Life Story of Ruth Elizabeth Proctor-Part Five

Written by

Ruth Elizabeth Proctor Cook

After Vergil was called to his Heavenly Home, I found out that I was expecting a baby.  I wondered how in heaven's name I was going to have the money to pay a doctor and take care of a baby.  The folks in Tooele sent me the money and I went back to Tooele for awhile.

Vergil

  Everything had changed and the folks were so good to me.  Most of my girl friends were married and had moved away.  Elmer Searle came to see me and wanted me to go out with him.  I just didn't want to do that. He asked me to marry him in due time and he would raise the baby.  He hadn't gotten married yet.  But I just didn't love him the way you should love someone you marry.  I stayed in Tooele for about a month and a half and then went back to Roberts.  I lived with Atha and Opal for a while.  I would take long walks.  One night I walked over to the Snake River Bridge and just stood there and looked at the swirling water. I heard someone call my name.  It was Opal.  Someone had gone to the store and told him I was on the bridge.  He put his arm around me, took me back to their car.  I told him I wasn't going to jump but I surely didn't know what I was going to do.  He told me I would always have a home with Atha and him but that he thought there was someone else for me. One night as I was staying with them, I seemed to wake up and thought I could see Vergil standing in the doorway to the bedroom.  He said for me not to worry that both me and the baby would be taken care of.  I slept better that night than I had.

I thought I had lived with Opal and Atha long enough and I knew that I needed to take care of me and my baby that was coming.  So I took a small room in the home where Wayne and Vandetta Wilson lived.  It was north of Roberts.  I had my cook stove, a cupboard for dishes and pots and pans, a bed, a chest of drawers, a dresser, and a little stand to put a bucket of water on and a wash basin.  They guys put the cupboard in front of the door that led to the other part of the Wilson's home so their kids couldn't run into the place where I was to live any time they felt like it.

Fishing Bridge 1937
Annie, and Ruth are at top and Ruth has hands on Atha

 

Before I left the Staker's home, they gave me a baby shower and I think everyone in the ward came for I didn't have to buy anything.  They even gave me a wicker baby buggy for my baby.  The room was just right for me and my baby.  Cleo and Carl Cook could come at night and take me to the show and many other places.  I never got very large with my baby as I never had to wear anything different than what I generally wore.  I loved that little room though it was lonesome at nights.  Wayne and Vandetta would come around the house and have me come and be with them in the evenings.  They were good to me.

Atha holding Frank and Ruth

When it was time for my baby to make his appearance into this world, I was having sharp pains.  They started about 8:00 a.m.  Cleo drove me to Mrs, Lee Hansen's home in Rigby to have the baby.  We stopped and picked up my sister Atha.  When we got to Rigby, Cleo asked if he could do anything else and Mrs. Hansen said not unless you want to have it for her.  Cleo told her he would wait out in the car and to please let him know if they needed anything.  Vergil Franklin Cook came into this world only weighing 5 pounds.  He wasn't due until 27 September.  He was so tiny.  I remember asking Dr. Aldon Tall if the baby was ok.  He said everything was perfect but that he was tiny.  When I looked up I saw Vergil standing in the doorway.  When the doctor said the baby would do fine in this world, Vergil just disappeared.  I started to cry.  The doctor asked me if I was ok.  I just nodded my head, and then he said he had felt all along that someone else was in the room.  Franklin had tiny curls all over his head and was a good baby.  When everything was cleaned up, Atha went out to where Cleo was in the car and told him I had a tiny baby boy and everything was ok with me and the baby.  Cleo asked Atha if he could come in and see me and the baby, which he did.  Then he and Atha went back to Roberts.  I stayed at Mrs. Hansen's for 10 days and then went to Grandma Cook's for another 10 days.  After being down that long when I did try to get up it was very hard to walk.

I decided it was time for my son and I go to our own place.  Cleo came as often as he could to see me and make sure that I had everything that I needed.  I tried to nurse Franklin, but I wasn't good at that.  What I had didn't help him very much, so he became a bottle baby.

Vergil Franklin Cook

I can remember one time we were all at Parley and Edna Ririe's for Thanksgiving dinner.  Cleo and I were sitting on the couch and I was holding Franklin, when their daughter LaWan asked me if I was going to marry her Uncle Cleo and be her Aunt Ruth.  I am sure I turned very red for we hadn't even talked about getting married.  She just kept asking me and finally Cleo said she could, would that be alright with her.  LaWan said sure that she was just wondering.  Cleo started taking me to the shows without his brother Carl going with us, though I always took my baby with us.  Cleo was very good to me and Franklin.  He did ask me to marry him.  I told him I would.  When Cleo told his folks, Grandpa Cook told him he couldn't marry me because I was sealed to Vergil and that wouldn't be fair to Cleo.  That just about broke us up, for I wouldn't see Cleo or go anywhere with him.  I even left the little room where Franklin and I were living and went to Roberts and stayed with Atha and Opal. 

Frank and Ruth

Cleo came to see me there and I wouldn't even talk to him.  Opal and Cleo had a good long talk one night when Cleo came in.  I was upstairs playing with Franklin, when Opal came up and told me that I needed to go down and talk to Cleo.  He said he and Atha would watch the baby.  He told me I needed to hear Cleo's side of the story.  So I went down.  We had quite a talk.  Cleo said that he still wanted to marry me no matter what his dad said.  He loved me and knew that all the children that he and I would have would belong to Vergil.  But he said there is a just God and things will be ok.  He would be Franklin's father on this earth and a good father to any other ones we might have.  So we decided to go to the Salt Lake Temple and be married for time.  He told me he would get their car and we would go down and take Franklin with us.

Frank

Ruth and Cleo

We set the date for 20 December 1939.  We had quite a funny thing happen to us on our way down to Utah.  We stopped at a service station to get gas and have the oil checked.  I had made a small bed for Franklin between us and I was playing with him and he was smiling for me.  The fellow putting in the gas as Cleo if this trip was necessary.  Just about that time Franklin laughed out loud.  He looked in the window and Cleo told him we were going to Salt Lake to get married.  The fellow looked at Cleo and said, "I guess it's necessary for you to go."  We laughed about that and the expression on the man's face quite a few times as the years went by.  When we got to Salt 
Lake City and went to the court house to get our marriage license, we had quite a time convincing the clerk that we weren't brother and sister, because both of our names were Cook.  Finally I told her that I was married to his brother and that he had passed away and now we were planning to get married.  She asked why we hadn't said so in the first place, and Cleo told her she had never given us a chance.

Frank with his Grandfather, James Edward Cook

Cleo, Frank, James Edward Cook

Cleo took out his endowments the day we were married.  While we were in one of the sessions, a Temple matron came and said something to one of the workers.  The man then asked where Sister Ruth Cook was.  My heart almost stopped.  The sister came to me and as I got up to leave the brother said that there would be a slight delay that a young man needed his mother.  One of the sisters had Franklin in the nursery.  He had woken up and didn't know anyone and had started to cry.  They couldn't get him to stop, so they brought him to me.  When he saw me he reached out his little arms.  I took him and loved him and fed him a bottle.  He went to sleep again.  Bless his little heart.  He sure did a lot of sobbing.  Then the sister took me back to the session and the brother said that now we would continue but that little ones come first.

When we got back from Salt Lake, we moved into two rooms upstairs at Grandpa and Grandma Cook's.  They wanted to go back and finish the mission that Grandpa was on in California when Vergil died.  This time he wanted to take Grandma with him.  There were still young girls living in the Cook household, and they needed someone there.

Ruth and Frank outside home in Roberts

Ruth and Frank

Cleo, Frank and Ruth

Cleo did all the farming.  His sisters had their bedroom in one of the upstairs rooms.  I told them to always remember to shut their bedroom door tight and to shut the gate we had put across the steps as they were quire steep and I didn't want Franklin to fall down those steps.  The only place he had to play was out in the hallway.  One morning in a rush to catch the school bus, they didn't get their bedroom shut tight, though they did lock the gate on the stairs.  I put Franklin out to play in the hall, and sure enough he pushed open their door.  He got into their lipstick, rouge, powder, perfume and anything else he wasn't to get into, and he did it in a very short time.  When I went to check on him, I looked in their room and what a mess I found.  He looked like a circus clown and smelled of perfume.  He was a sight to behold and so was their room.  I took him into our rooms and put him into a tin tub that we bathed in.  His head and hair was a mess as were his hands, arms and the clothes he had on.  I told him he wasn't to go into his aunts' room and that they would be very unhappy with him when they came home from school.  Sure enough when they came home from school and saw the mess he had made, they were very unhappy with him.  Cleo told them it was as much their fault as it was his, but from then on their door was shut tight, for which I was very happy.

Cleo and Frank

When Grandpa and Grandma Cook came home from their mission, Grandpa wanted Cleo to live upstairs still. but I told him we needed to find a place of our own to live in.  So we moved into Roberts and lived in a small two room house of Bessie Jones.  This was 26 May 1940.  We needed a place where Franklin could play outside and I could watch him, also Grandma Cook needed to be over her daughters.  Our land lady Bessie Jones was something else.  She would be on your doorstep the day your rent was due so she could have the money.  She stayed there till she got it, sometimes it was quite late as Cleo drove back and forth to farm.  It was nice to be by ourselves.

Vergil Franklin Cook

Cleo, Ruth and Frank on left with Atha and Opal's family
and others I am not sure of.