For several years in high school I dated a girl named Twila Greene. An only child of Earl and Vivian Greene, Twila was a member of a group of about a dozen kids I ran around with. Even before we started dating, her parents were more like parents to me than my own were. Every Monday evening they drove to Ashland, about 1 ½ hours from Klamath Falls, to see a ‘faith healer’ named “Mom” Crowder and receive a ‘treatment’.

I can’t remember what malady took them to Mom Crowder in the beginning but as I recall it was something to do with Earl and sinus problems of Vivian’s. Their illnesses were corrected and they referred many people to Mom. After we started dating, I often went to Ashland with them, not for a treatment, but just to be with Twila.

In my teens, and off and on since then, I had really bad acne. We didn’t have today’s medications back then and nothing the doctor tried worked completely. The diagnosis was that I had allergic skin, oily skin and large pores and I would eventually grow out of it. The one thing that helped somewhat was treatment with ultra-violet light. I went to the doctor’s office several times a week for a treatment until my parents ended up buying a lamp to use at home. This resulted in a real disaster.

On one Friday after school, I laid down under the u-v lamp to read for a few minutes before getting ready for a semi-formal dance that evening. The next thing I knew, Twila was on the phone wondering when I was going to pick her up. I had fallen asleep and had been under the lamp for a very long time. I hurried, got dressed and by the time I picked her up, the side of my face most exposed to the u-v was starting to turn red. As the evening wore on, my face became redder and started swelling. By the end of the evening, my eye was swollen almost closed.

The next morning, my parents contacted our family doctor who saw me in his office. He gave me some pain medication and took a blood sample. He then told me to check in the first of the next week to schedule a blood transfusion because the u-v light had destroyed most of my white blood cells. When I got out of the doctor’s, I went to see the Greenes. By then the right side of my face was really swollen and was white in some areas – having gone beyond ‘burned red’.

When I told them what the doctor said, they said I shouldn’t wait until Monday but should try to get over to see Mom Crowder right away. They called Mom, explained what had happened and were told to bring me over to Ashland as soon as possible and not to wait until their regular Monday evening appointment. Earl was a barber and didn’t get off work until late afternoon but as soon as he was off, we set out to see Mom.

As soon as we arrived, Mom finished with the people she was seeing, told others waiting that she had an emergency and would be delayed, and took me right in. Mom did not heal by the ‘laying on of hands’ literally, but held her hands close to, but not in contact with, a person. She would move her hands over a persons’ body and could feel heat generating from an area that was diseased or in someway not in proper health.

She would mentally block out her surroundings and ask Heavenly Father to remove the illness from the person. She never claimed that she was healing anybody, only that she was an instrument being used by God. And she didn’t speak or in anyway carry on while she was treating you. Obviously she did not have to use her hands to diagnose me.

She worked on me for a long time, slowly moving her hands about my face and head and silently praying. As she moved her hands over my face, they felt cool to me. When she finished she told me I would be okay and that I would not need a transfusion. She appeared very tired. When I got back in the car and looked in a mirror, I saw that my right eye was open about half way, the swelling was almost gone from my face and my color was better. There was no pain.

Over the weekend, I continued to improve. When I went to the doctor Monday morning, he took another blood sample to confirm his previous findings and to get ready to schedule a transfusion. He came back, expressed astonishment and said that I did not need a transfusion. He couldn’t explain it but my blood count was normal. He said that if he hadn’t seen it himself and done the tests himself, he wouldn’t believe it.

Needless to say, this experience made me look at spiritual powers in a whole new light. I went back to Mom many times. On one visit I mentioned a problem with my mother. She had an accident when she was in high school and one leg was shorter than the other. She had to have the heel of one shoe built up and this still didn’t completely help the pain and discomfort.

Mom asked if I could bring my mother over to see her and said probably not – she was still skeptical even after witnessing what happened to my burn. Mom said that was all right, she didn’t necessarily need to see someone in person to ‘see’ them and help them. She asked me to just watch my mother and see what happened.

After a short period of time, my mother’s leg grew longer and she no longer needed to have her shoes built up. She was grateful that it happened but still would not go over to see Mom. I don’t believe she was ever fully convinced that her healing had anything to do with Mom. This, to me, is one proof that you don’t necessarily have to have faith to be healed. As long as the person doing the healing has faith, it is often enough.

In I Corinthians 12, Paul talks of gifts saying that some are given the gift of healing.  He did not say some men, or some priesthood holders, he simply said “To another faith by that same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by that same Spirit;”.

This is expanded upon in modern revelation. In the Doctrine and Covenants we read:

19 And again, to some it is given to have faith to be healed;
20 And to others it is given to have faith to heal;
(Doctrine and Covenants | Section 46:19 – 20)

From Pauls writing as well as modern revelation it is difficult for me to see where it is required that a person has to have faith to be healed. The two gifts, faith to be healed and faith to heal, are not co-dependent. Yet, many seem to hold that belief. The faith of another, such as a parent’s faith that a child can be healed, is often enough. My mother was a good example of that. She had no faith at all but Mom Crowder’s faith and gift of healing was sufficient.

These two examples of healing by Mom Crowder proved to me beyond a doubt that this was possible. Several months after my burn was healed, Vivian Greene told me that she had been told by Mom that I had the gift to heal and asked whether or not I was aware of it. She told Mom that she was sure I had no idea of this and I confirmed it to Vivian with a bit of skepticism. I could accept someone else doing this, having the faith to do it, but not me.

I was to learn that my skepticism was unfounded. More on this latter.

I started this some months ago and as you can tell from reading, this is not the first time I have re-started this. It is very difficult for me to write about myself and especially of those things that are spiritual in nature. I think I feel somehow that what I write will be made light of. None of us want to leave a heritage of ridicule.

I wish I had kept up my journal over the years. The morning I began to write this some years ago, I started reading parts of the Journal I was keeping at the time our family joined the church. It brought back many fond memories. From time to time I have tried to start a biography to leave for my posterity.

Thinking about some events in my life over the past few days I realized that there are many details that I have completely forgotten. In setting out the following there may be some gaps but the essence I hope will be there so my children and grandchildren will have a better idea and understanding of who I am and why my testimony is so important to me.

Rather than a complete biography this will be more a history of my gaining a testimony and my relationship with the Savior. I cannot remember a time when I did not believe in Heavenly Father. I can remember walking to school in about the fourth grade and talking to Him as though He were walking beside me and knowing that He heard me. I did not realize it at the time, but I had a strong gift of faith. Looking back on this it seems strange, but at the time it didn’t.

To me it was the most natural thing in the world. The reason it does seem strange in a way is that my family was not a church going family. I cannot remember my mother ever having been in a church. My older sister Delores and I attended many different Sunday schools as youngsters but none of them for an extended time. From time to time, depending upon where we lived, we attended Baptist, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Nazarene to name only those that I can remember.

My earliest recollection of Sunday school is of one we attended when I was 4 or 5 years old. It was a black evangelical congregation with less than a handful of whites. There was an old gospel song I faintly remember that contained words something to the effect “park your (something and) chewing gum on the door” as you enter the church. And that is what we children did. We took out our gum, stuck it to the door frame and picked it up again on our way out. Not a very sanitary custom, but we didn’t pay as much attention to those things back then.

From the eighth grade through high school I attended primarily the First and United Presbyterian churches. One of my friends, Lynn Shaffer, who was in high school band with me was a Mormon. He invited me to services one Sunday and after the normal church service we went to a Sunday School class where he introduced me. After the instructor welcomed me he immediately called on me to offer and opening prayer. Somehow I got through that but never entered an Latter-day Saint chapel again for almost 30 years.

That was as bad of an experience as I can remember as far as religion is concerned. I was in my teens, didn’t know anyone else there and was very self-conscious as are most teens. But it did not make me think any less of Lynn or his older brother Lyle, who played trumpet in the band. From my association with them in school I knew they were regular people just like the rest of us.

Interestingly, growing up in Klamath Falls, I don’t recall a lot of prejudice against any religion or against any ethnic group. That was to come in later years, but not in the 50′s in Klamath Falls. I don’t know but maybe I just was not attuned to such things.

My early faith and belief in God did not keep me from getting into trouble. Some years, I’m sure, my parents and school officials thought ‘trouble’ was my middle name. In spite of my rebellious nature and trouble with authority, I always held on to my knowledge that there was a God.

(To be continued…)

Dorie and I (and Kashi, of course) drove out to Heikes Farms yesterday and bought some blueberries, marionberries and raspberries and sweet cherries. How I love this time of the year and the fact that we live in the middle of so much bounty.

This area has an abundance of fruit crops including peaches, apricots, many varieties of apples, blackberries and the best flavored strawberries grown anywhere. But my favorite are the raspberries.  There just is nothing that tastes of summer so much as a ripe, sweet raspberry fresh picked and still warm from the sun.

Raspberries bring back memories to me of summers spent on Grandmas farm in Montana. She grew strawberries, raspberries, currants and gooseberries and canned and made preserves with much of it.

Ravalli County had an experimental farm quite close and we also went there to pick cherries and other fruit. One summer I tried to earn a little spending money picking fruit at the county farm. I can remember going there and working most of the day climbing up and down fruit ladders but cannot recall what type of fruit I actually picked. Since I was in grade school at the time I am sure whatever it was I didn’t pick much of it or earn much money.

It seemed that Grandma’s root cellar was always lined with shimmering jars of fruit of all kinds. The jars shined with bright colors of peaches, apricots, pears, plums, sweet cherries and pie cherries and my favorites were the raspberries and raspberry juice. I am not sure how she made the juice but she seemed to put it up as a special treat. Poured in a glass with a little water and some ice cubes it made a summer cooler that was unbeatable. It was a real treat on a hot day.

Like most farm families, we all enjoyed our food. Fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy followed by shortcake heaped high with strawberries has to be high on the list. But raspberries were, and still are my favorite.

Many years later all I have to do to bring back pleasant memories of my grandmother and the summers at her farm is to plop a nice, ripe, juicy sweet raspberry in my mouth – or even just smell one.

I wrote the following after a visit from my sister Delores in the mid-1990s. I am not sure of the exact date. The reason this is being included on this site is simply to furnish a little more insight into who I am and some of my background. It may or may not be of interest to anyone in future generations including my own children.

As Delores’ Plymouth station wagon turned the corner and disappeared from view heading up the hill to the freeway which would take her to Seattle to visit her daughter, Denise, I was filled with a sad, empty void. The sadness and the emptiness was not caused by her leaving, in fact I was rather happy to see her go, but rather by what she was taking with her – and by what she left behind.

Delores arrived Friday evening and left Sunday morning. A short stay of less than two days. But the longest of the half dozen visits we have had in the last 40 years. In some ways I wish it had been shorter, or not happened at all.

We were able to work in a pleasant visit to St.Helens to see Diana and her children Saturday morning and then we dropped Dorie off at home to finish arrangements for a dinner with John & his wife, Carol, in the evening.

Delores and I then went to the Rose Test Gardens and took an auto tour of Portland. Her biggest concern was that she didn’t see any “bums or winos” laying around the streets near Burnside and Broadway. This really seemed to disappoint her. And she wanted to know where the red light district was. I told her honestly that I didn’t know.

I couldn’t seem to have an actual conversation with her. Whether it was me or her, I don’t know, but I seemed to be constantly warding off a confrontation by simply letting a conversation die. Whenever politics or religion was discussed (who, in their right mind, brings these subjects up, anyway?) she initiated the discussion with a sharp statement in a manner which dared anyone to disagree. Not the best way to begin amicable conversation.

During one of her infrequent lapses when she forgot to be confrontational but was simply reminiscing, she mentioned the times we visited our grandmother in Montana. All of a sudden, the flood gates of my memory were opened. Suppressed memories sprang forth from deep recesses where I had managed to bury them for so many years and I was filled at once with both a sadness for the past and a sure knowledge that if the past had been different, so would today.

As I gaze out the windows of the passenger coach at the telephone lines, they constantly dip and rise again to meet the next telephone pole. Up, sway down, and up again to the next pole. Mile, after mile of nothing but telephone poles and lines standing like sentinels between the rails and the untold acres of grain marching across Washington. Occasionally the scene is broken by a glimpse of the steam engine or its smoke rushing toward the back of the train. The scene is both hypnotic and boring.

Extra engines are added to help pull us over the pass out of Spokane. Sharp curves and steep grades permit us several times to look down and see the last cars of the train below us.

The train finally pulls into Missoula, Montana, and we get off. Delores and I ask around and are taken to a bus terminal and board for Corvallis (or Hamilton – I cannot recall for sure). It is night when we get to Corvallis.

We are supposed to me met, but no one is there for us. The station agent (he owned the pharmacy as I recall) placed a telephone call and after sometime we were taken out to our grandmother’s farm.

Thus starts this great adventure! Delores is here to start school! But not college as one might think. This train ride is my earliest memory and Delores is six years old and starting first grade. I am three. The year is 1940. Where this trip originated, Portland or Klamath Falls, and why we were sent away from our mother I don’t know.

I can’t remember much about the next year. Only several things have stayed in my memory over the years and these things I have always recalled.

Grandma's home after it was remodeled.

Turning off the main road, you passed a gravel pit on the left and then came to a beautiful two story, white farm house. You turned to the right down her lane, passed her large garden, to her small two room home. Near the house were the shop and feed storage and several large chicken houses.

Grandma Ethel Cox and George "Shorty" Korman

Grandma would later marry Shorty and they combined their farms and turned his home into a milk separating shed.

As I recall, uncle Duane and his youngest sister, aunt Betty, also lived at home then and I seem to recall several others also, so we must have been quite crowded in the small home. Grandma had several cows, hundreds of chickens and raised alfalfa, peas, strawberries, watermelon and sugar cane.

The last two were experimental crops underwritten by the government to try and help the small farmers find what crops might grow in areas where they had never been tried before.

This was not finished at the time although I had the best of intentions. That is one of the reasons for this blog. I will try to do better in the future and continue to post memories and happenings as time permits.

The bottom picture is of my grandmother and Shorty on the front porch of her home as it looked in 1937 when I was born in the bedroom of her 2 room home.

It is good to see the return of ballroom dancing in shows like Dancing With The Stars. But the dancing they do on screen really doesn’t represent what most of us actually did in real life. But it is fun to think we could and to imagine that we just might have been able to dance like that when we were in our prime.

When I was in the 7th and 8th grades, I was fortunate enough to be able to take ballroom dancing in a small class of youth taught by an extremely good instructor. She had us doing the tango, rhumba, samba and waltz in no time – but we could never begin to compete with the pros on tv.

In school we learned a lot of folk dances which I really enjoyed but I never had much opportunity to use those steps outside of a school setting.

Back then, everyone seemed to want to dance. Of course, as a model, we had all of those movies made of the war in which the main characters seemed to dance as much as defend the country. When I joined the Navy I just knew I would spend much of my time singing and dancing.

The early dance instruction came in handy in high school. We had all of the usual dances in high school – proms, homecoming, DeMolay and Jobs Daughters dances at the Masonic Hall or at the Yacht or Country Club. We couldn’t get enough dancing and even held impromptu dances at night on vacant tennis courts with music from our car radios.

The movie Grease, that was supposed to represent the 50′s youth, came close, but like everything on the big screen, did not get it quite right. But it was close.

The best part of dancing in the early 1950′s for me was dancing to the live bands. Growing up in Klamath Falls I did not realize until later that our little town was the usual stop over for touring bands playing in San Francisco and Portland. During the War, we had a Naval Air Station, a Marine Hospital and an USO so I suppose stopping there to entertain was sort of a habit.

Many of the western bands, including the Maddox Brothers and Rose, Lefty Frizzell, Hank Thompson and many others played at the Klamath Falls Armory or in one of the surrounding farm and ranch communities like Malin, Oregon and Doris, California.

Then the Big Bands started their revival. That is when the dancing craze really hit! We had The Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington, Harry James, Sauter and Finegan and The Glenn Miller Orchestra – every big band that was trying to make a come back, stop and play in our town.

One summer when they were touring I was working for a contract hay hauler – bucking hay and driving truck when I was 16. We had a big band in on Wednesday, Saturday and the next week too. Getting up at 4 am to head to the hay fields I was pooped, buy it didn’t stop the dancing.

Duke Ellington was in town on his birthday one year and they brought out a huge cake that was shared with everyone. They also held a dance contest and I partnered up with one of the girls that took ballroom lessons with me. We didn’t win, but we did manage to be in the last few dancing.

When I was in the Navy and away from home for the first time, I mentioned dancing to the big bands and the guys were sort of skeptical. They had not been able to do that but I grew up thinking everyone did.