Life Sketch of Alice Ann Smith Royter I am going to begin this with Mom's own report of her birth. "I came into this world in Twin Falls, ID at my Aunt Alice's home. My parents had driven from Jerome to be as close as possible to the Wood Maternity Home where my older brother was born. Aunt Nell and Uncle Laurence, my mom and dad, and Aunt Alice sat joking and laughing until the small hours when they decided they should get some rest. Aunt Nell and Uncle Laurence went home but when mom stood up she discovered she was in full labor. Aunt Alice and Aunt Nell were R.N.s and Aunt Alice delivered me and took care of us until Dr. Lamb could get there. I was named for her and my grandmother Anna Dorothea Benson Dalton. That was March 13, 1933 at 9 AM. Within that year Aunt Alice died of pneumonia." She went home to Jerome with her parents Lloyd and Bertha Smith who taught her to be frugal and a hard worker and she worked hard all of her life. And man was she frugal. I remember Gramma writing that Mom was a very happy and cheerful child. When she was a girl, her mother, with heart trouble and other ailments for quite a few years, when she was well worked as grampa's unpaid secretary. Grampa was the local manager for Idaho Power, a service which is no longer provided. So, at 10 years old my mom assisted in running the house. She cleaned, did laundry and cooked meals. This made it difficult for mom to do much studying and that bothered her all her life. I read a letter that her mother had written expressing her sorrow that Alice Ann had been required to make such a huge sacrifice and seriously, it was a major sacrifice for her. I think that because of that she was very determined that her daughters learn how to do things meticulously. To this day I notice the details because I couldn't stand her pointing out things I had missed. And I have appreciated that very much in my life. On talking with Mom recently she told me that she thought her girls were so wonderful that all they needed was to have pointed out what they were doing wrong, and they would be perfect. I think she forgot we really needed to know what we were doing right, but when she was growing up it was considered bad parenting to over praise a child. Her sister Edele told me that while growing up Mom got plenty of practice telling her what she was doing wrong. I am not sure she knew how proud Mom was of her little sister and that she felt that she was the most talented and beautiful little sister she could have; so, stand up straight, pull in your tummy and fix your hair was her way of saying I admire you. She adored her parents and loved to tell stories of the things her father would do. One Halloween he wrapped chicken wire around their outhouse, which was not a decorative item then, and then ran wire to the porch light thus making touching it a really bad idea as several of the towns young men discovered to their dismay. It seems that it was a thing to knock over outhouses on Halloween night. Every year grampa would wrap the outhouse and it was never touched again. Mom reported that it was only electrified the first year. Her dad worked for Idaho Power all of his adult life and as the district manager they lived in Jerome, Shoshone and Oakley Idaho and after she left home, Hailey and Buhl. Mom's clearest memories were of living in Oakley where she graduated from high school. Mom later attended nursing school for two years in Pocatello where she would meet her future husband, Richard LaMonte Royter. Mom was so beautiful, and Dad was smitten. He charmed her with his good looks, great singing voice and fun sense of humor. They were married and soon expecting me, and Mom quit nursing school. All of her life she felt it important to present herself as well as was possible and even with a limited budget she managed to look elegant. She had a flair and love of the dramatic, and that was reflected in her enjoyment of wearing red and black; that and the fact that she looked really good in them. This summer while I was caring for her after a fall, Alanna and Shannon, two of my granddaughters came in to visit with her. Her granddaughter Tessa had done her nails and they were a striking gold color. For some reason she thought they had stayed that way for months and she credited the gold polish, forgetting that they had been retouched a few times. She was showing them off and waved her hands saying; "they make me feel sexy". That delighted the girls. Mom's childhood vacations were spent either going on one of grampa's fishing trips or up to scout camp with her mom and younger sister Edele, because Grampa and Uncle Lloyd were avid scouts. She really hated that and vowed she would never camp again. So, when mom and dad bought property on the Cascade reservoir two miles outside of Donnelly, Idaho they built a quite nice home from a cabin brought down from Stibnite, a mining town in Central Idaho. It was brought down on a logging truck and was the first to be transported whole; all the previous cabins having been cut in half to go down the narrow mountain roads. Being bisected made it necessary for them to be completely re-wired which was a huge expense and it was a blessing that they didn't need to. She and dad did most of the work themselves; digging out a daylight basement, pouring concrete forms and placing the house on it. I watched them doing that with metal pipes to roll the house across the foundation and a Jeep pulling it, Crazy Cool. They took out walls and put in two fireplaces with brick salvaged from buildings torn down in Boise. I remember a lovely place with thick wool carpet in burnt orange to match some of the "mismatched" brick of the upstairs fireplace; the downstairs was more of a rose red. The fireplaces were actually used to warm the house. It had an open concept kitchen and living room which looked out over the lake through large picture windows; and yes, TV and a phone; so, no camping. That was the first open concept house I had ever seen and that is where we watched the moon landing. I wasn't impressed with it as Star Trek wasn't as grainy. As kids we spent a lot of time playing on the deck that spanned the entire front of the house. One fall after staining the deck, mom came to a program at my school. She was very elegant with beautifully done hair, wearing a lovely dress and white gloves; in the 60's ladies did that. All the other mothers were impressed by the trouble she had gone to for her daughter's program and I was very proud of her. When we got home, I commented on how delighted I had been that she had looked nicer than all of the other mothers. She held out her hands and said, "That was the only way I could cover the stains on my hands, and I didn't want to embarrass you." That was Mom. She frequently did special little things that I adored and influenced things that I did for my own children. Once when I was sick, she brought my lunch in on a tray and there was a little bouquet of violets on it, for that reason I love violets to this day. Another time both my sister Tamella and I were sick, and she made trays out of cardboard boxes that when you turned them over were little doll houses. I loved it when she occasionally re-decorated our rooms, usually when we were staying with one of our grandmothers so it would be a surprise when we came home. I remember her giving us heart shaped boxes of chocolates on Valentines and she always made Christmases very special. When I was around seven, I overheard my grandmother asking mom why she hadn't gotten the new coat she really needed, and I never forgot mom saying, "My girls needed coats more." The property at Donnelly was a huge part of our childhood and mom worked hard to keep it for us. Mom and Dad had purchased it with us in mind so that we didn't have to spend summers in town with nothing to do. They had both grown up in the country and felt it was the best place for kids. Keeping it wasn't so easy. Because of dad's employment, a couple of times it was a problem to make payments both on the house in Boise and the one up at the lake as we referred to it. However, if the property was occupied the bank wouldn't foreclose. So, there were a couple of winters that we spent part of them up at the lake. It was heaven for us kids but must have been a nightmare for Mom. One time after a heavy snow fall, we opened the kitchen door to a wall of snow that reached to the roof and that had to be dug out so Mom could get to the coal we used as fuel for the fireplaces. Dad had fashioned a clever forced air system that blew the warmed air out from above the fire box on both the upstairs and downstairs fireplaces. We had electric wall heaters in the other parts of the house. I can remember her digging huge lumps of coal out of the snow and lugging them into the house because they burned longer than wood; she also split and carried in wood because it burns hotter. Once when the power went out, she carried in snow and melted it by the fire so we could cook, bathe and flush toilets. Our water came from our well which had an electric pump. Mom and Dad had dug the well themselves and we had the best tasting water in the area, many people having reached a stratum of sulfur when dug by the professional well diggers. A few weeks after that bad snow, Mom and Dad were having dinner in McCall and overheard some power company linemen talking about staying up on the mountain getting the lines back up in a blizzard, because some crazy woman lived out by the lake with her kids. She was afraid they would know it was her, which Dad thought was hilarious. Dad came up on weekends that winter and that was always the pattern during every summer. Fortunately, he was able to take long vacations. We had to park our car about a quarter of a mile from the house because the road got washed out that winter. Unloading the car was an onerous task, but Mom and Dad would wade through the snow with us, get the house warm then wade back and forth carrying supplies; did I mention it was a quarter of a mile? Mom would bake delicious bread and make wonderful soups and stews. I particularly loved her cinnamon rolls that I discovered other people call sticky buns. Mom was a marvelous cook and many people enjoyed goodies from her kitchen. She was probably best known for her amazing pies and she would share them literally with half the neighborhood. At one time Mom would make dozens of pies and take them to the "Sycamore Stroll", a neighborhood street fair where she sold them. One day we were talking to a friend in our ward on the other side of town and when he found out I was her daughter he got very excited. He told us he drove over to the Sycamore Stroll every year to buy as many pies as Mom would let him. Mom's cooking was so good that Dad felt going out to dinner was a step down and there were many things she made that I have never had anywhere else that measured up. She was also well known for her candy making and she spent weeks making them up and sharing at Christmas with family and friends. People would even bring her sugar and chocolate which she much appreciated. Cooking was Mom's creative outlet and there she shone. She was also a good seamstress, but cooking she enjoyed. Mom was a member of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, which made her feel closer to her mom. Anything that had belonged to her parents was precious to her and she cherished many of the things her mom left her. She once got upset with the missionaries for using one of her mom's towels as a rag, which in truth it was by then, but it had been her mom's. Mom was always very active; she and Dad loved dancing and went whenever they could. They were really good swing dancers and when they would go to dances it was not unusual for people to stop dancing to watch them. During her last weeks we would play Big Band music and she would dance with her hands. She would frequently comment on a song saying she had danced it with Dad at this or that place or time. One afternoon two of her great-granddaughters that she lived with, stood in the doorway and danced to the music as well, which delighted her. Near the end she responded to the music when she didn't respond to anything else, one time holding up her arms as though she was putting her hands on Dad's shoulder and hand. She raised and canned a garden every year even when she was working full time for Ore-Ida. In fact, she would take her vacation time for canning. I remember barely getting to eat the fresh fruit she brought home from picking in Emmett because it all needed to go into jars for the winter. Mom took great satisfaction in having a well-stocked pantry and we benefited from that greatly when times were tough. Mom worked for Ore-Ida foods from 1968 to 1995 and developed their billing system for the military. When Mom retired, they actually had to hire two people to take her place. While Mom was working for Ore-Ida she and Dad divorced after 25 years and she then looked for other sources of income to supplement after retirement. She built a loft apartment onto the house as an income property which had mixed success but provided temporary housing for various family members who greatly appreciated the use of the space. A few years after the divorce Mom and Dad were both diagnosed with cancer and as my sisters and I tried to come up with a way to care for both of them, Mom graciously offered to have Dad move into a spare bedroom and the loft apartment was used by which ever sister was staying with them at the time. More than once Dad asked me if he had made a mistake when he divorced her. Once Dad recovered, he went to live with Tami and Mom once again had her beloved home to herself. That was the home where many of our best memories were lived and it was very special to her for that reason, and she really wanted it to stay in the family. The years spent on Clearview and in Donnelly were filled with a lot of singing and laughter. My dad was a natural cutup and mom was his best audience. We made many car trips to stay with one or the other grandmother or up to the lake, and the trips were always accompanied by dad teaching us to sing silly songs like Simon Slick. If you don't know it ask your grandmother. In her later years Mom found great joy in attending the Temple and went regularly with friends from the ward. Her ward family was very important to her. Her kids were even more important and before there were so many of us, she would have us over for Sunday dinners, until there were too many of us to fit in her house. As the family grew, she frequently had all of us over for BBQs during the summer, where she enjoyed watching the cousins grow close. She delighted in how adorable her great-grandchildren were and laughed that she couldn't remember all of their names but claimed them anyway. Mom had been a student nurse, which she is very proud of and told anyone whenever she had the chance, perhaps because two of her aunts and her sister were nurses. Because of that and also as a cancer survivor Mom was very conscience of maintaining good health habits. She would cook and freeze meals ahead so there was always a good meal ready when she needed it and she stayed very active and fit even through several illnesses. She rarely asked for help and was pretty independent until breaking her hip. Even then she insisted on doing most things for herself and impressed the home health nurses with her physical strength. At the end, the hospice nurses were impressed with her sense of humor and good nature in dealing with things. Growing up she would sing a song by Louis Armstrong; "When You're Smiling the Whole World Smiles with You"; usually when I was crying or whining about something. I think she tried to live by that, if not always successfully. I have to say that in the last few years her eating habits changed radically as aging caused her to not want to eat. At first, she would drink a lot of the complete nutrition shakes which her doctors advised us were the best for her. We tried to have one of us go over every day to be sure she had at least one meal a day but over time that was taken over by her grandson John Jay and he was always there to keep an eye on her and often cooked for her. I think our visits mattered more than the food. In time Jay could no longer take care of her needs and her grandson Brian, his wife Alyssa and their family moved in with her. It took her awhile to get used to having children living in the house, but if she could see them, she was enchanted, if not she was sure they were tearing the house down. Bless Alyssa's heart I don't know what we would have done without her. Mom still loved sweets and one day before I was caring for her, when I walked in, she hid a candy bar from me. I thought it was hilarious; first because of the whole role reversal thing of hiding sweets and second because when we were growing up, she always maintained she didn't like chocolate and usually bought licorice and something called burnt peanuts which were just peanuts in a candy shell. I found her choices disappointing when she filled our Easter baskets with things that only tasted of sugar, and NO Chocolate Bunnies. Her one food passion at the end of her life, were Kraft caramel bits that go into baking. If she ran out, she would sulk until I bought more. Wendy once texted to tell me that mom had run out and was, in mom's words "wasting away". I would go to Walmart and buy an entire box of a dozen packages at a time. I rotated between three stores and I have no idea what they thought. Last Halloween Mom's ministering sister brought her a bag of Dum Dum suckers for Mom to hand out to her great grandkids. Alyssa listened to the rattling of the package and the rustling of wrappers all night over the baby monitor. The next morning, she wasn't too surprised to find the floor covered with wrappers but was surprised that there were no sticks. I later found the uneaten suckers carefully packed away in a tissue box. Mom wondered who would do that because she hadn't. She was also sure someone else was eating her caramels. The last thirty years of her life she spent mostly living alone with sporadic housing of missionaries, children and grandchildren. It wasn't until the end of her life that I discovered that she had spent most of that time afraid. Afraid of not having enough retirement money to live on, afraid of the dark, afraid of intruders, and afraid that she had been such a bad mother that her children would abandon her in her old age. She would wake up feeling anxious and would then search her memory for reasons why. It wasn't until we recognized this and consulted with her doctor that she received appropriate anti-anxiety medication and regained her natural personality. After that she was a hoot and enjoyed making others laugh. Mom had four daughters, four sons-in-law, 16 grandchildren and 32 great-grandchildren. Mom always wanted sons and had four daughters and so her sons-in-law were very special to her. One Sunday at church a friend told me that she was impressed with how well I got along with my mother-in-law. I replied that it wasn't too difficult as she had been dead for two years. She looked shocked and asked, "Isn't Alice Ann your mother-in-law?" (Mom always introduced my husband John as her son so her confusion was understandable.) I replied, "No, she is my mom; she just likes John better." She was like that about all of her sons-on law, they were her boys. And she felt she was well repaid for her patience when she had 13 grandsons and 14 great-grandsons. She also had 3 granddaughters and 16 great-granddaughters which if you are counting, that is 27 boys to 19 girls. But with Mom the boys were the apple of her eye although she would never admit it. She didn't seem to notice that she would nearly always do what the guys asked when she wouldn't do the same things for her daughters, hence Jay taking over getting her to eat. When I was growing up Mom and her mom told me that "if you put down your burden because it is too heavy, someone else has to pick it up and carry it along with their own and that wasn't right; so, we carry our burdens as best we can". All of my life I have known I could do hard things, because my mom did them first. And when I couldn't I did my best anyway, because mom would have.
Add comment