Excerpt from the autobiography of Taft Rowberry WRATHALL
(1909 - 1985)
[Written approx. 1980 (age 71)]
Most people said I looked like my brothers although I always felt it was they that looked like me, especially Grant [ Grant Rowberry WRATHALL (1907 - 1984 )] and Lish [ Leishman Rowberry WRATHALL (1902 - 1977)]. They were both about as tall as I was (5' 8") but a little heavier. At age 71, just before stepping into the bath tub, I weighed 157 pounds. Jay [ John Rowberry WRATHALL
(1905 - 1959)] was taller and skinnier, being about 6 feet tall. My father (James L. Wrathall) was a couple of inches taller than me and built about the same -- not much fat, and in his later years just a trace of a stomach. He always had whiskers covering his face and very few visible wrinkles, even when he was older. What was under the bush, I don't know. He had a fair complexion with blue-gray eyes. To my knowledge, even through his final years, he had no serious physical handicaps and was always able to be quite active.
I didn't know my father very well; in many ways he was a complete stranger to me, and I really felt like I was raised without a father. Never once did he take me any place with him, he never sat down and talked to me, and the first time he even spoke to me person-to-person, to inquire of my plans and welfare, was in Salt Lake during my junior year at the University of Utah. I was taking ROTC and as part of this program, required to go to summer camp for six weeks at Fort Warren, in Cheyenne Wyoming. This camp was coming up the following summer. For the first time ever, he asked me about my plans. It was anything but an in-depth discussion as I was standing with him, during one of his infrequent visits with us in Salt Lake, as he waited for a streetcar to take him downtown so he could return to Grantsville. When I told him I was taking military training and would be at Fort Warren, he seemed shocked and said he wasn't sure the military and Fort Warren was such a good Idea.
[James L. Wrathall] was not given to many words and was rather soft-spoken. I never questioned his integrity nor heard of anyone who did. Never, not even once, did I bear him utter one word of profanity. He was intelligent, industrious, and although he never went to college, was a very successful stockman and businessman. He was a director of one of the large banks in Salt Lake, on the Board of Education in Tooele County and, I'm sure, had many other business activities and responsibilities which I was not aware of. Suave manners and gifted tongue were not two of his long suits. I recall on one occasion, as he was presenting diplomas to each member of the High School graduating class, he would say a few words to each person as he handed him his diploma. Often he had second thoughts and just as the nervous, anxious student reached out for the diploma, my father would withdraw it and say something else. This kept both the students and spectators in a constant twitter. Maybe -- just maybe, these second thoughts were part of an act - I wonder.
Another characteristic attributed to him [James L. Wrathall] was a tenacious nature. He would be in meetings when decisions were made and which he acquiesced to, but against his will. The next time the group met, he would bring up and argue these same points as if nothing had been decided before. How exasperating! (I recognize this trait in me and have had a number of my professional peers say, "Wrathall, you're a tenacious son-of-a-gun. Don't you ever give up?". Well, they were right because I did hate to give up on anything and I accepted this statement as a compliment, although I'm not sure it was meant to be.) I never considered my father a spiritual giant, but perhaps I just didn't know. I never received any blessing from him, that I recall, except when he blessed and named me, nor am I aware of anyone else who did, but after all, he was Bishop of the Grantsville First Ward for twenty years and that says something.
I'm sure I don't give my father all the credit he deserves and things must have been real hectic with the polygamy situation as it was. He probably had many experiences, trials, and tribulations, that I am completely unaware of. For example, about 1973, we had just stopped by Sister Thulins, in Palo Alto [California], on one of our visits while living in Bellevue, Washington. She was showing us a large old, old book, tattered and yellowed from age. This book was a day-by-day account of significant things that happened, to the church or in the early history of the church. It was a kind of day-by-day church diary or journal. As I was flipping through the pages, the name James L. Wrathall caught my eye. Some surprise; this was my father and it told how Elder James L. Wrathall and his companion, both young Mormon Missionaries, had been chased out of a small Kentucky town by a rock-throwing mob. ... here my father was chased by a blood-thirsty mob, and I had never heard about it!
Father had two wives at the same time, and mother [ Charlotte Elizabeth ROWBERRY (1873 - 1955) ] was his second. Father lived with his first wife [ Penninah Susana HUNTER (1862 - 1937)] and their children in a beautiful, red brick, home with all the comforts of the day. My mother, [my brothers and I] lived in a small frame house just behind the big red brick house. our house had a kitchen, two bedrooms and full basement. The basement served as a food and fuel storage area. The fuel was mostly wood with an occasional load of soft coal. During the summer and fall months the basement cupboards were stocked with bottled fruit and vegetables prepared by mother. In addition, there was the usual pile of potatoes, boxes of apples, pork salted away in brine and eggs in "water glass". Water-glass was a liquid made of some compound of silica which kept the air away from the eggs so they lasted longer. The kitchen was the center of activity as we ate there and it was the warmest-room in the house as the kitchen stove was used to heat the house. This was the house I was born in. We didn't have electricity, an indoor bathroom, or running water like the red brick house but we did have kerosene lamps, and outdoor privy and a hand pump to get water. This hand pump was bolted to the drainboard near the sink and was a lot more than many other people had. If you needed water, it was usually necessary to prime the pump and then pump the handle up and down. To prime the pump a couple of quarts of water was poured down the pump cylinder while pumping. Usually this created a suction and produced water. It was important that a pan, located near the pump, be kept filled with water to prime the pump, so whenever the pump was used the first Order of business was to fill the priming water pan for the next pumping operation.
Grandma [ Charlotte CLARK Rowberry (1845 - 1923)] had a large lot with trees, a garden and a large patch of raspberries and I spent many a night sleeping out in the open among the trees. On this lot was also a small burial plot containing four graves. Who was buried there I never knew. As I hurriedly stole by these graves at night, on my way from the house to my bed in the orchard, the adrenalin was always there just waiting for the signal to start flowing, Each unfamiliar sound would start my heart thumping in my ears. As I got a little older I found one disadvantage in sleeping in the orchard. My father lived about 100 yards down and across the street. He always got up early, was strongly dedicated to work and very active himself and felt everyone should be likewise.