January 22, 1972

I was 19 in this picture, although I look like I could have easily passed for 15. The day was January 22, 1972--the day my family took me to Salt Lake City to the mission home. Jill was barely 15 and Ann was 11. It would prove to be a miserable day for all of us.

The plans were great. I knew there wouldn't be a lot of music I could listen to in the next two years, so I had a list of cassettes that my father put into the player on the way to Salt Lake City: Who's Next by the Who, Fireball by Deep Purple, Naturally by Three Dog Night, Bread, On The Waters and Manna by Bread, and a number of Neil Diamond cassettes. My dad loved Neil Diamond, and Deep Purple and The Who drove him crazy during a road trip, so we listened mostly to Neil Diamond. I'm sure it also reminded him of our family road trips we often took in the fall.

We planned to eat at Maddox, a favorite restaurant in Brigham City, where my family have done stops that began with my Grandpa Cles and Grandma Liza. Meals there were kind of a family tradition.

And a stop at Snelgroves in Salt Lake

City was a must. Dad always ordered

a double hot fudge sundae. I preferred hot caramel. The ice cream there was always fantastic. It was our tradition, but there wasn't enough time by the time we arrived in Salt Lake City.

Dad thought we would stop by the mission home, drop off bags and go for ice cream, but we were a bit uninformed with the whole thing of what would happen.

What happened next is difficult to understand, unless you are a Ward. What we understood in terms of the concept "it's ours" was something defined by a brand on the side, marked ears and a waddle on the side of the throat. All our cattle and horses had those markings.

The hallway we find ourselves in faintly reminded me of a spot near corrals where we worked cattle. We walked down this corridor, and we're talking nervously. I notice a black line of tape on the floor, and as I approach it, this obese obnoxious man grabs me by the collar and the shoulder of my jacket, looks at my parents and says, "He's 'ours' for the next two years."

My dad took his hands away before I could even respond, because I didn't like it either. He puts his arm around my shoulders and says, "Let's just go home."

I had wanted to do this since I was 12, so going home was not an option, even in light of the pest who loved a little authority. I hugged everyone and walked across the "dreaded black line."

Both my sisters cried. I think Jill's tears were more of joy than sorrow. And at that minute, I knew her mantra was I will seize his room and make it mine forever. And I'll play his favorite records every day too.

My mom cried. That was no surprise, because I saw my mom do that when horrible things happened, but what happened next was something I never saw in my life. Tears came to my dad's eyes, and he choked up leaving him unable to say a word. Like I said, it was a horrible day.

Given what I experienced, I'm glad that I fulfilled a commitment that I made when I was 12, but given what I know now, I would never have walked across that line, although the next two years were things that changed my life forever: I learned how to study, I became even more independent than I had ever been, I developed a lasting friendship and developed a love for my future wife Annie. We wrote every week, missing only a few times when my Annie had finals or when I had something very pressing that prevented me from sending a letter.

The lower picture of the two still has the holes in the corner, where my Annie tacked it onto her bulletin board in her dorm room at the university. I'm glad I didn't send the top one. The second one was what they used for my passport and German mission office identification materials, but both pictures show what I looked like, before I turned into the elephant man after chemotherapy.

I awaken in the night sometimes, dreaming that I scream the words: "I am not an animal!" For those reading this who aren't familiar with the film Elephant Man, that was the key line. And sometimes I have to say it aloud when I look in the mirror. Regardless, it is fantastic to be alive. At least no one says, "Gee, he they made him look almost alive."