The next spring we found out we were going to have our first baby in November. We were so excited. We knew we needed to find another place to live that had a bedroom, so we found a little two-bedroom home up on Crescent Drive in Logan that we could afford. Arlin added on a utility room on the back that helped pay our rent. We fixed up our little nursery and anxiously waited for our new arrival. We had a great ward and had so much fun in our calling as Young Married Stake Leaders. We met some choice young couples: Merle and Janice Jeppsen, Jim and Coleen Flamm – although I already knew Coleen from the trip to the New York Pageant.
The morning of November 17th 1960, I was awakened with a bad pain about 5:00 a.m. After 30 minutes we knew I was in labor, so we arrived at the hospital and Arlin called mom to tell her we were having the baby. She didn’t think there was any need to rush, since it took her forever to have her babies. When she arrived, our little son was already here. It didn’t take him long. What a joy to hold my very own baby in my arms for the very first time. The tears flowed and it was such a miracle to see that new little spirit from Heavenly Father. I knew our life would never be the same again. We named him Craig Arlin Bartschi after his father.
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| Craig Arlin Bartschi |
Arlin’s memory of Craig’s birth is as follows: “Being our first born, this was a big event in our lives. It is good the Lord watches out for his spirits, as mom and I weren’t too sharp on what to do. We welcomed this new little spirit with open arms. I thought I should hand out cigars, so I went to town and found some baby blue candy cigars, which worked just fine for all of our friends. I was so excited I even handed them out to people whether I knew them or not. Ha ha! Our first Bartschi boy to carry on the family name.”
We didn’t know what we were doing when we became parents. Craig was throwing up a lot so I took him to the doctor and he told me how to fix a formula for him, but I think we got the instructions backwards because after I gave it to him he started gagging and turning blue. Arlin ran him to the bathroom and started pounding on his back and it looked just like jello was coming out of his little throat. I was just crying and bawling, but we finally got it worked out and I never gave him that formula again.
I was able to work in the evenings while Arlin tended Craig and studied. We were able to make it through one more year of school, and then Arlin signed all the papers and thought he was ready to graduate. He interviewed for a job teaching school in Roosevelt, Utah, but then his advisor told him his major was too close to his minor and that he needed to go to school one more semester and get a different minor. That was quite a letdown. So he went back to school that fall and got a minor in psychology.
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| Arlin Bartschi Graduation |
Arlin majored in Industrial Science at Utah State and had enjoyed taking a lot of institute classes. He had an interview to take his first job teaching at a high school down in Roosevelt, Utah. There was a seminary teacher who had something come up and couldn’t finish out the year, so they invited Arlin to come down and take over his class. We were happy because he didn’t have a job and he was through with school, and it was right in the middle of the winter when he started teaching, so it was an answer to our prayers in many ways.
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| Bryan Bartschi |
Our second son Bryan was born on March 13th, 1962 on a Friday. He has brought us a lot of joy in spite of his birthday being Friday the 13th. Craig was 16 months old and keeping me plenty busy, so life became even busier with two babies. One day I had Bryan in a bassinet in the bedroom and went in to check on him, only to find that Craig had piled all of his toys on top of him. He was learning to share real young. Ha ha! Also, when I had my babies guess who came to help me? Grandpa Bartschi. He’d come up and do the dishes and just putter around and help wherever he was needed. He was a sweetheart, and he was so thrilled to have two grandsons.
Arlin taught seminary until Spring and we thought we were going to move to Roosevelt, but then he came home one day and said, “You know, I think I’d rather teach seminary than teach industrial science to high school kids.” So he applied to be a seminary teacher with the church education system and our first assignment was Sugar City, Idaho. We didn’t know where it was or anything about it, but you look back on your life and see how you were led and how the Lord guides you to where He needs you to be. And Grandma Dredge was just ecstatic, because I didn’t know that Grandpa Dredge had two sisters that had come up here to Sugar City and married a Lusk and a Roberts, but they were up here and I didn’t even know them. So Grandma Dredge knew all about Sugar City, but I didn’t and neither did Arlin. We had some friends from Idaho, Kay and Joyce Johnson, whose parents lived in Sugar City. They invited us to go home with them on a weekend in April. Bryan was just a few weeks old and we were anxious to see where we would be living. The next morning after we got there, we woke up to snow. That should have told us something then, right? Remember when I worked over in Jackson for the summer right after I got my beauty license, and I came through Sugar City on the Greyhound Bus and stopped right there on Main Street? At the time there was nothing but gravel roads and little old houses and I remember sitting there looking out the window and saying, “Who would want to live here?” Then after we moved here that memory came to me and I thought “Oh my gosh!”
