Marshall &Kay Family  Histories

B. VAUGHN MARSHALL

1953 - 1954

Married

Before Vaughn returned home from his mission, my father had made arrangements for him to apply for work at Southern Pacific Railroad, which was where my father worked. He had contacted Vaughn earlier to see if he wanted him to do that. Jobs were not that easy to find and everyone knew that it was important to Vaughn to work as much as possible before going back to school, which he planned to do in the fall. Vaughn said yes to my father, to go ahead and make arrangements for the application. It turned out that he would be hired within two weeks of returning home. That was good, but once he started working he would not have any time off until it was time to quit and start school. That left us with a difficult decision to make about when to get married. We either had to be married very soon or wait until September just before school started. From February until September seemed like a very long time especially after waiting two years. So we decided to be married within ten days of his return. We announced our plans to our parents and, after getting over the surprise they were all very wonderful helping us to pull the whole thing together. The Lord was with us all the way.

One of the very best decisions we ever made was to be married in the Temple right from the start. My Parents drove up and we drove with Vaughn’s parents to Salt Lake. We drove straight through and we were all tired. There was still ice on some of the mountain roads and we felt the Lord’s protection when the car slid out of control at one point. We spun round a couple of times missing all other traffic and coming to a stop when the back end of the car hit the high side of a cliff. None of us were hurt and the car was not damaged. When we were married on the evening of February ninth we were both so tired that we had a hard time following what was going on. We decided to return the following day when our minds were more clear. My parents had loaned us their new car to drive back home in and they took the train back home. We went back to the Temple the following day and while we were there someone ran into the backside of’ my parent’s parked car. We were just sick about it. We didn’t want my parents’ insurance company to have to pay for it, so we used our honeymoon money to repair the car.  Then, without much money left, we took about five days coming home and called that our honeymoon. As I imagine it from Vaughn’s viewpoint, this must have been a trying time. He always told me that, of course, he was thrilled to be married, but there was a big adjustment to be made. He was still living on mission time. Up at 6 a.m. and ready to start the day soon after. He had this wife who thought 6 a.m. was the middle of the night. Then finding an apartment in San Francisco quickly (that’s where we were both working) was a challenge. Starting a new job is never easy. It was especially hard when he’d only been married a week, living in a new apartment in a strange city and then his wife seems to have caught this flu that won’t go away. That’s right! We were expecting our first baby and before I even had  time to suspect I was pregnant, I was so--- sick! And that’s another story--------- 

Baby

I think Vaughn would want me to share this so I will. Before he came home from his mission we wondered about delaying our family at least a year, so that it would be easier for Vaughn to go to school. His mission president and other leaders strongly advised him not to do that. He prayed about it and talked to me about it. We both wanted to do the right thing so we decided that if I became pregnant it would work out fine. We didn’t know it would happen so fast or that I would be so ill. It was very difficult at the time but when we looked back on those times, we always said that we would make the same decision again. We were blessed in so many ways for making that decision. The first great blessing was our son. He has been nothing but a joy to us all his life. He was always a very patient and loving little boy and grew into a fine man that Vaughn was so proud of. One of the important lessons we learned was unselfishness. We had to put many of our “wants” on the back burner and that helped us grow in the right direction. That set the tone for our marriage.

  Tithing

Vaughn was the one that taught me the importance of paying a real tithing. I had a desire to pay tithing but I might have let it slip once in a while. He always made sure that we paid a full tithe and we were blessed throughout our marriage because of that. The following is an example of receiving financial blessings. Because I was so sick I was not able to work for the first few months of the pregnancy. We needed that income to save toward school in the fall. We were blessed to hear of a small cottage that we could rent for very little in exchange for taking care of the young children that belonged to the owners. So we moved from the city to the Los Altos area. I was able to go back to work for the last months of my pregnancy and found work at the Palo Alto Hospital. Because I did that, I became acquainted with a doctor that was willing to deliver our baby free. We didn’t have any health insurance at the time. We were also allowed to pay our hospital bill over the period of a year because I was employed there. Vaughn quit his job at the railroad and started classes at San Jose State in the fall. I became very sick with a kidney infection and had to go on leave about one and a half months before our son was born. In a few weeks we ran out of money. Our parents helped us out until I returned to work two weeks after the birth of our son. We considered their help a loan and were able to pay them back within a few months. We continued to be blessed financially all the time Vaughn was in school. I may have been inclined to sleep in on a Sunday or two but Vaughn just took it for granted that going to church on Sunday was what we did, period. So that’s what we did. Because he led us in that direction I found that even when he was gone for long periods of time doing field work, that that habit was well formed in the family and we were always at church whenever we should be.

  Birth

The birth of our first child was a favorite story of ours so I’ll include it in Vaughn’s history. The good doctor who delivered David had told us that the only time he was not available to deliver the baby was on “big game day”.  For many years there was a strong football rivalry between Stanford University and University of California. Sometimes the games were held in Berkley and sometimes in Palo Alto. That year they were to be held in Palo Alto. Tickets for the game were not easy to get and my doctor had tickets. Stanford was a small campus and the traffic coming into the campus was crazy.  The hospital was on the campus. In order to get to the hospital we had to cross the main highway that lead to the campus. All the side streets were blocked off to route traffic away from that part of the highway. Well of course that was the day I went into labor. Vaughn was working with his dad that day cutting trees. I wanted to have him take me to the hospital so I waited for him to finish work. By that time the contractions were pretty strong and as soon as he walked in we needed to leave. He didn’t get a chance to clean up or anything. The game had just ended and the traffic was trying to get out of the campus and onto the highway while we were trying to get onto the campus and couldn’t. Vaughn tried telling a few police officers our problem but they didn’t believe him. We both felt a little desperate and he tried one last time. The officer came over to the car and saw me. He was really quite nice. He worked with another officer and they stopped all the traffic on the highway so that we could cross it.  It was a challenge notifying the doctor and for him to get through the traffic. But he did! And we had a boy! And all was well.