My Grandparents, Joseph Welton Ward and Elizabeth Allen, and Jessie H. Dredge and Nellie Kunz, were from Malad, Idaho. Both grandparents were sheep men and farmers. My parents lived across the street from each other and were good friends. In fact, when my father was born Grandma Ward didn’t know what to name him. She was visiting with Grandmother Dredge and she suggested she name him Rulon. Little did she know at the time she was naming her future son-in-law.
 |
| Rulon Ward & Rose Dredge |
Mother wrote about their courtship: “We’d grown up together and were more like brother and sister. We’d been in each other’s homes all our lives and he’d always called my mother Aunt Nellie. A day after I came home from college, Rulon came right over to our home and asked me for a date for Saturday night. I thought he was just kidding so I said, “Oh, sure!” A few days later, he called me on the phone to check and see if we really had a date, and I told him I thought he had been kidding me. He said, “Well, I’m not!” We went together for six weeks before we were engaged, and we were married in three months.”
 |
| Rose & Rulon Ward |
Dad and mom were married October 21, 1936 in the Logan Temple. Early that next Spring mother and dad moved out on the ranch by Snowville, Utah. Grandpa Ward had purchased some ground in that area. Their first home was a sheep camp and they worked hard burning sagebrush and clearing the ground for farming. Mother was expecting me that summer. Daddy taught her how to shoot a 22 gun. Instead of “Annie Get Your Gun” it was “Rosie get your gun”. She spent a lot of her time shooting rabbits, rattlesnakes, and squirrels. When I was born, I was shell shocked and have never been able to slow down or sit still for very long since.
 |
| Rulon & Rose 1937 |
