Daughter of Mormon General Authority Hartman Rector Jr. - Lila Tueller Pt. 1 - Mormon Stories #1245

hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon stories podcast I'm your host John Dolan it's January 16th 2020 and we could not be more excited for the new year and to be recording a new season we can even say of Mormon stories podcast interviews we are broadcasting to you today live from the mormon the new mormon stores podcast slash thrive Studios here in holiday Utah and if you look at the wide shot you can actually see for those who are watching by a Facebook or YouTube kind of this new set up we have partnered with my dear friend Clint Martin and his wife Jenny to co-locate a new facility of the Mormon stories podcast studios with what we're calling the thrive Center which is just a community center for progressive and post Mormons who are looking to learn and grow and find community and build together so we've got this slick new podcast studio that I've teamed with Cody Layton and Tyler Alden to to build out it's got a bit of a Joe Rogan ask feel to it and we're going to be doing lots of cool things here in the studio we've got brand new mics lighting it's super exciting so we're excited about that one thing about that is that I'm really excited I follow a couple podcasts one is called armchair expert another one is the Conan O'Brien podcast but in in a lot of podcasts going on these days the what they do is they have their producer with his own microphone and so the person who's producing the podcast episode can monitor comments chime in if there's an error or if there's a need for some sort of correction or if I forgot to ask a really important question the producer can jump in and say or do anything they need to and they've got their own mic so we're really fortunate to have with us helping out with the Oba stories foundation Tyler Alden totter you can wave to everybody if you want Tyler Tyler is our producer tire it's nice nice to have you with us yeah do you want to say anything to would you want to introduce yourself to our listeners just for a second I'm helping out here today with the cameras and Tyler's well it's good to have you Tyler thanks for all you've done to make this video possible along with Cody and Clint and one of the things we want to do we want to we want to try to livestream these when we can but if I'm paying attention to to viewer comments it kind of takes me out of the interview and I don't want that to happen so Tyler will monitor your comments and questions he'll jump in at at graceful periods and either make the comments or ask the questions and so we're looking forward to that and and I'll be able to focus more on my guests that's not all right Tyler just really quickly just a tiny bit more about the studio so the thrive center here in holiday Utah is exciting for a couple reasons we've been holding these thrive support groups all around the country there's more than 50 of them and once a month there's been this faith crisis support group that are is being held in local areas and that's been really successful because people in a faith crisis really need support and friends and community and then we've added to that this idea once a month of sort of a secular sunday-school where on us once I'm each month people in the area get together and they have a potluck and they talk about an interesting topic that's more focused on growth then on healing and and faith crisis stuff and so we've picked a book for our first few months it's called The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz and in thrive sport groups all around the country they'll be having their first what we call growth meeting this Sunday it's going to be usually the third Sunday of every month and people just show up around 10 a.m. or whatever time the group decides bring a potluck talk about this book talk about a given topic whether it's honesty or parenting or help the relationships or healthy marriage and then eat and build community so that's gonna be happening this Sunday here at Holiday we're going to be doing that the following Sunday so it's basically two Sundays from now but the reason why I'm mentioning all that is because we really want this Center in holiday along with the center that's already in Springville to be a gathering place for post Mormons and progressive Mormons and liberal Mormons we want to be able to have book signings here we want to be able to have live podcasts we want to be able to have workshops and retreats and incidentally we're so excited that Natasha over Parker marriage & Family Therapist sex therapist has relocated to Utah and now her her private practice along with symmetry solutions is co-located here at this thrive Center in Holliday so you can come visit her if you need any counseling or therapy but also for the next two months she's holding up a weekly workshop on various issues related to faith crisis whether its communicative believing family or friends or navigating your marriage or raising kids or whatever it is so if you want to come here each Wednesday night at 7 p.m. you can take part of that it's free and we plan to be doing retreats and another events here too and I'll just say that we plan to have our new first sign of Mormon stories retreat we're going to start doing those again it's kind of a faith crisis retreat and we're gonna hope to do that the last weekend in February so stay tuned for more about that but we're just super excited for all the new changes we're grateful for all the donors and and volunteers who have helped make this possible and we hope to do lots of good things for post Mormons and progressive Mormons in the weeks months and years ahead Tyler did I forget anything I think you know okay all right so without any further ado let's go ahead and introduce our guest today our guest today is Lila tular Lila may be a name her name may be familiar to a few of you because she was interviewed recently on Radio Free Mormon podcast that's not where I learned about Lila in one of the free workshops that we held last year at the commune of Christ I meant Lana for the first time I was really excited to meet her tour hear about her story I've been contacted either by or about her brother you know in the past few years as well and so I've known about Lila and her family for a while and and again I'm I'm super happy that radio if you're Mormon was able to interview Lila along with Bill real I think but I've been wanting to interview Lila for some time and I'm really excited to be able to interview her today for those of you don't know Lila tular is the child of the late Mormon general authority Hartmann rector jr. and you know his wife her mother so those of you who who were you know teen or adult Mormons in the 70s or 80s or even 90s will have heard the name Hartman director jr. he didn't reach the level of apostle but he certainly Wow was among the most prominent non apostle General Authorities in the church I'm pretty sure he served in the quorum of the seventy but also in the presidency of the seventy for many years and so we're gonna be talking about a lot today we're gonna be talking about a little bit about Lila's parents story something that's interesting is that her dad was a convert to Mormonism and so you know back then there weren't many converts that became General Authorities so we're gonna talk about her parents story we're going to talk about what it was like for her growing up in the home of Mormon general authority you know which which apostles did she meet how strict were her parents what's what's it like on the inside what can what insight can she provide into whether Mormon general authorities really believe or don't which is one of the big questions people ask well is he a special witness did he get a second anointing you know was he was he loving could he have special powers to heal like all these things that you would wonder about what it's like to be the child of a general authority was he gone all the time the family secretly fight like all these sort of things were their dirty little secrets and we're not you know seeking for smut but I mean like were there secrets in the family that was there a lot of pressure was it super intense like well we'll kind of dive into that kind of stuff and just kind of about what it's like to be a general authority from the the child's perspective and the child of a general authority from the child's perspective and then we'll talk about Lila's own faith journey she she has had a crisis of faith at some point and so we'll talk about that she's had her own you know family and marriage and children and we'll just talk about all that and then in the end we'll end was sort of like how how Lila has kind of healed and grown in her journey especially after her faith crisis and we'll start we'll follow some of these questions that I've been putting out about kind of with a thrive theme about you know questions focused on healing and growth after Mormonism so that's what it's going to be a longer Mormon stories interview probably three four or five hours so buckle in but we're gonna cover a lot of great territory in the same tradition of the Christine Jepsen Clark interview on warmest stories where we interviewed her the daughter of Malcolm Jepsen who was Boyd Kay Packers best friend and doctor and also the general authority who's responsible for excommunicating many of the people to September 6 that's actually the one of if not the most downloaded Mormon stories episodes of all time we've also interviewed I think M russell Ballard granddaughter and so whenever we can get family members of General Authorities we like to do that so thanks for tuning in Lila you were very patient in that very lengthy introduction is there anything you want to correct or add or take away from okay all right well thanks for joining us today yeah it's nice to meet you thanks for having me yeah okay so let's begin I guess the place to begin would be with your parents story unless there's some opening statement you want to make about your intentions or you know no I'm I think you did great we can start wherever you want to start with my parents story so just real briefly I don't want to delete the belabor anything but my parents were not members of the church they both grew up in Missouri and they met each other in Missouri my mother was 14 my dad was 18 when they first met and the story he tells were always told was that he saw her walking down the sidewalk this beautiful black-haired girl and went up to her and said my name is Hartman record jr. I'm gonna marry you in four years I'm going away to the Navy when I come back I'm gonna marry you and she looked at him and said okay that's kind of the way they tell this story it was love at first sight and he did go away for four years in the Navy and came back and they did get married and they were part of kind of Society in Missouri at the time you know they they did the parties and they drank and they smoked and my mom had a cute little gold cigarette box that she kept her cigarettes in and you know they they were just typical normal people of the time and fast forward to get in they got married they had they were had she was pregnant with her third child quickly so he was a pilot right right for the Navy right that's kind of a big deal at Navy pilot yeah yeah did he serve in World War two did he serve in Vietnam do you even know it was the Korean War Korean War so good world war two right and did he like fly overseas yeah a bomber was he a jet fighter jet pilot fighter pilot yeah you know he was a bomber so he you know he was on the the aircraft carriers out in the ocean and would take off off the aircraft carrier and land on the aircraft carrier and he was he was bombing over in Korea that he talked about dropping bombs you know they'd give him a point on the map and tell him to wipe it out and so he would do that usually they were not places where there were civilians who was just bombing you know the trains and and that you know different military outposts but he wasn't really trying to kill anyone does what he said and he yeah it was it was uh he was a captain so he you know he was he was up there he was proud of his naval service did you get a sense for was he raised LDS I mean thought not was originally us was he raised religious at all and did he ever tell you like how he got converted yeah okay he wasn't we haven't gotten there yet right so so all the stuff with your mom happened before he converted yeah okay good okay we'll get to there we'll get to that okay okay so okay so let's keep going so he he but what was he raised religious no there was it was not a member of any Church there was a family big family Bible that his grandmother would read out of to him but that was the extent of his religious training there really was no religion his my mom was a member of the Methodist faith but they never went to church you know it was just she just wasn't active okay so not super religious so he serves in the war then they get married right how does it how does it go from there well they got married and while he was out on a boat in Japan doing some accelerated accelerated training my mom was home she was pregnant with the third child and the missionaries tracked him track it into her knocked on her door she invited the men oh and I have to kind of preface this with my dad had a sort of theme that he lived his life by and it was never cease to grow that was one of them that was one theme and then the other theme was his nightly prayer and that my mom would say he did it what wasn't just nightly it was every time he prayed he would say dear God please show me the truth please bring me the truth and that was his you know he was searching he was a searching for truth soul and so my mom was aware of that so when the missionaries tracted her out she invited the men and said you know sit down and tell me what what have you got what what are you what are you teaching and they left her with some material and then my dad came home from his trip abroad and she handed him the Book of Mormon was she had already started to read and then he he looked at it and said something like uh yeah probably written by a man I'll shoot it down fifteen minutes so that was his his idea he had he had looked into a lot of different religions he had been searching for a while for the truth so when he started the story goes that when he started reading the Book of Mormon he wasn't he said he hadn't finished first Nephi before he he prayed that it was true and then when he finished second me by which is the hardest part he said he knew it was true mm-hmm and it was just an overwhelming feeling and from then on I mean they just stopped drinking smoking partying everything just came to a screeching halt they changed everything biggest and we're very you know he got baptized on the boat on the ship actually they had to dock and he got baptized in a really cold ocean I remember him saying he was freezing and my mom got baptized in San Diego and then you know when he came home they started going to church in earnest so they were baptized separately yeah yeah no around what year oh gosh I think it was 51 okay right around then that's throughout the time of the Korean War for sure right so this is Eisenhower time this is right exactly post-world war cold war yep McCarthy hearing Eisenhower Nixon vice president that kind of yeah you know your history no no like that little part of it yeah okay and it was the Book of Mormon that converted him right okay so they stopped their partying lifestyles and they both get baptized how does it how does it progress how many kids were born when they were when they were she was pregnant with her third okay um sorry number six they're sick so it was a ways before me yeah they just you know they started my dad they moved to Virginia after the war was over my dad got a job at the Pentagon in the Department of Agriculture and he worked with who's my cousin really Oh so yes debts of a Secretary of Agriculture under Eisenhower under Eisenhower and so your dad got a hookup he they had a Mormon hookup with the Apostles slash future profit to be all right okay right so I think my dad the personality that my dad has very he was very charismatic outgoing fun-loving people person and and just loved entertaining people and loved a crowd loved more people around him the better very much an extrovert and he I think he just had an impression on Ezra Taft Benson and his best friend was Reid Benson who was son right so they were buddies and so and might at the time my dad was a seminary teacher you know and but not CES was he Church employee no I don't know okay I don't know be honest okay I just know he was seminary teacher and so that so before I mean I was at the time when he got called I was seven years old so my experience with it is kind of vague I just remember in retrospect kind of oh that's what was going on okay now I understand so he got the call and which was we nobody expected that it was a total the call to be a general authority okay so he D been bishop or stake president no really no none of that how many years had he been a member before he gets called I think I did the math and I think it was like 16 years ago something whatever is never a bishop or a president he was a stake mission leader ya know and he had been I never been a mission president before no no that I mean maybe that's how they did it back then well I just think he you know he didn't have the pedigree at all it was just somebody said hey this guy's on fire he'd be great mission a great missionary advocate you know and and so they I don't know he got the call and you know pretty quick he got sent on to be a mission president right away to Tallahassee Florida so when I was in fifth grade that's where I lived well for just for a year he went to Tallahassee okay so he gets called as a general authority first right then as a mission president yeah so we moved to Salt Lake and then almost at well I spent one year in snow two years in Salt Lake and then he gets called to be a mission president and it must have been a step Benson I mean just guessing I'm speculating but it's like hey this guy's sharp yeah let's get him let's get him in the leadership ranks yeah and we need to give him some leadership experience so let's make him a mission president I guess yeah cuz he was I mean he was a missionary entrepreneur like he he was converting everybody everybody our neighbors everybody he could he was just a had the missionary spirit so I think they saw that and they're like yeah get him going let's get him in there so went to Tallahassee he was on fire down there loved it and I mean just a little side note my sister one of my sisters who I won't mention got pregnant at 17 while we're in Florida Oh oh yeah so with my LDS kid in the ward so that was a real upsetting theme for my dad I remember what watching him I didn't know what was going on all I know is that my dad was crying walking around the house sobbing yelling just furious furious that at the position he was in you know as the mission president and his daughters knocked up and and like I said I was nine years old I really like I didn't know what was how I do my dad was really upset so and then the next thing I knew my sister I saw her like and we shared a bathroom and I noticed she was pregnant and then and she said yes I'm pregnant and the next thing I know she was shipped off to Georgia to have the baby what does that mean they found a place for her to live so she wasn't there being pregnant isn't that interesting it's like yeah get her out he's in a family secret oh yeah I was totally I found my secret like I was I was sworn to secrecy I wasn't supposed to talk about it so the more so in theory the word didn't know in theory yeah she was like probably five months along when they sent her out so she was starting to show but they got her out of there and then my dad insisted that they get married there was no ifs ands or buts they were getting married I mean and I had no choice and again do you have a sense for what year this is okay let's see this sort of been around 71 okay so this is like the early kind of the Year the Beatles are breaking up this talk yeah this kind of Woodstock you know is emerging the hippie culture very happy cults your sisters your sisters how old she was 17 and you were hold I was 10 okay you were young yeah you were young and what an embarrassment and this is after he'd been called as a journey right after he's called his generation yeah so see you okay and that's just that culture of like shipping them off right like when does it Shane what does a kid need more help than when they're pregnant or whatever yeah not only are they not getting the help they need right from their parents right but they're like you said they're shipped off as if it's some shameful awful thing and it's all hidden right now instead of being open and honest it's kind of hidden and and that must have been terribly embarrassing for your parents stuff to go tell whoever their upline General Authorities nice I don't know that they did tell I don't know maybe they happy that Tipton secret I don't know I don't know but I just know that you know the next thing I knew she was married and then she had the baby and then you know later a year later they got sealed in the temple I mean with my dad just breathing down their neck so she got pulled out of high school didn't finish cuz she was pregnant you know and so it was all kind of mmm wild but that was that traumatic for her very she had scars about that oh yeah it was an abusive relationship too and she ended up having six kids with that with him and then they ended up divorcing oh so he wasn't good for her but since you're do a shotgun wedding right your dad your parents insisted on it absolutely yeah that was the only way out for them they didn't you know you're gonna make this right okay so then let me think then the baby put up for adoption no nope they kept the baby and he is currently still living in Florida most of the kids do that they had okay yeah thank you thanks Tyler oh one other well thanks listener yeah there's other details I think there are certain things I should probably not say cuz they're family things but yeah I you could write a probably do a movie and a book about the intrigue of my family well my heart's breaking for your sister yeah cuz it was rough for her who wants to be shamed about their mistake and then who wants to be daddy mommy's little secret supposed to be forced into a marriage the I'll be right right and then what about the generational ripple effects of yeah being an abusive marriage that's that's harmful and painful and how that have affects all the children what a domino of potential catastrophe exactly all in a family that's probably highlighted is this ideal yeah elite Mormon family a perfect and you always wonder that and we'll get into this obviously just are these perfect Mormon families really perfect and you gotta know they're not right for some reason we kind of like to idolize them and even though we know they can't possibly be perfect look it up to it all yeah yeah so uh so she ended up staying in Florida my family went back to Salt Lake and we didn't see her for years and years she just was stuck out there in Florida my dad continued you know onward and upward but we didn't go back to Florida and she didn't come out so I didn't see her for a long time now I wonder if they just wanted the kids to get old enough so that no no ask questions like why would she be estranged effectively estranged from the family for years I think it was such a an embarrassment for my dad I just think he was absolutely mortified by it and you know here he is new you know he's the new guy on the block and immediately this happens I yeah I think it was just so embarrassing for him they stayed in touch but you know there was a lot of abuse going on that she never mentioned because she just thought I can't complain I have no right to complain cuz cuz I screwed up I screwed up exactly we talked about this with Sean from from Wales yesterday she ever teenage pregnancy we don't know the story just yesterday and just the shame was it like yesterday I was livestream yeah it's it's good listeners in the oven check that out yet check out the one about Sean from from Wales it's it's definitely but so much shame and then so many ripple effects but anyway so you guys moved to Salt Lake right well what what area we lived after we came back well before Florida we lived over on the east bench near Skyline High School in Oak Creek that's where that's where Kristi Jepsen Clarke's family lived Malcolm Jepsen oh yeah like up in that area with streets named like Moroni and write all these streets named after Book of Mormon characters I hope it's the same area of a similar I know where those are we're close okay the same general area and then when we came back from Florida we moved to the avenues oh the upper avenues 18th Avenue and up into a house that my dad found on foreclosure there had been satanic rituals taking place in that house they had their signs painted on the walls there was burnt crosses in the backyard it was this it was filthy it was it was this big beautiful home but it had been completely ransacked by a satanic group that would be there so we moved in and my dad the first thing you did was dedicate the house and he had to rededicate it several times because we had experiences with what we thought were evil spirits in the house okay so this is mid seventies now right yeah so Bruce are macaques book would have been out we could have talked about Ouija boards and evil spirits and and this would have been around the time that the movie The Omen was coming out in the seventies Damien oh yeah so there's the 70 started to rage and all the stasi Osbourne yeah like Led Zeppelin and all these this hype and hysteria around Satanism yeah and so so that's sort of been happening but that shows if your dad would have taken the time like the biggest question I get Bar None is do General Authorities really believe and I guess it's different in the 70s than now but even back then there were stuff going on with like Leonard Arrington or you know church history and stuff but they always want to ask you know do the general Florez really believe and I just can't imagine your dad doing it I performing an exorcism to clean out the evil spirits if he didn't really believe my dad was a believer absolutely because think about it if he was a nuke on the missionaries did not tell him the deep dark secrets of anything they they just gave him the discussions right so it was he my dad joined the church believing that it was you know this wonderful glorious amazing happy thing that that you know was why wouldn't why would anyone not want to join the church that was his philosophy it was like hey you're crazy if you don't join this church it's amazing like it's it answers all my questions it's the it's so neatly tied up in a boat to him it was perfect so he didn't know I don't think he knew any of this stuff the history so I didn't ask you that like Joseph I was a polygamist or like Book of Abraham or not yet okay okay but but it but at the time he was a general authority and didn't know that's how the question dude the John authorities know at least we can say in the 70s there were there at least was a time where general Florez didn't know yeah didn't know any of that stuff yeah they kind of found out you know when things started breaking I don't know during the Hoffman years you know some a little bit yeah we'll get to that let's not forget to talk about that okay so he performs an exorcism on your house cast out evil spirits yeah and you moving in the avenues is that like East High School back in the day yeah so what was that like moving to the you know Oz basically it was great it was it was hard because I moved in and junior high I was 6th grade I think so you know you have to kind of make friends and try to fit in to group what that's already established right and um and but it was I loved it I loved East High I loved my my years there my brother Dan who was five years older than me was the big man on campus he was so he was popular everybody knew him so as his little sister I kind of had it in you know I'm dance little sister so every was like oh yeah you're cool then you know Dan was this big skier and he was he just had all the girls he had the guys he was just a you know a really popular kid and so yeah we kind of moved into this rich neighborhood my parents were not wealthy at all we came from kind of you know I would just say blue color not very we didn't have a lot middle-class into an upper-class neighborhood and everybody was you know had boats and and cabins and you know all kinds of toys and I didn't I'd never had any of that growing up so your dad would have been a gentle 30 so you would have been on salary right but do you probably don't know what that amount I want to say today my seventies would have to adjust for inflation right no just back for right so at this is what I was told by my parents they said you know we get some money but it's not a lot so you know we're gonna shop thrift stores we're gonna you know we're gonna try to make do and we're gonna write books and that's how we make extra money just by writing books that's what they were kind of told if you want to make some money write a book so immediately you know my mom's like okay I'm a writer now and and she would say to the kids sheet a ok you guys I'm gonna be gone for about four hours I gotta go right on the book work on the book you guys just take care of yourselves don't answer the door of the phone I'll just be in there for a while my dad was never home so you know we were like cool we can do whatever we want for four hours mom's gonna be in the door in the room right in a book and she was always writing a book forever they she wrote you know they wrote no more strangers but my mom wrote like four other books after that no more strangers volumes all four of them eventually start writing our own books and we'll talk about that let's to things to what extent was your family doing you know morning and evening prayer scripture study David scripture study family evening like how Orthodox was the actual household okay it was we did when my dad was in town which was rare he always made it so he was gone let's just say four weeks out of the four weeks out of the year out of the month how many days would he be gone okay well it probably was the traveling they did these they did these trips which were a month long at least a month long sometimes six weeks and that was every so they'd be home for three gone for a month home for three gone for a month and that was that was just the regular routine and my mom would go with my dad over three weeks home for three months gone for a month okay got it go so they were home you know they were gone for long periods of time like for a whole month so imagine your dad not being around for a month yeah all my mom - oh shoot the other watch yeah so we got farmed out like I'd go one one month I'd be you know what time they'd travel I'd be over at my girlfriend's house you know and I'd stay there for a month my brother would go to his friends house the next time my mom would send me over here because we don't want to wear out the Welcome over here so she'd send me over there and my brother over here my little sister over here so we were farmed out and then sometimes she kind of got to the point where she started inviting young couples to come in and stay with us just like young married couples and they'd pay him I don't know what they'd pay him they Pam and you know so it was weird I'd wake up in the morning and I'd kind of had this pit in my stomach you know cuz it was like my mom and dad aren't here it's that random couple that I don't even know and those four I felt sorry for them you know they're thrown into a house they're supposed to run it like they know how their young couples and they've got instantly all these kids to take care of and figure out their schedules and how to cook for him and all that so that was our normal routine so to answer did that make you feel like I can imagine if I were the child of the gentle thirty that would be like yes Mormons do hard things and my dad is one of Jesus's special representatives and my parents are serving the church and so like yes we get to do a hard thing and we're sacrificing as a family for the Lord's cause is that how you and your siblings thought of it or were there parts now I'm like wow John that's a really positive way to look at it you'd be that way right chatter well I think my older brother saw it as an opportunity to have parties oh really yeah but he I mean he didn't he was a good kid he never did anything bad but he would just have friends over you know more often than normal i was i held a little resentment because i felt like you know I'm kind of an orphan half the time and I'm farmed out like I felt like the church talks about families family family family how important the family is but we were being neglected you felt that at the time yeah you're out projecting back no I felt it at the time you're like my family's neglecting me yeah I felt I felt like I guess I'm chopped liver they don't they'll just farm me out so they can go travel travel travel travel and then come home with all these gifts where you know they the toys and stuff that they'd bought in Germany or Japan or wherever they were and that was supposed to make it okay you know I just felt like something was backward back then I was angry about it I really was I like I said I woke up in the morning with my a pit in my stomach I felt like you know where's my mom where you know I don't my mom's not here and when I got went to bed at night I was sad I would cry because I wanted my parents there so I mean I feel I feel kind of bratty being upset about that because I know there are people with worse experiences okay I know there's always worse but for me at the time that was really hard it was hard for me I'm so sorry okay I mean I'm over it anybody yeah so when so the but they would be home with three months stretches but my dad would be gone my mom would be goki but he'd be but he was gone gone gone he would be home for check quarters like traveling around you traveling around yeah traveling around Utah or Arizona or California or you know the western states he traveled a lot okay so during those three months where your mom was home right he'd still be gone all the time right okay so he'd be home usually on a Monday night if he was in town he'd be home on Monday night that was our sacred family home evening night and so we would have it whenever he is gone Bob - oh my god tot he always taught uh-huh he loved it he's a very patriarchal so what's it like to have this church celebrity guy who's charismatic and probably well-informed giving these dazzling did you love it did you hate it was it I we all put up with it it was kind of like there we go you know we'd be fighting and stuff and it would frustrate my mom and dad maybe like can't we just have quiet for one hour and you know I just got it you know so he'd try to it he'd have he'd have the visual aids ready and everything oh he he went with the the handbook there was a family home evening handbook and he would go through those lessons and teach them and then you know we'd have the the song and then my mom would have a treat afterwards and so I mean there were perks to it but and he would do the morning scripture at 6:00 the whole day if he was ever in town we had to get up and do the scripture study my mom would try she tried to do it she wasn't as good at it as my dad she wasn't as motivated he just really wanted to do everything right he really did and like Sunday Sabbath observance was it you can't was it that strict where he can't change out of your church clothes all day yeah wasn't that strict no cuz we didn't have the cultural background because my parents were not members you know they were convert so they didn't know all those cultural rules at all they only knew you know you're not supposed to go out and buy things you're not supposed to go swimming there were certain things that we would never do but once in a while we'd go out to eat until I think it was president Kimball really locked down on that later but at first we would go out to eat sometimes on Sunday we we could watch TV my dad watched sports but we were in our comfy clothes yeah like face cards were they prohibited yeah we didn't place a face card what about popular music we allowed to play rock music my dad was pretty open about that if it was blatantly satanic or something no but you know he was too busy to notice he really didn't notice what we were playing and he had his own music that he would blast up in his room like Andy Williams and Glen Campbell and just the old crooners you know cute Perry Como Frank Sinatra yeah he's saying - he had a really nice singing voice so he would sing at the top of his lungs all all around the house in his garments walking the road yeah yeah lots of lots of Glen Campbell like by the time I get to Phoenix oh and another thing about my dad that might be kind of interesting is he played racquetball and he was really good really good he could whoop anybody and so he would have a regular like he played every morning at the Deseret gym racquetball and so he would put on these really short shorts with his temple coat over the top his white temple coat what's a temple coat well like temple suit like when you're in when you're initiating wear white yeah so because he would go directly from the gym to the temple so he would wear it was so weird he would wear that out the door this gym gym shorts with the temple and I'd to see him sometimes I'd be at the store and I'd he'd show up at the grocery store dressed like that and I'd be like dad put some pants on but he just he didn't care about that kind of stuff he would just cuz he didn't know the rules and he didn't care about the rules yeah so well he cared about some rules some rules but he didn't care about the cultural rules okay so like if somebody said this you know here are the here are the rules these are the Commandments he would follow those to the tee but if it was something subjective like people you know they don't change out of their church clothes or something like that he wouldn't have known that okay okay so what we didn't have caffeine no Coke no caffeinated beverages seen not even chocolate he didn't believe in chocolate not my dad believed in chocolate chocolate I don't know he would he would eat snicker bars that was kind of his secret though it was in the freezer kept him in the freezer a little bag of Snickers and he would pull those out and eat those frozen but that he would never like chocolate he felt like was kind of I don't know kind of bad right the Snickers bars were his so that's about as bad as it got but he you know he did have so I was gonna say about that about the desert jamming and the racquetball he got really good so he would challenge people everywhere he traveled he would hi Joseph Smith challenging people to leg wrestle yes yeah he would have racquetball like matches everywhere he was and like the best of the best athletes in the area would would be there all dressed up ready to play because they my dad was legendary nobody could beat him he would give him a 20-point lead and still beat him you know it was the serve was right in the corner and it would just drop dead and you couldn't return it oh definitely and a competitor there's no worse fan I mean worse because he's right in your face he's yeah he loved BYU sports and he was very aggressive sports fan yeah I mean okay so many good things about my dad they were great okay so any other things about family culture in your middle and high school years that you want to mention just to paint that picture we got to study prayer yeah no caffeine right you know that kind of stuff parents dead gone mom gone yeah anything else yeah strict like was the gospel about love was it about appearance was it about was a harsh you know yeah he was a disciplinarian and very I mean a loving guy too but he had this sort of he was a patriarch of the home and like I told the story on the other podcast but it bears repeating he would sit down at the table and my mom would serve him and she would she would just kind of stand aside she wouldn't sit down at the table and eat when he was sitting there she would be serving him so he'd say I need a little bit of jam and she'd run and get it waters empty he'd refill that I need a little salt I mean she was just just like a waitress and then when when he was finally starting to you know slow down she would sit down and finally start to eat that was just the way it was and that's probably as much of an American thing is kind of a Mormon thing right the patriarch I'm an America's patriarchal and 70s were probably way more chauvinistic yeah so in a lot of ways he was chauvinistic um like he would tell me little girls are meant to be seen and not heard cuz he didn't like my mouth I was a little bit he told me a bunch of times that I was the biggest challenge he had had even though Linda had got oops one of my sisters had gotten pregnant I was the challenge because I would back talk I would I would challenge him on things not sassy but like I don't think that's right I don't agree with that you know whatever and that will hold oh he did not like that I was told I was impudent probably a thousand times and he would tell me you know you're not supposed to talk back and we didn't say it like that it was angry we had a lot of fights my dad and I head-to-head fights I remember one time I went and saw I was probably I was in junior high and I went and saw Jesus Christ Superstar while he was on the road is probably musical where where Jesus and all those apostles are hippies right and are they writing or are they on roller skates no but but it's just like basically Woodstock crashes into the Last Supper yeah so my dad's out I didn't know he was campaigning against this movie all over the United States no idea right so I had no idea so I go with my friends they're all hey let's go to the movies so I went come home and my mom's like what movie did you see and I told her and then she looked at me like oh you better and then so my dad oh I think so the mic okay yeah so then my dad comes home walks through the door and my mom grabs him and says do you know what your daughter just went what just did she went and saw Jesus Christ Superstar and he came in the kitchen I was sitting on the bench there was like a bench on one side of the table and chairs on the other I sitting on the bench and he came over and jerked me off the bench onto the floor and proceeded to kick me all over the kitchen which I had seen him do to my brother literally kick kicking yeah screaming at me his nostrils flared his teeth bared yelling and saying do you have any idea what I've just been doing I've been all over this country telling people not to go see that movie and I said well you didn't tell me you know and that made him more angry so we would have I mean that was one of probably the most memorable experiences of what I considered to be abusive he was very verbally abusive but that was one of the worst times I remember him being physical with me he was physical to my brother's a lot but then I look back in it those were part of the times because he he grew up on a farm in the Midwest and his dad beat him so it was kind of it was just part of the culture in his mind so he didn't see anything wrong with that I got spanked a lot I got swatted with a flyswatter on bare legs bare but you know a lot of that kind of thing and that was just the norm for my family I never thought anything of it really until later when I was raising my own kids and there was a lot of talk about abuse you know child abuse and I was I was like wow I guess I was kind of a abused in my home so and I just want to kind of speak about intent here first of all I I didn't know anything about your story going into this interview right and I it's just not my style to like want to get dirt I want truth I want good and bad and so you know so you're just telling your real story and I'm noticing that there's a lot of painful stuff yeah but it is just the truth like I'm not I'm not angry at my dad for that because that was for him that was how you raised kids at he was raised in a completely different culture his dad beat him with the belt you know I knew that cuz he told me stories about it so for me to get kicked around the kitchen floor was kind of in my mind it was like well I probably deserved it and I didn't like I said I'd been spanked my whole life I didn't think it was awful and I didn't hate my dad for that I loved my dad I admired my dad I later in life realized that I had some issues that I needed to deal with about him and I dealt with him I mean dealt with them face to face with my dad as he when he got older but at the time I didn't feel like I was being abused it was just normal for me and some of that's cultural yeah I mean I was common for those of us growing up with the 70s or 80s to be spanked or grabbed or jerk not Kent I was never kicked yeah yeah that's hard so I don't want to I want to have you just share any other soul was ever like parents said children down and say listen we're general you know I'm a general authority we're leaders in the church this family needs to behave this family needs to be examples yeah was it ever that explicit or was it more just whenever someone made a mistake that came up you know yeah just unsaid like how do you how do you how does that get communicated I think there were times he would talk about the name his name and that that we needed to respect that name and be examples and so he would say you know when you're out in public everybody's watching you the things that you do things you say that reflects on our name and you need to respect our name our name is is you know it's it's all you've got and so and he would say so what behave the way that you want people to remember you as you know I remember the pressure feeling like I can't do or act like my friends were doing you know what they were doing because people were watching me my mom would remind me that you know she'd say you know remember you know people are watching you careful careful what you say and do um so I felt like people were you know kind of watching my behavior because it reflected on them now what's that like is a team in Salt Lake City in the 70s to feel like everybody's watching you and like there's this extra expectation of pressure there's some pressure there and I think I did feel like maybe it wasn't fair like I wanted to be just me I didn't want to have to live up to someone else's expectations and I found that that's kind of a theme in my life expectations are they like there's something deep down inside that just makes me crazy about the idea that someone expects something of me and I think it must have started back then and then when my dad got called he got called to be a mission president again in San Diego when I was just finishing my sophomore year okay so I had to go to San Diego and go to finish my junior in my senior year which was really hard because on one hand I was excited to go to California because you know the B the Sun and you think wow surfer boys you know everyone's like wow you get to go live in San Diego Wow but on the other hand it was you know you're going in cold you don't know anybody you're going into a high school nobody knows you yeah it was just it was scary but is also exciting so I did I went and once again my dad was mission president so it's like hey you know you need to make sure that you set an example for everybody that you come across you're a missionary you're an extension of your your family your parents so you need to be a missionary and so that means you have to behave really you know as best as you can and so I really took that on I took that on as a you know I'm gonna try to you know spread the gospel in my life just by how I act and I remember in school you know I never went to I never drank I never I didn't do anything you know like that at all but uh I had some negative experiences with some people one of the church girls when the girls that I during the summer when we moved into San Diego this girl said hey do you want to go to the beach with us we go three times a week you can come and I was like yeah I'll go to the beach absolutely so I started going the beach with them and she would tell me stories about you know the guys at school and who was popular and all this stuff so when school started there was a guy that she had had a crush on and he started asking me out which made her angry and this is a Mormon girl right made her really angry so she started to spread rumors around the school cuz nobody knew me and one of the rumors she spread was that I was a lesbian so back then this was 1977 it wasn't cool yet if it is right yeah I mean it wasn't then at all and it was very kind of taboo and so all the girls thought I was weird all the guys I don't know what the guy thought they didn't seem to mind as much but the girls would not talk to me so I except for the lesbian girls and then I got invited to do stuff with them I didn't know I had no idea that this rumor was being spread so I get these girls calling me to come over to their house and hang out and they're asking me to come roll around on the cushions with them on the floor and then suddenly I realize this is what's happening you know and I said hey I I like boys I'm sorry I don't I'm not gonna do this you know and then someone in the school told me what she was doing so there was and also that I dealt drugs so that was a really hard experience for me in San Diego when my dad was mission president I had a really rough two years that was really hard did any did you or any of your siblings ever party or break the rules or drink that's X or Y a mess around with girls and boys well my one sister okay not pregnant and she was into it but that wasn't just a one-time fluke I mean she was like disobedient yeah she was she was drinking because she was doing a lot of things okay and there that was older what about this the popular brother Dan is in some parties yeah I don't know he may have he may have done some alcohol back in the day I never really knew about it okay he wasn't like I never heard my parents yelling at him about that okay uh later I mean a bunch of my family has left the church so now you know people do a lot of things that we didn't do back then when we were all home under the roof or you know close by I didn't really have my parents adopted a son from Samoa and he was heavily into partying and alcohol and still is and that's another story okay yeah most of us were not you

Channel: Mormon Stories Podcast

Views: 66,393

Keywords: lds, mormon, latter-day saints, faith, transitions, doubt, disfellowshipment, disfellowship, sunstone, general authority, general authorities, second anointing, 2nd anointing, ordinance, nde, near death experience

Id: IFNC1_x5oGk

Length: 60min 2sec (3602 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 23 2020