Life's Training Grounds

(D. Arthur and Maurine Haycock, at a White House Reception, 1954)

Since coming to Fort Worth, I've been thinking a lot about the meaning of life experiences, and the value of having experiences that stretch us.  I've really enjoyed my time here so far, but it has certainly been a challenge.  By its very nature a PhD program makes you feel inadequate.  Somewhere in the midst of reading 2-3 books per week, writing book reviews of those books, and using your "spare" time to do research to write papers and get published, and then trying to fulfill callings and have a social life (as a single), you start to wonder about your general level of sanity.  (And you start writing horrible run-on sentences).  No matter what the nature of our challenges in life, there is a temptation to begin wondering if you are in the right place.  Perhaps most dangerously, there is what Elder Holland once called, "the temptation to retreat from a good thing."

All of this brings me to Washington D.C. and the U.S. Department of Agriculture during 1953 and 1954.  Hopefully those who aren't members of my family will indulge me a little bit of family history.  I promise it will have a point.

To get to 1953, I need to write a short background.  As a young missionary in Hawaii in 1935, my grandfather, D. Arthur Haycock, was privileged to be present for the visit of President Heber J. Grant to the islands.  President Grant had come to organize the Hawaii Stake, the first stake to be organized outside of North America.  During President Grant's visit, my grandfather had occasion to see the work of President Grant's able secretary, Brother Joseph Anderson.  Upon seeing Brother Anderson's contributions, my grandfather determined that when he returned from Hawaii, he wanted to work for the Church like Brother Anderson.  To make a long story short, after returning from his mission, my grandfather eventually managed to secure one of the coveted secretarial positions at the Church offices. In 1947, after nearly ten years of working for the Church (minus some time at the Denver and Rio Grande during the war), President George Albert Smith hired my grandfather as his private secretary. And so from 1947 until President Smith's death in 1951, my grandfather's dream came true.  He had the position that he had always hoped for and loved every minute of it.

With President Smith's death, however, that dream job came to an end.  President McKay already had a very able secretary in Sister Claire Middlemiss, who stayed on with him and served faithfully throughout President McKay's presidency.  In 1952 when Dwight D. Eisenhower asked Elder Benson to accept the position of Secretary of Agriculture, Elder Benson asked my grandfather to move to Washington D.C. and accept a position as his secretary.  After counseling with President McKay and with my grandmother, my grandpa accepted the position and moved to Washington D.C.

While an executive position in the government would be a dream job for many people, my grandfather found Washington very challenging.  He found the environment in Washington D.C. to be a night and day difference from his his work at the Church.  Although he found his work for the government to be interesting and challenging, he and the family struggled to fit into the Potomac region's "unique trappings."  He later confided in a friend and mentor that, "Even before I left for Washington I was quite sure that the glamour would quickly wear off--and I have not be disappointed in that regard."  While he was grateful for the employment and the opportunities it offered, my grandfather's heart had always been at 47 East South Temple, working for the Church.

Most challenging of all, Washington was far from home and during the first several months there, my grandfather was virtually alone.  My grandmother had stayed in Utah with their four girls (including my beautiful mother) to try to sell the house in Salt Lake City while he looked for an affordable house in Washington.  Noting this challenge, my grandfather wrote in his diary for March 2, 1953, "tired & very homesick--miss Maurine something terrible."  The next day he wrote, "Still lonesome for my wife & girls--miss them terribly."  After the family arrived, my grandmother also struggled with the challenge of being so far from home and family.

Everything changed one day in February 1954, when President Stephen L. Richards called to extend a calling to my grandparents to preside over the Hawaii Mission.  By the end of June their Washington experience was over and the family was situated in the Islands.  By 1963, my grandfather was once again working for the Church, and from 1970 until his retirement in 1986 served as secretary to Presidents Joseph Fielding Smith, Harold B. Lee, Spencer W. Kimball, and Ezra Taft Benson.

Washington D.C. had been a hard experience for my grandparents.  But it had also been a necessary experience for them.  While there, my grandparents made several lifelong friends, gained important skills, had once in a lifetime experiences, and learned more about enduring life's challenges.  In spite of the challenges, my grandparents were wise enough to realize that there were friends to be made and there was happiness to be had, even in Washington D.C.  In 1985, he wrote a letter to the family, detailing some of these experiences and came to this important conclusion:  "I have come to know that not every unhappy experience in life needs to remain unhappy, but rather in all likelihood, is a training ground for a better and happier day."

These past couple of months in Fort Worth have helped me to understand this principle better.  There are plenty of days when I feel almost exactly like my grandfather felt during those first challenging months in Washington.  But I am beginning to learn that wherever I am, there are friends to be made, lessons to be learned, and joyful experiences to be had, even far away from friends and family in Fort Worth, Texas.  May we all take advantage of and enjoy the various training grounds that God sends us to.  As we do so, the time will come when we will look back with fondness and see their value in our lives, rejoicing that God was so good as to send us there.

Brett