Chapter 8 - The pressure put on son to go on mission for LDS Church

CHAPTER 8

It was nearly 11 p.m. when I pushed my key into the front door lock. I proceeded directly to the small bathroom that served our family of six. I locked the door, brushed my teeth thoroughly and then squeezed a half-inch ribbon of toothpaste onto my tongue, sloshed it about with water and then swallowed it -- my nightly protection against tobacco-breath. Thus cleansed, I emerged from the bathroom and opened the door to my parents' bedroom. The room was lit and they were both sitting up in bed.


My father got right to it. Peering at me through his thick-lens glasses, he almost gleefully announced, "I hear big things were to happen at the ward tonight. Tell us about it, big boy."


"Well," I spoke slowly, "they said I've had a mission call. They as much as said that you had wired things so that I would go to England. They didn't really cover any other details because I told them right off that I am not going to go on a mission -- no matter where it is."


And my father said, "Always joking. You and your crazy sense of humor!" But he knew. I could tell from his expression.

"Everyone thinks I'm joking, but I'm not." My voice shook as I continued: "I really do not want to go on a mission. And I just plain am not going to go."

And then I got it -- everything I knew they were going to say and a lot of things I never even anticipated. And while my mother was asking me how I could possibly think of doing such a thing to my father after all he had done for me, she started crying. And after a while my father began getting angry and he commenced speaking loudly. He got out of bed and I was talking back to him, which always inflamed him more, and I thought oh, boy, now I've done it and he's going to hit me and if he does I'm going to hit him back, not in the face but in the ribs. I'll pound the hell out of his ribs.

But my father did not hit me. And, after they had exhausted all their arguments, he finally said: "I think maybe you'll feel differently after you've had a night to think about it." After I closed the door behind me, I lingered long enough to hear him praying aloud. He was entreating God to soften my heart and cause me to follow the counsel of my parents.

Our breakfast period was solemn. I was several times compelled to reassert my unchanged position. On my return from school my mother immediately reproached me for my intent to "spit in the face of the Lord." When my father arrived from work he presented his reasons for my becoming a missionary all over again -- more persuasively than during the previous night. I assumed he had spent a good part of the day perfecting his arguments. I had devoted a lot of thought to countering his logic and had decided that my best line of defense was to stick with the line "I am not going to go."

My parents induced a couple of university faculty members and some neighbors to put pressures on me. And the bishopric, much influenced by my father, established a deadline by which I was to give them my acceptance of the Lord's call. I kept saying "You have my final answer. I ain't gonna go." And they kept telling me to pray for guidance. Fearing that the Lord's guidance might tend to head me for a missionary's career, I took the counsel of my heart instead.

The deadline day was Friday and the bishopric had ordained that they must have my final answer by 7 p.m. Knowing that I had to get it over with, I did what had to be done. I left campus early, arriving home at 3:30 p.m.

My mother accosted me at the front door. Her first words were: "Tell me that I can call your father and tell him you're accepting your call."

And I said, "Mom, I can't do that."

Her face hardened into her determined look and she said, "Your father and I have decided you're going to go. We're your parents and you owe us that much. We're going to tell the bishop you're accepting your call. And you're going to do it! After all's said and done, we're your family!"

Then I told her: "Mom, I'm in another family now. Since two o'clock, I have belonged to the United States Marines."

And 17 days after Pearl Harbor, I married Kathryn Davis.

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Page Modified July 6, 1999