REDD, Margaret Vivian

1889 - 1985  (95 years)  Submit Photo / Document

 Set As Default Person

• Name	REDD, Margaret Vivian
  Birth	13 Oct 1889	Bluff, San Juan, Utah, United States
  Gender	Female
  WAC	10 Sep 1913	SLAKE
  _TAG	Reviewed on FS
  Death	11 May 1985	Provo, Utah, Utah, United States
  Burial	14 May 1985	Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, Utah, United States
  Headstones	Submit Headstone Photo
  Person ID	I46420	Joseph Smith Sr and Lucy Mack Smith
  Last Modified	19 Aug 2021

  
  

  Family ID

  F24231

  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	MCCONKIE, Oscar Walter ,   b. 9 May 1887, Moab, Grand, Utah, United States Moab, Grand, Utah, United Statesd. 9 Apr 1966, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, United States (Age 78 years)
  Marriage	10 Sep 1913	Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, United States
  Children	+ 1. MCCONKIE, Bruce Redd ,   b. 29 Jul 1915, Ann Arbor, Washtenaw, Michigan, United States Ann Arbor, Washtenaw, Michigan, United Statesd. 19 Apr 1985, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, United States (Age 69 years)
  Family ID	F14481	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	24 Jan 2022

  
  

• Photos

  At least one living or private individual is linked to this item - Details withheld.

  
  

• Notes

  My cousin, Frank McGhie, introduced me to a very handsome man, Richard Obra Pearce, who had thick, black hair and beautiful deep blue eyes. He was active in football and yearbook on the University of Utah campus. Frank worked with Ob together on the University Utonian Yearbook. Ob was the business manager for the yearbook and made a lot of money for them selling ads. Frank was assistant business manager. When I met Ob, he was 24 and I was 22. He had completed a successful mission to England and Scotland, so he was attractive to me, for I was looking for a returned missionary, and my grandmother, Isabella Lindsay, and great grandfather, John Daniel Thompson McAllister, were Scots. We dated for about a year. Our first date was to a U of U. Dance. He stood me up. He just forgot to come. We loved to go dancing at the top of the Hotel Utah in the Roof Garden, and did so for many years into our marriage. We also loved to go to many U. of U. football and basketball games. He loved to yell at the players. Ob used to love to fish up Brighton Canyon, Big Cottonwood Canyon, at Silver Lake. We went up there once a month during warm months. Ob played football for the U. while he attended classes to obtain a Law degree. After his counselor in the Law School at the U. asked him if he were going to be a professional football player, and he said “No”, Richard gave up football and graduated from the University of Utah as a lawyer. I never was able to attend school after 6th grade, but I worked to support my widowed mother and my younger siblings after my father died in 1913. Richard liked that about me, as he also had worked from a very early age (18) when his father died in 1919 of the Influenza brought home from World War I. He and I had worked all through our teenage years to help support our fathers’ families. But that was not all we had in common. His father was a teacher, and taught Elementary school in Beaver, Utah. He frequently used Richard as an example to his students of what even a younger child than they could accomplish. Richard learned the times tables and other academic things so his father could show him off at school. So Richard had acquired a love of learning at an early age. I did too, my father being a professor of Ancient Languages and Cultures at the U. of Utah, and my mother teaching Elementary School after my father died. And because I didn’t get to attend Junior High, High School or college, I loved learning all the more, sneaking in night classes whenever I could. To further my knowledge of the Church and Gospel, I took classes at the Institute of Religion even after being married. We went together for about 3 years while he finished his Bachelor's degree at the U. Then in May of 1927, we were coming down Brighton Canyon in the back seat of Ed Wood's car and Catherine was there too. He asked me to marry him then, (after many kisses!). We decided we were in love and wanted to be married, which we were on the 10th of August 1927 in the Salt Lake Temple by his former Mission President in England, Orson F. Whitney. Brother Whitney was one of my mother's best friends. I thought the temple ceremony was wonderful. It was the only event we had, since our families were both too poor to pay for a reception. After the temple ceremony, we stayed in Aunt Kate Alkire's (Catherine Curtis McGhie Alkire) apartment. She was my father's sister. I remember mama tried to tell Ob how to drive the car up to Aunt Kate's. He was patient but asked her if she was going to tell us what to do from now on. She became quiet. Aunt Kate had a wedding breakfast for us. I had a simple white satin dress that I made. We also drove down to Beaver, Utah where his parents’ family lived, many of whom could not go to the temple, and we repeated a civil marriage ceremony down there so they could witness it. I met his mother then for the first time. His father was dead then. We stayed in the Beaver Hotel which his mother ran. We honeymooned at The Grand Canyon, Bryce and Zion's Canyon for two weeks. It was wonderful to see the big mountains. Then we went home and worked a little while. Then we went to California and Yellowstone Park with friends before we had children. We loved to travel together to Yellowstone, Palm Springs, and other resort towns with our close couple friends like the Gale McDonalds, and Morris Ashtons. We had a car that worked pretty well to get us to these places. I think it was an Oldsmobile, since that kind became my favorite and I drove nothing but those, especially if they were red. We made our first home in an apartment at 424 East South Temple. We moved to 25th and 4th East apartment where we had lots of parties with friends. When we made more money, we moved to 1151 Gilmer Drive, which was our first real home. It was a lovely home on a hill in a beautiful neighborhood in the Garden Park Ward where the Red Butte Canyon stream ran through the beautiful grounds around the chapel. We had a difficult time getting pregnant, although we both wanted children. Richard especially loved little children, remembering his younger brother Ennes who died at age 2, and sister Leah Larue who died at age 4 with great sorrow and fondness. And I remembered Helen, my older sister who died at age 3. I was a little afraid of pregnancy and delivery since I had heard from my older relatives so many stories of women, especially the pioneers ladies, dying in childbirth. But still we longed to bring little souls to our family. Since we had no children yet, I also helped take care of my sister, Catherine's child Joan Angeline Woods for about 10 years, because Catherine and Ed had health problems which they later were able to overcome. Joanie became like a child to us where we took her everywhere and taught her all the things we knew how to do. It was a special relationship. When Ob had law trouble, we moved to 2439 South Highland Drive in the Sugar House area, and that's where Jim was born the 2 May 1940 and Cathy the 19th of May 1944. It took us 10 years to become pregnant. One Sunday, Richard gave a talk on the family in Church which was very inspiring. A lady in our 20th Ward, Rose Bennett, (Senator Wallace F. Bennett’s mother) who worked in the temple Initiatory as a sealer, asked me why we did not have any children. I told her we had been trying, and that I had even had an operation to adjust the position of my ovaries in order to assist in getting pregnant, but still I wasn’t. Sister Bennett told me to read my Patriarchal Blessing and in it, it said that I would have children. So Rose said she’d pray for me and put my name in the temple. Four other women in the ward did the same thing. She also said I’d been given blessings in the temple that confirmed that my “loins would be fruitful and replenish the earth.” The whole ward fasted for us too. Two months later Sister Bennett came up to me and asked if I were pregnant yet. I said, “I think so.” She said, “You’ll have the baby in December on my birthday, which I did! Mary Lynn was born the 12 of December 1937, ten years after we got married. Sister Bennett was not pleased because I didn’t name the baby Rose. Oh well. We named her Mary after me, and Lynn after my beloved father whom I lost at age 11. While I was carrying the baby, I expressed my fear of delivery to ladies in our ward. Rose and 2 other ladies, Mrs. McConkie and Mrs. Fairbanks, and one other that were set apart by Brigham Young to bless and anoint mothers who were about to deliver babies, came and blessed me. I was naked but covered with a sheet, and then anointed with oil by these sisters in our bath tub. Oil was put on the head. I was blessed to have a good, healthy baby. This power to bless mothers was taken away from the women by the time Catherine Claire, named after my sister, was born on the 19th of May 1944, but I also received this kind of blessing for our son, James Richard McGhie Pearce, born 2nd May 1940. It was a great comfort to me at that time. I was thankful that all 3 children were Born in the Covenant. He was a great golfer, and I wasn’t too bad myself. We both became Champion players at the old Fort Douglas Golf course on the U. of Utah campus. He was the Fort Douglas Champion one year and I was the Salt Lake Women's Champion. We won trophies and fame as seen in the Deseret News. Richard’s golf career ended rather tragically when he was struck in the eye by a shanked golf ball hit by a novice player. The ball struck his left eye, shattering it down his face. Everyone who witnessed this terrible accident got sick and couldn’t drive him to the hospital. So, being as tough as nails, he put one hand over his eye, and drove himself. Unfortunately, the eye could not be saved, and he wore a glass eye for the rest of his life. His depth perception with only one good eye was never good thereafter, so he gave up golf, and then so did I. I was active in the Community while awaiting children to come to our family. I served as president of the Fort Douglas Women's Golf Association, and as a leader in the Salt Lake Garden Club. I loved roses, lilacs and pansies. One Christmas after we had Jim and Lynn, we went to Phoenix, Arizona and spent Christmas there in the desert. When we made even more money, we bought the old Ashton home at 2185 South 21st East and lived there almost 30 years. In that home was raised Apostle Marvin J Ashton, Wendell Ashton of the Deseret News, Afton Curtis whose husband was with Hiland dairy, Phyllis Gardner whose husband is the owner of Dan's grocery stores, and Ellie Badger, whose husband was a realtor. We raised our daughter Mary Lynn there, who was a great singer and studied at Juliard School in New York. And Jim who became an internal medicine doctor, and Cathy who became a teacher and taught in the public schools for 20 years, private schools for 11 years, and another eight years for the Church in the Family History Library. When Ob made a good deal of money selling fencing material to the Chaing Chi Chek government to keep out the Mao Tse Tung communists, we built a swimming pool. It helped Ob too because he needed to keep active and swimming was a gentle way to do so. He had been diagnosed with Pagets disease after he broke his elbow arm wrestling. In 1972, when Jim finished his MD degree, he came home to Salt Lake, and bought the Ashton home from us. He raised his family there with his wife Virginia Hinckley and they lived there another 30 years. Jim died of ALS in 2009, but Virginia stayed in the home. When my children finally came and they joined fraternities and sororities, I became president of the Sigma Chi Fraternity Mothers' Club, and also the Kappa Kappa Gamma Mothers' Club. I served as an active member of the Symphony Guild and got the Symphony Sub-Debs started in the high schools. I also went to my various friends who sold cars, like Ken Garff, and the Ballard Motors, and we formed the Automotive Baseball League for boys who were between the ages for Little League baseball and the high school teams. My son Jim was a very good pitcher in that league. I also supported the Christensen school of ballet when Cathy was dancing. And I helped see that Mary Lynn had excellent voice training as a soprano, and painting lessons from LaVon Vincent Best for her as well. LaVon also painted a beautiful portrait of me in red.I really tried to support my children in their interests. Our last home was on Ob's business at 1225 Beck Street, by the Capital on Pearce Equipment property. It was a little dump of a house, but Ob wanted to keep working and didn't want to travel clear across town to do so. Cathy came down and painted the inside rooms for us, and put up cute curtains. Catherine and Ed had lived there as caretakers for the business. Since it was so close to the Oil Refineries which burned stuff all night, it was a pretty dirty place. By then, in 1969, I had suffered a stroke in my back that paralyzed me from the waist down. I had to use a wheel chair to get around. So it was good that we moved to Beck Street where everything was on one floor with no upstairs. Mary suffered more strokes in 1982 and at age 79 she died on the 10 of July. As a doctor, Jim, and as a nurse's aid, Lynn, and myself had decided not to put her in the hospital or do heroic measure to save her life, since she had been bed ridden for 14 and 1/2 years already. Jim put an IV in for fluids to keep her hydrated, but no food, which she couldn't eat anyway, since her throat was paralyzed. She fell asleep for 3 weeks, and then passed away quietly, with Mary Lynn taking care of her. It was hard on dad to lose her, since they had been such great pals for so long, married 55 years, but pals for longer than that. She was a great wife and mother and person.