As told by Reinhart and Barbara Kowallis
The first thing I can remember when I was little was crawling under the fence cause I’d been naughty and mother grabbed me by the pants and pulled me back. I don’t remember what I did. And then I remember another time when I did something; I went and climbed up the poplar tree out in front. She couldn’t reach me. So I was safe that time. I don’t recall how long I waited up there. But she was a small woman and she wasn’t very large. I don’t remember much of her. I remember when she died and they took me into the front room and let me see her there in the casket. And that’s about all I remember of her (Justine Brenner).
I wasn’t much of a game player. When I was in the first grade or second grade, something like that, we were playing baseball…and I held my hands up there and instead of hitting in my hand it me in my eye. I can remember that I was getting hit in the eye with a baseball. A lot of that stuff I can’t remember any more. I can remember when Russell Maughn flew his plane in to River Heights and landed in the fields up above next to the mountain. He was in World War I and he was one of these aviator aces of World War I. It was on Sunday, on a Sunday morning, and Sunday school was about to start when he dropped that plane up on them fields up there. Why Sunday school just disappeared. Everybody went up there… They lived in River Heights at that time, his folks did, and he stopped in there to visit them. Of course he flew his plane in. That was quite a deal at that time.
I can remember dad used to take us up in the summer, he shut the shop up, close the business, and take us up the canyon for several days vacation and usually we went up past the red banks and on up to where you turn to go east on the canyon road. And over to the west towards the river there was a nice campground n there. In that time the campgrounds weren’t organized. It was just a nice place you could park and stay. And we had a big tent. We made the tent, put the tent up. And that’s where we camped for sometimes a week. Albert and I, my older brother, would go fishing. Never caught much but there was always fish in the creek right there. They were just natives. That was before they started planting fish. But that’s just where we camped and we had a lot of fun there.
Dad at that time had an old Rio (?)(Make of car). That make is not in existence anymore. But we’d pile everything in the car and it had running boards it where they had racks on the running boards and we could load things down… and that’s what we had, our first car. Fords, new Fords, as I recall when I was a teenager were around $600 for a new car. Now you can’t buy a tire for that.
I can remember when I was on my mission I bought a rifle while I was in Germany. Well how I come to get it before I went on my mission I worked on a ranch over in Randolph and the last month or tow that I was working over there the boss said he’d let me have a little colt that I was watching. It was a two year old. A nice little black guilding…and I rode that pony all the way from Randolph to Logan in one day. Or no, to Laytown, I rode to Laytown the first day and stopped at the boss’s mother’s in Laytown and then the next day I rode from there to Logan with that little two year old. That was a nice horse. And when I went on my mission I took the horse down to Lawrence Larson’s, a friend of mine in Logan, to keep it. Then while I was on my mission I wrote him and told him, sell the horse and send me the money, I want to buy a gun. So he did. And there was another missionary out there that was quite a gun enthusiast and he told me where to go to get the gun customized and built the way I wanted it. It was a 7nm mouser sporting gun. It was custom built. Right now, Kim’s got it. So I bought the gun and brought it back.
One day I can remember, living there in River Heights in Logan there and I used to do a lot of hiking back up on Little Baldy and Big Baldy and those mountains there and up Dry Canyon. And I went up hunting there one snowy morning. There was moonlight and the snow was crusted and I hiked up the east side over there of the east mountains. I got part way up there and I had a little black dog at the time and there was a lot of elk tracks around and the dog picked up a fresh sent of the elk tracks and took off down through the trees and pretty soon come back and a big ole bull elk right on his tail. And he got about ten feet from me and I could see that the elk wasn’t going to stop. The dog was crouched between my legs and so I just raised the rifle up and shot It couldn’t kill the elk but it wounded it I’m sure. He twirled around and went back down and somebody said they found him there a couple of days later and he was dead. But we used to have a lot of fun with that rifle. It was a good gun. Still is a good gun.
Before I came home I took a little trip down to…to see the passion play down there. Every year that little town down there put on the passion play. It’s a lot like Shakespeare programs. And that was where I say Hitler come through. He came through with all his paraphernalia and parade and they put on a big show for him there and I took some pictures of it but I don’t know whether I got them around anymore or not. It think Bart’s got those…that was when I was coming on the way home and I took a little trip through Germany there. Then over through France. And I boarded the boat on the British side and come home. Then I boarded the ship in England and come on back. I took usually about five or six days by boat. Going over a lot of them got sick. At that time when you traveled over seas it was by boat. And if the seas were rough you went anyhow. I didn’t hit rough seas there so much, well it got rough with all that wavy action, I thought I could get by without it. As we went out under the arch harbor going over I did all right until we hit the middle, the main body of water, then it eventually got to me and I hung over the side like the rest of them did. It was an interesting time.
You got married right after you got home from your mission. It was about ten years after. I got married in 1942. And three days after I got married I was inducted in World War II. Norma lived with her folks over here in Pleasant View. However she did go with me while I was still in training here in the states and we went back east and we were back there for a couple of months or longer I don’t remember how long. And I was in California for a while and she stayed in there in California with me. I had to be on the base most of the time, but we had a little apartment there that we shared with another couple of couples that were in the army too.
I went over and was assigned to go to the islands and on the way we stopped at the Hawaiian Islands and spent probably a month there before they shipped us out. They shipped us over to Guam. I stopped there. I had a little interpretation team that I was in charge of, interpreting maps, something like that. On Guam we did the interpreting of maps and we had a system where we could measure the water depth in the harbors and things like that. We did the measuring of water depths so that the ships could go through where they had to go to get in.
The work we were doing was on Okinawa so we spent quite a time mapping the water depths of Okinawa. Of course the Japs, they said that they pushed us out. They would send their frogmen in first. Then they would travel under the water until they got to where they wanted to before they’d surface. The Japs thought they were being invaded, well they were being invaded, but these guys went in just as a preliminary to see that there was no mines where the ships had to come in. And the Japs thought they had cleaned us out because the frogmen went back out to their ships where they’d came from of course they were all bombarded…I didn’t have to go to Okinawa until they had pretty well established the island. I was there until the end of the last of the air raids (Kamikazes)…It was a real fourth of July to just sit there and watch the shells explode in the sky and planed trying to fly through and so on and so forth. That was a lot of experience there.
I didn’t do a lot of fighting. I was in the headquarters section and we were still mapping and determining maps, so I never did get into action. After the armistice had just been signed I and the sergeant decided to go looking around the island a little bit and we found a couple of marines that were trying to get some Japs out of a cave they had that place tunneled from one place to the other. They had a big hospital in there under the ground. When the Americans came in and took the island over this underground hospital, rather than try and do anything to save themselves, they went through the hospital beds and killed every Jap that was there, and the Japs did this so we couldn’t take them captive. I didn’t go down into the ground there, but those that went in told us about it. We were in headquarters there and didn’t get out terribly often. But I did get down there after the armistice was signed with the sergeant and these two marines were trying to get some Japs out of the tunnels there and finally one of them came out. He had a hand grenade in his hand and we just motioned for him to throw it down. He dropped it and came on out. All he had on was a loincloth. And we knew there was another one in there at least and maybe two and he indicated that there was two others in there. So I took a grenade in and tossed it into the hole. We couldn’t get them to come out and I threw a grenade in the hole and I’m sure that it killed one of them. But then there was an explosion in the hole too and I’m sure that they killed one of them their selves. They carried those grenades not necessarily to fight with but to kill themselves with. And when they got in a spot where they knew they couldn’t resist they’d hold the grenade against their heart and explode them.
And then there was a time there when our ammunition dump was about, oh, maybe half a mile away from where we were. But there was a little ridge between us. And our ammunition dump caught fire and it kept exploding, exploding, exploding all night and all day. I got up on this little ridge and watched it for a while and you could just feel the compression as the bombs would explode. They’re dumps, they actually had ammunition dumps where they were piled in different piles. They finally got the fire out but it exploded a lot of the stuff.
Then the last thing I did there, I broke out with a rash, I’m allergic to so many foods and so on. They army, they fed you a lot of sugars or things with sugar in, quick energy. And that got to me and they put me in the hospital for a while and they decided they just as well send me home. So that’s when they boxed me up and sent me over to the Hawaiian Islands and I stayed there for a day or two before they flew home and I landed in San Francisco. I was over seas for about a year. It was quit an experience.
That was three days after he got married. It was about that it wasn’t very long. I went up to Logan and worked for my brother in law there for a couple of days. He was in construction up there. But it was quite a show over there when the Japs surrendered. The came over to the Island of Okinawa there and had quite a deal. And of course they turned all their arms in then too. That’s when I picked up a Samari sword and a Japanese pistol and a Japanese rifle and I boxed them up and sent them all home. The sword, some guy come around and was buying those Japanese swords and I sold the one I had. He gave me a hundred dollars for it, something like that. The gun, I sold that to him too. I think he gave me twenty-five dollars for it.
I did a stupid thing when I was on Okinawa. After the armistice was signed they said, well turn your arms in. If I’d have used my head I’d have a brand new 45. If I’d have used my head I could’ve just gone over and told them it was lost and I’d have put it in my duffle bag and brought it home. And stupid me, I turned it in. And the thing is when you turned it in they just took the thing and threw it out there in a pile in the dirt. They just dumped them in the ground. In fact a lot of the equipment after the armistice was signed they took it out in the ocean and just dropped it in, rather than take it back to the states. A lot of their heavy equipment, big guns, tractors, and all that stuff they’d just dump it out. They’d take it out by boat and dump it in the water.
After I graduated from Utah State in Forestry I went up to Boise and worked the first summer on the Boise-Fayette Forest cruising timber. And to do that what you do you have a compass and you formed a line and every so far you stopped and you count the trees within the diameter and the size the tree is and so on and so forth. And then after I got through there I came back here to Utah and they had been fighting at that time the bugs that were attacking the pine over on the Uintas. And I spent two winters over there fighting insects. And what we’d do there, we’d go through and we’d have one guy running the compass, and there was four of us on out there a hundred feet apart. And we’d go through the timber and when we’d get to the end of the timber we’d move over and come back to the other side. And we’d spot the bug trees. And then after we’d spotted the tree you blazed it with your hatchet so you could find it again. Then later on we would come through in the winter and cut the tree down, cut it up into lengths that you could handle, and burn it. This bug (scientific name) is the name of it. It’s a little black bug about 3/8ths of an inch and it would burrow into the tree, into the cambium layer and when your spotting the trees you could tell because they’re would be a little pitch tube that the tree would push out. Then you’d find the little, it looked like sawdust, it would run down along the tree, so you could tell when the tree had been hit. And you’d mark it so the cutters when they came through they could find the place and burn it. And of course we’d spot those trees on the chart as we went through and when the spotters went through they take the chart and they’d locate these trees and cut them and burn them.
If you let the insect live, it burrows in and then goes up the cambium layer, eats it’s way up. And all the way as it goes up it lays eggs and the eggs hatch out and go around the cambium layer and in one year the tree is dead because they cut the cambium layer. And then of course the tree starts to die. Change color and die. And that was the thing they tried to fight. And then later on they came out with a special poison, an oil, that you just sprayed at the bowl of the tree and it killed the bugs. Eventually the Forest Service decided that it was a losing situation, let nature take it’s course.
Now you could go up through Jackson Hole up there and if you looked over on the high side of the mountain you’d see all of these red trees that were dying. It was because of the bugs, but they just let it go because you can’t win and it was costing them a lot of money. And that’s where I started out in Forestry.
I graduated in Forestry and Wildlife Management and I never did get into the Wildlife Management. Then after the war, when I come back, I looked the situation over should I go back into the forest or should I do something else. And like a stupid idiot, I decided to go back into teaching school, so I’d be home, be able to raise a family, one thing and another but I didn’t do anything further in the forest business. I taught eight years in junior high. It was a pretty good school. I started there at Walquist… I quite enjoyed teaching but you could starve to death on the wages. So I’d work summers, I worked with the Forest Service a couple of summers up here one the Ogden Canyon. I was a recreation guard. I’d see that the campgrounds were kept up. Just general maintenance work one the on the canyon and the campgrounds. It was your job to go around and see that the toilets were cleaned and the tables and the garbage was cleaned up.
Roy Stoker that lived up in Huntsville, he and I worked the canyon there. We had a pretty good system there working. We’d go through and clean the garbage cans, we’d throw the garbage in the truck and then take it to the dump. I enjoyed the work up there and it was cool in the summertime a lot more than it was down here.
And then we had a fire on the hillside one night. We had to go and put that out. A sheepherder set a fire up there to keep the coyotes away from the sheep. That was a midnight tour. I don’t like firefighting. It’s too hot.
On a mission. I started out in Mogdeburg, well of course we started in Berlin that’s the church headquarters, but then I was assigned to the mission in Mogdeburg. And of course I had to ride the train to get there and I couldn’t speak any German, couldn’t understand it. And it’s kind of a scary situation to be on a train among strangers who don’t understand you and wonder if you’re going to get off at the right place or what’s your going to do. Well it worked out all right. I made it. They commissioned a companion who was waiting for me there on the dock when I go there to Mogdeburg so I wasn’t lost entirely.
The funny this is, dad of course is German and he came over from Germany when he was sixteen and located in Utah here. He’d taken an apprenticeship out as a printer and he started his own business. He tried to teach me a little German before I left. He and mother would talk German so us kids couldn’t understand what they were saying. And we never did pick it up. So I had to start from scratch when I got over there. At that time they didn’t give you any training before you left.
My first assignment was in Mogdeburg and I stayed with a couple that were LDS and she was mostly blind, she had Cataracts and couldn’t read because her eyes wouldn’t let her. And so I would read the Book of Mormon in German, I could make out the reading, and she’d correct me when I’d make a mistake and I’d read through the Book of Mormon that way and I picked up a lot of the German that way.
It’s a funny thing when you get in a foreign land and you don’t know the language. You work with it about six months and all at once it just comes to you. it seems like it’s just there. And you get along after that. It’s a struggle for a few months. Of course now they have the mission home and that’s where you have the struggle.
I remember seeing Hitler all right. I remember some of the people I knew. There was one family. He was the keeper of the railroad gate. When the trains were coming he’d put the gaits down. And he had two daughters that were. The oldest daughter was filling a mission in Berlin and the youngest daughter was doing the secretarial work for us in the branch and I remember then Eltsie and Helen, Helen was the older one, and they were both nice looking gals. When I was released from my mission I came back up that way to visit them and I know Eltsie would like to have been able to come to America and I think she would have picked up with any missionary that would have proposed to her. And eventually they did. They came over before the war and I don’t know just where they settled but I understand they came over with a couple of missionaries. They were nice kids.
I never did baptize anybody while I was over there. We taught quite a few. The Germans weren’t very interested in religion. Hitler had them going and they were going to win the world and you just here the tramp, tramp, tramp of feet all night long. When he came in and put the youth, they had a pretty good scout organization before, and as soon as Hitler came and took power the scout business was done right then. And he put his youth, he pulled all the youth in, trained them as soldiers and they would drill day and night. Before he came in Germany was under the obligation they had made that they wouldn’t have more than, I don’t remember what the number was. I think it was a hundred thousand military personnel in the country. What they did was to train the hundred thousand as officers then as soon as Hitler came in he took that and organized the youth as soldiers and trained them and these guys were the officers so that when war broke out they were fully equipped. So that’s how they did it.
Unfortunately I kept a diary a little diary about so big. About all I’d ever do I’d open it up and I’d think what did I do today and then I’d just say well, I’ll have to write it up some other place, so I’d just put, “remember”. That’s about all there was in it. I never did get anything worthwhile in it. It’s too bad I didn’t because it would have been valuable to me later on.
After I come home Mac… was Sheriff and well he pulled me in as the deputy on the force. And that lasted, I think I was only in there about six months and I decide to go teach school. Sheriffing wasn’t for me. And so I started teaching school. I shouldn’t have done that I should’ve stayed at the Forest Service. I should’ve gone back to them. After I taught for six or eight years I went back into government work and I worked with the Bureau of Reclamation on the Weber Basin Project here in the Valley. Then that started to peter out. I had some friends in Salt Lake at the Geological Survey. Bill Wilson was the Chief down there. He was born and raised in the same little River Heights town that I was although he was older than I was. And he knew me and I knew him. and then there was Herald Chase that I went to school with in Logan. He was working there and I knew him. There was Don Peterson that I went to School with in Logan. He was there and I knew him. So I pretty well knew the gang down there. When I went down and asked if I could go to work with them they said, sure, come down. So I transferred from the Bureau of Reclamation up here and went down there to the Geologic Survey. And I finally ended up down there as section chief. Herald Chase was Section chief when I went down there and he died and that threw me into his position. That was interesting work because we measured all the streams in Utah. Kept the records on the stream flow. I moved all around the state doing that stuff.
We had different sections and we’d trade off different units, different areas and getting down through… that country was quite a chore at times. And sometimes you didn’t have much of a road down there to get to the streams. I thought at one time, I’d like to go down and be the one working down there. They had an office down there in Moab. But Herald Chase says, ah, you don’t want to go down there, better stay right here. And it was a good thing I did. I’d had to move the family, sell the place here, and move down there if I’d have done that. It wouldn’t have worked out too well. I spent quite a little time off and on down there with the crew installing stations, one thing and another that had to be done. But that was just periodic work, most of the time I was in Salt Lake. It’s a great life.
Then when Norma died that left me alone and I was alone for a year or so. (Barbara’s daughter Connie) was a nurse and she took care of Norma when she was ill and after Norma died Connie told me about her mother that she was a widow and she kind of urged me on. But she wouldn’t tell me where to go or where to find her. And so when I retired I had a little trailer on the truck and I went down to Florida. And on the way down Connie and her husband had moved down that way because he was at Wonder Bread and he was all over the country with Wonder Bread all the time. I got down there and she finally gave me the address of her mother and I said well I’ll go up and visit her. And so I went up there and couldn’t hardly find the darn place and then after I did she wanted to kick me out.
Barbara: you got there just as I was watching pro bowling and I said just leave me alone you can watch pro bowling if you want to, or you can just sit, cause I’m going to watch my pro bowling program then I have to get ready and go…
Reinhart: it was rough.
Barbara: he came home and he told Cheryl, he said Cheryl, he said I think Connie gave me a bum steer. She said, how come. He said, well she just said you can sit down and watch TV if you want to but I got to get ready to go sweet Adeline, because I was in the Sweet Adeline group.
Barbara: I moved down here in May and come December of that year why one of his very dear friends came over from north Ogden came in to visit with us. He called and said he was coming over to visit. Well to me a visit was a visit, but it wasn’t. He came over to call us to come every other Tuesday morning at 7:00 for a sealing assignment in the stake. We did that for 12 years. Then on top of that we had another fellow from the stake that was our bishop and he wanted us to go into the Spanish extraction. Dad stayed with it 12 years and I stayed with it 14. Every day. We had to decipher films and put it on cards for the temples.
Reinhart: we had six or seven machines. At first they had a building down by Weber State here. Then they moved us over into the basement of one of the chapels there. It was interesting work.
Barbara: when we first started with it we had seven in one room going through Spanish and in the other room we had four on the Italian. And I had to help those with the Italian right along with the Spanish who couldn’t speak it, but I could read it.
Reinhart: I learned to count in Spanish.
Barbara: that was interesting work to go into those. We went clear back into the 1600s.
Reinhart: a lot of the records were Mexican Spanish.
Barbara: Tell him about the one day that you had so much trouble with your film. He had his card all filled out and he couldn’t get the name (there was a blotch in it) absolutely couldn’t get that name. And I went over and I helped him. I rolled it back and rolled it forward to see if I could coincide with some of the others. I couldn’t. And of course I was real good at reading the Spanish I could help five, six besides doing my own work and I had five films of my own to read. I said well we’ve been here three hours lets go home and see what we find tomorrow. We went back the next day, why, he still wanted the machine. He turned the light on and there it was. Just like it should be.
Reinhart: I met Norma up at School, Utah State. We were roller-skating at the roller-skating rink. I just happened to latch onto her and talk to her. And after I met her, why, I found out where she was staying and I started dating her and that’s how we got acquainted.
I remember when the war broke out that we were going together and we decided to get married. She wanted to wait until spring or something like that and I said, well, if we don’t get married pretty quick I’ll be in the army and we won’t be able to. So we went along and got married. I think it was in December. She followed me around while I was here in the states and would shift from one plant to another for different reasons. I started out in California as a rookie. I had been an officer in the national guard and so when it came to getting a commission I had already had one and I had my uniform so I stepped right into it. But then after I got my commission the started shipping us around to different places. And from California we moved back to the east coast. We were there for a couple three months. I can remember going swimming in the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast and we had to go with a buddy. They’d pair us off and you had to be responsible for your buddy. And I can remember how the waves pick you up and slam you down into the mud. I wondered if I’d ever get out of there. But it was fun.
And then from there I was shipped down to Texas. We had to bivouac out in the desert in the middle of winter and it was cold and the rattlesnakes would crawl in under your bed. I think from there I came back up to Utah to Camp Williams. They never told us where we were going.
They had those round bottomed schips that they built for the torpedos would miss them. They rocked. With every wave they’d rock and boy, talk about a sick bunch of troopers. They were just hanging over everywhere. I got by fairly good. I got sick but I didn’t have too much trouble. And we stopped at the Hawaiian islands and we were there about a month before they shipped us out again and we were shipped over to Guam at the time. When we left Texas Norma went home and stayed with her folks when she was expecting Kent. It wasn’t till after the war that she found out she had cancer. That was a struggle. She tried to straighten me out all the time. She was a good person. I used to take grandpa Jensen fishing with me quite a bit and take him hunting. Actually I remember one time when we went up Dry Canyon there in Logan and we had a tent and I had a Jeep at that time. And we got up past the spring and camped. And grandpa shot a deer the next day in the morning opening day. Then after a couple of days when we came back down and were going to go home, why, he couldn’t find his deer. He said, “I hung it up. I know where it is.” He says, “I can’t find it.” We hiked the canyon all the way from the top to the bottom and couldn’t find it. Lo and behold, somebody went out back of the tent a little ways and there was the deer hanging in the tree back of the tent oh about 50 yards. I’ll never forget that.
Obituary and Life Sketch by Jay Owen Cole
Pleasant View, UT – Barbara W. Cole Kowallis, passed away peacefully at her home in Pleasant View, Utah, Wednesday, January 21, 2004 at the age of 87 from a short illness. She had been in Ogden Regional Medical Center for several days and her family brought her home to Pleasant View to be close to her husband Reinhart, who is 93 years old
Born in Cherryville, Idaho on May 28, 1916, the daughter of John William and Pearl Day Whitehead, the oldest of nine children. Barbara married Owen Voss Cole on February 12, 1936 in the Logan Temple.
She was an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was reared and educated in the Preston Idaho area. She had a special love and talent for music. She made beautiful quilts and was a creative homemaker and gardener. She loved to cook and shared often with family and friends. Voss passed away in 1954 in Twin Falls, Idaho where they farmed, leaving her with five children to raise, Marlene, Barbara Jean, Connie, Jay, and Norma. She lived and worked in the Filer, Twin Falls area for 22 years, before meeting and marrying Reinhart T. Kowallis in the Ogden Temple on Mom’s birthday, May 28, 1976. They enjoyed traveling, fishing, gardening, reunions, camping, temple work, and having family visit them often.
Surviving are her husband, Reinhart; their grandchildren, Marlene (Dennis) Nielsen, Marsing, Idaho; Barbara Jean (Gary) Peterson, Twin Falls, Idaho; Connie (Darrell) Ogden, Layton, Utah; Jay Owen (Eve) Cole, Rigby, Idaho; Norma (Dick) Parrott, Twin Falls, Idaho; Cheryl (Lynn) Humphreys, Ogden, Utah; Kent (Sheri) Kowallis, American Fork, Utah; Jill Mower, Salt Lake City, Utah; Bart (Julee) Kowallis, Provo, Utah; Kim (Ellen) Kowallis, Midway, Utah; 43 grandchildren, 69 great-grandchildren; and four expected. Also surviving are her sisters, Emma Barton, Doris Wintch, Vilda Jensen, Reana Christensen, June Rasmussen; one brother Lloyd “Shorty” Whitehead; also many extended family members and special friends, including Glaydon and Anita Ferrin.
She was preceded in death by her parents, two brothers, three great-grandchildren and her 1st husband, Voss.
Mom and Voss were always engaged in agriculture as well as dairy and had lots of chickens in Mink Creek, a small town in Idaho.
In her career she worked in a grocery store in Buhl and Filer. She worked as a bank teller in Boise and Filer, and in the courthouse in Twin Falls as a clerk in the assessors office.
As children we remember annual trips to the Willard Cemetery for Memorial Day. In the 1940’s we took a trip to Yellowstone Park – no car seats and no seat belts and 5 kids with camping gear. We saw lots of bears.
Mom wrote weekly letters to missionaries and financially supported several members of the family as they served as well as some ward missionaries. A missionary fund has been set up to continue to support Barbara’s family that are serving or will serve missions called the Barbara Kowallis Family Missionary Fund. Contributions would gladly be accepted to ensure that this legacy continues.
One of her important goals and accomplishments was to see that all 5 of her children were married and sealed in the Temple.
Mom was known for always making sure that whoever visited never left empty-handed. And they always had a full stomach and something to eat on their way home. She made sure that she made a quilt for each of the grandchildren and many of the great grand children received baby quilts.
She worked in the Ogden temple for two years doing sealing assignments, and did the Spanish extraction program for 4 years before computers. This gave her the opportunity to make many, many friends.
Mom and Reinhart had many fruit trees and great times were had picking grapes, peaches, apricots, and apples. For the past decade or so, us kids, grandkids, and great grandkids looked forward to the annual grape picking day. We gathered together with those who could come and we harvested the grapes and made wreaths with the long vines. Everyone enjoyed and looked forward to dinner prepared by Mom and that was just like Thanksgiving Dinner, after the grapes were all picked. It was one of our special times together. For years Mom and Reinhart drove to Twin Falls a few days before Christmas for the exchange of gifts and also another feast together. An annual reunion has been held for as long as anyone can remember because Mom felt the need to keep the family close and to know each other. All the grandchildren and great grandchildren look forward to the Cole Reunion every July. Mom and Reinhart owned several different camper trailers and loved to go just about anywhere. Mom would keep in regular contact with her children and several grandchildren through phone calls. Marlene said that Mom would call every Sunday at 6; that was their “assigned” time. Mom also sent Birthday cards to every member of her family; children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. No on ever was forgotten!
Shelli Davis, a grandchild, wrote that her favorite memory of grandma was when she was in elementary school. After school she would walk over to the church for primary every Tuesday, and then after that she would walk to Grandma’s apartment and Grandma would feed her a grilled cheese sandwich and sit and watch TV with her until her mother got off work and came and picked her up. She says Grandma was very special.
Jean, one of Barbara’s daughters, says that Mom and Reinhart’s house was known as the “half-way house” to her children. If they needed time off from college or work, or just some good R&R, Then could call Grandma and Grandpa or just stop in and Grandma would help them do their laundry while they slept in late! She always had a hot meal when anyone was hungry, and when it was time to leave, she sent enough fixings for another meal.
Connie, another of Barbara’s daughters and her husband Darrel, say that the time they spent on the Kowallis farm, fruit orchard, and vineyard was a wonderful time without them ever having to worry about hurrying their visit. They were always able to enjoy the time they shared with them there.
Tracie Cloward, a granddaughter, says that her favorite memory of Grandma shows distinctly grandma’s great sense of humor and adventure. She was a teenager and Grandma took her squirrel hunting. When Tracie killed one, grandma told her to pull the tail off! She thinks that Grandma and her Aunt Norma had a good laugh that day!
Glaydon, a dear friend of Mom and Reinhart’s, says they were never allowed to leave their house empty-handed. Her apple pies were always baked and ready to eat if even a stranger stopped by. Her recipe was her own and no one could ever duplicate it.
Many people have shared that they remember Reinhart always calling Barbara “Moma Mia”. She was a great mom to many.
Mom kept a journal and a family genealogy book. Here is an excerpt from that. “Jay is my FAVORITE son (That’s because I am the only son). It continues, “When Jay got into trouble, which was often, she would threaten to spank him. Jay said ‘OK, if you can catch me’. He was very fast and she never could catch him, so he never received many spankings.” Mom made sure that we all had copies of the important pages of genealogy and she spent hours on our behalf so we would know our ancestors.
Mom had a poem that she copied from somewhere and had tucked into her journal. I would like to share it with everyone;
In the next life let’s be teddy bears,
Everybody loves you,
Nobody cares if you’re fat,
And when you get old,
You are more valuable.
Barbara Cole Kowallis is buried in the Willard Cemetery.