I just wanted to make it clear that he had served in the military because he was quite proud of having done so, and he would have wanted that known.

You all know about the book and documentary SAINTS AT WAR, I hope.

I don’t know if this will accept a link, but it’s a Covenant book

http://www.covenant-lds.com/osb2/itemdetails.cfm?ID=49

about LDS soldiers in WWII. I have a copy around here somewhere, but I don’t remember if there were any women included.

I believe the authors are still collecting information and have a book on the LDS soldiers in the Korean and Vietnam wars. Robert Freeman also has one on 19th century LDS soldiers.

2. My (LDS) mother was first a WAAC and then a WAC; I sometimes still wear her service ring, although the gold has worn so smooth that it’s hard to recognize if you don’t already know what it was. I wonder how many others were with her? In all her stories, she only ever mentioned one other WAC whose LDS-ness figured in the story.

3. No need to wait for someone to take up a collection, Mark B; send your own donation directly! ;-)

Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury’s comments raise a few more research questions for you, when you get distracted in the library from your paid work.

1. My father, who like Bro. Dalton and, more famously, Elder Maxwell, is a WW2 veteran who served a mission after his military service. He said that there was counsel from church leadership that those who had served in the military did not need to feel themselves obligated to serve missions, because of the already long interruption to their young lives caused by the war. Is there documentary evidence (a 1st Presidency letter, for example) of this counsel?

2. Were there any women who did the same? (Which raises another question: how many LDS women were there who served in the auxiliary services–WAC, WAAF, WAVES,–or as nurses in the Medical Corps?)

3. Since 2 would require a lot of work, I’d be willing to settle for some anecdotal evidence. Or else we’ll have to get T&S bosses to take up a collection to pay you for it.

My own clarification of the remark about men making themselves available for military service. During World War II, virtually no men were permitted to serve missions — the government required that, if they were fit, they were candidates for military service. When the war was finally over and men were free to plan their own lives again, your father didn’t choose to do something focusing on himself and his own future (i.e., he didn’t immediately go to school, or focus on building a career, either of which would have been understandable of any man after so many years of not being able to control his life) — instead, your father was among the first in that new era to volunteer to serve a mission. That was intended as a compliment to him. I did not say that he shirked military duty by becoming a missionary, and I’m sorry that you apparently read it that way.

She was a granddaughter to Benjamin Franklin Johnson, associate of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Her father, Heber Franklin Johnson, took his family to Mexico where they lived in the Mormon colonies a while, and then further south towards Chihuahua.

When Pancho Villa went on his anti-Gringo rampages, she and her family had to flee north and had a narrow escape from an encounter with some of Villa’s soldiers. That is an interesting story of its own.

Her husband, Patrick Daly Dalton, was born in Colorado and orphaned as a boy. His aunt in Salt Lake County took him in, but was unable to handle him and planned to send him to an orphanage. He had made friends with children of the Fox family and they persuaded their mother to give him a home. He and Grant Fox served in an artillery unit in World War I, and when he died in 1939, it was from complications from gas poisons he was exposed to in France.

I just want to stress that my father did not serve his mission “rather than make himself available for military service.” He followed his father’s example and joined up as soon as he was old enough, even though WWII ended before he was actually able to go overseas. His mission came after that.

My sister came upon this posting while looking for articles my father had published in the MILLENIAL STAR while he was on his mission, but we had no idea that the letter had been published there as well.

To add a few details, my father went on his mission after WWII because he had served in the air force, training to be an aerial gunner, during the war.

My grandmother served a mission herself in the late 50s, after all of her children were grown and raising their own families. I remember being able to read her letters from her mission (she served in the Kansas/Missouri area, though I’m not certain what the mission was actually called at that time–guess I’ll have to look it up), even though she wrote in cursive and I was supposed to be too young to be able to read cursive.

When I was an adult, she told me a story from her mission that I think you all might enjoy.

She said she and her companion had gone to teach a woman and found that the woman had invited another woman to be present during the discussion. This woman apparently intended only to heckle, because she started out by asking my grandmother and her companion how they liked being “concubines.”

My grandmother asked the woman if she knew what a concubine was, and the woman made some remark about polygamy.

My grandmother then looked her right in the eye (she showed me the look, as she told me the story) and said, “A concubine was a woman given to a man ’till death do you part’.” Then she pointed to herself and said, “I was married to my husband for time and all eternity. I am a wife.” She pointed to the heckler. “You are a concubine.”

The woman was stunned into silence, and my grandmother and her companion went on to give their prepared lesson.

Sister Dalton’s letter was published in the Millennial Star soon after it was written — evidently Elder Dalton shared it with more than the man it was written to, and the Star staff recognized how effective it might be for a wider audience.

Thank you for sharing the story of my grandmother\’s support for my father while he was on his mission. She truly was quite a woman.

I’m curious, though, to know where you found the letter. I thought the original was in our family\’s hands, and I’m wondering from what archive or repository you obtained it or a copy of it. Please email me through the Association for Mormon Letters if you feel you can\’t be that specific here.

Thank you,
Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury
AML executive secretary

Mark B., I have the sweetest little racket going. People actually pay me to read mountains of records, looking for the little pieces they need to complete their arguments or add sparkle to their articles. If they knew how much fun I had doing it, they’d probably charge me for the privilege! Along the way, I watch for gems like Ora’s letter, then do a little research to fill out the picture. In this case, you see it’s nothing more than what could be found in an obituary or in the minutes of a ward Relief Society. In other cases, it takes a lot more work. But Ora is so perfect in her simplicity and candor that she needed only the plainest frame to make us see her beauty.