LOUISE ELIZABETH CROUCH

I was born on a farm three miles southeast of Pittsburg, Kansas, August 22, 1894, I was the 7th of nine children, four brothers, Henry, Erich, Albert and William and four sisters, Anna, Lena, Emma, and Augusta. I started to school when I was six years old walking down a country road, about one and a half miles with my sister Lena and my brother Erich. My first teacher was Belle Raymond. We always carried a lunch pail. In this school all grades were in the same room with only one teacher. When I was seven years old, my mother died leaving a baby brother only 12 days old, who died at the age of eight months. My mother died the day after Christmas, 1901. This was a sad Christmas at our house, although I was too young to fully realize our great loss. We stayed on the farm until I was 11 years old, then moved to Pittsburg, Kansas. I went to the Lutheran Church School after I finished the 6th grade, when I was 12. I was confirmed the spring I was 13, that ended my school days. My father never married again, but worked hard to keep a home for all of us children. But we had a happy home life; my father was always a very devout man, and gave us a very spiritual outlook on life. I worked at several different things, and when I was 17, I started to work in a department store for Sam Israel. I began at $3.00 per week, worked there for eight years, earning $20.00 per week when I quit to be married. During the years I worked I met some wonderful girls who I have always considered some of my very best friends. During these years I neglected my church, going only now and then, using as an excuse my having to work late on Saturday night and having to walk more than two miles to church. While going to and from work I would meet a good looking young man, and after some time we started walking part way to work together, and having dates at night. At that time there was a war going on in Europe, finally it developed into World War I. My brother Erich and Carl Crouch both left the same night for Camp Funston, May 26, 1918. Also the boyfriend of my cousin, Clara, left on the same train. When the train pulled out Clara and I stood there crying. In the early part of July we visited them in Camp Funston. After the war ended on Nov. 11, 1918, the boys were both safe home again. The following summer Mary Fletcher, Madge Toms and I went to Colorado to work in a summer hotel. It was a nice experience but we stayed only about six weeks. On Nov. 20, 1919 Carl Crouch and I were married at Girard, Kansas by a Rev. B.R. Smith. We have had a wonderful life together. After going to the Christian Church with Carl for a number of years, I was baptized, having only been sprinkled as a baby in the Lutheran Church. I felt the need of baptism by immersion. The L.D.S. missionaries started calling on us in Pittsburg, Kansas about 1937. I became convinced that their message was true, that the Gospel in its fullness had been restored. But having so many friends, I was weak enough that I put off leaving the Christian Church and going to the L.D.S. meetings. We moved to Miami, Oklahoma Nov. 11, 1938. There the missionaries began contacting us, and after some months I started going to their meetings. The Herndon family there were and still are, some of our very best friends. They had a great influence on helping me to become a member of the L.D.S. church. I was baptized on Jan. 21, 1940, and have since tried to be active in church work. I have been Relief Society President and counselor three times and have been a counselor in the District Primary and in the District Relief Society, teacher in Mutual, teacher in Relief Society and visiting teacher. Carl and I were married in the Salt Lake Temple on October 8, 1946 by Robert I. Burton. We have had the opportunity of going through the Temple a number of times since. One of my greatest blessings is the love and affection and understanding that we have as a family, one for another.