Rose Irene Summers was born 26 July 1918 in Ririe, Jefferson, Idaho. She was 6th of the eight children born to George Waldron Summers and Ivy May Siepert Summers. Siblings: Charles Roman Summers (1911-1911), Ivy May [Summers] Bateman (1913-1977), Laurence George Summers (1914-1998), Melvin W. Summers (1915-1915), Helen Wanda [Summers] Jensen (1917-2009), Ray W. Summers (1920-2001), Alice M. [Summers] Murdock (1922-2004) and Dee Summers (1924-1985). Rose was a beautiful little girl with deep brown eyes and unlike the rest of her siblings, she had blonde hair. Her older brother Laurence would tease her and call her cotton-top. Rose's father was a farmer and he and his wife Ivy homesteaded a farm on Antelope Flats, which was about ten miles east of Ririe, Idaho. Her parents built a small house on that farm and later they built a small house in Ririe, Idaho. As their family grew larger, they bought a larger house down the street. The family stayed on the farm through the week and then on Saturday, they made the trip down to the valley and spent the night in Ririe so that they could attend church the next day. Eventually, Ivy just stayed at the home in Ririe with the small children where she raised a large garden and canned the bounty it produced to feed her family through the winter. The family also had a cow that provided milk for them. Her father and Laurence continued to work on the farm during the week and come home on Saturday nights. When Rose was about 10 years old, she went to the farm with her father and brothers. She had the responsibility to clean house and cook for them. Because of her young age, Rose was not a very good cook yet. Laurence remembers some egg dumplings that Rose made for them. He described them as very sticky and a lot like glue. No one wanted to eat them so they fed them to their old dog instead. The dog died...probably from old age. Laurence teased Rose about her cooking from that time forth. He would say, "Should we feed it to the dog first?" Rose became an excellent cook and she liked to entertain and cook large dinners for her friends and family. She had a talent of being able to make a meal out of very little. Rose's father loved horses and raised them to sell. Rose liked horses and enjoyed riding. She would ride a horse to visit her cousin Thelma Summers. Rose liked school and graduated from Ririe High School. She enjoyed writing poetry and had beautiful hand writing. She was an excellent speller and once made a bet with a cow buyer that she could spell any word in the dictionary. She won the bet. She was also very skilled at typing and could type sixty words a minute on a manual typewriter. She knew short hand and used it throughout her life. Rose loved dancing and regularly attended the Saturday night dances held in Ririe. It was there that she met Zeke Ward. She was 17 and he was 27. Rose's mother, Ivy, did not like Zeke but Rose told her mother that when she turned 18 years old, she was going to marry him anyway. She and her mother had a terrible argument about it. Rose turned 18 on 26 July 1936 and six days later on 1 August 1936, she married Ezekiel Wilford Ward in her parent's home at Ririe, Idaho. Her mother was so upset about the marriage that on the day of the wedding, she locked herself in her bedroom and refused to come out. Just before the ceremony started, Rose's father persuaded Ivy to come out of the bedroom. To make matters worse, Zeke was late for the wedding. He had a flat tire on his old car on the way to the wedding and he had no spare. He had to patch the flat tire before continuing on. It stands to reason that Rose was very upset. After the ceremony, Rose left the comfort of her parents twelve-roomed house to live in a cabin at Spring Creek. It had a dirt floor and roof and not much else. Zeke and his parents had an 80 acre farm in LaBelle, close to Rigby, Idaho. There was a small three-roomed house on the property. At the end of the summer, Zeke's parents sold their share of the farm to him and then they moved to Valle, Oregon. Rose and Zeke settled into married life and immediately started their family. In the space of five short years, they became the parents of 4 children: DeLoy Zeke Ward (1937-), Dixie Rose Ward (1938-), Lee Jay Ward (1940-2010) and Sonne George Ward (1942-). Rose and Zeke had their marriage solemnized in the Logan, Utah LDS Temple on 30 November 1937. They raised their family on the summer place at Spring Creek, later known as the LZ Ranch and the winter place in LaBelle. On Halloween night in 1938, Zeke built a fire in the fireplace and then he and Rose took their small children and made a quick trip to town for supplies. When they returned, they were horrified to see fire coming from their small house in LaBelle. They lost everything. Their families and the church helped them to build a new house. Rose and Zeke moved their family into the kitchen of their house on New Years Day in 1939. It was the worst winter that they had ever endured. At times they burned sage brush to keep warm. All the food that Rose had canned had been destroyed in the fire, but their families and the church gave them clothes, bedding, a cook stove and food to help sustain them. In 1940, Rose and Zeke sold their farm and small house in LaBelle and they bought a two-bedroom house with two acres in Rexburg, Idaho. On the 10th of August in 1940, (nine days before Lee was born), they moved their family to Rexburg, Idaho. The family continued to live at the LZ Ranch during the summer months. When it rained, the roof would leak and Rose would get upset with Zeke and tell him to fix the roof. He would reply, "I can't fix the roof because it's raining". When it wasn't raining Zeke would say, "Why fix the roof? I'm going to build a nice cabin and I don't want to put the time in this." If Rose nagged enough, he would make a half effort to work on the roof. Eventually, they started construction on a new cabin. Zeke wanted something he could be proud of. They gathered rocks from the farm for the foundation. They cut logs from the forest close to the farm, with a two-man saw. Rose peeled most of the logs for the outside. They had to be peeled by hand, while they were still green. Zeke had a sawmill that ran on a gas motor. They cut all the rough boards and used them for the floors and inside walls. The cabin had a kitchen, dining room, two bedrooms, a screened porch and an outside porch, that was held up with two crooked logs. The children would climb up and sit on the crooked logs that held up the outside porch and ride them like horses. Zeke and Rose had looked for two years to find those logs in the forest. The cabin took three years to build as they could only work on it in their spare time and only in the summer months. They were finally able to move into the cabin in the spring of 1942, shortly before Sonne was born. Rose worked along side Zeke in the fields and she helped clear the land and burn the brush. She also operated the threshing machine. After
Sonne was born, Rose usually stayed with the children in Rexburg when Zeke went to the ranch. She made friends with the neighbors and when they invited her to have a drink with them, she accepted and before long drinking alcohol became a part of her routine. Rose and Zeke were divorced in April 1959. She married Calvin Ephraim Larsen on May 29, 1959 in Elko, Nevada. Calvin and Rose lived in Ririe and they had a happy marriage, but their happiness was short lived. One day while Calvin was at work, Rose went to visit her sister Helen who lived west of Ririe and then for some unknown reason drove on past her home only to run out of gas in her car in an area east of Ririe. She started to walk along the old river road that overlooked the Snake River Canyon and she slipped and fell to her death on 28 August 1959. Her body was found at the bottom of a cliff at a place called Devil's Dive. (Some bio information taken from a history written by Rose's daughter Dixie).