Tuesday, October 6, 2020

Helen Rex (1913-1982) lived on Wilson Avenue while attending Salt Lake LDS High School 1928-1929


Salt Lake LDS High School Campus (notice Salt Lake Temple)


Salt Lake LDS High School Campus (notice Hotel Utah)


Brother Durham was a favorite teacher.


Helen is in the right center of the picture 
looking all the world like her daughter Susan.



Helen (on the right) and a friend in Liberty Park
 are looking back cousin Jerry Morgan.


Helen was invited to stay with Earl and Marin Morgan
 because Grandma Morgan's house was full.


Jerry is on the right, Jack and John
(Jack Clayton, John Morgan?) are to his left.
  Earl and Marin Morgan's Wilson Street home.



Helen is the photographer.  
Jerry on the left of two of her classmates.



Jerry is with Helen in front of his Wilson Avenue home.  
Cousins of about the same age



Magazines for the years Helen resided in Salt Lake City. 



 

Monday, September 14, 2020

Glenn and Helen Rex Frazier. New Draft Document compels me to POST.

Glenn Frazier and Helen Rex met at one of her high school dances. She graduated in 1931.  They courted for several years.

In mid-1937 Helen traveled to California where Glenn was living and working. Soon after her return to Randolph the following appeared in a Rich County newspaper.



Its presumed Glenn and Helen are standing in front of their Derby Street, Oakland, California  address listed in the following Draft Registration.  

Glenn was good at checkers.  He loved to tell us he'd won our mother Helen's hand in marriage by winning her mother Bessie Morgan Rex in a game of checkers.


Glenn certainly looks content having dozed off reading the current Life Magazine.  Note his need for a new pair or shoes, or new shoe soles.


In 1941 Glenn and Helen hosted her family (PH Rex, Mary, Morgan, Maeser, Flora) for Thanksgiving Dinner in their apartment.


One night walking home from the movies an unknown photographer snapped this unsolicited picture of Glenn and Helen walking in the cold. Note Helen's hands tucked into the sleeves of her brown wool coat topped with a velvet collar.


This newly discovered document shared by Family Search instigated this Post.  It told me several things I hadn't yet learned about my parents' lives in Oakland.  It needed to be saved and shared.


Helen and some friends in Oakland shared a social the year she and Glenn moved from there to Woodruff, Utah.


Glenn and Helen are sitting on the floor front and center at a Young Marrieds Halloween Party in Oakland probably days before they began their move to Woodruff, Utah.  They spent Halloween night at a motel in Las Vegas, Nevada.


 Their children Rex and Bessie are waiting for public transportation in Oakland.  Please note the coats they are wearing.  Made by their Great Aunt Maude Frazier Eastman.  She picked apart and refashioned adult wool coats she then sewed from the usable pieces for children.  We were lucky recipients of more than one of her lovely coats.  Mine may have been fashion from the coat Helen wore ten years earlier--velvet collar and all. 

Monday, August 31, 2020

Bessie wrote a drama in six reels for the silent screen.


In 1912 newly weds Percy Harold and Bessie Morgan Rex established their home in Randolph, Utah.  They lived and ranched outside of town for their first years there. Bessie was raised in Salt Lake City and helped establish a Ladies Literary Club there as a young woman. She loved the arts and was a talented teacher and writer.     


Randolph, A Look Back, page 203
“Drama in the Old Opera house”
Written by Vera H. Peart Pulsipher

Under the direction of Alice Reay, Stewart McKinnon and Bessie M. Rex, many shows were put on in the Old Opera House. Willard and I took part in most of them.

We were really a Traveling Troupe taking shows throughout the County. One time we went to Woodruff to put on a play. We were to put on a matinee for the children and a performance at night for the adults. This one time the show was not going over very good for the children. Fat (Delbert) Fackrell, one of the actors, said, “We must do something for the kids to enjoy of they will go home and tell their parents what a poor show it is and the adults won’t come out.” With this in mind, they started punching one another and knocking over tables—anything to make the children laugh. The result was a large turn-out at the night performance.

Another time Willard was to kiss Stella Israelson, who was the leading lady. She had a lace dress on and when Willard kissed her, one of his coat buttons got caught on her dress and there they were, attached to each other. The curtain had to be dropped. In another one, Willard was the villain. Joyce, about four years old, was in the audience with her Aunt Thelma. Willard was “shot” and dropped to the floor; the “catsup” started to ooze out on his white shirt, and Joyce yelled and cried, “They have shot my Dad.” It brought the house down in laughter.

Every production had its comedy, as something funny always happened—like the time “Fat” Fackrell got his coat changed with Mearl Peart.  Mearl came out with sleeves to his knees, and “Fat” was struggling to get into his.

In a show that Stewart was conducting, he was also the prompter; it got so funny, he got to laughing so hard, he lost the place in the script. The show had to stop for awhile as the actor forgot his lines and Stewart couldn’t prompt him.

When the MIA sponsored contest dramas, the best one from the stake would go to Salt Lake to June Conference. Alice Reay directed Woodruff Stake, which Randolph Ward won and went to Salt Lake in June. Letha Spencer and R. D. Law were the leading parts: Reuben had to kiss Letha. Blaine (Letha’s husband) was in the audience, and he said, “you know, I think he likes that too-o-o much!”




Thursday, January 30, 2020

1937 - Helen Rex's trip to Los Angeles to visit her fiance Glenn Frazier

Helen wrote:
We surely had a Grand Time. I mean Glenn and I.


My father, Glenn Frazier moved  from Woodruff, Utah to Los Angeles, California in 1936. There he lived, attended school, and worked.  He left his girlfriend, Helen Rex behind in Randolph, Utah. There she worked in the Rich County Court House where she saved and planned for their future marriage.

Both on Bridge of Los Angeles River
 where it goes into the ocean May 19, 1937

In May 1937 Helen vacationed  in Los Angles, California with her fiance Glenn. Upon her return to Randolph she wrote a three page letter to her brother Harold Morgan Rex. He was serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Brazil. The pictures she saved and her letter to her brother described her WONDERFUL trip to California.  Grateful I am to her brother and family for saving her letter for me.  And for Helen!  I'm so PROUD of her for pulling off that dream trip.  



Helen at Forest Lawn Memorial Park May 16, 1937. 
The pool with "Finding of Moses"

May 18, 1937 Charlie Chaplain's home


Long Beach Hotel
May 19, 1937 

Ronald Coleman's home
May 18, 1937

4062 Oakwood Ave., L. A.
May 23, 1937
Glenn Frazier on left. I presume this man is his room mate.
I don't know his name. 
Helen wrote her brother Harold: "A fellow from Mississippi is living with him, and he doesn’t even have any kind of work. So Glenn does feel pretty good about his luck."  

Glenn at  Temple of Santa Sabina, 
Forest Lawn Memorial Park

 Helen with Glenn's friend in front of apartment

May 19, 1937
Soldiers at Long Beach

Long Beach
May 19, 1937
'I got my 1st sight of the ocean. I was surely thrilled."

4062 Oakwood Ave., L. A. 
Glenn and friend

Long Beach, May 19, 1937
Officer's boat from Battle Ship Utah

Santa Monica
May 21, 1937

Ocean Park
May 21, 1937
Pictures and their descriptions from Helen's scrapbook.