HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!

Today marks the 91st anniversary of the Melvin Reed and Maude Marie Crane Huggins Family.  They were married by their bishop on a cold winter's night in Idaho with very little in the way of celebration.  I believe maybe a few gifts from family and friends, but no party or reception.  That kind of partying was not so much the accepted social custom at that time.  Money was scarce, and what little people had was husbanded for the necessities. 

Melvin and Maude got on the train almost immediately and went to Salt Lake City where they set up housekeeping in Riverton where my dad's parents had a farm.  My mother said it was such a pleasure to arrive in the Salt Lake Valley and see plowed fields with circling seagulls instead of the snow and ice they had left behind.

That was the inauspicious start of 60 years of marriage.  But in spite of its modest beginnings, it was a productive and fruitful partnership which generated people with the same hearty genes and determination to endure to the end just as their immediate pioneer parents and grandparents had done.

We are part of that noble birthright and heritage.  I cherish the upbringing of honesty, integrity, and hard work which I passed on to you.  Though you have not liked my saying this, we were the meat and the potatoes, the work horses who get the world's work done.  We will never be famous, but we will be revered in our own family for character traits which reflect the birthright of good people who tried to do their best.

Happy Anniversary! to all of those who carry that Huggins link in their family history line. 

     At the sheep camp in Idaho where they met about 1922                         This is the way you probably remember them.