Her father remembers:

The reunion of 1884 stands out in memory not just because it was a successful experiment following the vote to abandon our customary semiannual conference, but, sadly, because during its session I received, through letter from my wife, the distressing news that a serious accident had happened to one of our children – Bertha Azuba, then just finishing her sixth year of life.

She had been attending school, a little way from our home, and at the noon hour was at play in the schoolyard when the teacher, Brother Orlin B. Thomas, rapped on the door to call the children in. All were quick and prompt to obey, and with others she started immediately towards the door. In her haste, she did not notice that one of the boys was swinging a stick around him, challenging his companions to run in on him. As if urged by some fatality, the child ran within the circle of the whirling stick and received a severe blow across her throat. 

Complaining of pain, she was allowed to go home at recess, where her mother did what she could to alleviate her suffering and injury. In a few days dangerous symptoms developed, and a physician was called who pronounced the condition a putrid sore throat. The accident occurred mid-week, and on Saturday I received a telegram announcing that the child was dangerously ill. I started home as soon as I could, reaching there on Tuesday, only to find my little daughter lying shrouded in death. 

It is difficult for me even now after all the years that have passed since then, to speak of the suffering of that hour, so keenly did I feel the loss of this child. There were five children at home then, besides my grown daughter Carrie. I had always believed that it was impossible for a parent to love one child more than another, or, in other words, to be able to decide that one child of the family was dearer to the heart than another; but upon this occasion, I learned, to my surprise, that for some reason this child of six years (we buried her upon her birthday) was dearer to me than any other in either of the families of children I had. 

I could not then, and cannot now, give a reason that could adequately account for such a feeling and discrimination on my part. She was not what could be called a handsome or even pretty child, but there was a definite charm in her presence and in the spirit which animated her that made her inexpressibly dear- a fact, recognized by everybody who knew her. Brother David Dancer expressed it to me: "Brother Joseph, I do not understand why I should feel as I do, but I never knew a child toward whom my feelings were so drawn as toward the child you have lost." As we discovered, she was equally loved by all the children of the neighborhood.

My wife was heart-broken, and I must confess to a spirit of great rebellion. Constantly recurred the question, wrung from an agonized heart: "Why, oh why? Why was this loss permitted. Why am I called upon to pass through this ordeal? Here I was trying to do right, trying to be about my Master's business in the missionary field away from home, at work among his people, trusting my all to the providence controlled by Him, God over all as He is; and in spite of this sincere labor and consecration on my part, He has allowed the dearest human treasure of my family to be taken from me, and in such a pitiful way!"

I should not record these bitter thoughts here were it not for the fact that when my grief had seemed to accumulate to an almost unbearable and inconsolable point, I was given a spiritual manifestation that reconciled me to the loss we had sustained. In a vision, I saw this dear little girl, our Zuba, as we called her, at the head of a little concourse of children about her own age, who were in charge of a young woman and elder companion who seemed to be filling the place of a teacher.

As I stood to see them pass, the young woman turned to me with smiling eyes and lips, and said: "It is all right, Brother Smith! You see we have Zuba with us, and she is very happy."  Indeed the child did seem to fairly beam with joy and happiness. Her arms were filled with flowers, of which she had been extremely fond. She waved her hand to me lovingly, and with the sight a flood of spiritual emotion swept over me, and my heavy load of rebellious bitterness vanished.

I took this experience as a rebuke for my excessive grief, and both my wife and I were greatly comforted. The futile question, Why, oh why? no longer repeated itself wearily, and I was enabled to see that grief is but the common lot of human kind, and that I should be willing to bear my portion bravely and suffer resignedly the loss of loved ones from the family circle, if need be, even the same as must others of my associates. 

I have not been so forgetful of the obligation of man to God as to believe that the Divine Being visits deprivation and loss upon his children for the purpose of inflicting distress and sorrow. In his wisdom and love He ordained life, and has suffered death to come, that out of it all and through all, his intelligence will bring to pass the redemption of his children. Through my own suffering and the comforting vision I received with its assurances that all was well with my little one, I have been able to help others passing through similar vicissitudes to bear more patiently and hopefully their sorrows.

The tendency of the human mind is often to grow hard and bitter when called upon to suffer the deprivation death entails, some going so far as to reproach the Divine One for everything, even that which may have been brought about as a result of breaking the laws by which men should live. Through the ministry of sorrow which has come into my life, such as the passing of my beloved brother, David, into the shadow of demential melancholia and in the various visits to my family of the angel of death, I have come to learn well the lesson taught to one of old, who able to say: 

"Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him."

-Excerpt from Richard Howard's The Memoirs of President Joseph Smith III (1832-1914), (Herald Publishing House, Independence, MO, 1979), pgs.214-15.