Mary Wells Williams

Mary was born February 22, 1918, in St. George Utah, to Eliza Everett and St. George Wells. She was the youngest child in the family. Mary never talked much about her family and her growing up years, always saying, "There isn't anything to tell." So I will post some pictures and write what little I know from what Howard said. Here is a picture of baby Mary and a later picture of her with the entire family.

Standing in the back are Rachael, Annie, and George. Front row are Harold, Steve, Eugene, Eliza, Mary, and St. George. Rachael died with the miscarriage of her first child, and Eugene died unexpectedly at age 29 from a heart condition. Both George and Harold married and had families, but they died from heart attacks at fairly young ages, leaving their wives to raise the children. Annie and Steve lived full life-expectancies. Val has no memories of his grandmother, and just a dim recollection of seeing his grandfather.

This is Mary, probably about the time she and Howard were dating.

They met when a friend of Howard's invited him to go to St. George for an activity with some friends. They married in the St. George Temple June 1, 1939

Howard and Mary became the parents of three sons, Val Dean, Clinton, and Richard. She loved her sons, but she always lamented the fact that she never had a daughter. She laughingly admitted that before Clinton was born she had prepared for a baby girl and had several little dresses for him. He wore them for the first couple months until he outgrew them.

The most memorable part of Val's childhood was spending summers on his grandpa's farm, so his memories of home life in St. George are a little vague. These are things he can remember: His mother worked for a couple different laundries, washing and ironing linens for the hospital and various motels. The last one she worked for was Covey's. There always seemed to be fresh oatmeal cookie in the kitchen. The family lived in two or three different houses in St. George until they bought and settled in the one on 600 East. It had just two bedrooms, so she and Howard used the smaller one, and the three boys bunked up in the larger one. They had a set of metal bunk beds. She was not religious but was always willing to help the Relief Society with flowers and food whenever there was a funeral. In fact, her calling was to see that the flowers got from the funeral to the vehicles that would carry them to the cemetery. She always wore a dress with an apron over it. He said Christmasses were pleasant, and that they always got a new pair of Levis to go with the pair they got at the beginning of each school year.

Val remembers that when they went to visit Howard's parents at the farm, he would always go to sleep on the way home. After the trip, his mother would cook up a bunch of scrambled eggs they had brought back - cracked ones that couldn't be sold - and often they had waffles with them.

I have fond memories of Mary. She treated me very well, and I was always comfortable around her. She kept her home spotless, everything always in its proper place. She loved flowers, especially roses, and she worked in the yard, nurturing her roses and tending the flower beds.

Mary loved the color red. She wore alot of red in her clothing, and her Christmas trees were decorated with red bulbs and lights. She dressed nicely all the time, and her hair was always perfectly in place. She was proud of her naturally wavy hair, and she kept it tinted it's natural color, which was brown with red tints in it. I think she called the tint, "henna." Anyway, it looked nice all the time. She liked to do embroidery work in the evenings, and she gave me a couple pairs of pillowcases she had embroidered. She especially liked using shiny rayon floss.

Chad was their first grandchild, and after he was born they came to Summit almost every Sunday afternoon to see him while Val was in Viet Nam. They came to Texas once when we lived there, and to California several times. Following pictures were taken

in Texas.

Mary was proud of her family, and she liked to get us together for special occasions like birthdays and for a dinner right before Christmas.

Here she is holding baby Randy.

And here she is with baby David. This was taken the end of January or the first part of Febuary 1981 and is the last picture I took of her. She was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in the fall of 1980 and had radiation treatments on her thyroid and on a spot in her upper thigh where cancer was discovered in the bone. The following spring she began having trouble thinking and remembering. She was excited to make matching dresses for Clinton's little girls, and I was helping her. She came over one morning with some sewing and was upset because she had received a letter from someone, and although she could read it, she couldn't comprehend what it said. She was pretty frightened. Other symptoms soon showed up, and a CAT scan at the LDS Hospital in Salt Lake in April showed more cancer in various spots, including her brain. They tried a treatment to shrink the one in her head so she could come home and have a few weeks or months to prepare for death, but it didn't help. She went into a coma, and Val and I went to Salt Lake in our station wagon and brought her back to St. George on May 2nd. She died early the morning of May 3, 1981.

Her passing left a big empty spot in the Howard Williams family. We've all missed her very much and will be glad to see her again when that day comes.