GLADYS NAOMI MONROE RADFORD

Gladys Naomi Monroe was born April 3, 1911. I was born in Republican City, Howard County, Nebraska. I was born at home, the oldest of six. The doctor was Dr. Valleycott. I believe Grandma Shipley was there.

My Father had been married before to Flora Bell Warford. She died leaving five children. The oldest was nine years old. He married my Mother, October 13, 1909. I think they were married in Missouri, around Armstrong and Lafayette.

My childhood was spent in Nebraska, then Missouri. I can remember thrashing corn and having the cobs as high as the house. They burnt the cobs for fuel in the winter. I remember the house. It was a frame, two stories, two or three bedrooms upstairs, big wide stairway up between the bottom bedroom and living room. A back porch to keep milk, wood and to wash cloths on. The house was heated by wood. We always had plenty of food to eat.

Some of the first things I remember was walking to school with Marie (half sister). It was about 1/4 of a mile away, on the lower end of our property. The school was white with the boy's toilet on one side and the girls on the other side. A man brought a fresh bucket of water every day and if you had a clean cup they would dip you out some water. The teacher was Miss Gould. There were only fifteen kids in the school and first to eighth grade.

We moved (by train) to Armstrong (outside of Bunker Hill) to Bertha's house until my Dad got a farm in Rocheport, Missouri, by Missouri River. We raised sugar cane, broom corn and hay. It had a smokehouse and he smoked our meat. He cut wood on our property to smoke it. He would drag logs in with the horses and then he would chop it up into short lengths by hand. The horses names was Nelly, Mamie and Daisy. We lived there about eight years.

When we lived in Missouri we had to walk about five miles to school. It was a one-room school and was named Walnut Grove. Miss Mable Semen was my teacher. I was in third grade when I started there. We would go to school as long as the roads would let us then would stay home. Mother and Marie would teach us. We would go back to school when the roads would let us.

We were coming home from school one day and there was a lady (I don't remember her name) that lived along the road from school. She told us we could stop and rest at her house if we wanted to. Lou, Myrtle and Lynda, our cousins, were staying at our house one winter, Lou was going to school with us. On the way home he threw a rock or something at a cow with a neighbor calf. She chased us for about one and and a half miles to that ladies house. She told us if we had stopped the cow would have killed us.

We had an ice house about twelve feet around with a shingle roof and steps down into it. My Dad hauled ice from the river and put a layer of ice and a layer of straw up to about two or three feet from the top to keep it cool for the summer. We had an ice box in the kitchen with a pan on the bottom to catch the water. My Dad bought it to put the milk and things in to keep cool.

We had a fruit cellar with a double door and cement steps down to two doors at the bottom. Ir was round with a shoulder or shelf that held about four to six bottles deep. My Dad made bins in the bottom for potatoes, apples and squashes, There was a hole in the top for air.

Dad would never let us go to the fruit cellar when there was a storm or tornado. When it was storming, he would sit on the porch in a rocking chair and watch the storms (tornados). John and I would stay out there and watch too. Dad told me, "Gladys, there isn't any use to go inside because if it is our time to go, we would go anywhere we were. We watched our smokehouse, which was only ten to twelve feet from the house, blow part way off the foundation. Dot (my sister) got scared and hid under the bed once and Dad got mad.

I can remember my Mother's Mother. She was about four foot ten inches tall and weighed about one hundred pounds. She was kinda grippe, maybe because I was a little kid. She lived at 821 West End Place, Glasco, Missouri.

Uncle John, Uncle Ed and Uncle Wallace Shipley would come and visit. Aunt Minnie would come and visit too. We visited Louisa Huston at Bunker Hill, Missouri.

Aunt Minnie was with my Mother when Mary was born. Aunt Minnie came in the middle of the night. I asked them if the baby was a Miller. I couldn't figure it out. I thought that all the kids born in Missouri were Millers and the kids born in Nebraska were Monroes. I couldn't figure it out and they laughed at me.

I don't remember what we used but when it snowed we used some kind of a lid to slide down the hill. We would go up the hill and slide down in the lid.

About the time the depression started we moved back to Nebraska. We were going to move in a white top buggy and a covered wagon but the day we were going to leave a horse died so they sold the buggy and all went in the covered wagon. All the way in a covered wagon and I was surely tired of a covered wagon. It took us about a week. The three older children walked quite a bit of the way. Dad's health was failing and he could hardly make it and John wasn't old enough to help much. When they would run short of money we would stop and Dad and John would help in the fields harvesting grain. We stopped at Pa's nephew, Annie and ? Morris. Ma and we kids, Dot, John and I stayed at Sub and Lucky Morris. We went to Republican City. We lived there one year.

Walt (half brother from Idaho) came and said Dad could find work, on the railroad in Idaho. Mr Dad came to Idaho right after Christmas. We came in March on the train. I told them if they moved again I wouldn't go back to school. I lacked about six weeks to finish the eighth grade.

We had mumps, whooping cough and measles when we were kids. We all had whooping cough at the same time. All the girls had mumps but John didn't get them.

When I was about fourteen, I worked for Walt (my half brother) tending kids and cleaning. I worked hard for three dollars a week. She was going to have a baby. I worked for about three or four months. Just before I was to leave to go back home, Bertha (my half sister) lost her baby (a boy) so I stayed about three weeks then I went home. In Pocatello I stayed at a ladies house. Her name was Patty Podoll. She had a little girl. I stayed about four to six months then I went back to Walts. She had another baby and Ellen (their daughter) had been killed in an elevator. I was about seventeen. While I was at Walts in Pocatello, I found out about the LDS Church. Myrtle went with me to box socials. The bishop wanted me to join but my Mother threw a fit.

Harley was a carpenter. He built a service station (Green Triangle) there in Pocatello the year I was with Bertha, when she lost her baby boy.

My Dad worked on the railroad yard and also helped with building the service station. Kelly quit the railroad. Harley quit carpentering and Dad went to Osgood and thought they could be rich raising sugar beets for the sugar factory and tried to raise sugar beets. The longer they stayed the more they got in the hole. They (Kelly and ?, I think she said LR) quit the sugar factory and went to Independence, Idaho. Harley went to California. Dad stayed in Osgood an farmed for the sugar factory. We went to church (Mutual and Sunday School) in a wagon. My folks finally let us go.

I met Loren Radford there in Osgood. He was herding sheep on the sugar beet land. He was going with Dot (my sister). I went with Loren Nielson and he was with Loren. Dot started to go with Elmer. I wouldn't have gone with him but Faye Harman said they had the boys picked out that they wanted and we could have the rest. It was a fourth or twenty-fourth of July and Loren had asked me to go with him. I went with him just to show Faye. We went together for two years and decided to get married. He had a job and burnt his car up. So we decided to get married on September 3, 1924. We lived in Aunt Maud's house in Ririe. He worked at Roger Brothers Seed House for $11.50 every two weeks.

About six months after we were married. I had a miscarriage. It was a girl and we named her Lavee. She was too premature and only lived about two hours. She was born at the home. Loren's Dad blessed and named her. That summer Uncle Walt Womack was running a sawmill. Loren, Loren's Dad, John (my brother) and I went up and worked there. I did the cooking. We lived in two tent houses. Loren and his cousin would ride motorcycles and race on Sunday.

We moved to the dry farm where Loren's Dad lived. Loren built a house for us but I was pregnant and moved down to Ririe. I tended Dellas and Theola that winter. Zane was born January 18, 1031. He was born at home. I hemorrhaged and it went clear through the mattress and onto the floor. They got my Mother to come and stay with me. She had a fit when she saw it. I was in bed fourteen days without getting up.

In April we went up to Jim Ririe's dry farm and worked until September. I tended two of Jim's kids that were herding sheep up there. While I was tending them, they had a birthday party. They were outside playing and a pig bit Max and tore a big hole in his cheek. That winter we went over and lived in our house on Loren's Dads place. We worked for Jim again the next summer and moved back to our house again the next winter. The next spring we worked on Niels Larsen's dry farm for $1.00 a day. We lived in a terrible house there. Flies by the gobs. We moved back to our house for the winter. In the spring we helped Bob Miller lamb. In the summer he cut wood on a dry farmer's place by the name of Bitters. In June we went down to Loren's sisters. Loren and Tobe (his sisters husband) thinned beets. I took care of the baby (Laverl) for one month and then moved back to our house. That fall we moved to Osgood and Loren helped top beets and pick spuds. I cooked for the guys, and one was Uncle Joe Teeples. We went back to the dry farm again that winter. The next spring Loren was working in the lambing sheds again (she didn't say where LR). My Dad died in April 7, 1934. We went back to do dry farming again until Loren went to Osgood to work in the spuds that fall.

In the winter of 1934 Loren's sister Stella had a baby and both died and was buried by Thanksgiving, 23 November 1934. Then Karel (Loren's brother) was killed by his wife's brother and was buried before Christmas.

While we were living in Milo, Loren's folks moved to Labelle. We moved our log house from the dry farm down to Loren's Dads place.

We moved to Blackfoot and worked for J. S. Gardner for four and a half years and worked on his farm.

Jay was born in the Idaho Falls Hospital June 23, 1936. I had kidney trouble and varicose veins before he was born. I had gathered breasts and they packed me in ice for three days and nights. I had to put him on a bottle. Jay was four years old when we moved to Garfield and was there for one winter. Zane was in the fifth grade. We then bought this place, in Labelle, we live in now. When we moved here, Loren had broken his leg and it was in a cast.

Thirty-four years of hard work and believe me, it was hard work. We lived here three years and then Joyce was born on March 20, 1944 at Idaho Falls Hospital. They didn't think either of us would make it on account of kidney trouble. There was a nurse and a doctor stayed right with me for hours. Before she was born, I worked at Lewisville Seed Company. I would get up and feed the pigs, get the kids off to school and pick up four women and be to work at eight o'clock.

Ten years after Joyce was born. I had LaRee on January 18, 1954 at Rigby Maternity Hospital. She was born on Zane's birthday.

Loren had broken his legs three times, twice on one leg and one on the other. He has broken his shoulder blade. In 1966 he cut off most of his right hand in a grain combine belt. He has pulled his leg out of joint and he has broken his ribs twice.

My Mother died February 3, 1948.

This is the end of the history given to me, Louise Radford. I will continue on with her history as I have received information and facts that I have knowledge of.

Gladys (Mom) was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; the same day as her son Zane, on February 5, 1939. Gladys taught Primary and Sunday School for eight years before being baptized. She taught the five year olds in Sunday School for twenty years. She loved little children. She was a visiting teacher for many years and was very dilligent in all her church callings. Gladys and Loren were married in the Idaho Falls Temple May 7, 1965.

Gladys and Loren took a couple of trips to California. In 1948 they visited Albert Askew and Walt Monroe and again in 1953. They also took a trip to LaRees when she lived in Washington, to Joyces in Arizona and Jay and Zanes in California.

Gladys loved to embroider and made lots of dish towels and pillow cases. There was always an embroidered dish towel hanging on her towel rack. She would take them to the Ririe Fair and win a prize and a small amount of prize money. She worked very hard in her garden she had every year. She canned and froze as much as she possibly could. She always had a good garden. She worked out in the fields irrigating and whatever she could do to help. She even milked the cows and fed the pigs. Her daily job she hated was washing the milking machine buckets. She was such a hard worker. She worked in the Hunter Potato House for twelve years. She worked right up to the time she got sick.

Gladys and Loren had their fiftieth wedding anniversary Serptember 3, 1979. All the children were there. Lots of friends and relativeds were there. Gladys had not been feeling well but she didn't want to go to the doctor until after the anniversary party was over. She had been to the doctor and he told she had an ulcer but she knew it was worse than that. She went to a specialist in April 1980 and he found a mass in the upper part of her stomach. She knew it was bad (cancer). They operated on her but couldn't get it all and she passed away June 15, 1980 and was buried June 18, 1980 in the Ririe-Shelton Cemetery, Ririe, Idaho.

-Told by Gladys Monroe Radford to Louise Radford (daughter-in-law)

Gladys Naomi Monroe is the daughter of Sarah Alice Shipley and William Johnson Monroe. Gladys Naomi Monroe married Loren Edward Radford September 3, 1929 in Idaho Falls, Idaho. They lost a baby girl, Gladys L. Radford, when she was still an infant due to an undeveloped heart.

Grandson: Orson Loren Smith

Great granddaughter Rachelle Marie Sloan died in 2008.