Grandpa Emery

When I was growing up, I always had a healthy admiration for my ancestors on the Flake side. They were among the early Mormon pioneers who crossed the plains with the saints. Both my paternal grandmother and grandfather came from long lines of good, faithful members of the church. Family history archives are full of stories of faith, sacrifice, and integrity.

My understanding and appreciation of my Emery roots came later in life. My Grandpa Emery was a colorful man with stories so wild, I just grew up assuming he was making them up. I am ashamed to admit that it was only after he had passed away that I came to realize that they were not only true, but there were more where that came from!

And, so, on this Memorial Day, I want to tell you a little about my favorite Veteran of all time, my Grandpa Emery.
























Grandpa Emery was born Danny Delmer Emery on June 26th, 1922 in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere, the mountains of northern Idaho (Woodland, ID). His Mom was white, his Dad was Native American. Long before the days of political correctness and affirmative action, Grandpa Emery was a half-breed. His maternal grandmother wasn't terribly interested in maintaining a relationship with her half-breed grandchildren and saw very little of them. Grandpa's Dad was like many other Native Americans, prone to drinking in binges. As a result, Grandpa grew up hard. Sometimes, their Dad wouldn't show up for days or weeks at a time. When he did get work as a logger, it would take him far away from home for atleast as long. Often, the money he earned from work never made it home, but instead to the local tavern. Grandpa's Dad sometimes got violent when he was drunk. One night, when Grandpa was 13, his Dad was drunk and was pushing his Mom around. Grandpa punched his Dad. He passed out. That's when Grandpa's mom begged him to leave and never come back. She was sincerely concerned for the safety of her son when his Dad came to.

That's how Grandpa became a hobo. Yep, during the depression lots of men would ride the rails from hobo camp to hobo camp looking for food, work, whatever they could get. He was just a child! But Grandpa had already learned a lot from the hardship in his life.

Grandpa was eventually able to return home and finished highschool. Shortly after, at the age of 17, Grandpa enlisted in the army. He was stationed in the Phillippines when Pearl Harbor was attacked during the attack that began WWII. There are millions of haunting stories about Grandpa's time fighting in the Phillipines, but a couple that have stayed with me are these:























Once Grandpa shot a guy and went around to see if he had got him. When he found the guy, he was dead. He was knelt down on his knees praying. Poor Grandpa never got over that one. Once Grandpa accidentally (seriously!) got married to a Phillippino girl. Something about not understanding the language and customs. When the war was over, Grandpa tried to return to her village, but never did find the girl. Her village had been destroyed.

My Grandfather was in the Bataan Death March. Men died to the right and left, but miraculously, my Grandpa ended up in a prison camp. I'm not so sure he would call it miraculous. When he left that camp, after every kind of torture imaginable, Grandpa weighed in the 90's! He was 6'0".

Back home, Grandpa's mother had received a life insurance check from the army for her son after the Bataan Death March. Although it was a lot of money, and she needed that money, she refused to cash the check saying, "I know my son is alive". When Grandpa got back to the states, he sent his Mom a telegram saying he was on his way home. She never got that telegram. You can imagine the emotions she must have felt when she was washing clothes in the creek one day and looked up to see her son coming across to meet her!

After the war, Grandpa met my beautiful Grandma, Lorraine Adamson, at a dance in the local town. They courted and married in 1946.

The GI bill paid for Grandpa to go to college, the first to attend on either side of his family. At first, they lived in northern Idaho. They had three children when Grandma joined the church. With a little persuasion, Grandpa was talked in to reading the history of "his ancestors" (the predecessors to the American Indians found in the Book of Mormon). That led to Grandpa's baptism, three more children, and their move to Boise.
























Later, Grandpa opened his own business, an insurance agency. He did well, owning both a home in town (Boise) and a ranch house and land out on the rural outskirts of town. Grandpa succeeded in the land of shirts and ties as well as in the community of ranchers. He raised sheep, chickens, had horses and sometimes a herd of cattle. He ran for the House of Representatives and served 7 terms there. He was loved everywhere.

When they were the age of retirement, my Grandparents decided to serve a mission. Guess where they were called? To the very land where Grandpa had been tortured and starved, the Phillipines. They loved their mission.

Grandpa had many, many quirks. He had shrapnel left over from a couple of bullet wounds in his hip and leg. He even had lingering malaria. It hurt him all the time, but doctors were sure any surgery to extract the shrapnel would leave Grandpa unable to walk. It especially bothered him when it was cold. As a result, Grandpa always wanted to be hot. He was famous for turning on the heat in his truck in the summer. Every winter, he would take his truck with a camper on the back of it south to southern California, Mexico, Arizona and Texas. Even though West Virginia was usually colder than Idaho, Grandpa usually figured out a way to work a visit to my family into his winter trip. He would bring boxes of oranges and trinkets from Mexico.

Grandpa did a lot of cooking. He was almost always slow cooking some kind of meat. As he was getting older, Grandpa's stomach started to bother him. Every morning Grandpa would wrap some kind of meat in a piece of bread or a tortilla and then he'd put that in a piece of foil and put it in his pocket. Every hour or so, Grandpa would pull that foil out of his pocket and take only one bite. He always had foil in his pocket!

Grandpa was a ridiculously early sleeper/riser. He would go to bed in the late afternoon and get up sometime between 3:30 and 4:30. Grandpa rarely made it to family dinners as he got older. Too late!

Grandpa was a cowboy poet. He loved his poetry and was often quoting his poems or writing new ones. He was a very deep thinker and felt things profoundly.

Grandpa was convinced he was going to die young! I can remember as a very little child that Grandpa would always say goodbye as we headed back east after our annual trip to Boise, "Come and give me a hug, Sarah, this may be the last time you see me!" I guess you could say we were pretty well prepared when he finally did die (6.5 years ago).

Many summers, Grandpa would take his grandsons to "sheep camp" . He would take his sheep to the foothills of Idaho with all of his little guys as helpers. They would camp out, fish and do guy stuff. I was always a little jealous that I wasn't invited.

Grandpa was an amateur painter. There were a lot of years that he did a ton of painting. He would take his canvases on his winter trips south and paint all sorts of beautiful landscapes.

I can only remember once that my Grandpa got mad at me. My parents had left for some work-related trip and Grandma and Grandpa were in charge of us. I was in highschool, so I guess there were atlest 9 or 10 of us kids by then. I was late to wake up on a seminary morning, and Grandpa could tell we were going to be late. I think he was worried my parents would be mad at him if we got to seminary late. Exasperated, Grandpa yelled at me, "Damn it, girl! Get INTO the shower!!!" I did.

The summer before Grandpa died, I called up to his house. By then he was living on the ranch property, but in a different house built more recently. I asked him if I could come up and take some pictures of him in his element. He said sure. It was nice wandering around the property with Grandpa. We visited his greenhouse and saddled up the horses. It was the last alone time I ever spent with him.































































When I think over Grandpa's life, it's amazing to me what he went through! I am in awe how a boy who came from humble, even negative beginnings, who was tortured and starved, who suffered for the wrong choices of others as well as many of his own wrong choices, could then become the man I knew. He was a half-breed, a hobo, a soldier, a prisoner of war, a husband and father, a returned-missionary, a business owner a rancher and a state representative. And he was my Grandpa.