Stay out of Sight

In 1953, I was three, when the state of Arizona decided to raid a little town of polygamist families in southern Utah.  The police broke into their homes at 3:00 in the morning.  The men were arrested and the children were put onto buses, to be taken away.  Their mothers refused to part with them and boarded the bus with their children.  Well-meaning people in Arizona, who perceived they were rescuing these “poor women and children”, were waiting to adopt the children and give them “a good life”.  

1953 3 yrs old

These families were simply living their religious beliefs, but because the current laws did not permit it, and the news media villainized it, they were constantly being threatened with imprisonment and disenfranchisement from society.  They had moved themselves to a remote part of the country with the hope that they would not be molested by the law.  They were, in essence living on the “underground”.  Even those living in cities, going to public school, lived as quietly (secretly) as possible.  We were such a family, living in Salt Lake City at the time.

When my parents got word of the raid, they panicked. They had heard that at least one of the women were also arrested and her ten children taken away, and placed into several different foster homes as wards of the state.  They didn’t know how far reaching this raid would be.  

My father and fourteen of his friends and relatives had spent time in prison in 1945 for polygamy.  He wasn’t afraid for himself, but the threat of his children being scattered and  his family torn apart, was more than he could bear.  He and mother decided to gather all of the children, and take them to the canyons for a while until they could assess the situation.  

My older sister woke me in the early hours of the morning.  I could feel the fear in her voice as she dressed me and helped me into the car.  “Where are we going?  What’s the matter?” I asked.  The car was parked right under the neighbor’s window.

“Shush!! If you wake the neighbors, they will call the police!  The police will take us away, and we may never see Mom and Dad again!”  That fear instilled in me a strong belief that I needed to be very quiet, in order to stay safe and to protect my entire family.  The monster under my bed was anyone with the ability to interfere in our family.  

I mostly kept to myself in public school.  As a child, I had nightmares of my little sister and I hiding in a covert under the street because we heard a siren.  We were sure they were looking for us to take us away.  As an adult, I had nightmares of policemen coming to my door to take away my babies, because I had chosen to live plural marriage.

I am flexible enough to accept life as it is, and forgiving enough to accept it as it has been.