He died on February
6, 1982 at age 69, almost 31 years ago.
ARNOLD G. ALBERTSON –
LIFE SKETCH
on the day that made 27
years since he had passed away.
ARNOLD GEORGE ALBERTSON
was born December 8, 1912 in Jackson, Cassia County, Idaho to Clarence
Albertson from Albion and Blanche Ilene Hartwell, originally from Salt Lake
City, then Burley, Idaho. He was the oldest of their 8 children.
When Arnold was about 10 they moved to Montana, and
homesteaded a large ranch until his Dad had a severe head injury in a combine
accident at harvest time, and was unconscious for 45 days. Clarence's sister, Salome,
was a nurse and took Clarence to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. After they did all they could, she had her
brother and family move to Idaho in the Hagerman valley where she and her
husband, Earl Justice, lived, so she could help take care of him.
Arnold, who was 13 at the time of the accident, had hidden
all the money earned from the crops in an empty tomato can in their basement.
When the authorities foreclosed on their home and ranch in Montana, Arnold was
able to pay for the train tickets for his mother and siblings to get to
Hagerman.
Arnold
said his Dad was tough on them before, but after the accident became even
meaner and beat their mother. When Arnold was about 16, he stood up to his Dad
and said they weren't going to let their mother be treated that way anymore. He
helped his mother get a divorce, and Clarence moved back to Albion where he
lived near other Albertson relatives until his death there in Sept 1955. He had
had no further contact with his wife and children; never knowing any of his
grandchildren.
When I went to his funeral in Albion when I was 16, I
couldn't believe I'd had a grandfather living that close to Wendell, where we
lived, and I had never known him.
Arnold worked very hard to help his mother...even building a
little house for her and the kids, after their little shack burned down. All
the family photos and possessions burned in the fire, but the 8 children were
okay.
Arnold graduated from
Hagerman High School when he was older than 18 because he'd not had a chance to
go to school regularly from working on the farm so much. During the Depression
he worked in the CCC's up in the McCall forest area where they were building
roads. He was the cook and one day ate a whole huge #10 can of the canned
pineapple, which he'd never had before, but after that he never liked pineapple
again. He sent most of his paycheck home
every week to his mother to buy food for the family.
He fell in love with
Verna Huffaker from Wendell when he was 23 and she was 15. He kept trying to get her to drop out of
school and marry him but she insisted she wanted to finish school.
Finally, at the start of her senior year, when she was 17,
he "dared" her to elope and she "double dared" him back,
and they with their best friends, Marie and Ralph, had a double wedding the
next day in Hailey.
He worked as a cook and card dealer in Wendell, Hagerman,
Ketchum, then as the goal tender at the Guggenheim Gold Mine in Jarbridge,
Nevada. When the gold ran out and the mine closed, he had friends in Long
Beach, California who convinced him to come to ship fitter school there and
then got him a job in the ship yards in October 1941. It took him 3 months to
find housing and earn enough money for us to join him.
I was born a year and three months after they married, so
got to be in Wendell, Hagerman, Ketchum, Jarbridge, then to California with
them.
That's my first
memory, at age 3 riding on the bus with my Mom to California a month after the
Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. My Mom
said I would wink at all the sailors and soldiers on the bus and they winked
back. The day that World War II was
over--2 September 1945* (footnote 1)-- we were in downtown Long Beach taking my
Grama Huffaker to the Greyhound bus station for her return to Idaho after
visiting us. Confetti and ticker tape
were everywhere in the air, horns honking, people crowding in the streets and
everyone so happy.
That same month we
moved back to Wendell, Idaho, where Daddy began to work as a carpenter and did
that for the rest of his life.
Because of the
complications my mother had after my birth, she was told she would never be
able to have more children. However,
when I was 10 1/2 my baby sister, Janice was born. Mom told me that Arnold
could not wait to get home after work to play with her. We were all overjoyed to become a family of
four.
Mom had gotten
her high school diploma while in California through a correspondence course,
and when I was a junior and senior she went to night classes at the Twin Falls
Business College after working at the Wendell Cleaners all day. She was able to
get a great job as secretary to the boss of the Southern Idaho Production
Credit Association in Gooding. Daddy didn't want her driving on the roads in
the winter, and since he had to drive all over Magic Valley anyway for his
carpentry jobs, he said Gooding would be their new hometown.
Right after the war we lived in the old McBurney teacherage
school house out in the country near my grandparents. When it was put up for auction, Daddy bought
it, had it moved to town, and built on to it making it into a beautiful home. [Photo at
left; home on Utah St., Gooding, Idaho below 1957-61,]
Then when they moved
to Gooding in 1957, right after I had graduated from Wendell High School and
gone to business college in Salt Lake City, they rented a tiny house while he
built Mom her "dream home." [Sorry
we don’t have a photo. Janice do you have a photo of it?]
However, he sold it
before she got to live in it because he was afraid he couldn't make the
payments of $120 a month. Mom made $200
a month at the PCA and I don’t know if he made much more than that in carpentry. He bought a little 20x28 house on Wyoming
Street and kept building on to it until it became a beautiful home for her,
which she doesn't want to leave.
My Dad ended his carpenter years as the maintenance man for
the new Tupperware plant in Jerome, commuting from Gooding. He had just retired and was planning to open
"Arnold's Antiques" in the big honey shed behind their home that had
come with the original purchase. Mom and Dad had collected lots of wonderful
antiques from many Saturday auctions all over the Magic Valley. Mom had one
more year until her retirement in 1983 after 26 years at her great job with the
Southern Idaho PCA. So Arnold had been
looking at trailers for them to do some traveling in.
He loved to fish, and
when I was little I would go with him to the Malad River in Hagerman...until I
saw a snake there, and that ended my fishing trips with my Dad.
But his retirement plans never materialized when he was
diagnosed with colon cancer in August 1981, and after 4 surgeries, the doctors
told him the tumor was growing faster than they could cut it out.
My Daddy was converted and baptized in July 1954. Arnold and
Verna were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple the day Walt and I were married
there, June 14, 1961. Janice and I were sealed to our parents.
He would call his grandkids "little scaliwags,"
and it was a joy to me that our boys got to go fishing with him and Grampa
Huffaker one time.
He liked to tease and loved baseball. When I was a junior,
during the World Series of 1955, he "rented" a TV set. He was so
excited to actually see the games that he never took the TV back, arranging to
make payments until he owned it. That's why I'm a die-hard Yankee fan to this
day...my Daddy loved the Yankees.
He was quiet, like his
mother and never liked to stand out in a crowd, and was a staunch Democrat,
which I am not. Mom said they just canceled out each other's vote at election
time. He was a union man, believing the unions helped the working man, but the
Union didn't come through for him at his death, not giving his widow the right
benefits. However, she has had a good
retirement pension from her years with PCA.
His mother, Blanche Ilene Hartwell Albertson, passed away on July 27, 1966, at the age of 72. She is buried at the Hagerman, Idaho Cemetery
He smoked and drank coffee for many years, and he said Mom
learned how to make really good coffee for him, even though she never drank
it. I heard him occasionally cuss a
little when he hit his finger with the hammer.
But I never heard him take the Lord's name in vain. Two weeks before he died I heard him say:
'Damn cancer!"
I look forward to seeing him again in the Spirit World. I
pray each day that he is happy and successful in his missionary work in heaven. I wish he could come get Mom soon.
End of this life
sketch I wrote in 2009 from memory because I had none of our family histories
with me in Argentina. I have just added the photos
for this 2012 update.
Posterity
Arnold & Verna have 2 children, 11 grandchildren, and 45 great-grandchildren with 1 more due in March 2014. I hope to post some photos of his posterity, also.
Update: Sunday, May 15, 2022
Posterity
of Arnold & Verna Huffaker Albertson
Posterity
of Walter & Eileen Albertson Petersen
Posterity
of Janice Lynn Albertson Robertson
As
of May11 2022
Posterity of
Arnold & Verna Huffaker Albertson
Children – 2
Spouses of Children – 2
G-Children – 11
Spouses of G-Children – 10
G-G-Children – 54
Spouses of G-G-Children – 11
GG-G Children – 8,
2 more due in 2022
Posterity
of Walter & Eileen Albertson Petersen
Children
– 7
Spouses of Children - 6
G-Children
– 39
Spouses of G-Children – 6
G=G-Children
- 2
Posterity
of Janice Lynn Albertson Robertson
Children
– 4
Spouses of Children – 4
G-Children – 15
Spouses of G-Children – 5
G-G-Children
– 4
As
of May 2022
