Written sometime in the 1980's by Glenna at the request of Laurel's daughter, Gay.

Memories of Laurel Esplin Leany
By Glenna E. Josephson

My little sister, Laurel, was born August 11, 1933. We were all really delighted to have another girl in the family. About a year before we had lost Carolyn, the only other girl in the family, at the age of fourteen months, through a sad accident and until Laurel came along, we were all very lonely for her. Laurel was a beautiful baby and child, with reddish blond hair. She was sweet-natured and very lovable. I loved playing with her, dressing her up and taking pictures of her with my new Brownie camera. I was in high school then and very much immersed in my studies and school activities, so I didn’t have a lot of free time. It was weekends when we spent time together. “Lollie” was our family’s affectionate nickname for her.

On Saturday we would all get ourselves and our clothes ready for Sunday. Mother would cut Dad’s and the boys’ hair whenever they needed. Dad would polish shoes and insist that those of us who were old enough polish our own. Everyone must be bathed and hair washed, and on Sunday we would go to Sunday School and church. Laurel was always very good and quiet; I don’t remember her ever making a fuss, either at church or at home. We would come home from church and have Sunday dinner, very often with guests there. Mother was very hospitable and we seemed always to have some relative or friend staying with us.

Paul was born just about two years after Laurel. Since the two of them were so close in age and the rest of us were older and busy with school, Laurel and Paul were together most of the time. Mother would take them with her when she went to help Dad after he acquired the mill, so they learned to amuse themselves while she was busy. Paul was an irrepressible, rather mischievous child and some of his escapades were a little embarrassing to Mother and Dad. I’m sure Laurel tried to restrain him a little, but didn’t always manage to succeed.

I was married when Laurel was six years old, and we lived in the East for the first seven years, so I missed most of the years of Laurel’s growing up. She had rheumatic fever as a child and occasionally had to stay home from school. The folks were quite worried about the effect on her heart, but she seemed to recover and be healthy eventually.

After three years Vern received his Ph.D. from McGill University in Montreal and we came back to Utah and Idaho. After a short visit he went to Cambridge, Mass. where he would be working, and found a house for us and got it furnished ready for us. We spent the summer in the West, a while in Malad, Idaho, but most of the time with the folks in Cedar City.

Laurel and I had a good time together that summer. Then I went back to Cambridge and didn’t see the family again for four years. Then, in 1946 I spent the summer in Cedar City, this time with two children. It was then that Laurel and I became really good friends again. She had a strong sense of fun, was witty and had a good sense of humor and we shared our favorite jokes and read each other funny stories. At that time the Saturday Evening Post magazine ran a series of “Tairy Fales for the Fittle Lolks and Bigger Toople Peep” – fairy tales written in garbled English which we found hilarious. There was a stack of old magazines in a cupboard and we combed through them looking for these stories and nearly collapsing in hysterical laughter at parts of them. We would get started in the evening and had trouble going to sleep at nights (we were sleeping together,) because one of us would suddenly start laughing at something we had remembered, quote it to the other, and we would be off again reciting and laughing.

Laurel and I would go to Mutual together, and church. Laurel had a beautiful singing voice. It was a pleasure to hear her sing. Dad especially enjoyed it. Though tone deaf himself and unable to sing more than a sort of monotone, he loved to listen to music. Laurel and I both loved to sing and we were always singing around the house as we worked, quite often some of the silly songs that Kent so liked and had taught us, such as the one about the lady and the crocodile, etc. We also liked the old songs that were Mother and Dad’s favorites because they gave us a chance for real vocalizing. “Springtime in the Rockies,” “Love’s Old Sweet Song,” and other sentimental old songs that few people remember today. We would harmonize and do obbligatos and have a rich time with them.

Laurel took piano lessons and studied music for many years and during most of her adult life served as organist, accompanist or singing leader for one or another organization in the church.

The next opportunity Laurel and I had to spend some time together was the summer she was fifteen years old. We were living in Los Alamos and the family came for a visit then Laurel stayed on with us for several weeks. It was an interesting time for us. Our friend Jerry was living and working in Los Alamos then and his brother and several of his friends came to visit, one at a time and stayed with us. Our family would go on picnics to some beautiful spot or to see Indian ruins, or camping trips, and Jerry was always with us, also whoever else happened to be there at the time. Jerry was witty and entertaining, and his friends were also, and very interesting. We had fascinating conversations at the dinner table and long into the evening. Laurel was a good sport and entered into everything we did enthusiastically. The young men liked her and her presence made it more fun for everyone.

Laurel and I became very close that summer. It was really a lovely time for me. It was as if we were the same age and for the first time we knew what it was like really to have a sister to do things with. We shared the housework and the task of taking care of our horse. Often we would borrow another horse and ride into the mountains together. She was so sweet and good-natured and fun to be around that everyone loved her.

We had never noticed that we resembled each other, but that summer people sometimes mistook us for each other. When we realized that we could almost fool people we rather played it up. I was very flattered to be told that we looked so much alike. Laurel was a beautiful girl and I was pleased to be told that I looked like someone fifteen years younger than myself. I find that in our baby pictures we looked a lot alike.
We had just discovered the South African Veldt songs, sung by Marais and Miranda and had their records. We memorized a number of the songs and sang them a lot around the house. We also enjoyed songs from Gilbert and Sullivan.

Our family were all great fans of Winnie the Pooh, and would very often comment or sum up a situation with a quote from one of the books. Laurel learned the Pooh language and was very clever about using it at appropriate times. I guess we also revived the witty “Tairy Fales” language and used it a lot. It was a very happy time, and when it came time to think about school starting in the fall we wanted Laurel to stay and go to school there. She would have liked to, but Mother and Dad didn’t approve, so we sadly let her go home. She had really enriched our lives.

After that I didn’t see Laurel very often. We came to Cedar City for her wedding. Vern had to visit the test site in Nevada so after they were married Laurel, Rod and we drove to Las Vegas for a day or two. We stayed in a motel at Las Vegas for a day or two. We stayed in a motel at Las Vegas and drove out to the test site. We three stayed at Camp Mercury for a few hours while Vern went into the site

We visited Laurel and Rod briefly once or twice when they were living in Provo.

We had a couple of wonderful family camping trips with Mother and Dad and all of their descendants that could make it.

Once, in 1963, was at Duck Creek. Paul was probably in Germany then and I don’t remember that Don and his family were there, but the rest of us were there with our families, and we had a great time. We all helped cook together over the campfire and Coleman stoves, huge breakfasts o f pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausages, and dinners of hot dogs toasted on the coals. Dad’s sourdough biscuits and many other traditional outdoor treats, and of course marshmallows toasted on sticks for dessert. The children all played around the camp together while the adults cooked and did the cleaning up or sat around resting and visiting. We spent some time hiking and playing with the children. We found quaking aspens with “saddles” in the trunks to sit on. We helped them bend down slender ones so that they could hang on to them and be taken into the air when they straightened up. We all went together to explore the Mammoth caves, and we looked for the ice cave on Cedar mountain. One day Valerie organized the children into a marching squad and led them around the area like a drill sergeant.

One frightening incident happened on that trip. One of the children, Francis, I think, fell into the campfire. We were all sitting around it after supper talking and the children were playing and he stumbled and fell into the coals. We were all terrified and pulled him out. Fortunately the embers were nearly dead and he was more frightened than hurt.

A year or two later we met again to camp together in Zion Canyon. It was very stormy and Dad made sure we trenched around the tents to take the water away so the tent would not be inundated. And it really did rain! We all got pretty damp but it cleared up next day and we had a good time together, doing some of the hikes and going a ways up txhe narrows and exploring the cliff dwelling.

We visited Laurel and Rod and family several times after they moved to Bluewater, first at Anaconda village and later at their home in Bluewater, after we moved to the ranch near Espanola. Now both Sandra and Kirsten seemed seriously interested in music we decided to invest in a Steinway, and sold Laurel our old piano. I think Gay Lynne was taking piano lessons at the time. They borrowed or rented a truck and came to the ranch to get it, staying a day or two with us. Another time they all visited us and we went to the places of interest in the area.

After we moved to California we didn’t see Laurel and family very much. They visited us only once, in spite of our urgent invitations, and we all had a wonderful time together.

We visited them in Bluewater once or twice after our move, when we were going to or from Albuquerque, where Kirsten and her family lived. I think the last time was when Gay Lynne was in college. She was doing a lot of running. We had a memorable picnic at Bluewater Lake, and then or another time they took us to see the inscription on the rock, “paso por aqui”, left by one of the Spanish explorers’ men, which I found fascinating.

We were very much impressed by their fine family and the way they were growing up. The old house that they had bought was by then nearly renovated and the part they had finished was well done and very charming.

Laurel was always very devoted to Mother and Dad, and loyal to her girlhood friends. She and her family made many trips back to visit them in Salt Lake City and stopped in Cedar City and sometimes Kane County to see relatives and friends. I admired her for always keeping in close touch with her friends and her cousins.

We occasionally gathered at Mother and Dad’s house for family reunions, and family pictures, which Mother really cherished, and we always had a very good time together and our children loved playing together and getting reacquainted.

One time when we were all visiting together in Salt Lake, one of Mother’s relatives died in Kane County. They wanted to go down for the funeral and they wanted one of us to go with them to help with the driving. Laurel very generously offered to stay and take care of all the children so I could go, so I went and had the chance to see many of our extended family whom I hadn’t seen for some years. It turned out to be pretty strenuous for Laurel, because our twin girls, then two or three years old, were quite ill while we were gone.

That act was typical of Laurel. She was always anxious to help anyone who needed it. When she was in High School in Cedar City she made friends with the group of Paiute Indians who lived in shacks and houses just outside town. They were very poor and demoralized, many of the men didn’t have work. She worked with them in organizing primary and mutual services. She collected what food and clothing she could for them and tried to interest people in helping them with work and in other ways. She always defended them when people spoke unfavorably of them.

Laurel always held one or more jobs in the church, in the Relief Society, the Primary or the Mutual Association. She served many years as organist or chorister, in addition to any other jobs she might have. She always helped prepare the food for any special event in the church, and was good at organizing things. She was one of the mainstays of the Relief Society in Bluewater, and helped put on weddings and many other events connected with it.

She also did a lot of substitute teaching in the schools, and did some accounting work, so she was always very busy.

During this time Laurel had access to a WATS line and would sometimes call me and we would keep in touch by telephone. She had gained considerable weight and finally decided she needed to make the effort to lose it, which she did. It took a lot of determination and will power, and I was impressed with her for sticking to it. I was sad that I never got to see her after she became slim again.

Laurel was always a very attractive woman. One of her outstanding features was her beautiful light auburn hair. She always kept it immaculately and it was hard to because it was so thick. When we were together she would sometimes ask me to help her set it. I tried to, but I wasn’t very good at it. She was very fastidious and kept her family always clean and well dressed. When I became lazy and dressed my girls in shorts or jeans much of the time, Laurel’s girls mostly wore dresses, often with ruffles or other trimming which made a tremendous ironing job for her.

Laurel was truly a wonderful woman. Though modest and self-effacing she certainly made a contribution to the church, her community and her family. Her sudden death was a sad shock to us all and she is very much missed by her family and all her friends.