BRENT
LINDHOLM
written by his mother, Reva Grace Jenkins Lindholm
Brent was born
at 8:40 a.m. January 11, 1934 at the farm north of Iona, Idaho. He was a couple
of weeks premature so he was just a little bit smaller than he should have
been. He weighed just over 8 pounds, just a little on the skinny side, but
quite long. His complexion was a little yellow, what is called today, jaundice.
I remember that my brother Rod and someone else came down to see me that day
and Rod said he was sure cute.
It was the fall of 1934, October to
be exact, that we met the Collins family. Ross and I were outside doing
something. It seems like we were fixing a fence when Charlie drove up in an old
topless pickup. He was coming ahead of the rest to see if he could find a
corral to put their cattle in overnight. Bob and Art were on horses herding the
cattle. Uncle Lee was driving a covered wagon where they stayed at night and
cooked their meals. They were never without a cup of coffee.
Brent practically grew up with some
of the Collins family around. We met Barbara also that fall, she being the
youngest of the family.
As Brent was growing up, he was like
most boys. Into a lot of things that he shouldn’t have been. But he was a lot
of good help too. When he was almost two years old he had bad tonsils and had
to have them removed. They had been so bad that they caused him to have large
abscesses under his ears. He was a very sick little boy. The surgery was done
in the old Spencer Hospital.
 |
| Brent at about 4 years old |
The
summer he was three, he and his dad were out in the yard talking to Mel
Frandsen, and Mel had set Brent up on his horse while they were talking. Brent
wasn’t hanging on very well and a dog came up behind the horse and bit him on
the heel. He tried to kick the dog and then threw Brent off and Brent received
a fractured skull. It was, of course, a quick trip to the hospital where he was
kept for about three days. It was about that time or a little later that Ross
sent him to the neighbors to get some calves that had gotten out of the pasture
and had gotten into the Frandsen’s pasture. As he was trying to get our calves
out of the pasture a huge, buck sheep cornered him and really gave him a bad
time. Every time he started to get up, the sheep would butt him down again.
Then Mel happened to see what was going on and got him away from the sheep.
WAR YEARS
I think Brent
was in the second grade when the World War
II started. I remember that one evening Ross and I had been somewhere in
the afternoon and were late getting home. It was after dark and Brent was
scared to death.
I
remember during the war how interested he was in the planes. He would watch
them as far as he could when they went over. He was especially interested when
a fighter plane went down in a field a mile or so from our place. The guys that
bailed out of the planes always fascinated him. He still loves to watch
skydivers and anything that has to do with planes. It is always a great day for
both him and Kirk when they can go together to an air show.
During school
Brent was a fair student. The teachers always said he was getting along all
right, but could do better if he wanted to. He liked the athletic department,
but didn’t participate in it very much. He went out for football once, but
didn’t play very much. He said he always ran too long in one place, thus no
basketball. But he always liked to be the team manager, help take care of the
other kids when they were hurt, or in any other capacity he could.
When the older
kids were growing up, like most other kids, they liked to tease each other.
Most of the time, they would go on and on until there was a fight. Brent and
Neal would start something in the house and I would try to stop it until I was
so frustrated I could hardly see. Then one day, I came up with something that
really did the trick. They were really going at it and I said, All right you
two, that is enough and if you don’t stop it, I’ll have some real good
nicknames for you. I said that the next time they started to fight I would call
Brent - - Rose Brenda as his initials are R.B. And I’d call Neal - - Nellie
Katherine. His initials are N.K. Being boys they were very offended when I had
to resort to those names. So things got better after that.
ON THE FARM
When the
farming was going on Brent wasn’t too happy when he had to drive the team of
horses to help. So when we got the tractor he was right there to run it. One
day right after we got the tractor, he was cultivating beets and went to turn
around at the end of the field and the tractor broke off at the front end. It
really scared Brent and me, because we were afraid Ross would blame Brent.
Luckily it was a part of the tractor that hadn’t been right when he bought it,
so it wasn’t anybody’s fault. He, Neal, and Ross always did the work that
required the tractor, but when we had a team of horses on a job, it was always
Mother’s job.
One time
before we got the tractor, Brent was bringing the team of horses from the
field, (Ross’s favorites, of course) and they started to run. He couldn’t hold
them and they ran across the yard and into the garden. They had been dragging a
harrow and somehow the harrow flipped up on the back of one of the horses. The
teeth of the harrow punctured the skin on the rump of the horse, bad enough
that the horse finally had to be destroyed. The horses were a team of
well—match sorrels that Ross had bought when they were just old enough to break
and had trained them himself.
One day he was driving a team up the
road, pulling a borrowed disc. Something scared the horses and they ran on. As
they turned down the lane, one of the horses fell upside down in the ditch
between the bridge and the fence, about 8 or 10 feet. They had to put a chain
around the horse’s neck and pull him out with the other horse.
The first job Brent had away from
home was helping put up hay for a man who had a dry farm at Gray’s Lake. His
name was Claude Mann, and Brent really liked him and worked very hard for him.
He was up there 2 or 3 weeks and when we went up to see him. He worked really
hard. When the job was finished, Mr. Mann paid him with a $100 bill and Brent
was really happy.
While Brent
and Elaine were going to high school, the lona, Ucon and Ammon districts
consolidated and formed one large high school. They went to school in Ammon.
Brent graduated in May 1952.
On Sunday,
just 3 days after he graduated he came home after being out with some friends.
He was home just a little while when he started with a terrible pain in his
right side. As he grew worse we got very worried and called the doctor. He told
us to meet him at the hospital. About midnight that night he was operated on
for appendicitis. He was getting along pretty well until the next Sunday
morning. His Grandmother Lindholm went up to the hospital to see him and he was
in very bad condition again. They operated on him again about noon that day for
peritonitis, which is a very bad infection. He was much worse from the second
operation than from the first. He was very nervous and the only thing that
would calm him down was to have Theora Field or me rub his legs, or to have me
sit beside his bed and read the Book of Mormon to him. He came home about a
week later and two days after that, his dad had him driving the tractor to pull
loads of hay up on the stack while he stacked the hay. Ross was never very
patient with people who were sick and probably didn’t realize the danger in
what he demanded.
It was just a month after that on
July 14 that Annie was born. She was born on Monday afternoon at 2:22. The boys
had just left that morning for the Boy Scout Camp. After Annie was born Ross
sent them a card telling them that they had a new sister. When Brent got the
card, before he read it he said, “Oh damn, I bet we have to go home.” But they
came home the next Saturday. When they got home Ross told them to hurry and
they could go with him to bring Annie and me home from the hospital. But they
were too smart for him, they knew that we were already home.
Brent helped on the farm the rest of
that summer and in the winter he drove cab in Idaho Falls. He and his Dad
didn’t get along very well so Brent moved in to town. He stayed in a room that
Grandma Lindholm had in her basement. In the spring, he came back home and
helped his Dad for a while, then he got other employment.
During the winter he was driving
cab, he started to go with Verla Field. He had met her at Scout Camp one summer,
she was the stepsister of one of his cousins. (Verla and her family all went to
the camp one evening to a family night.)
WITH VERLA
During the
time he was going with Verla, he took her out on Valentine’s Day. He had bought
me a box of candy, but when they got home, he gave her the candy. I still laugh
when I remember that in 1977 when I was in the hospital, he brought me a box of
candy and said, “Here is the candy I bought for you for Valentine’s Day before
Verla and I were married.”
They went
together until October 21, 1953 when they were married in the Idaho Falls
Temple. They lived up in the hills east of Iona that winter while Brent was
working for Cory Scrimsher. Kirk was born the next August 1, 1954, and after
that they lived in Iona.
That winter he
worked at Roger Brothers Seed Company in Idaho Falls.
That fall we
sold the farm to Parmer and Wilma Wolfe. After we sold the farm we moved into a
little house in Iona, then at Thanksgiving, we went to North Idaho where we
found a small farm and bought it and moved up there around New Years’.
Brent and Verla moved into the house
we had lived in and were there a while until they moved to Osgood, where they
farmed for Roger Brothers. Both Paul and Terri were born, while they lived at
Osgood. When they moved from there they lived at Grant for a while, and Brent
worked for Don Pieper Oil Co. A year or two later they moved to Blackfoot to
work for Pieper. After he finished with that job he started to work for Bingham
Co-Op and worked there until the fall of 1977.
Since then he
has done odd jobs, mostly construction and some farming. He has a couple of bad
accidents, which has left him with one bad eye, and he had a bout with carbon
monoxide poisoning.
Their youngest
daughters, Jean and Marie were born in Blackfoot.
Brent has
always had a strong testimony of the Gospel. He and Verla have always taken
their children to church except when they were ill or had pressing obligations.
He has been a very good father and
has much love for his
family. His
grandchildren are especially fond of him and he of them.
In the summer of 1996, Verla,
Brent’s eternal companion, passed away. This was quite a blow to Brent and his
family, who had come to rely on her wit and tenderness. Brent found out from
his grandchildren that in the weeks prior to her passing, Verla had a heart to
heart with almost all of them.
Brent has always been my rock and I
love him very much.
