Larue Weaver

LaRue Hemsley Weaver died peacefully in her sleep on Monday, June 20, 2016, in Provo, Utah, at the age of 89. LaRue was born July 13, 1926, in Plano Idaho, daughter of Joseph Henry Hemsley and Lottie Hannah Davies Hemsley, older sister of Max and Kent Hemsley. She graduated from the REAL Idaho Falls High School, class of 1944, and from Brigham Young University in 1967. in 1948, LaRue married DL Wright Weaver. They are the parents of Alan (Renee) Weaver, Laura (Alan) Hinsdale, Lenore (Lynn) Davis, and Glen (Heidi) Weaver. David and Cynthia Hemsley, her nephew and niece, also lived with them for an extended time. She was the grandmother of 22 and great-grandmother of 20. LaRue taught first grade in Pocatello, Idaho and in Bellevue, Washington. When she retired after 26 years of teaching, she tutored as a volunteer at Eastern Idaho Technical College in Idaho Falls. LaRue loved music. She performed on radio and television with her sextet, the Belle Cantos, and sang in an award-winning Sweet Adeline chorus. An active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she served in many church callings, especially those involving children, music, or drama. She was beloved by family, friends, and all who knew her. We miss her dearly. Funeral Services will be held at 12:00 Noon Saturday, June 25, 2016, at the Edgewood LDS Chapel, 3469 North 180 East, Provo, Utah, with visitation beginning at 11:00 a.m. at the church. An additional viewing will be held from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Sunday, June 26, 2016, at Wood Funeral Home, 273 North Ridge Avenue, Idaho Falls. Graveside services will be held at 10:00 a.m. Monday, June 27, 2016, at Fielding Memorial Park Cemetery in Idaho Falls.

LaRue Hemsley Weaver Life Sketch LaRue was born July 13, 1926 in Plano Idaho. It takes imagination for most of us to picture life at that time in a poor rural town. She was rather proud to say, later in life, that she was born in a log cabin. So she was, in her parents' small home, no running water, no electricity, no indoor bathroom. But she was born into a loving family, and when you include books and music, you understand what riches she was blessed with. Her little brother Max was born in 1929, then a brother Grant in 1932. That same year the family moved to the big town of Idaho Falls where her Dad had an offer of steady work at Brandle's meat market, feeding the animals and working in the slaughterhouse. (Excerpts from mom's biography) “The new home was a“big house”. Four rooms, all in a line from the front porch to the back porch. The first room off the back porch had a sink! With a water tap! We didn't use that room except as a play room when it was warm enough. I learned to play jacks and to roller skate in there. The second room was our kitchen. We had a coal stove with a reservoir to heat water. We brought the range, a dish cupboard, a table with a tin top, and our kitchen chairs from our Plano house. The third room held Mom's treadle sewing machine, our round dining room table, and a cot where Max and I slept. The fourth room was our living room. It held Mom's piano from her childhood in Sugarhouse, and a heatrola stove. We didn't have enough money to buy wood or coal for it, so we lit it only when we had company. That meant the only heat was from the kitchen range. The back porch was boarded halfway up with a screen the rest of the way. The south side was partitioned off and had a door and a flush toilet inside. Boy! We were now rich city folks! The toilet had a seat, and when you sat down, the water ran all the time you sat there. LaRue was in first grade when they moved. She remembers her grandmother coming to get her at school, and walking her home in the middle of the day because baby Grant was dying. She got home to see him struggling to breath for a little while before he died. The doctor's wife then bathed him in the little tub on the oven door, just like normal bath time. His mom dressed him in his best little white dress, and they put him on top of the sewing machine under the dining room window, opened a crack to keep his body cool. It was a bitter cold winter, so the burial was quite an ordeal. The family in Plano worked for 2 days trying to dig a little grave in the frozen ground. The trip from Idaho Falls, with the tiny casket on the seat between LaRue and Max, began by car, then switched to horse and sleigh from Rexburg on. LaRue always remembered her little brother, and understood her mother's grief better when she had children of her own. On Memorial Day, when decorating the family graves, there were always pansies for Baby Grant. Another boy was born in February 1934, Kent. The family lived in Idaho Falls from then on, with multiple moves. LaRue was a good student, and liked school and also Primary, especially all the programs and plays. Much of the time she was the only girl on the block. She played with her brothers, cousins and neighborhood boys, often dressed in bib overalls. She enjoyed baseball and marbles, kick- the-can and other fun games. In Jr. High, LaRue was in choir with a Weaver boy named DL. He was a year behind her in school, so they didn't have any other classes together. But they were in a school play celebrating Armistice Day. He was a wheelchair bound WW1 vet, and LaRue played his mother. Of course there was singing involved. DL was brave enough to ask her to one Jr. High dance. They were in the same ward for a while, so the families knew each other. Then DL and LaRue met again once DL got old enough to attend Idaho Falls High School. They sang in choir again for two years, but it wasn't until DL was a Senior that they really started dating. It was the beginning of a great romance LaRue was a hard worker, picking potatoes at harvest time, doing other odd jobs. She and her family also helped pluck hundreds of young turkeys that had smothered themselves on the Weaver farm-an all night effort to at least salvage something from the catastrophe. Her first full time job was in a department store, then she moved to grocery stores, and became a great checker. As the war progressed, and the men and boys were gone, she learned some butchering skills, and had to haul heavy boxes. Checking in those days meant memorizing all the prices, including what was on sale that week. Then punching the numbers into the cash register (quickly), and counting change accurately. Also keeping track of food coupons, with the rationing during the war. While in High School LaRue started singing in a trio with 2 friends. They sang at church often, and some school functions, also for the Lions club and Elks Club social events. There were yearly spring music concerts sponsored by the ward or stake mutual (we would say joint Young Men's and Young Women's. LaRue's trio and DL's trio were always part of the program. The spring program in 1944 included a number by LaRue's trio combined with another girl's trio. The Belle Cantos were born. This sextette performed together for years, sang on a weekly radio broadcast, and even had a few gigs on a local television broadcast. They stayed together despite college years, and marriage. LaRue's little boy Alan, when answering the phone, said “no Mom's not here, she's at sex practice.” LaRue was able to save up enough money to go to college, and had great adventures at BYU. In the fall of 1945, her mom and dad drove her to Provo.They were told they couldn't miss the buildings on the East side of the main drag through town. Apparently they did , for they turned left on Center Street, and tried to drop LaRue off at the State Mental Hospital. That might have been better, because she finally found herself at BYU, staying at the legendary (to our family) UCD Upper Campus Dorm. This was an old barracks that some genius decided was a great place to house a hundred co-eds. The walls were bare blocks, the floor bare concrete. The east half of the ground floor was the bedroom. The west half was a reception room, with couches, a piano, etc. for entertaining. There was a wringer washer in the basement, and a few short clothes lines. There was a six head gang shower. The main floor restroom had four stalls and four hand bowls. There was one phone. (From Mom's bio) The east room contained a dozen clusters of bunk beds, clothes racks and dressers. Each section supported eight girls and all their possessions. One imaginative group bought muslin sheets and hung them up for walls, and soon the entire hall had “separate rooms”. Girls were identified by their section number. My harem was section ten, also known as “The Nutcracker Suite” Harem is right, DL was at college too, but few men were back from the war. He was “going steady” with LaRue, but he graciously befriended all the girls in section 10, they made life-long ties, and have many hilarious stories to tell of that year. LaRue stayed home and worked the next two years, DL worked on the ranch in the summers, and attended B.Y.U. in the winter. He hitch-hiked home to see LaRue every weekend possible. DL and LaRue were married in the Idaho Falls Temple in August 1948. DL was working out on his Dad's ranch, and the temple was closed for cleaning. When word came that endowments could not be done in Idaho Falls yet, things became problematic. No phone at the farm—not much time to make a long trip. They had to make a mad dash to Salt Lake (chaperoned by DL's mother) for endowments, but were assured they could be married at home in Idaho Falls. When they showed up at the still closed temple, with their mothers, the official asked them where their witnesses were. Pointing to their moms did not solve the problem. They had to ask some painters to come down from their ladders, change clothes, and be the witnesses. They attended B.Y.U. again as married students, and remember their tiny apartments being filled with good friends. DL graduated in the Spring of 1950, and they moved to Burley , Idaho where DL taught school. Alan was born in April of 1951. They moved back to Idaho Falls, where Laura was born, 1955 and Lenore in 1957. Then in 1958 they moved to the Weaver farm at Monteview. It's a good thing that her childhood and freshman year had prepared her for hard times. They dug a hole in the ground, poured a concrete floor which DL covered with tile, stacked used cinder blocks for walls, put a flat roof over it, and called it home. 2 rooms, plus the bathroom. There was running water and and indoor toilet, also electric heat- bare wires on the ceiling. The bathroom had a door. Bookshelves made of orange crates made half a wall, behind which was the “bedroom” for the five family members. There was a quilt across the stairs leading up and outside, but there was a wooden door at the top of the stairs. Plumbing fixtures and metal cabinets in the kitchen came from junk yards. LaRue set up housekeeping there and was involved in helping get the business running, and in various church callings. She had to nurse a very sickly Alan, who it turns out was severely allergic to everything out there. They added on 2 more basement rooms, a bedrom and a storage room. Glen was born in January 1962. Cousins David and Cindy also came to live with them. LaRue had a large garden, and shared with neighbors needed the food. Her kids never had a clue that they were “poor.”Again, music, books and love made a happy childhood. Alan's illness forced them to move in 1964. LaRue and DL had to start from scratch--the house, farm, the mill business and all they had put into it belonged to Grandpa, They couldn't sell out. DL went back to teaching school, and LaRue started, although she didn't yet have her degree. The new house in Pocatello was a big step up. It had windows!. A front and back door! A yard to play in with mature trees to climb. An extra bathroom in the basement, with a shower! There was a park across the street, and gullies behind the house where no one could build-almost like being in the country, but no cows to milk or feed mill to run. A bedroom for the girls with lilac paint on the walls. A panelled bedroom downstairs for the boys. And DL and LaRue also had a bedroom. And they all had doors on them! LaRue got in 3 years at BYU, including some as a married student., but due to illness after baby Alan was born, didn't get to finish. She spent many years chasing her diploma by attending night school and summer school, but credits expired as fast as she could take classes. And even then, different colleges wouldn't accept each others classes. Finally, the summer of 1968 she enrolled at BYU, got special permission to take a crazy number of credits, left her 4 children at home with Dad and Grandmas sharing time with the kids, and spent the weekdays on campus, sleeping at Deseret Towers. She came home every weekend, did dishes, washed clothes, fulfilled her church calling, then went back to school. Classes started at 8:00 a.m. and went to 10:00 p.m. But somehow she finished and was a college graduate. LaRue taught first grade for 5 years in Pocatello. DL taught Jr. High, but they were in the same building, so the two could share a car. The kids got used to mom getting supper, helping get them to piano, school and church functions, then starting her school work late at night. They also got used to cutting out apples, pumpkins, hearts, shamrocks, etc. for bulletin boards. LaRue did everything by hand, including making dittos to supplement the school work, cutting out pictures from magazines, calendars, etc. to use as visual aids for school and church She would have loved the things now easily available on the internet. LaRue also started a tradition she kept throughout her 25 years of teaching—the spring program. The kids memorized the lines DL wrote (rhyming, of course) learned songs, dances, made puppets, and put on a great show for the rest of the school, and their parents. DL made a puppet theater, LaRue made costumes. Her students learned the thrill of getting well-earned applause. They learned how to get over a little stage fright. They found they could memorize things. They were proud of their self-made puppets. They got confidence in themselves, and also had a lot of fun. Of course, she had used music in the class room all year, so the program was not a huge leap. Even two teachers working together could not make enough to put kids through college, do DL and LaRue decided to make the daring and heartbreaking leap out of state where salaries were much higher. In 1969 they moved their family to Bellevue, Washington. Moss! Forest! Lakes! Ocean! And hardly any members of the church. It was an adjustment, but another great adventure. The house in Bellevue was a 2 story white house, with pillars out front. It looked like a mansion. They had a dishwasher! Each kid had a bedroom. They had a fireplace. There was a beautiful dogwood tree out back. The neighborhood had been carved out of forest, with trees left intact where possible. Not like Idaho where people sweated to try to carry water to get a few trees to grow. There were azaleas, rhododendrons, the roads were lined with trees, bushes, and ferns, and blackberry bushes grew wild all over. DL had to commute across the floating bridge to Seattle to teach. LaRue was within walking distance of the elementary school she and Glen went to. Of course she usually drove, 1st grade teachers carry a lot of junk to school. The High School was even closer. Alan had graduated and was at BYU, then on a mission, so now they only had three kids at home. LaRue continued to be busy with family, work and church. She got a reputation as a great teacher, and parents started requesting her for their kids.