Renewing Old Friendships of almost half a century ago

My friend, Alan L'Homme from High school days

Al and his wife, Kay

Today I met an old friend, Alan, that I knew in high school. He found me on Facebook the end of August sometime. He and his wife came for the Thanksgiving holidays and spent some time in Clearfield with their daughter. Their son-in-law is stationed at Hill Air Force base in computers.

We had lunch in Salt Lake City at the Lion House. We had a great visit and talked over old times as teen-agers. He was actually a good friend of my boyfriend, Wally. We caught up on old news. When I saw him, he was a lot taller than when I knew him. It was kind of comical to see him so tall and I said, "You grew taller!" What a strange thing to say to a sixty-some year old man. Right? It had been about 48 years since I had seen him.

He was so much fun to get to know all over again. He was kind of a side kick and my friend would bring his friends over to hang out. It wasn't a very long friendship, but Alan said I wrote to him when he was in Viet Nam. I didn't remember that he was there, but I do remember writing him. He was in the Navy. He told me I was the only one of his friends who wrote to him. I feel bad now that I had not kept in touch, but people just kind of move on; I got married so that ended a lot of contact with friends from high school, anyway.

We talked about his family, etc. He is the only survivor of his immediate family. His dad died when I knew him, then he has lost three brothers and his mother. He is not LDS, but a good man. He said he is fairly open minded when it comes to religion. His wife was very kind and seemed like a very good lady, too. She is retired also. We had a good time and I am pleased to have met them both.




He seemed to be very impressed with the Lion House, so I took him and his wife, Kay to tour the Beehive House after lunch. We walked over there and found the tours were guided by sister missionaries. They gave a short overall sketch of Brigham Young and showed us where he lived and about his family's life. Alan made various comments and said he was very interested in history. As we walked through the sisters offered to send representatives to their home. He and his wife declined.




We continued after the Brigham Young home to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. We had met there when they came in from the parking, so I told them about the genealogy center and that we ought to give it a try to research his family roots. He sounded excited.



The missionaries were so helpful. I put Kay on a computer to find her ancestors. She really had a lot of success in tracing her roots. I helped Alan and we found his grandparents and great-grandparents. There were numerous ways to trace from a 1920 census to find his father as a child. Then when we found his grandparents' names we went to the 1900 census and found a gold mine of information too.

I felt the visit was a success and some good seeds were planted. The missionary who helped us get most of the copies they needed, casually asked them before leaving if they could send a representative to share with them why we search for our families. He said, "Sure." His interest was piqued by the success we had in finding his family. He was delighted to say the least at the results of our searches.

I encouraged them to go to their local stake center in his neighborhood to have the helpers guide them along to find out more. I believe they will. They will be back in July he said, and intend to stay a month instead of two weeks. I look forward to have more time to visit with Al & Fay when they come back to Utah.