Our family in Nampa

“During the Second World War, John couldn’t buy a tractor and hired men were hard to find so we sold our livestock, horses and machinery to Jay Smith who had helped us with summer before and we moved to Nampa, Idaho on March 17, 1945, Nola’s birthday. We had hired a truck from Nampa to come for our furniture. The truck arrived before we were up as we had attended the St. Patrick’s dance the night before and we had slept in later than our usual early hour of getting up. It was snowing and we scattered among our neighbors for breakfast. We pulled out amid the tearful goodbyes of the neighbors and John’s family. If we hadn’t already bought a place in Nampa, I believe we would have back out and stayed right there in Acequia. Nola will never forget that birthday. We arrived at our new home ahead of the truck and sat around the cold empty house until a neighbor Mr. Long took pity on us and invited us over to their house for supper. The truck arrived around 9:00 pm. They had burned out a bearing in a wheel near Jerome. We then put up our beds and the cook stove. This was Saturday night. Sunday we had things pretty well straightened around and we looked up the schools on Monday. Lois would attend Nampa High School, Carol Jean would go to the Junior High, and Jack and Nola would attend Lakeview Grade school.It was a rather lonely spring and summer as we knew so few people and had no one to visit except Martin and Millie Teuscher in Boise. Martin was John’s cousin and the one who had urged us to come to the Boise area. Martin and John had attended another cousin’s funeral in Montpelier and at that time Martin had invited John and I to come to Boise and look the area over.

We started attending church at the LDS First Ward and soon met some people as nice as the ones we had left in the Acequia Ward. I was asked to work in the Primary as the second counselor. On January 12, 1947 I became Primary President and served in that calling for two years.

John went to work at the sugar factory which was just about one-half mile from our place. He worked there through each campaign for twelve years. Lois graduated from high school in May, 1947, and Carol from Central Jr. High that same year. Lois attended Nampa Business college right out of high school for eight months and then went to work for lawyer, Earl Reed. She finished her business course going to night classes. On July 14, 1948 she married Jerry Thorne (Jerrold Lewis) in the Idaho Falls Temple. We went with them and had our endowments and had our family sealed to us. This was something we had waited long years for but we had needed this occasion to fulfill our plans to become a celestial family.”

-Beatrice Gardner Straubhaar

Excerpt from Straubhaar Family History, July 1990