Max L Wilson-Life Sketch Part 2

     Max L Wilson

Life Sketch

Given by President Myron Hancock

15 October 1997

       Another experience he had, as soon as he got his driver’s license, he wanted to drive like all the rest of us, I suppose.  They were coming out of Roberts and I think they had the old red panel wagon at the time and Max, and it might have been Frazier or somebody with him, they were gawking off looking at ducks flying.  Max drove the old panel wagon off the road and rolled it over on its side.  Joyce related that she didn’t think that Max ever got to drive again until he was about a senior in high school. 

     During the growing up years, he worked a lot for a couple of farmers there.  He worked for George L and Bud Hart in Menan.  He helped them haul hay.  That was back when you did it by hand.  He always loved working for Bud and George L.  George L’s wife had passed away and Bud was an old bachelor, so when it came dinner time, they loaded up the haying crew and took them over to the Roberts Café and told them they could have anything on the menu that they wanted to eat.  I know that all the young men liked to work there because that was a good experience in those days.  He also worked for Milt Hammon and the Fullmer’s picking spuds and different things. 

     As Max entered junior high and high school, he was always an out-standing athlete.  He played varsity basketball as a sophomore.  And Joyce related to me that one time in a game out to Salmon that he scored 40 or 50 points as they beat Salmon.  He was always a tremendous athlete. 

     He was always a good natured person when you were playing sports with him but you didn’t want to push him too far.  Bob Dansie related an experience about playing basketball with him.  He said that one night it was either in Burley or Marsh Valley or somewhere they were playing.  He had fouled a young man and the young man picked the basketball up and as he walked by Max he just kind of gently stuffed it in his stomach for him.  Max just caught the ball and gently bounced it off the guy’s head for him. 

      One night they were playing Shelley and they were behind by one point.  The game was coming to a close and Max was fouled.  He went to the foul line.  He had the opportunity to shoot two foul shots and he missed them both.  So Shelley won.  The family waited for him to come out of the locker room.  They waited until everybody had gone and still no Max.  Finally Bill went down to the locker room and Max wasn’t there and so he went out to the car.  Max was sitting out in the car with his head wrapped in a towel.  He had been crying because he felt like he had let the team down and had lost the game for them. 

     When Max was in junior high, he had the opportunity to start playing basketball.  I think there is where he had an experience with a teacher that probably helped develop in him the special love that he had for people to teach.  He wasn’t quite eligible to play basketball because of low grades and a teacher there by the name of Gene Palmer took it upon himself to tutor Max at every opportunity and to help him get his grades up so he could play sports. 

     Later on in his high school years, two coaches that were significant in his life were Coach Roh and Coach Stokes.  I had first hour Business Math with Max and Les Roh was our math teacher.  Especially during tournament time or something like that Max wouldn’t show up to Business Math but Coach Roh would mark him there because he wanted Max to rest up because of his bad heart.  All these years in sports he played with a bad heart because of the rheumatic fever and I don’t think too many people really knew that. 

     I was talking to Bob Dansie the other night and he related an experience that Max had with Coach Stokes.  He said that they were playing football one night and Max was the quarterback.  He said every play Max would run off that field to get the plays from Coach Stokes and he stepped on Coach Stokes’s foot every single time.  I can see Coach Stokes out here in the audience and he might still have a sore foot. 

     There was always been a rivalry with Rigby and Madison in football.  Madison had beat Rigby three years running by one point in football.  Bob Dansie said that Max was quarterback and Rigby was ahead.  They decided that if Madison scored a touchdown rather than let them beat them by one point they were going to fumble the football and let them beat them by at least a touchdown so they couldn’t say that they had beat them by one point.  But Rigby went on to win the ballgame. 

     Max was friends with everyone in high school with all the guys and all the gals but dating wasn’t really high on his list.  But his senior year he started to date a gal from down the street from him by the name of Joyce Cook.  At homecoming that year, he was voted Mr. Touchdown.  I was visiting with Joyce the other night and I asked her when she got her first kiss from Max.  She said that after they got home from the dance he asked her if Mr. Touchdown could get a kiss like all the other boys had gotten from their dates.  I asked Joyce if she had kissed him and she said she didn’t remember if she had or not.  But she must have done because this started a lasting relationship that would go on forever. 

     She related an experience that as they were dating and getting a little bit serious that Max liked to hunt and fish a little bit and he had this opportunity on a bright sunny day on a Sunday to go fishing.  She told him, “Max, you have got to make a choice it’s either me or fishing.”   He went fishing.  But Max had a great love for hunting and fishing.  There is a special spot up Medicine Lodge up on Steltzer’s up on Irwin Creek.  I know his family and the Helm family spent a lot of time up there and later on Max and I and our boys were to spend a lot of time there. 

     Joyce related that it was always a Wilson tradition that they would go fishing and camping and she said it was on Easter Sunday.  I told her I didn’t know whether it was Easter Sunday  because fishing season really doesn’t open until Memorial Day weekend.  And then I got thinking remembering Bill and Max and the rest of family and I said “Well, maybe the Wilsons did open that up.”  It was probably really good up there at that time.  

Max, Leah, Bill, and Quentin