I, Avon Whitaker Smith Oakeson Scott was born in Salt Lake City, Utah on January 5, 1924 at the L.D.S. Hospital with brown hair and eyes, to Samuel Schwartz Smith and Jeannette Whitaker Smith. 

I remember when I was small, Daddy put me in a baby coupe he had made. It was rectangle framed with wood and had wire screen around it, with a board part way up so I could pull myself up to stand. The coupe was one foot above the floor and rolled on three heavy wide 4 inch wheels. This coupe was used for the other children when they were babies too. 

When I was small, my mother, my brother Samuel, and I lived with my father's mother, Mary Schwartz Smith and Aunt Agnes for one year while my father went to Chicago for his education and to earn his Doctorate degree in mathematics.. Grandmother Smith lived in a big two-story house on 3rd Avenue in Salt Lake City. I remember how I liked eating Campbell’s alphabet vegetable soup there. I liked to get in Grandma's piano bench and eat the fish food.  Grandma had a sand box on the east of the house that we loved to play in as children, too. One time a photographer came to the house with a pony and took my picture, along with my brother and cousin John, on the pony. Daddy came home after a year in Chicago and Momma, Samuel and I moved to Grandma and Grandpa Whitaker’s home on 1975 Garfield Avenue in Salt Lake City for another year, while Daddy went to school again. While staying at Grandpa John Whitaker’s home, I remember sitting on a chair between the stove and sink, getting dressed in the mornings and learning to tie my shoelaces. I played with a little girl my age named, Katherine Chipman. She had a little clothesline and washing set I loved to play with. Once Daddy sent me a long tube of candy and it spilled on the floor. I felt bad. 

When Daddy came home, we moved to a farm house Daddy had built years before on 2200 West 5400 South in Bennion. While there, I remember my mother standing out on the porch talking to Cloe Mackay, our neighbor, and I was in the driveway with big geese knocking me down. I was so scared.  We had oil lamps for lights.  One day I fell in the ditch across the road that had running water in it. I managed to hang on to the bridge with water running all around me and down under the bridge. Daddy heard me screaming and came running to save my life.

My father bought the Osborn home at 2481 West 5400 South, Bennion, in about 1930, where we moved when I was about 5 years old. Our home was two story, yellow brick with tall ceilings and big rooms. Mama and Daddy painted it lighter colors because it had dark greens and browns on the walls. The main floor had two bedrooms, a study, living room, kitchen and pantry and stairway going down to the basement. Later, the stairway and part of the pantry were made into a bathroom. The upstairs was divided into about three rooms until it was made into an apartment for the children to use after they were married and while going to school. The basement had five rooms. In the fall, apples were put on straw in two of the rooms. The big room was cluttered with tools, harnesses, broken chairs, to be fixed and so many odds and ends. One room was the fruit room with a screen door. Mama had a big table with pans of milk settling so cream could be skimmed off to make butter. She had eggs set up in jellied stuff in jars on the shelves. I hated to put my hand in that cold stuff to get the eggs out. Mama had an old dark cupboard with bottled fruit in it and boxes of bottled fruit setting on the wood shelves. In the spring, I helped Mama clean the basement and always was afraid of the spiders. There was a small room at the bottom of the stairs where the coal was dumped. 

I remember running in the field east of our house picking dandelions and making chains out of the stems. 

I went to Plymouth Elementary School for 6 weeks in the Summer for Kindergarten. We colored in books, played games, and had milk and crackers. One day, I fell in the little ditch by the school and cut my knee on a rock. I was at Plymouth School for 10 years. I was held back in the third grade because of a lot of childhood diseases.  My mother had us wear simple homemade clothes and black stockings that didn't show the dirt. I hated them and would roll them down sometimes. The other children would make fun of me. I learned that children can be very cruel if you don't look just right.    

In the first grade, I had Miss Slackman and once she slapped my brother Samuel and made him cry so loud you could hear him all over the school. In the second grade I had Miss Cook. I was so afraid of her that I didn't dare ask if I could go to the restroom. I loved the aroma of school lunch, which was generally a bowl of soup, crackers, apple and cookie, all for only 3 cents. Mama traded potatoes or two quarts of milk to pay for our lunches each week. When we didn't buy lunch, I had to put the lunches up by myself, all six of them. I used homemade bread, one small can of potted meat mixed with salad dressing for the sandwiches, an apple, maybe a cookie. I use to watch the other children eat potato chips and wished I had some. 

The winters were bad about up to the sixth grade. I had to walk from our place almost a mile east to catch a school bus. Most mornings my Daddy dropped me off at school on his way to teach at the University of Utah.  It was about one hour and a half before school started. I would ride part way home on the bus then walk the rest of the way over big snowdrifts. Our legs would be wet and our hands cold from the snow. It was dark in the winter months when my Daddy came home from school. Sometimes my mother and younger brothers and sisters rode home with him.  They had spent the day with my Grandfather and Grandmother Whitaker at 13th East and 1500 South in Salt Lake City. 

I was asked to be a French doll in a school play called "Toyland." Mama made me a beautiful yellow organdy dress with three layers of ruffled skirting. I thought I was so neat to wear black Maryjane slippers with yellow socks for the play. I thought this was so special.

I had a lovely playhouse upstairs with dolls, small dishes, cupboard, table and chairs and buggy for my dolls. I used to sew clothes for my dolls, too. Mama had me give one of my best dolls to a girl who was sick in our ward once. She later died. 

Christmas was always so special.  Mama made it sound like a fairy tale and made Santa Claus seem so real. The children could choose whatever they wanted that cost up to a dollar. I wanted coloring books, a Jesus Book, crayons or watercolors, a ring or beads, lotion or maybe stockings. If I received a doll, it was usually one of my old dolls that Aunt Agnes had given me, dressed up in new clothes, The table and chairs would have a new coat of paint on them, too. Once I got a wicker buggy I just loved. We couldn't sleep very well on Christmas Eve so we would sneak in the living room in the dark and look at the presents. Mama and Daddy always filled Mama's big cotton stockings with homemade candy, bought hard candy, nuts, popcorn balls, oranges and a banana that we had maybe three times in a year. Mama loved to make everything so special. 

One summer, when I was about 8 years to 10 years old, Mama asked me to take little buckets of eggs two miles to the Bennion store to exchange them for groceries. She let me have three or five cents each time. I would buy yeast cakes because I liked them so much. I was afraid of the dogs along the way and sometimes it was so hot. Once Samuel went with me and our dog "Wags" followed and we walked along the train tracks.  When the train came "Wags" wouldn't get off the tracks. We screamed and screamed, but he wouldn't budge, so the train hit "Wags" and he drug himself down to a fence where he died. It took a long time for me to get over it. 

When we got our work done we could play. I use to go to the Blake’s house, about one-fourth of a mile away to play with LuJean. She was the youngest of thirteen children. During the summer, we would swim in their canal and float over the checks (like a little waterfall). One time I cut my chest and bathing suit on the rocks as I went through the checks. 

In the sixth grade, I really loved my teacher, Mrs. Gerard. She was so sweet. She took one of my 24X30 pastels to be framed for Mama and Daddy. I had a boyfriend that year named Willard Cushing. His sister Viola was my friend, too. Later in life, Willard was killed in WWII when the ship he was on was blown up by the Germans. 

I loved art in school. The music teacher, Mr. Jeppson, paid for me to have some art lessons in Salt Lake, so I took the interurban train on some Saturdays for my lessons. When I was a young teenager, Mama let me ride the interurban train to shop and let me do some shopping for her in Salt Lake City. She let me buy lunch at Kress'. Sometimes my feet would heat up from walking on the hot cement in town. 

For entertainment I would take Samuel's bike and ride to one of my school friend’s home. One time I made it to Aunt Lucille's (Redwood Road and about 5800 South) from the Midvale swimming pool on the bike in 17 minutes. I took piano lessons from Lilly Palmer and enjoyed playing it very much. Mama had me practice one hour a day. Another way I entertained myself was to roller skate by the hour around the house on the sidewalk.

Some summers my Aunt Agnes and Grandmother Smith would have all the girls in the Smith family, like Carol, Margaret and her sisters and I, stay up in the Smith cabin in Little Cottonwood Canyon for a week. Then the boys would stay for another week. We had the best food: hamburgers, hot dogs, etc. We looked forward to this vacation. Our family had Thanksgiving dinner at my Aunt Agnes’ and Grandmother Smith's home for as long as I can remember. They made it very special. 

In the springtime, Mama paid me a little to wash and clean each room from the ceiling to the floor, including the ceiling. I had to get in the corners. I loved to use lots of soap to clean with. At this time of my life, I loved to make cakes whenever Mama went for the day. Sometimes, I made cookies and hid them in the coal bucket in a sack so the boys wouldn't find them. 

Mama had me hang buckets of wet clothes up on washday. In the summer, I would hang them outside, but in the winter, I would hang them upstairs in the pink room, usually 
three deep on the lines. I put the socks along the stair banister. Another chore was
cleaning my bedroom floor. In the winter it was so cold that the water almost froze to the linoleum as I cleaned it. I would put hot water in quart bottles and take them to bed to keep warm. The blankets were so heavy I couldn't move in bed at night. 

The Smith and Taylor reunions were so much fun and special. Mama made me a pretty new dress to go. Sometimes we had dinners and programs or box lunches with baker’s bread, tuna sandwiches, a banana, cupcakes, oranges or grapes and potato chips and an olive. Sometimes they gave us a little toy. In the Bishop's building, we children would run up and down the stairs. In the Lion House, we would go in and out of the pretty rooms looking around. Sometimes Aunt Agnes took all of us to Beck's Hot Springs swimming pool of natural hot water, north of Salt Lake City. It was so much fun. The swimming pool was open with dressing rooms around it. There was a hot small pool, also. Daddy used to take us to Wasatch Plunge swimming pool in North Salt Lake, too. This pool was indoors, very large and full of natural warm water. I love to swim! 

Mama used to pay me a dime to mend the boys’ overalls on the old treadle sewing machine. I had many chores to do, like help with the dishes, clean my bedroom, vacuum the front rooms, hang the washing upstairs in the winter, scrub the kitchen and bathroom floors, and help with meals. I tended the, children when Mama went anywhere. There were four boys and four girls:  me, Samuel, Joseph, Hyrum, John, Esther, Joan, and Gladys. 

When I went to High School, I met Francis Oakeson and we shared lockers together. He was the oldest of four boys and one girl: Francis, Wendell, Willard, Gwendolyn, and Leslie Oakeson. He graduated from High School the year I was a junior. We were married before I graduated in the Salt Lake Temple, November 16, 1942. We lived in Francis' parent's basement for a year while I worked for Eitelmakella War Plant, where they made radar tubes.  I worked shift work. When I was on night shift, I didn't get much sleep in the day. I made about $85.00 every two weeks. Francis was staying out of the draft by working on the farm and going to Business School at Henniger’s Business College. Daddy gave us a half-acre of land east of their home to build a house on. Francis built a 2-room house with an outhouse on the outside. We bought our doors, windows, and lumber at Ketchum’s lumber yard. We carried our water from Mama's in buckets. We heated the house with a coal range in the kitchen. We had seven dollars a week to live on because Francis was working on some of Daddy's land growing sugar beets. LaRaine was born the day before Christmas, 1944, at  the Cottonwood Maternity House. Mama tended us for a while until I got my strength back. Then I went back to our little house with no water or lights. 

Francis went into the Army in March of 1945. I rented the house to Easton Blake and he brought the water and lights into the house, just one pipe in the kitchen wall. 

I lived next door at my parents that Spring and Summer until Aunt Agnes wanted me to live at her place and tend young Agnes while she taught school. A divorced girl and her little boy lived in three rooms of Aunt Agnes' house. While there, I did the housework, washed clothes in a tiny washer and most of the time prepared supper for Aunt Agnes and family.  Aunt Agnes' little Sarah was a sweet, special girl who loved to play with LaRaine. 

On weekends, I went home with Daddy when he came from the University of Utah. Aunt 
Agnes helped me buy a high chair and mattress for LaRaine's crib plus milk for her to drink. This was my pay. 

In the spring, about March, my cousins, Dale and Irene Bates, asked me to help them with housework, laundry, and cooking because Irene (my cousin) was going to have a baby. I stayed there three months or more. They had three children at the time. Then Ed Jeppson came and asked me to help them because Elizabeth (my cousin) was expecting her seventh child.   I worked and worked and don't remember how many months I stayed there. I worked hard though with so many to care for. Elizabeth gave me $48.00 a month. While there, I saved up $700.00 dollars from our Army pay and when Francis came home we moved into our two-room house again. I had bought a lot of canned goods and fixed our kitchen chairs while I lived at Jeppson's. 

Then I was expecting Grant. We still lived in our two-room house. Francis bought an oil burning stove for the living room. We had one water pipe in the kitchen so he bought a two sink cabinet (Youngstown), which I really liked, and installed it in the kitchen.
 
When Grant was born on August 20, 1947, the doctor gave me a spinal anesthetic that gave me so much pain and problems the rest of my life. I became paralyzed from the waist down. One night while I was staying up to Daddy and Mama's, the pain in my legs was so bad Daddy got up from his bed and gave me a blessing and the pain went right away. I kept getting a little better, but I couldn't walk with security. 

That fall of 1947, Francis built two bedrooms, a bathroom, and washroom on to our two-room house.  In the spring, things kept getting worse with my legs and back, so I went to see a specialist.  I could hardly get around and was afraid of falling down. The doctor sent me to the L.D.S. Hospital in Salt Lake City for a spinal test. Then he operated on my back.  I could walk for one month, then, in the night, the numbness came back and I couldn't walk very well, so the doctors thought it was a blood clot, so they had me go to the hospital again and this time they were afraid I would not live.  The doctor operated again on my spine and cut more scar tissue out, but I couldn't walk after that.   I stayed at Mama's for a year.  She waited on me and tended LaRaine.  Daddy put me in the tub every morning and would rub my legs before he went to school. Francis stayed in the basement of our house while my brother Samuel and his wife Marjorie stayed in the top of our house. 

After a year at Mama's, I went home.  Mama didn’t think I could manage, but I did. 

Milt Hunt (a naturopathic healer) came to see me and said he could help me, so I went to St. George where he lived and gave treatments to people. I stayed from February until May of 1949 and took LaRaine with me. I started to get better and could stand by the sink to do dishes. I was very ill before I started to get better.  LaRaine and I lived with Uncle Glen and Aunt Bessy (Elizabeth Whitaker) Hunt in a big two-story house west and across the street from the St. George Temple. The Temple President, President Snow, gave me a blessing.  Milt gave me treatments every day. This helped me get better by leaps and bounds. In May, he moved to Sheridan, Montana, to the mountains, where there was a mining village. There were about seven log cabins, some small and some large. Francis took me up there to continue my treatments.  A lot of people came until the cabins were full.  I took LaRaine and Joan to help me and didn't know how I was going to get along without a bathroom.  They had an outhouse and tin tub. We stayed in one of the bigger cabins. The cabin had one big room with a big bed and piano and a lean-to divided into two rooms, a bedroom and a kitchen. 

A girl named Deana LeFever and her three children stayed with us. The only thing we cooked was whole wheat bread and potatoes and sometimes a health cake. Everything else was raw, mostly salads. In the morning, we ate raw ground wheat with raisins and milk from a cow they had up there. We exercised a lot in the day and had treatments at night because Milt Hunt worked in the mine during the day. We were eight miles up the canyon from any stores. We saw mountain lions on one side of the mountain and bears on the other. 

One day Milt came into the cabin and said, "I feel you can walk." I was sitting in my wheelchair. He said, "I will go get Brages crutches", but I said, "No! I brought my own.”  I told him they were in the bedroom closet.  He went and got them and said, "You get up and walk." I did. I made about eight steps across the room, always afraid of falling, but I did it!  Francis took me home in October when the snow came.  I went to Montana in a wheelchair and came home walking on crutches. Everyone could hardly believe it.

The summer before Grant went to Elementary School, I went to summer school and took art classes at Granite High School with Aunt Agnes Knowlton. The teacher gave me a scholarship to go to the University of Utah. So in the Fall, when LaRaine and Grant.were in school, I went to the University of Utah with my father and took all the art I could get that year. This schooling helped me so much with my painting. 

I kept the primary history up in the Bennion Ward and did most of the posters for the ward and sang in the ward choir. 

I had appendicitis about this time and Uncle Silas Smith, Daddy’s brother and our family physician, operated and removed it for me. He helped us out a lot and gave his services for free.

Francis had an opportunity to get a better job at Northrup Air Plant in Hawthorne, California. Francis, LaRaine, 13 years old, Grant, 10 years old, and I moved to El Segundo, California, not far from Hawthorne. We lived in a three-bedroom two-bathroom apartment for $130.00 a month, and that was a lot of money then. It left very little for food. We had to buy rugs for all three bedrooms while we lived there. The living room had a rug. It was a big apartment. I hung the wash out on the north of the apartment on a round clothesline. I started painting while we lived there. 

After a year, we moved to Hawthorne and rented a pink stucco house with 2 bedrooms and one bath for $90.00 a month, We painted the walls in every room. We had some dear friends who lived next to us there named Castletons. They had 2 boys and 2 girls about Grant and LaRaine's age. 

It was here I got interested in making plastic jewelry and I had Francis take me to Redland's, 60 miles away, to get the material for jewelry. I put the plastic in molds with sea horses, seashells, fish hooks, etc.  I made earrings, cuff links, and sweater guards, and sold them to the people who worked at the aircraft plants. I made money for my needs. While living here, I learned the florist business and how to arrange wedding flowers from Lois Wickers, who owned a florist shop.  She also lived in our Centinela Ward at 4580 West 115th Street, Hawthorne. I have always loved to put flowers together and so it came easy. When I moved back to Salt Lake City, I worked at Francis' Mother's Floral Shop (Oakeson Floral). While we lived in Hawthorne, we made frequent trips to San Diego to see Richard and Esther Bowen (my Brother-in-law and sister). 

One time I was very ill with a bad kidney infection. I had a high fever, then I suddenly got cold. It was Christmas time and all the fami1y had gone to Grandpa Whitaker's for a Christmas party. They had a prayer circle for me. I was home and, all at once, I felt good and the next day I was up and well. 

After LaRaine finished high school, she got a scholarship to the Brigham Young University.  She paid her way from money she earned washing bottles at the Whitbeck Dairy.  Her Daddy gave her $25.00 a month on her food and rent.  She was at the B.Y.U. for one year, then she met and married Jon D. Stephens on June 5, 1964, in the Salt Lake Temple. I helped on the wedding by arranging all the flowers and preparing the food for the wedding breakfast. I made her dress, cake, and sewed my own dress, too. I don't know how I did it. After her two or three day honeymoon at the Smith cabin, we all traveled to Cardiff-by-the-Sea in California to a little reception for Jon and LaRaine. 

Months later, Francis had a job offer in San Diego, California, for the government so we (Francis, Grant and I) moved to Claremont, San Diego, into a beautiful new model home. It had three bedrooms, two baths, and a 30-foot living room, big kitchen and beautiful yard. While we lived here, Francis was the first counselor in the Bishopric. I went to art school and did a lot of paintings. Grant graduated from Madison High and started attending the El Camino Junior College. We visited often with Jon and LaRaine who lived about 20 miles north of us at Cardiff-by-the-Sea. 

I had to bring the Relief Society History up to date and I was organist for a while in Relief Society. I kept very busy. I loved living in San Diego. We also were able to visit my sister, Esther, once in a while.

After 14 months, the government closed down the building Francis was working in and moved to Hawthorne, California. We moved to a one-bedroom apartment with a swimming pool. I did a lot of painting here.

Grant went to El Camino College until he was asked to go on a mission. He stayed with his Grandmother Oakeson in Taylorsville, Utah, to make residence and leave for his mission from her ward, as the missionary quota had been filled in our area. 

Francis quit his job after his folks came to visit and we moved back to Salt Lake City in our little house at 2447 West 5400 South after living in Hawthorne about 14 months.  I worked at Oakeson's Floral arranging flowers and Francis kept the accounting books for his mother's floral business. 

When Grant came home from his mission, I met him in Seattle, Washington, where LaRaine and Jon lived. Grant was able to see their first baby boy, Jon Allen. Then I came home with Grant on the plane. Grant wanted to go to B.Y.U., so I had pre-registered him before he came home and used the money I had earned from my art. He worked early hours cleaning at the University to earn money to stay there. He met Rosalee Pryor and married her August 29, 1969, in the Salt Lake Temple while he was still attending B.Y.U. I did their wedding flowers.

During this time things became very difficult between Francis and myself.  He left and it was necessary for me to later obtain a divorce.  At this time, the State wanted to buy our house because they were going to build the I-215 Belt Route across 5400 South, so Francis signed the house over to me.  The State wanted to give me only $18,000.00 for it, which wasn't enough to build another house. I asked them to talk with my lawyer, so the head man came out and asked me to figure out how much it would cost and let him know, which I did. They paid me $21,000.00 and I had $3,000.00 Daddy and Mama had given me, plus I had earned $2,000.00 from paintings. With all the help from Hyrum, Daddy, Grant, John, Samuel, Joseph and many others, I came out to almost the dollar on building the house. The ground it was built on was a piece my Aunt Gay Smith had given to me. I am very grateful for all the help and land.  I feel I can never really repay them all for the help. I am very much blessed. 

My cousin, Glen Hunt and his boys came faithfully to put all the sheetrock in the upstairs and down. I did a painting for them, but this doesn't pay them in full for their kindness. 

I called to get the lowest bid on every job done on the house. My Sister-inlaw, Beth, my daughter-in-law, Rosalee, and Beth's girls and others helped me paint and move in. Hyrum, and Daddy helped me the most on the house, to which I am so very grateful and thankful. Some in the Taylorsville 2nd Ward High Priest Quorum helped paint the basement so I could rent it for additional income. I moved into the new house May 1, 1974. While living here, I've taught art to about 7 or 8 art students and have done weddings for money to live on. 

After six months, I met Austin Scott, David Scott's father at Joan (my sister) and David's home while having Sunday dinner. The next week Austin came to see me and the house.  After that he came to visit for sixteen months until we were married at Elko, Nevada, on February 12, 1976. Austin Scott is divorced and has fourteen children, nine boys, and five girls. We were married a year later in the Salt Lake Temple, April 1, 1977.  He has taught six classes of genealogy in the Taylorsville 2nd Ward while living here and has made the outside more beautiful with flowers and greenery. 

My son, Grant, and Rosalee moved next door.  I love seeing them all the time and they are so much help.  I love having the grandchildren come in. 

During my life, I have had many surgeries and illnesses and have been healed by the Priesthood many times.  I have a very strong testimony of the gospel.  I hope I can be a better person. 


Written by Avon Whitaker Smith Oakeson Scott


(Since the writing of this history, Austin Scott has left and I am living alone.  I am able to pay for my expenses with my Social Security Disability, rent from the basement apartment and some savings that my father left me.  I am 79 at this time.  I prepare dinner for my son, Grant, and my grandson, Isaac, during the week when Rosalee works.  I continue to paint and completed a portrait of Grant and one of LaRaine which I gave them for Christmas 2002.  I have seen the hand of the Lord in my life many times.  He has always been mindful of my needs and continues to bless me.)