Val Jennings

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Val John Jennings and his wife, Karla, reside in Norfolk, Virginia. Val is a senior citizen, professional scouter, genealogist, traveler, outdoorsman, great grandparent, poet, author, and latter-day saints temple patron.

Researching Jennings Prince, Heywood, Dalton, Lee, Woolsey, Daniels, Pierce,

Sources

• First-hand information. Entered by Val Jennings at registration.

I was born on 18 June 1941 to Sarepta Prince Jennings and Saval Baker Jennings at Walkermine, Plumas County, California. I was the firstborn, born premature, and my mother almost died with toximia. I was told that I could fit in a teacup or in my father's hand.

I was the first of 5 boys. My dad said he had wanted his own basketball team, and, although all my brothers were more into baseball, table tennis, and basketball, we did play together and once played against the ward team and won.

My outdoor interest probably began when I was about three years old and walking all over Panguitch, Utah visiting my cousins.

I remember my uncle Herbert Worthen buying a pile of scab lumber to use for fencing and we pushed boards back and forth until we could tunnel all through the pile. I especially enjoyed the freedom to visit the Worthen, Prince, Duell, and Houston cousins.

When I was about 5 years old we moved to Dragerton, Utah and then to Price, Utah where I began school at Central Elementary. Central and Harding occupied opposite corners of the school ground and we shared a playground. I remember looking forward to the assignment to run around the school ground and ring the bell to signal the start of the day or end of recess.

One of my friends in first grade was Mike Zamatakis. He called me Vel. One day at school the teacher asked him who he was referring to. He said, "You know. Vel, like the soap." In second grade my name was posted like grafitti and the teacher thought I had written it and I had to stay after school and write 500 times on the blackboard. I still don't think I did it, but at that time in my life I had imaginary friends called, "Gobe" and "Bebe".

Many years later it came to me that I was passing on to my imaginary friends my behavior and that "GoBe" was "good boy" and Bebe" was "bad boy."

About the same time my brother Douglas and I were enrolled in tap dance. I complained so loudly that it was giving me headaches, that my parents pulled us out. I suppose I ruined my brother's Vaudiville career. Those were the days when a bottle of pop cost a dime and we got 3 cents for the bottles. One of the neighbor girls came by selling "firecrackers". They were 5 toothpicks hooded together in such a way that when lighted with a match they sprang apart. We also made guns with clothespins that fired matches. A lot of things we did were so commonplace that we thought little about it but would get us expelled from school or in trouble at home today. We were more concerned about getting spanked at home than anything else. We didn't know nor worry about drugs and had little problem with cigarettes. We did try to smoke cedar bark in a pipe, or light a reed. There was more curiosity than evil in those days.

My father was a gardener and we were helping him prepare the yard for planting. My dad would spade and I would hit the clods with a tined cultivator. My brother, Douglas, would move the clods around after they were broken. I came down with the cultivator and hit my brother on the head. A quick trip to the doctor and we were told that I would have killed him if I had hit hard enough to drive it in another qwuarter inch. God was blessing our family and not until 2006 did I loose a brother when Joe died of cancer.

When I began the third grade we moved to Carbonville. We had a 3 acre farm with a cow, pigs, a sheep or two, chickens, and an orchard. My dad raised a good garden and mom canned. We never went hungry. Our family grew to 5 boys and we often played together. Sometimes dad would play with us. One day he was driving golf balls into the pasture and we would pick them up and return them to him. I was excited to catch the ball and ran forward only to be knocked out as the ball hit my forehead. I don't believe we tried to catch any more.

I never was in cub scouts, but became very interested in the boy scouts. I was asked to be a den chief and loved the cub scout program and the boys. Being the oldest, I felt a bit of pride as I taught my younger brothers. I was not always the best example, and my dad let me know that I was not. I was very angry at times and spent a lot of time away from my dad and walking the canal bank or sneaking out from a trap door in the floor of my bedroom and going to the movies. I suppose they knew but after chasing after me a few times, the family left me alone. I wish I had learned to control my emotions in those early days as they ruined my marriage later.

Scouting, sunday school, mutual (MIA) and trips to the church coal mine were among my favorite times as a youth. I was a good student in school, but a brat at home. I was rather timid. One year I was given a punching bag which I mopunted to the garage. I would give it a few punches every day. One night at mutual, Tommy Hansen, had had a drink or two and picked a fight with me. I took his face to be a punching bag and he soon had a bloddy nose. He no longer bullied me and we became friends.

Two Prettyman boys used to taunt me at the bus stop. I tried to avoid them, and did a good job of it only to have them become my brothers-in-law. I had moved from home by that time and had little contact with them but have come to admire the Prettyman family.

My interests weren't in farming, and I did not like the chores of milking, weeding, etc. I was especially close to my mother and helped out more in the house while my brothers took care of the outdoor chores. One day we had a scare as my brother had set the haystack on fire. I ran out and helped to restack many bales so they did not burn and got a word of praise from dad which was rare indeed. It took me years to realize that my dad had many more virtues that were apparent and to respect him. I am glad that I got to rekindle family contacts before my parents died.

One two occasions I felt I was protected from death. On returning home from church I was walking along the highway and felt impressed to move onto the grass as a car passed another and came past where I had been walking. The second occasion was during a family excursion to nine-mile canyon. Doug and I had been with dad at the base of a bute that had a cliff dwelling on it. We had previously climed into some dwellings only to have to ask dad to come up from below and help us relocat the footholes we had used to climb up but could not find to climb down. On this occasion dad was waiting as Doug and I went arould the top of the bute to investigate the cliff dwelling. As I waked away from dad I saw a three step starway leading to a sandstone wash that would return me to where dad stood. I waked over and said to dad. "I have fould an easier way down." Dad told me to wait for Doug and to come back down the way we had climbed up. I thought the other way was so much easier that I started to walk down the steps. The first step broke away and threw me off the top of the bute. It was probably 20 feet down to solid rock and I could very easily have broken bones or worse but I was thrown out facing away from the edge when I was turned around and caught the edge with both hands and was preserved from falling. Very sheepishly, I walked back to where Dad was and waited for Doug and we both went down the same way we had climbed up.

One night prior to MIA the guys had been playing with a snake and handed it to me as they went in to mutual. I put it in the glove box of the car and went in. After MIA I returned home and upon opening the glove box and seeing the snake I bent over to pick up my books only to see the snake crawl out and under the dashboard and into the space where wires went to the trunk. I could not pull the snake loose so I propped open the trunk and got up early the next morning and after looking for the snake, I closed the trunk. I waited through the school day expecting to hear about my mother having a car wreck, but upon returning home fould the snake in the garden.

I was called to be a counselor in the MIA. One evening I was asked to give a spiritual thought or schipture to start the meeting and opened the scriptures and read, "if any man enter into the sheepfold by any other way the same is a their and a robber, but he that enteresth in by the door, the same is the spepherd of the sheep," The young women's president let out an audible "Oh!" and said. I had to crawl in the window tonight to open the building.

I had strong desires to finish my scouting program, but very little interest was shown by others and we had a great turnover in leadership. In fact, we had good sisters who lead us in scouting before it was allowed. I turned to the local scout executive who had an office in city hall and visited him about once a week and used my high school teachers to serve as merit badge counselors. My history teacher was a good choice for several merit badges so I went to see him. He asked me, "Have you done the work?" When I said "Yes" he said, "Hand me the forms and I will sign them." Although I appreciated his trust in me, I was very disappointed. There was no counseling involved. I'l never know what I could have learned and been reinforced with had he counseled me. It might not have taken we another 40 years to have an interest in history.

We had an unusual school system. Junior High was grades 7-10. I took journalism and helped get out the school paper as well as worked with the "Sun Advocate" , the newspaper that printed our school paper for us. I also sold their newspapers on Thursdays. I bought newspapers for a nickle and sold them for a dime throughout the downtown business district. I did about as well as my brothers did delivering the "Deseret News" throughout the week. We also ran movies at school as a fund raiser for our journalism class. We would show 1/2 of a movie each of two lunch periods and would charge a dime. I was usually the projectionist.

Grades 11-12 were on the campus of Carbon College which was a two year school. So it was quite common to share the hallways and cafeteria with college students. It made me feel like a freshman in grade 11 and a sophmore in my graduating year. It was common practice to take American History in grade 10, but I took other electives and then preferred to take American History rather than World History and was the only senior in the class. It made me feel special, especially with the girls who wer always asking me questions.

A few of our classmates were into glue sniffing. I later heard that it was Utah's contribution to the drug scene. When I experienced it with one of my own children, I realized how dangerous it was. There were an occasional report of russian roulette. I am so glad that we had good teachers and fellow classmates who were not inclined toward such dangerous behavior. Some of my friends were scared by a table tapping seance and there was a strong discussion in seminary about the evils and danger of inviting spirit contact.

I was given a nomination to the U.S. Naval Academy but only two of the 14 were selected. I then tried to join the Marine Platoon leader Corps, only to be turned down because of family history of diabeters with abnormal labratory tests. My brothers joined the National Guard and each served a mission for the church. I received my mission call to the North Central States Mission (Minnesota/Manatoba) and then enrolled at Brigham Young University where I took AFROTC and majored in Youth Leadership. I took classes in summer school and graduated in 3 years. I was given a fellowship and could have earned my commission in the Air Force as well as get my masters degree. Instead I chose to go to work for the Boy Scouts of America.

I met Nancy Louise Draughn durning my first year at Brigham Young University. She was so warm and enthusiastic and everytime we met we seemed to be attracted to each other. We first met on a blind date, but soon I felt I had my eyes open to love and family and we married in the Manti Temple on 6 September 1963. She was working for her BS degree in nursing and finished her degree at the University of Utah after we married.

We soon were expecting a family and I had contracted with the Boy Scouts to work as a district executive for the Lake Bonneville Council in Ogden, Utah. Part of the employment involved taking a Training School in Mendham, New Jersey. Just prior to completion, I learned that Nancy had delivered stillborn, a week past term. I had left her with her parents in North Carolina where I returned and we buried Robert Allen at the church graveyard. We then returned to Utah where I began working and Nancy returned to school. I believe it was soon after graduation and Nancy was working that she surprised my by saying she was going home for the summer. It was April. I was assigned to work at scout camps for the summers and we only saw each other on every other weekend, so I was not surprised that she missed her family. I was seeing a trend develop for her to go home every summer so I said, why not just move to North Carolina. I made inquiries and was hired over the phone to move to Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

What a bitter sweet experience awaited us. We moved in with Nancy's parents, only to have them divorce. We had our children raised by an aunt and grandparents as I worked night and day and Nancy worked two jobs. We were burning the candle at both ends and it wasn't long before there was no wick left. We had moved to Kentucy and then to Virginia, growing our family from 2 to 7 children in the process. I had become unemployed on two occasions and the stress was unexpected. It wasn't so much the financial shortfall as the emotional downfall. We were both depressed and I didn't know how to act. So I reacted. To be proactive is to build coping skills. To react is to explode. I lost so much because of anger and irrational behavior.

Our psychologist asked me, "How can you live with someone who has so much disdain for you?" I answered, "Because I love her." I still do, but love is not enough. We seperated and after years of desire and no reconcilliation, I decided to divorce so I could go on with my life. I had begun working for the "Virginian-Pilot" the local newspaper, as an assistant mechanic. I retired after 23 years having become a mechanic and doubling my salary twice. I am now working part time to do a little extra. A fixed income leaves little room to do new things.

I tried internet dating, and thought I had met the girl of my dreams only to find out that it was not to be. I then asked my bishop, what I should do. "He said, "Stop dating on the internet, and you will find a wife in Norfolk or Virginia Beach."

I met Karla in 1999 at her parent's home in Norfolk where she was living. She owned her home in Virginia Beach. We married on 16 May, 2000. She was widowed. Her husband, Robert Casper, had been a football coach and history teacher. He died of brain cancer over only a few weeks.

Karla's daughter living at home had a hard time accepting a "Mormon" as her mother's suiter. Karla had been raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but her husband wasn't interested and they attended other churches. She has supported me in my activities and has become active herself. We enjoy attending temple sessions together and spent a week of our our 2008 vacation within walking distance of temple square.

Recently our life has been blessed by our grandchildren and great grandchildren. We have been active in helping Carla get to all the practices and performances of "Seusical. the Musical" put on by the Hurrah Players in Norfolk, Virginia. She has become quite the thespian. She also plays violin in the school orchestra.

My grandson, Drew, has been sharing with us the joy of his boys, Andrew, and Christopher. Valerie Danielle has Brienna and Keegan. Along with our 19 grandchildren we have begun to appreciate the extended family.

In a perfect world, we would overcome all our problems. Our challenges bring growth, and we should be thankful for opposition. It hearts to the quick when those closest to you seem to hurt and hurt you the most. I am so thankful for repentance and rconcilliation.

I am so thankful that God is not through with me yet. Neither is this life's story finished. It is a work in progress. God bless!

My love for family history:

My mother's aunt Manetta Prince Henrie wrote two books on our family history which included the Prince and Lee families. I was also shown a pie chart of genealogy as a teenager that had John Alden and Pricilla Mullens along it's fluted edges. While working as a cubmaster I asked the cubs to do a family tree and then thought I should do what i asked others to do and visited the family history center. After printing out over 1000 pages of ancestors, I thought I had better get off the paper trail and do it on the computer. The computer has become so much more user friendly and new sites that archive your information and allow you to see the contributions of others have become commonplace.

On vacation this summer Karla and I had the rich privilege of visiting Arthur & Helen Whittaker in their home and getting a transfusion of enthusiasm. We also began a correspondence with other cousins including Rodney Garth Dalton. I guess I have an obsession for genealogy. It has become a passion. It has become that which I am most anxiously engaged.

Truly to relocate all the human race is to chase after endless genealogies. To locate and learn about the life and times of our ancestors and to gain an appreciation for their input and influence is a worthy pursuit.

I am so thankful to have found many friends and fellow genealogists who have made me more aware of how much we need each other. Some of you help me to slow down and smell the roses.

My less than careful research in the past makes it harder to be the scholar that I ought to be and need to be. I am still learning about sources, and the fallibility of research. To err is human but to forgive yourself is habit forming. I am trying to keep good habits.