When Grandma Was A Litle Girl #62

How I Met Your Grandpa - #62

I met your grandpa at a New Year’s Eve dance at our church in 1968.
Our church building was in Alamogordo, N.M. We lived in Tularosa, which was about 10 miles north of Alamogordo. Holloman Air Force Base was about 6 miles west of Alamogordo. So in this triangle area, everyone who was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints went to the Alamogordo Ward.

When I was a little girl growing up we did not have our own church building. We rented the Women’s Day Club in Alamogordo. We were just a branch at the time. We had bazaars and building fund contributions and we finally raised enough money to build our very own church building. We had a booth at the local Otero County fairgrounds. We sold root beer and corn dogs to raise money for our building fund. That helped us out a lot. Back then the members helped build the building. I can remember my father spending a lot of his free hours to help build that building. I can remember cleaning the bricks. I think I was about ten years old when we finally had our church building completed. By the time we completed our building we finally had enough members and became a ward. Our Bishop at the time was Charles Bagley. He was a wonderful fatherly bishop. He was a genius and one of the scientists, a civilian, and worked out at Holloman AFB.

With the Air Base so close it gave us new members, which helped us to grow. However, like any branch of the service, you have on going transfers; people come and people go. So we had members that came and went. I remember how sad we all were when one of our service members did not come home. He was serving in Viet Nam. He and his wife had six children and their last name was Bonzo. They were a neat family. He had served his one-year and was waiting at the airfield to get on a flight to come home to his family. There was an enemy air raid at the airfield and he got caught in a strafe attack (gunfire) and was killed. We had pilots in our ward and they were always fun to have in our ward. We liked having the military families. It gave our ward new blood all the time.

We also had single guys in our ward from the base. It was at our ward’s 1968 New Year’s Eve Dance that grandpa showed up. A military family had brought him. His unit had just been transferred to Holloman from Germany. Neil and I had danced a few dances. He came to church the following Sunday and I sat by him. It wasn’t uncommon for me to sit with the single service men. There were few young women age 17 years and above in our ward. I was one of about 5. We were always nice to these young men. Most of these age appropriate young women were shy and I have to say somewhat immature. They would see the young men turn and walk away and then giggle. On the other hand I was friendly and outgoing. I guess you could say that I was like a USO welcome cheerleader. The young servicemen enjoyed our company and we liked theirs!

About a month after Neil came to church he had to go on TDY (Temporary Duty Away) back to Germany for 90 days. While he was gone I was dating a few other fellows and had a crush on one in particular. His name was Art Fletcher. He was tall and had dark brown hair and eyes. He was very polite. He was kind of shy but always sat with me. Grandpa was also tall and had dark brown hair and brown eyes. I guess I had a thing for tall, handsome guys with dark hair and eyes.

When his 90-day TDY was up Neil returned to his duty station at Holloman AFB. He came to church and asked if he could sit with me. We were walking up the aisle and Art looked up and moved over for me to sit by him and I smiled and sat between Neil and Art. Neil quickly escorted me out at the end of church with Art following behind. Neil got on his motorcycle and left. Art got in his car and left. Neil called me and we started dating. I never did go out with Art and we didn’t sit together anymore. He was later transferred. I don’t know what ever happen to him. My dad said of him, ‘Faint heart never won a fair maiden. He lost out!’ Yes he did, but I guess the Lord may have had a hand in that and had your grandpa in mind for me.