A Tribute to Wanda by Lynn

It’s Only the Beginning

            I supposed things often happen in our lives and at the time we are totally unaware of their significance.  As I reminisce I am convinced this was the case that day so long ago.  It was forty-six years ago to be exact.  It doesn’t seem that long, but the calendar must be right.  She came up the steps of the old Education Building and started to the dean’s office, there across from the Little Theater.

            I had no idea where she was going.  I remember she was wearing a light blue dress, and her eyes, though somewhat darker, matched it perfectly.  She had to be a Freshman.  I was a senior and no one, who looked like she did, could have been at Brigham Young University for a full year without my noticing her before.  I don’t recall if I spoke to her at the time, bit I did try unsuccessfully to find out more about her.  Then I found her seated in the library one day and proceeded to learn what I wanted to know.  She said she was from a very small town named Peoa, up near Kamas.  I thought it might be a hoax of some kind.  Who ever heard of a place called Peoa?  I asked her for a date, though, and she already had one.

            She seemed quite sincere as a student, but I remember telling her that a Freshman as pretty as she would never make it to graduation.  My efforts from that moment were directed toward making sure that I was right.  I soon asked her for another date, with more success than on the first occasion, and from that first date, forty-six years ago in March, neither of us ever went with anyone else.  Even her name didn’t keep me from wanting to be with her.  It was Wanda.  The only girl I had ever known under that name was a neighbor with penny sized freckles who played the cello, or I should say murdered it.  She had a forty watt light bulb nose in addition to her other endowments and I was not particularly enamored with her.

            The Spring Quarter I was directing a short play for the Drama Department.  I got her to take the part of a crazy woman in it.  She did real well.  In fact I think she must have identified with the role, because when I asked her to marry me she said yes.  This was in April of 1934.  We were married three months later, on July 18, in the Manti Temple.

            Wanda was born in Peoa, Utah, on March 13, 1914.  She was the daughter of Ruby Marchant and Andrew Leslie Crandall.  At the tender age of five she lost the mother whom she never really learned to know.  Ruby Marchant died of complications involving pneumonia, influenza and child birth, leaving Wanda and five brothers and sisters.

            When her mother died Wand and four of here brothers and sisters were raised by Grandma Marchant, who still had a large family of her own at home.  In my heart, as well as verbally, I have thanked this wonderful woman, whom I never knew, so many times fro the sacrifices she must have made to raise all of those children as she did.  Each of them has lived to be a monument to her memory, and to her testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  How grateful I am for Wanda and the kind of person that she is.  I love her very much.

            Wanda attended high school at Kamas, Utah, and later went to Brigham Young University where we met.  She was majoring in Dramatics and so was I.  After our marriage we moved to Helper, Utah, where we spent the next thirty years in business.  Though our stores kept us really involved, we both continued to work in dramatics and other speech activity for years after our marriage.  Wanda helped me in producing and taking parts I many plays which we staged for the church and the community.  I recall vividly a production of Sun Up, in which she played the leading part.  It was a three act play and, as the mother in a Hill-billy drama, she smoked a corn-cob pipe all through he play.  She portrayed an excellent character, but it was difficult breaking her of the habit.  She still has the corn-cob pipe, incidentally.

            Wanda has always been faithful in the church and never quite content unless she was taking an active part.  While still living in Peoa she taught the small children in Sunday School and her first assignment after moving to helper, was also with this organization.  From 1935 to 1949 she worked in the M.I.A., serving with the Bee Hive Girls, the Mia Maids, the Junior Gleaners and the Gleaners, later she became first counsellor.  She also spent many years giving devoted service in the Relief Society Organization, where she first gave the Visiting Teaching Lessons, then worked as first counsellor under two different presidents.  Wanda was serving as Relief Society President at the time we decided to move to Cedar City.  Wanda had also been a member of the Stake Relief Society Board for many years while living in Helper.

            In Cedar City hte pattern did not change.  My wife first taught a Sunday School class in the Eighth Ward, then became a member of the Stake Relief Society Board serving the newly organized College Stake, where she remained until 1974.  After the Ninth Ward was divided she taught the Spiritual Living Class in the Thirteenth Ward Relief Society until our street was moved back into the Ninth Ward.  There she worked with me in teaching the Family Relations Class in Sunday School.  We are presently assisting with the baptismal program on a stake basis and filling a regular assignment for sealings at the St. George Temple.  Wanda is also teaching and enjoying a Primary class.  This is the first time she has ever worked in the Primary Organization.

            The first thirty years of our married life was spent in Helper, where all of our children were born.  We have two sons and three daughters.  (That is about as equally divided as possible.)  All of our children have graduated from college, three from Brigham Young University, one from Utah State, and one from the State College of Southern Utah.  Both sons have filled missions for the church, one in Germany and the other in Finland.  The Lord has been good to Wanda and me.  All of our children married in the temple (four of them at Manti and the other at Salt Lake).  They and their spouses continue to live very close to the church and all are participating in church organizations.  They have given us seventeen splendid grandchildren, eight boys and nine girls, again about as well divided as possible with seventeen.  We believe there are more to come.  Those grandchildren thing their Grandma is the greatest---and so do I.

            For all that she is I am so grateful to my beautiful wife.  I am grateful for the love that she gives me, grateful that she is so kind and good, grateful that she is such a wonderful mother.  I am grateful for the fine sons and daughters she bore me, grateful for the knowledge we share of the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ---but most of all---for the understanding of “Eternity” which we received that day in Manti, back in 1935, as we gazed up at the spires of the temple reaching far up into the blue---not quite as dark perhaps as the blue of her eyes, although nearly as beautiful, and both holding the same promise of for ever, and ever---and ever---and ever-----

A tribute to his wife Wanda, offered by Lynn Broadbent, to be presented in her honor on the occasion of a “This is Your Life Program” under the auspices of the Ninth Ward Primary Association, Cedar City, Utah, February 16, 1980.