A History of Leo Pold and Zoe Ellen (Powell) Leonard

Written By Clair Leonard in 1987 

What I remember about my parents:

Although I had many a licking and grabbed by the hair of the head when I tried to get away from my mother, it was because I did not do what I was told to do at the time. Playing came first with me, as it does with all kids, and when a woman has a baby every two years her strength and nerves are not in the best shape.

Dad was more easy going, and was a good provider, but mother was the money manager. When I was a teenager and would have a run in with my mother, I would go up and stay with my grandmother Powell. My mother was the 8th child of Sarah Jane and John Powell, born December 6, 1887. She met Leo P.  Leonard at Sunnyside. Utah while working at her sister Florence's Boarding house. They were married June 17, 1904 and had nine children - seven boys, and two girls.

Mother was quite high strung and could get quite hysterical, and would become a screaming female when something unexpected would happen. A good example of this behavior is one that I will never forget. We were out in Carbon Co. in 1919 when a cloud burst happened. It rained so hard that Price River was flooding over its banks and the fire truck came down past our house at 2 a.m. with siren and fire bell blasting, and a string of cars behind.

Mother started screaming, "What's happening". Dad went out and down to the river to find out what had happened. It seems that a young couple had been parked to close to the river bank which had caved in and took them and their car into the river. I don't know if they ever did find them. As Dad talked with people. They were all afraid the Scofield dam was going to break. The next morning they put a train of cars together, loaded the cars down with men, scrapers and horses, and sent them up to the dam to save the dam. Clark and I both tried to get on but they kicked us off.

Mother was the one who laid the law down and then would tell Dad that he needed a session with one of his kids over his knee. One time, when we were living in Peerless, Dad received instructions to give Evelyn and Birdie a paddling. Dad took them into the other room, and then just as he was telling them to cry out as he would clap his hands to act out the spanking, I walked into the room.

While still living in Peerless I remember three or four women coming to mother to look at a baby the doctor had given up on. The mother was in bed ready to give birth to another one of her children. Mother took one look at the baby and told them the baby needed an enema, a mustard bath, and then they should cover the baby with plasters to break its fever and convulsions. When the doctor came back around 4 p.m. the baby's fever was down and the baby was sound asleep. Mother‘s favorite medicines were castor oil, plasters or Epsom salts. I still gag just thinking about them.

Mother and I came to terms one day when I had just finished scrubbing the floors of the back bedroom closet, bath and hallway--my weekly jobs. Mother then told me to go in and help Evelyn do the pantry and kitchen. I told her no Evelyn had been setting around not doing her work. Mother came up off the bed and had me cornered in the closet as she made a grab for me I grabbed her arm or wrist and put the pressure on. I was about fourteen years old at the time with some muscle. She screamed, “You’re hurting me” but I told her I would not let her go until she promised me that she would not grab me by the hair again. She promised. I made sure she kept her promise by getting a bulldog haircut or flat top, and kept my hair cut that way for over a year. I think that from this mother respected me. She began to have me go down and pay the grocery bill at the camp store, and I would take her shopping down to Helper. She even had me go with her to Salt Lake to visit grandma and grandpa Powell, when it was grandma's turn to come in from Price, to help her tend Evelyn or Stan. She would even give me the money to take care of things we needed. This made me feel ten feet tall.

In 1926 Dad had mother and I travel ahead of his band lining up places for them to play. We lined up Provo, Salem, and the Kamas Jordanelle, an open-air dance hall by the Kamas turn-off. This lasted for about two weeks. During this time grandma Powell had been taking care of Max, who was about four years old. Grandma had a renter living in her upstairs that had lost her baby from some mysterious sickness. Within that week Max got sick with a fever, and we had to hold him on a pillow on our laps or on two chairs put together and only on his back for him to sleep. He had a lot of pain on his right side. Mother took Max to three different doctors in Provo, Heber, and Kamas, while we were on dance tour with Dad. She got three different diagnosis of appendicitis, tonsillitis, and arthritis. When we got back home to Peerless the doctor went down Max's right leg with a needle and his leg was numb from the hip down. When the doctor told us it was Polio, Mother went into hysterics. She was worried about the money and care he would need. We would all take turns putting warm pack's on his leg and massaging his leg.

Someone told Dad about a program that the Elks had going to help polio cases. The Elks sent Max into St. Mark’s hospital in Salt Lake, and when things stabilized they called in the family to discuss what to do. Max had no control over his leg and it would flop all over; They felt that the best thing to do would be to operate on the knee cap and stiffen his leg to give him some control and less chance of breaking it. I will never forget mother coming up one week to see Max and then wanting to know if we had been up to see him. We told her no because we thought he had been in quarantine. He was in quarantine, but you could go along the closed in sun porches and talk to him through the window. We all went to see him and was he glad to see us.

I remember Mother telling us that we were all going to go without things so that Max could get an education since he would not be able to work like us.

Mother planted the seeds of independence in us along with Granddad's genes. Mother was always for us to work for ourselves to get ahead. If she had been a man she would have been in two or three businesses. When I look back at the family of mother's, I think she turned out to be the most successful and her grandchildren are showing good signs.

When we were growing up we all had house work to do and sometimes I would think mother was lazy because she would always say do this, do that. I am going in and put the baby too sleep. To me it was a cop-out. But when we had Norma, with her few months of sickness and the drain it can be on you, I wrote mother a letter and told her how much more I appreciated a mother and what she goes through in bringing a baby into this world.

Mother made Lee and Emmett pay for their board and room at Peerless. They had a room in the bunk house because we only had a one bedroom house. The front room converted into a bedroom for mother and dad and the basement, with a dirt floor, for the rest of us.

Lee and Emmett were grumbling one day about having to pay and I said to them "do you know how much it costs to feed this family a month?“, "No", they said, so I enlightened them since I was mother's errand boy. Dad was making $50.00 a week, and Lee and Emmett were making $40.00 each. I told them that when I took mother to Helper on pay day she would spend $50/60 for groceries, and another $60/75 at the company store for clothes, and maybe some shoes and socks for someone. Parks Brothers, would come nearly every week with fruit and vegetables, and the farmers from Castledale would come with pork, eggs, butter etc. Since we had no refrigeration in those days mother would buy these supplies weekly and then put them in a box after they had been wrapped in lots of burlap, which was kept wet down during the day. Mother was a sharpie in her buying to make Dad's money stretch, and after I had laid this out for them. Lee and Emmett could see that mother and dad needed help. Dad needed the eight to ten dollars he made from playing for dances weekly to have any money at all with which to buy us kids a new shirt, pants, shoes for Christmas and we were happy to get these. Kids that know the family financial condition will understand why they can’t have everything and will get out sooner to find a job to have their own money.

They say a good education is the next best thing to a pushy mother, and mother instilled into each us that God helps those who help themselves. She proved it when in the mid-fifties she and dad were cleaning the house for her turn to have the Daughters of the Pioneer Social and meeting. Dad was giving mother the glass globe covers to clean and mother all at once went blind. She was having a stroke. Because she was under the care of the doctor that Evelyn worked for Jack called Evelyn, and she called me. Evelyn then came to Provo and together we went down in my 1953 Nash that could be made into a bed. We picked up Dad and Mother and took them up to stay with Clair and Evelyn so they could be close to their doctors. Whenever Mother and Dad got sick it was up to Evelyn and Clair to take care of them. Evelyn being the only daughter living. Clair (Bjorn husband of Evelyn) worked a night shift at the Tribune paper and would get home at 8:30 in the morning, just as Evelyn would be leaving for work. Clair would then fix the breakfast, feed Mother and Dad and take care of them during the day. Then when Evelyn would get home from work, Clair would get his rest. It worked a hardship on Clair and Evelyn. When mother got better and could see fair again, and was getting the use of her leg and arm again they went home.

While mother and dad were staying with Evelyn and Clair, Stan, Bob, Jack and wives along with Emmett and myself went through the Price house and duplex next door and fixed then up. We painted, rewired the electrical, put in new ceiling fixtures, wall plugs wall switches, wall paper, new curtains, a new kitchen set, a new front porch, and then topped all the old trees.

The renters in the duplex were two widows on welfare. Mother had a soft heart for them and they would often not pay the rent. We told them that mother and dad needed that money to live on and that they would have to find a way to come up with the rent every month. Mother had bought two small four room houses and the duplex, three rooms each side, from Watt’s Coal Company, for $500 each, plus the costs of moving and setting them up on a foundation. It seems mother was a pushover where her rentals were concerned and never did break even. She didn't have the heart to turn out renters when they did not pay their rent. She and Dad did book work around tax time to help pay their taxes, light, and water.

When Clair and Evelyn brought them home on a Sunday the rest of us were there. When mother and dad took one look at the new curtains light fixtures, kitchen set, mother started to cry before she even saw the rest of the house and duplex. For some reason I was delegated the boss, but we all worked together on color blending, collecting and paying bills, and making out a statement each month for Dad and Mother. I started sending meat down, along with some groceries, each Monday with a meat salesman unless they came in from Price to see me. One day when they came in, mother was coming down the aisle and walked right into a display they had put up. It was then she let it out that sometimes a film would come over her eyes and she couldn't see a thing. She had a lot of fight in her. She worked with that leg and arm until they were working good again. Then about six or seven years later she got a blood clot in her left leg. They could not dissolve the clot and her leg went black and blue. Nobody wanted to tell her it had to come off, afraid she would go into hysterics. They were afraid gangrene would set in if they kept putting it off. It was a Wednesday, the day I took a half day off and mother said she wanted me to administer to her. When I got there they told me they had given her a blessing about an hour before. This put me in a dilemma of knowing what to say, so I went in the room and said to Dad "Let's each one have a little silent prayer." It was then that I received my inspiration of Grandmother Sarah Jane being in the room and just said "grandmother take your daughter by the hand and give her the strength and courage for what is ahead of her.” I had to get back to the store to close so I was not there when the doctors came in that night to tell her. A few months later Stan and I were talking about those anxious moments, and about what I said. He spoke up and said “we and the doctors, were surprised at how calm she took it when they told her, she said. “yes I know, I have been watching it. Do what you have to do.'" 

We went down that Sunday to see mother and she had sustained another blood clot. All the circulation from her hips down had stopped, and her bowels were not working. They could not give her anything because it came right back up. Mother asked me why they would not feed her and so I told her she answered "well if I am going to die I don't want to starve to death". I went out to the desk and told the doctor, who was still there what she had said so the doctor told the nurse to give her a little liquid Jello and see what happened. The next day she started to go and about her last words were, "did you call Clair?" Jack called me from the store and I called Blanche, who came right over to watch the market, and I was down to Price in one hour. Jack was surprised when he came in and saw me.  Mother was in her transition state, but knew when I came in. Uncle Abe, her brother, saw her lips move. "She wants to tell you something", he said. I put my ear down but she could not make a sound. She stayed with us as long as she could, but the body was getting cold by the time she stopped breathing.

Mother was a great talker. We, as a family, were out to Emmett's one day to a dinner. Emmett had bought a cabinet type recorder, one of the first made, and mother was in high gear. Emmett told the rest of us to be quiet and he would turn on the recorder.  When we sat down to eat we told mother we had something for her to hear. We turned on the recording and she listened for a minute or so and then she said "why do you want to listen to that woman yak and yak". We said, “well, just listen", and then she said, "Good Lord, that's me." Yes, and it slowed her down the rest of the day.

In talking to Evelyn about mother, she said one day the bishop came up to see mother, and she gave him what songs she wanted sung at her funeral. She told him that she wanted two good sermons from people who had known her for years. She did not want any glory speeches. Lee was at the reunion in Salem when we bought the cemetery lots, and mother said to him, "Why don't you settle down and get back here to God's Country". I said to her after, "Mother, you don't tell a fifty year old man how to live his life." Her come-back was, “as long as he is my kid, I will tell him what to do.”

My early memories of my Dad go back to about when I was around 4 or 5 years old. I had received three to four sailor type suits, with the big flaps on the back, shoes, socks etc., but when Dad put me on his knee and said "Santa was sure good to you, are you happy?". ” Yes I said, “but he didn't bring me my skates." Mother and Dad looked surprised and mother said, "I'll look around”, and she went into her closet and said, "Here they are, he hid them in the closet." Well, Santa sure slipped up because he was supposed to come down the chimney and leave everything under the tree. Another time we were going to have a Christmas Eve up to grandma Sarah Jane's with five or six of her kids and grandkids. The men went to town to find a Santa or a suit. Time went by and the women were getting madder by the minute. Around ten or eleven p.m. here the men came higher than Santa and his sleigh. The women wouldn't let them in the house for us kids to see but three or four of us went out and around the house and the women were really mad. It ruined the Christmas Eve party for us.

Dad was born in Kamas, Utah, on the 28th of August, 1882. He went to BYU where he majored in music. He was a good ball player and tops in track. When he graduated he went out to Sunnyside to work in the mine. It was there he met mother - age 17. She was working for her sister Florence that was running a boarding house. Dad and two other fellows used to do a lot of singing and playing at weddings, funerals, and church socials. Dad was good on the mandolin. When mother and dad got married, mother started playing the piano in the group.

Dad worked for the Con Wagon as a book keeper around 1917 to 1920, and then as a salesman for Con Wagon starting in 1920. He worked as a salesman up and around Briggs, Idaho. He later went to work at Peerless where Max was born December 21, 1922 and Jack in April, 1925. When we decided to move up to Peerless from Price, Dad took me with him one day to clean and scrub floors, go through the house and have the furniture all in place for when mother and the family came up. Dad bought mother a new velvet, big brim hat with a feather in it. I think it was peacock because it made mother strut like one. This was a present to help soften things for leaving her big home in Price.

It was around 1923 or 1924 that Dad had his appendix attack and they had to wait for the train to take him into Salt Lake. There was one train going to Salt Lake in the morning, seven to eight p.m. and one coming out of Salt Lake and going to Denver at night. By the time Dad got into Salt Lake his appendix had broken. Gangrene had set in, and there was no penicillin in those days. Dad was hip and tuck for three months and then when he did get out he went out to Uncle Lots, mother's brother, to stay and rest. He also went to the cabin called, "Pattie Clyde’s", where the two families of us would make our beds under the pines and spend four or five days fishing. Then we would go back to Uncle Lots ranch to help put up the last cutting of hay.

Fishing in those days was a dream. When you caught a Rainbow it was around one and a half to two pounds and it was nothing to catch two at a time. Dad would get off the wagon about a mile from camp and say, "I'll get our fish and sage hen for supper": and he would. Usually John Clark and I would get off the ponies we were riding and fish behind him and catch some nice ones.

Dad would take his two week vacation in August and go out to Uncle Lot’s in Altonah, to fish. Uncle Lot would kill a young calf or sheep for a meal and we would all pitch in and get the hay and grain done.  John Clark and I would herd the sheep or see that they didn't get through the fence into the garden-alfalfa and bloat. One day we were swimming in the canal when we decided to cross over and get something to eat out of the garden. Each one grabbed an arm full of clothes. John grabbed mine. I got out in the middle and dropped my new shoes. We found one only. We would pen up some young calves and try and ride them, and end up landing in fresh do-do (manure).

Dad started some ball teams in the different camps so that the miners had some recreation other than the pool hall. Dad also got an orchestra together. He had Lee on the trumpet, Emmett on the Sax, Fan Cowley on the piano and dad would play the Violin or banjo. He also had drums, a trombone, and another Sax and trumpet. It was a good sounding orchestra. They would play every Saturday night some place in Carbon County. They played a lot in Helper. Eventually new bands were formed and the pay per hour dad could get was cut.  In the later years. Dad quit the coal company and went to work for Price City as a bookkeeper in the assessor’s office.

After burying mother in the Salem cemetery, we met as a family and discussed what we should do about Dad. Some of the family was leaving Dad out of the decision making, and I finally spoke up and said, “Everything still belongs to Dad and he is still able to collect the rent and pay bills." I then asked him if he thought he could do this, and he said. "Yes." We then told him to keep what money he would need and then give the rest to Jack to bank.

Max came home for a visit in June, and when he went back to Europa, he took Dad with him. Dad really enjoyed his flight over and wondered at one time why they were going so slow. The pilot spoke up and gave altitude 35,000 speed 600 MPH. and Dad couldn't believe it. (He was in a Boeing Stratoliner which was a military version of the Boeing 707 commercial jet aircraft.)

When School started Lee came from Vienna Austria to take Dad around Germany – Switzerland, etc. Dad got pneumonia from the change of a dry climate to a wet one. Max put him in the hospital but the shots wouldn't help any so the doctor told Max to get him home. Max checked with the air base and hit it lucky. They had a plane going to Hill Air Force Base. Upon landing at Hill Air Force Base, they put dad in an ambulance and brought him to St. Mark’s hospital. Dad couldn't believe he was back home and so we would take him down the hall to where he could see the temple. A half hour later he would ask again if he were really home, and then say, "The people won't believe me when I tell them how high and fast we flew and were I visited."

The family took turns staying with Dad at the hospital. The day before he passed away Blanche and Evelyn were with him until about seven when Stan came to stay with him for the night. A day or two before that, Emmett said Dad told him "They were after him." And "don't let them take me." Emmett said “who is after you?” Dad said, "Those two at the foot of the bed, can't you see them?" Well I guess the two dad saw at the foot of the bed went back and told mother and she showed up the day Blanche and Evelyn were there. Dad kept saying, "I am coming," then that night Stan stayed with dad. Stan got on the bed with Dad and Dad liked that. He told Stan it reminded him of when he was a little boy and would jump in bed with them. The next morning as Stan was going to leave Dad said, “you know and I know I am not going to make it so let’s have a little prayer and get it over with." This was about seven or seven-thirty in the morning. When Clair got there at eight-thirty Dad was on his way. I got there around ten. Dad knew I was there but couldn't talk. I was standing by the bed holding his hand and Clair said, "Your Dad wants a drink." so I put the straw in Dad's mouth and he drank a half a glass of water and I said” was that good?" Dad gave my hand a very feeble squeeze and if I hadn't been looking at his hand I would of missed it. The nurse would keep coming in to check his pulse and each time would ask if I wanted to have her pull the oxygen. I told her to wait, we were trying to locate the family. Finally she showed me Dad wasn't getting any circulation from hips down, and he had turned all black and blue. It was around noon that I had her take the oxygen off and Dad was gone in fifteen minutes. Then in came the family.

When mother was in the hospital and they had wanted her to get all the rest she could, I had brought dad up to Provo to stay with me. On that Wednesday they had called and said that mother had a blood clot and to come right away. Blanche had come over to take care of the market without a grumble, and off dad and I went to Price. It was on the way to Price that dad said to me, “you know son your mother is a good woman in spite of all the bossiness.“ He went on to say, I “When I get sick she waits on me hand and foot." When we got down to the hospital I walked in ahead of dad and mother said, “where's your Dad,” and in he walked. She held her arms out and wrapped them around Dad.  Golda's mother was there and had to get up and go out with tears in her eyes.

Dad was a big boy at heart. He would always have to go eat after a dance. Usually a big H.B., hash browns, soup, coffee and pie (sixty cents back in the 20's). Mother would tell him to go and cut the lawn. (Kids all gone), weed around the flowers and the first thing she knew he had gone fishing up to Colton or Schofield with Don or Eben Powell.

If you went to town with Dad alone you could always figure on a twenty-five cent candy or some pie. It is hard to remember when he gave me a licking. He figured mother‘s whack or two was enough and mother would get unhappy with his lack of discipline because she felt the kids liked dad better because he wasn't always hollering at us, and this is true if only one shoulders the responsibility.

Mother one day tried to justify her ways by saying, "if it wasn't for me we wouldn't have a nickel," and I said, ”mother, you wouldn't have that nickel if Dad wasn't out working at three jobs." It was true, Dad could be thinking fishing, and mother worrying about how she could stretch the dollars she had, or make another dollar, in order to clothe and feed eleven people. Dad was baptized December 20, 1930 and married June 19, 1904. They were later married in the Temple June 22, 1933.