County or wherever we were the Fourth of July parade was a great celebration. It was a whole community effort. That has changed greatly because it used to be primarily the Church and the city which were always so closely interwoven. Now the community is a very large place by comparison. They have tried to bring everyone into it so it wouldn't be a predominant effect.


In the businesses, I've mentioned that there were grocery stores and saloons and things of that kind on University Avenue. I had not heard of Skaggs then but my mother did go to Piggly Wiggly and Speckart's Market. University Avenue was very wide then. We used to go play as children all around the neighborhood. We'd dam up the ditches on University Avenue and use those for our swimming pools in the summer time. Those wide streets afforded wonderful room for parades.


My husband can mention something about the development of malls and central shopping areas, but we just walked everywhere we went. The car was for my father. Fathers taught schools and did businesses and we walked. My mother had long beautiful hair. I used to think she was just like Ramona, from the song about Ramona. She went downtown one day to get a permanent. I didn't know what a permanent was. I got to meet her. I got to push my brother in the baby buggy. I walked south on the avenue to meet my mother. She was walking up.


There was another wonderful place where the Pizza Hut is now of Dr. D.B. Boyer, who was an osteopath. He had a large home there and there was a huge tree house in the back that the Boyer boys constructed. Birdie, the younger daughter and I who were friends, just about lost our lives trying to climb up to that tree house. Dr. Boyer was an outstanding citizen in Provo and made his place and home available to anybody who needed it.


I met my mother just about in front of Boyers and I didn't know her. She had her hair bobbed and had a permanent that looked like a Marsallis. That's the only time in my life I didn't want to own her. I think I cried. We didn't have very far to get home. That was my memory of that. I was not aware then of any kind of mall or central shopping area until later.


I referred earlier that my occupation and determination was to become a professional teacher of some kind, particularly in dance. I was out of BYU long before dance was a major. However, I had the great fortune while I was there. BYU brought in a distinguished dance teacher who had studied in Germany and abroad, by the name of Margaret Burton. In my freshman year Margaret Burton brought down a young woman who was teaching then at South High School in Salt Lake City which is now part of Salt Lake Community College. Her name was Virginia Tanner. Virginia Tanner is a legend. It was a soulful experience, like a religious experience when Virginia Tanner came down and spoke to all of us as dancers in the old women's gym.


In subsequent years we were able to arrange to get Virginia Tanner to come to Provo and I was lucky enough to teach with her for eighteen years, to help her in the Provo public schools. That was a marvelous experience. Also because of the Depression, Martha Gren's troop was travelling and through Virginia Tanner and Margaret Burton's efforts Martha Gren and her travelling troop performed in College Hall. That was an eye opener too. I wrote a paper then on dance and what it has done for me to awaken me soulfully and spiritually.


There was nothing in that form of dance that could ever in my opinion have been turned anything but meaningful and in a good way, besides beauty and grace and development of the physique. It was a total education as I still believe in and it would permeate the whole community. Children didn't have to be good or beautiful, they could just learn to dance and they learned rhythm. I think that was a great impact. Virginia Tanner was known nationally and internationally. I could go on about that.


We had gotten to World War II, but I was reminded because of some things my husband said of a time I was working as a legal secretary to A. Sherm Christianson, who was an outstanding young man in Provo and became one of our federal judges, who was asked to continue as a federal judge. He was from here. His father was a well-known judge. A.H. Christianson was an expert on water. Water contentions were some of the greatest contentions in the community. That was a very good education for me.


I found a home not far from Center Street and University Avenue which I thought would be a very good investment. I went down to the bank where Victor J. Byrd was, our bishop who had given us our temple recommends, and talked to Allen Headquist. I mention this because I felt that this home would be a very good investment. Geneva Steel had just started construction then. There were laborers in town and in fact soldiers. I'm reminded of some of the shameful things. My husband and I more than once had to make sure that a service man who was colored got waited on in a store.


Allen Headquist said to me that morning, he was almost disdainful. He said that we would never be able to pay for it. I mentioned Geneva Steel and what I thought was coming in the community and I knew that we could. He said, "That's just a passing thing. Geneva Steel will never last."


There were those people who had worked hard in the community and had achieved prominent positions. It's my opinion that they felt they were lords and masters of the community and they could predict and they could control. We didn't get to buy that place which we could have bought for $4,000, which later sold for about $15,000.


We did become very active in the community and very supportive, not just of the schools. Verl Dixon who was a long-time mayor in Provo and who had been my husband's friend, and we were in the old Provo Third Ward, which is now an entertainment place of some kind on Fifth West and First North. Verl was a good person who had lost his first wife very tragically and he became mayor of Provo. My husband and I differed on Provo needs and differed with Verl even though we remained friends. I think it can be truly stated that they got so tired of seeing the Lamberts come down to the city meetings that they wished we wouldn't come.


It was a huge tragedy with the apartment house up on the hill that is south and east of us on 1420 Maple Lane. We learned later to out dismay that the city council, being very naive and good-hearted, had been sold on the construction for that place on a set of colored water color blue prints. My husband spent 500 hours checking out throughout the county, zoning things. I just mention this because it shows that even when people care, their caring can be effective. We've always tried to be effective in our neighborhoods. We're known as a good neighborhood on Maple Lane but that is even slipping now.


There was a radio program for citizen input. We were out at a dinner group with Stella Oakes and Ed Barrett and ever so many wonderful people and Richard and Jean Gunn and Cleo Worsley, now departed. Jean Gunn is now gone. We were listening to this radio program and low and behold our daughter Lisa's voice came on almost castigating the council and saying, "Whatever made you think that that building up there could be anything beautiful. It's a geological hazard. It's ugly." She was just in high school. That gives you the history of that building. It is a sadness because it's geologically unstable. It's been resold at least five times. It's also known as a drug hang out, though that may have been cleared up.


These things have made great changes in community life in Provo. We talked about the cold war. My brother who was absolutely enamored from the time he was in bib overalls, of flying, stayed with us. He went to BY High and was taken as a seventeen-year-old into the Air Force program. As that kind of training progressed, there was such elimination that only the very best could stay in. He got to fly. Usually when a pilot was trained, they stayed in that kind of training. But my brother was sent to Korea and he became known as the lucky Mormon pilot. He skidded in one day and was barely able to land. He never lost a crew member nor lost his life.


It was a devastating commentary on how we can't get along as nations. We can't get along in our own country, except as we come down to families. And I still have great hope for that. But the effects of these wars, and the Korean War. I remember when my brother came home he was so heart sick of war, that he couldn't find any justification for it, and yet he felt very loyal and had to take part. We were affected also by the Cold War, and the Vietnam War. Some of my husband's friends were in it.


My brother flew a 52 bomber. When he landed at Hill Air Force Base one time, we were able to go through one of the great developed planes up at Hill Air Force Base. I mention this because of the technological development that we had; absolutely incredible, mind boggling things. They can serve a good purpose, but they're used mostly for war. I think that's one of the greatest, most pervasive changes that has happened in this area, that has affected everyone. There is a lot of progress too.


Watergate was a shameful thing. I worked for Republicans but only for good ones. I worked for some very good ones in the state of Utah and I had a lot of good Democrats. My husband's Aunt Algie Peterson Balliff, a sister to Dester Peterson was a wonderful effect for good in this community. We loved good Democrats and would be proud that many Democrats were our good friends.


The point was we tried to work with both of them and had study groups. We had a study group with Stella Oakes in her home at one time trying to study the national problems. We can't get into all the details of that, but some goof did some terrible things with our group and told my husband that he and his Uncle Arile Balliff were communists, because we were studying in an area where we didn't belong and we weren't following the Lord's direction. He was a passionate John Birch person.


It's been a long time in Provo and I am just glad that I've seen the changes that I've seen. I can just think of a million others but they don't belong here. I think we've said enough.

Interviewee: Carol Lambert
Interviewer: Sharon Meyers
May 17, 1999



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