Memories of Grandpa Bateman

Late Friday night (November 30) I received a text message from my mom saying that her dad was in the ICU at the Davis Hospital (Utah) suffering from a brain aneurysm and that he wasn't expected to live long.  I didn't know what a brain aneurysm was so I looked it up with some help from Google.  It is where a blood vessel bursts in the brain.  Theodore Wylie Clay Bateman died about 12:45am on Sunday, December 2, 2012.  He was 86 years old.  He was proceeded in death by his wife of 51 years, Georgie Gay, and 2 daughters Launi and Gayla.  He has 11 living children and I don't even know the number of grand children or great-grand children.  Lots and lots.

April 15, 1985



Throughout my childhood, my grandparents lived in Upstate New York.  I lived near them until I was 4, when my family moved to Utah.  When I was about to turn 8, we learned that they were coming west on a trip and would be in Mesa, Arizona at my Aunt Teddie's house on my birthday.  Our family made a plan to be there as well and we had a big family reunion, including me getting baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I asked my grandpa to baptize me.

When I was 12, I got to go to New York for the summer to live with my grandparents, along with my little brother, Conan, and cousin Lonny.  We drove from Utah to New York with us kids sitting/rolling around in the back of my grandparent's Nissan truck.  No seats, no seat belts, it did have a shell to protect us from the elements.  When we crossed the boarder from Canada back to the USA, a border guard opened the window hatch and asked our situation.  I replied that we were driving with our grandparents to their home in New York and pointing to the boys said, "He's my brother and he's my cousin."  The guard closed the hatch and we continued on.  Grandpa was the branch president and interviewed me (after talking to my bishop on the phone) for a temple recommend so I could go to the Washington, DC temple with the youth in the stake to do Baptisms for the Dead.  That was my first time going to the temple, visiting Washington, DC and staying at a Marriott Hotel.  I remember going to the Hill Cummorah Pageant (multiple times) that summer and one night complaining to my grandpa about the mosquitoes biting me.  He told me that he grew his arm hairs long so that the mosquitoes would get trapped in the hairs so he could easily kill them before they bit him.

I was so proud of my grandparents when they went on their first mission.  They served in Lima Peru.  I remember that at their missionary farewell, someone asked all of the grandchildren to stand up if they were planning to serve a mission.  I stood up proudly.  I wanted to be like them.  Their second mission was to Costa Rica.  After they returned from that mission (1994), I got to drive across the country with my dad, brothers, Conan and Cortney, Cortney's friend Marty and cousin Lonny to help them put up sheet rock in their home to make it tighter from the New York winters.  Really, I was there to help Grandma cook for these hungry workers.

In 1997, they invited all of their family to come to New York in the summer to celebrate their 50th Wedding anniversary.  They were married on November 5, 1947, but we celebrated a few months early (better weather in July for people sleeping in tents on their property).

The next year they moved to West Point, Utah to be closer to family, as most of their children lived there and in the western US and needed some help with Grandma's Parkinson's disease care.

Grandpa came to visit me in Provo, UT a few days after my daughter, Sabrina, was born in April 1999 with his sister Billie.  He commented that it didn't look like Sabrina had the 'Bateman cowlick'.  After Grandma died in August 1999, Grandpa moved back to New York and married Harriet.

In July 2001, I orchestrated a trip with my in-laws to fly to New York to see the city (and Auntie Lulu and Uncle Tony), drive to Kirtland, OH, Niagara Falls, and Palmyra to see the sights of the Restoration of the Gospel.  We got to spend some time with Grandpa and Harriet - at the Palmyra Temple, at their home and on a tour of the Johnston home near Mendon, NY where Brigham Young first heard the gospel preached.

After a few years, Grandpa and Harriet moved to West Point, UT to again be closer to family.  He turned 80 on May 9, 2006 and had a big party to celebrate on May 13.  It was at this party that I learned that my grandpa had graduated from Beauty School.  I flew from Boise to Salt Lake with my son Roderic, so I could sing with my sisters "You Are My Sunshine" and "Side By Side".  Ryan and Sabrina drove down after her soccer game that day.  The next day Kierra Ludlow was blessed in church and Grandpa was caught taking a nap in a fairly comfortable office desk chair.

In April of 2011, we celebrated Grandpa's 85th birthday at the Senior Center in West Point.  My Aunt Luella orchestrated the whole thing.  This picture contains only a fraction of his posterity.

I've got a great story that he told me in 2009 on my blog here.  And then there was the time that he had to contact the records department of the church to let them know he wasn't dead yet so he could continue to log into lds.org and do family history research.  And he loved to go out to his garden with salt shaker in hand to eat fresh cucumber. 

Calvin and bikes

We got a bike for Roderic from a friend whose son had out-grown it. It was parked for a while on our front porch by leaning against the house because it didn't have a kickstand. Roderic's imagination and fascination with Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strips have caused him to nickname it his "Calvin bike". The bike doesn't have training wheels and when learning to ride training-wheel free, he would often say, "It's trying to kill me!" Just like Calvin. He has mostly gotten over this fear and will ride the bike for short distances (around our cul-de-sac).


One day while I was trying to convince him to ride his bike, I told him about a time when I had a "Calvin bike". It was a present from Ryan in 1997. I recently found a picture.


Here is a video of him riding his "Calvin bike".

Flight Benefits

My mom is a huge fan of travelling. HUGE! In fact, she suggested I apply for a job with Delta Air Lines when they opened up a call center on the campus of Weber State University in January 1996 (where I was attending school). Of course, it was good for me to have a job on campus, so my commute time would be minimal, but what she was really looking forward to was the flight benefits that she would receive. For their first trip, my parents went to Europe -to Romania (with a stop in Vienna) in April to pick up my sister, Shanda, who was serving a mission there. My mom graduated from Weber State that June and in August, moved to Alabama (Bama-bama as 3 year old Carson called it) to attend Auburn University to work on her Master's Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. She (and my dad) used those flight benefits to be able to fly back and forth to see each other. Those flight benefits came in rather handy when we moved to Boise in May 1999 Ryan and my dad (and brother Colle) drove the Penske truck from BYU to our house in Boise, unloaded it, then returned the truck to the Thrifty Rental Car/Penske Truck Rental location at the Boise airport and hopped on a flight back to Salt Lake. And my mom flew up a week later to help us unpack and pick out new furniture and pamper me. Needless to say, she was sad to see me quit in June 1999 when my 6 weeks of maternity leave was up.

Fast forward almost a decade and my sister, Shanda, was encouraged by my mom to use her phone number to apply (for the 2nd time) for a job with JetBlue Airlines. Once again with flight benefits on the brain. And then about a year later, my sister, Keturah, got a job with Skywest Airlines in Denver. My parents are now able to fly free on JetBlue, Skywest and United flights.

So, yesterday morning I got a call from my mom, who was in San Diego for a MFT conference, saying that all the flights into Salt Lake were full, so she was going to fly into Boise and have my dad drive up and pick her up and take her home. A half an hour later, my dad called to let me know that Mom was flying into Boise and he would be driving up - both arriving about 10:30 pm and they most likely wouldn't stay the night. I was excited for the chance to see them both, but saddened that my kids would miss out on the visit. Then, about 1 pm, I got a phone call from Carson, asking if he could hang out at my house and eat dinner with me - he got to be the lucky one to come pick up Mom. My kids were so excited when the doorbell rang at 6:00 pm and Uncle Carson was there to play with them! He even taught Sabrina how to play "Heart and Soul" on the piano.

Kids were vying to sit next to him at dinner, he got to pick our Family Home Evening activity (hand-eye coordination games), no one wanted to go to bed, everyone wanted Carson to tell them a bedtime story, and eventually they did sleep.


Flights were delayed due to weather and airplane issues, so my mom finally arrived at 12:30 am. She got to fly through Denver, so she was able to visit with Keturah for a couple of hours (who was working at the gate for the flight to Boise).

I'll take these unexpected visits any day! Roderic has a request, though. Carson, the next time you come to Boise will you please stay for 3 days and bring a Wii remote control with you so you and Roderic can play?

Piglets Seal the Deal: Bert Keeps his Promise

Over Memorial Day weekend, while visiting with family, we took the opportunity to visit the graves of my grandma, and both sets of Ryan's grandparents. While driving to the West Point Cemetery, my mom mentioned that in the 9.5 years of visiting her mother's grave, she had never been there when any of her siblings or father were visiting. Well, there is always a first. Her father came a few minutes after we arrived. We were talking about a myriad of topics, when he brought up the fact that he would take flowers to his sister's grave in New York. I told him that I didn't realize that he had a sister who died in New York and he replied that she died at age 6 months. That really surprised me. I didn't know that he had lived in New York as a child. Well, that started him into telling stories from his childhood. This one is my favorite:

When Pansy Owens Clay agreed to marry Hyrum Adelbert "Bert" Bateman in March of 1936, she asked for him to promise to take her and her children (from a previous marriage) to the temple to be sealed together as a family for time and all eternity. Bert had to work hard for that to happen. He had to quit smoking. He had to attend church. He had to be ordained to the Melchizedek Priesthood. And he needed to save enough money for the family to travel from Pocatello, Idaho to Logan, Utah, where the closest temple was.

During their first two years of marriage, Bert overcame his addiction to smoking, attended church with the family and was ordained to the Melchizedek Priesthood. Money, however, was hard to come by. The family was poor. It was during the Great Depression. They lived in a log house with a sod roof. One day, the only bread in the house was moldy, and so it was put in the pig slop bucket. Mother took that moldy bread out of the bucket, washed it off with water and served it for supper.

After having a discussion with Mother, about when they'd go to the temple, which left her crying, Bert left the house. He couldn't stand to see Pansy cry. He prayed to find a way to earn the money needed to get to the temple and all of a sudden, their sow and her piglets came running around the side of the house. As they ran by, Bert saw dollar signs on the side of each piglet. If he would sell the piglets, they would have enough money to travel to the Logan Utah Temple.

And so Bert sold the piglets and had enough money to take the family to the temple. They were sealed on March 9, 1938 in the Logan Utah Temple.

The best part about this story was that my grandpa got teary eyed during the retelling. He choked up at the part where the piglets come running around the side of the house. I can tell that it meant a lot to him as a 12 year old boy to go to the temple to be sealed to his mom and step-dad.

Waxing Nostalgic

A decade, when you've only lived through 3, is a long time. I started thinking about the past decade a lot when Sabrina turned 10 last month, but even more recently I've been thinking of the major milestones that have happened 10 years ago...

April 23, 1999: Ryan graduates from BYU with a degree in Electrical Engineering.


April 29, 1999: We flew (standby) to Boise to sign the closing documents for our first house. Since we had hours until the next Delta flight left Boise, we went to the mall and bought a washer and dryer.

May 7, 1999: Ryan, my dad and little brother drive the Penske truck to Boise, unload it and then fly back to SLC. (We were so lucky to have flight benefits from Delta AirLines!)

May 9, 1999: Sabrina is given a name and a blessing in our ward at BYU. Sacrament meeting began at 8:30 am. Lots of family members and some friends came down. We ate waffles in the basement room of our Wymount Terrace apartment block.


That afternoon we drive to West Point and have a 4-generation picture taken of Sabrina, me, my mom and her mom.


May 11, 1999: We take our first (of many) family drive from Layton to Boise. Our Kia Sephia was filled with the remainder of our stuff. We barely had room for Sabrina's car seat in the back.

May 12, 1999: Sears delivered our new washing machine and dryer (really early in the morning, like 8:30 am, especially since we arrived in Boise at 11 pm the night before). They awakened us by ringing the doorbell. Ryan got to answer the door in his PJs. We found out immediately that Sears does not install gas connections. And there wasn't a Home Depot anywhere near us then. (The housing bubble was in its infancy, relatively.)

May 18, 1999: Ryan began work as a Junior Test Engineer at Micron Technology, Inc.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Today is my dad's birthday. I always thought it was cool that my dad's birthday is exactly 2 weeks after mine. In fact I remember thinking as a child that it was too bad that my brother's birthday was on the 2nd instead of the first because then we could have birthdays exactly 2 weeks apart during the whole month of April.

My dad grew up in Richfield. He has 1 older sister and 3 younger brothers. He served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to California in 1965-67.


He attended Utah State University and got a degree in Business in 1970. He met my mom as a student. They were both in the square dance club. I wish I had a picture of them in their costumes. They were married in the Manti, UT Temple in 1968.

Got drafted into the army and went to Vietnam. He was there for 6 months, while my mom stayed home and wrote him a letter a day (following counsel from the prophet) with 2 children.

My parents like to travel. After a trip early on in their marriage, they decided that it was faster and cheaper to drive all day and all night. No stopping for hotels. Only stopping for car repairs, some meals, and neat tourist attractions. Dad says he likes it because during the night, you don't have fights in the backseat because the children are all sleeping. I've gone from Layton, UT to Aurora, NY several times; it takes 32 hours when you drive straight through. Since I've been married, I have marveled that my parents could drive all night. I usually fall asleep at 10:30 pm when in a car.

I remember bits of stories that my dad would tell at bedtime. They always had a little girl named Malauna in them. I also remember him being the tickle monster. And every Saturday morning, he would chase us through the house with the vacuum cleaner. We'd have to have the floors picked up before he got to us. Fun times.

My dad got me my first job. I was a directional at the Delta Center (now the Energy Solutions Arena) from Jul. 1993 to Dec. 1996. My dad is an usher there. Has been since it opened in 1991. It was fun to get to commute with him and 2 of my sisters for the Jazz games, concerts, Golden Eagles and later Grizzlies games, circus shows, Amway conventions, and Disney on Ice shows. I joked with him this morning that the Utah Jazz gave him a birthday present by losing in LA, so that he wouldn't have to have such a sad game to watch on his birthday. It is amazing how sad the air is in the Delta Center after the final loss of a round of the play-offs.

My dad has helped us when we've moved. He drove with Ryan in the Penske truck 10 years ago from BYU to Boise and unloaded it. When we moved to our current house 4 years ago, he came up and built shelving in the closets in the kids' rooms, hall closet (for food storage!), and craft area in the laundry room.

Now that my children are older than babies, they've all taken a liking to Grandpa C. That first year of life, though, they'd all scream if I had him hold them...

Last year we got to celebrate with my dad the week of his birthday. He was nice enough to let Roderic blow out his candles.

Happy Birthday, Dad!