Born October 28, 1918 Mesquite, Nevada #10 of “The Original 13” Married Archie Leavitt on January 19, 1939 Sealed July 16, 1953 in St. George Temple Died: December 30, 1990

I was born October 28, 1918, the tenth child of Charles Arthur Hughes and Orilla Luella Leavitt Hughes. When I was born we still lived in the little house. My oldest sister, Luella, was in bed in one corner of the room with her first child, Dilworth, who was the first grandchild and Mama was in another corner in bed with me. I’ve heard the older ones tell that there was still room for daddy and the older boys to play a game or two of marbles in front of the fireplace every evening when the chores were done.

I think about the first time that I can remember Papa getting after me was when I was about three years old, how well I remember it. Our vacation every year was to go to the mountain and spend a week while the men rode and branded cattle. My hair never grew very fast, just plain white fuzz, so when it did grow, they never cut it. It was long an shaggy, we seldom had it combed and this day we had been out swimming in the ditch that ran in front of our house and after we got dressed Francis and Dil tried to comb my hair. I bawled my head off so they got Mama’s scissors and cut off all the tangles. My hair was nicked so bad that they had to shave my head. When Papa saw me he said, "My you are sure pretty, now you can’t go to the mountain with us, you will have to stay here while the rest of us go". That was the worst thing he could have said, I would have rather have had a whipping any day.

Then there was the day that Dil and I got right up on top of the hay stack and made a fire. Papa happened to see the smoke come up and ran as fast as he could and got it out before it did too much damage. When Papa was whipping us for it Dil said, "we were just trying to keep the horses and cows warm, Grandpa, we didn’t want to burn down the haystacks".

In those days we didn’t have very much candy and Uncle Jim Hughes had a store. If ever we could find an egg we would take it to the store to buy some candy. It didn’t matter if it was a sitting hen’s eggs or not, Uncle Jim was apt to have little chicks running around his store anytime.

We had a big row of mummies (pomegranate) and in the middle of the row sat the old privy (outhouse). It had three seats on it, a great big hole, a middle-sized hole and a little hole. Dil and I were always together, we always had a biscuit with butter and honey running down our hands and we always went to the privy together. He sat on the middle-sized hole and I sat on the little hole and this is where we did all our talking and planning for the day.

One day it would be to gather bird eggs. This was great fun because we would climb the biggest trees in the valley and put the eggs in our mouths to come back down the trees so they wouldn’t break. The old church house had lots of bird eggs and all of the old barns. When we wanted black bird eggs, we would wade the sloughs clear up to our knees, to see how many we could get.

Another day it would be bottle-horses. If you have never played bottle-horses you have missed the time of your life and also the best days of youth. We would have bottles harnessed up like horses, would make corrals and even make little rolls of grass and tie with strings as hay to feed the horses. We would gather sorrels (arrow week) for our corrals and what fun we would have making trails all over where we would play.

Time rolled on and then came school. In the first grade we ere so excited, our teacher was Mrs. Snell. There was one boy in our class I thought I didn’t like but Dee teased me all the time about him. We had a little in first grade to teach us music. The band consisted of kazoos, triangles, and tambourines. We had to keep in time with the music of a record, and as it was I had to set by this boy in the band. (My nickname was Butchup). Dee made up this song that he sang to me all the time: "Butchup and Bud were lovers, they both played in the band. They would go to their little practices, two little sweethearts, hand in hand". Of course he would act like he was playing the violin as he would sing it and I was always bawling because he was teasing me. Then came Christmas Eve when we were going to play our band for our parents. They had us all set up on the stage ready to play and they pulled the curtain. We were all ready to go when up stood Dee and acted like he was playing the violin and singing. I threw the kazoo in the air and fell on the floor and started to bawl. They closed the curtain to see what was wrong and finally got me quiet and we started again and the same thing happened. Then Daddy saw Dee and made him go home, so I sat up and played like a good one.

My school days were just about like anyone else’s, and time went on. We were getting to be quite big by the time we got up in the fifth and sixth grades. There used to be some big floods come down the Virgin River. Papa always warned us about going to the river when there was a flood, of course we thought it was great sport to ride the waves. So one time, when there as a big flood in, a bunch of us girls went off down to the river to ride the waves. I thought Papa hadn’t seen me sneak sown through the brush and arrow weeds. We all stripped down to our birthday suits and were standing on the bank watching for some big waves. I saw one coming along and I said, "Here comes a big one, I’m going to ride this one". I was all leaned over ready to jump when something hit me across the bare back. I turned around and there stood Papa with a big long willow. He whipped me from the river to the house. That, of course, was one of the hardest whippings I ever got from my Daddy. You bet, that was my last time riding waves at the river.

It is so hard to tell all the things that we did because we had to make all our own fun and we had plenty of it. I have just written the times that I remember when we got a correction from Daddy. It was such few times that we did because in our home with Mother and Daddy there was more love and kindness than there ever was anger. And with all of those kids in one room and a tent, they certainly had reason for anger.

When we were in the third year of High School it was the day before Thanksgiving and we were walking home from Bunkerville. Two boys came along and picked us up on a water truck, it had a tank on it and we all sat around the tank on the outside of the truck. These kids had to act smart and switch the steering wheel quite fast and I fell off the truck. I had a fractured skull and concussion and I never went back to school after that because I got so far behind my class.

I left school and got a job. I worked at cafes around the Valley and also at Beaver Dam Hotel. While I was working at Beaver Dam, Wallace Berry came to stay there for a few days. He always called me "The Bouncer", he said if you ever want a job come to California and I’ll put you to work, but I never got that far away from home.

I was still working when I reached the age of twenty-one. Archie Leavitt came to our place on January 17, 1939 and told me he had a good job for me up at Pioche. When he went and asked Daddy and Mama if I could go, he told them he promised to watch out for me and take good care of me. Well, on the 19th of January, 1939 we were married in Caliente, Nevada.

We were blessed with three children.

It was on July 16, 1953 that we went to the St. George Temple and took our children with us and were sealed for time and eternity. We are very proud of our children. God has blessed us beyond words to express.