Leonard Hodges Eppich

This is part of  an autobiography of Leonard Hodges Eppich written within the last five years of his life.

Katie, Leonard and Christopher Eppich

I was born 6 April 1894. [In my early years],Dad went to Meadowville and Laketown and worked for N. M. Hodges [mother's brother] freighting flour, vegetables, etc. to Randolph and Laketown.

Dad built a large room on the front of our log cabin. I remember the rough boards nailed vertically on the outside walls with narrow strips of wood, called battens, over the cracks.

I  had gone to school during my first year, about 1901. Someone looked out the window and said our place was on fire. My brother Shell wanted a bonfire and somehow found some matches and started his fire right in the straw shed. Not much was saved from the stable. They concentrated on saving the house by throwing water on the walls and roof. The only source of water was the open well with a bucket on each end of a rope and a pulley at the top.

It wasn't too long after this Dad bought a lot on South Main Street [Randolph, Utah] and built a new home--a four-room house with a bay window. They filled the walls between the studes with a thick clay-mud to help keep out the cold; for the winters got real cold. 

One fall, we [brother Shell and I] were hired to fall plow a piece of ground for Olaf Larson at a dollar per acre. He furnished a wood-beam hand plow and a team of horses for each of us. The ground froze and turned up in big chunks. We sure had a time holding the plows. I think we made about fifty cents a day.

 Top:  Leonard, Sheldon

Front:  Katie, Verne, Christopher Eppich

One of our jobs as deacons was to gather fast offerings once each month. Someone would furnish a horse and buggy and people would give bread, flour, soap, potatoes or supplies of any kind, which we took to the bishop, and he would give it to the needy. Tithing also was paid in kind, such as hay, grain, spuds, etc.

The summer of 1906 or 1907 Ed South offered Dad the job of cook in the boarding house at Elkol, Wyoming, a new coal mining camp a few miles southeast of Kemmerer and Diamondville, Wyoming at a wage of $125. That seemed like an enormous wage and he took it. 

The mine boomed and we had more than 50 boarders. Six to eight men slept to a room. Each room was provided with double-decker bunks. 

There was no school there for quite a while, so I missed the seventh grade. When school finally did get started, there were two teachers and all the grades in one room. School was pretty unruly and the two lady teachers had more than they could handle. A few of us older pupils got defiant one time and went out through the windows and played hooky for the day. We got expelled, but that didn't make much difference.

I worked in the mine as a door-tender, opening and closing doors to control the air current in the mind when the cars of coal were being pulled along the entries. 

The boarding kept us pretty buy and there was no time for play. Later, father and mother, Shell and Verne came to help out. 

Dad and mother had always wanted a farm. When Ed South and others formed a company and promoted a commercial orchard in and around Trenton, Utah, they sold Dad five acres of orchard on monthly payments. We bought a place in Cornish [Utah], Dad and I came to Cornish in the fall of 1909. We bought a team of horses.

In Cornish, it was a beautiful fall. Dad bought a hand plow and set me to plowing about 25 acres. Then I went back to Elkol while Verne came to Cornish. In the spring, we completed the move to Cornish.

We knew nothing about farming and had very little capital to work with. Beets were four dollars per ton and one year we had a lot of spuds worth fifteen cents a hundred--fed them to the cows.

We got some pretty good cows and if we  had known anything about finances, we could have made it okay. However, the mortgage came due and we were threatened with foreclosure. Also, the irrigation water was unsatisfactory.

In the early spring of 1914, we traded our farm for a ranch at the head of Sugar Creek in Cub River Basin, at Mapleton, Idaho. It was really back in the hills. It was hard to get to in the summer and almost impossible in the winter. 

I went to my first year of high school the winter of 1913-14 in Lewiston, Utah. I started high school as a sophomore in the fall of 1914 at the Oneida Stake Academy, an LDS Church school [in Preston, Idaho]. The next three years were my most carefree and enjoyable. Guy Allred, Shell, Verne and myself rented an upstairs room and did our own cooking. We made it a point to do our lessons and we got good marks all the way through. We went home Fridays after school and came back Sunday evenings, bringing most of our food from home. We had very little money, but when we got fifty cents, we usually spent it for a dance ticket.

In June of 1917, I went on a mission to the Northern States. In April of that year, the United States went to war with Germany. That made it hard to do missionary work. People thought we should be soldiers instead of missionaries.

I came home in August of 1919. When I walked along the street in Preston [Idaho], the town seemed deserted. When I left over two years before, Preston had seemed like a good-sized town. Now after being in Milwaukee and in Chicago where the buildings were big and streets were narrow and crowded with lots of people, the reality of Preston was a shock.

 Sarah Whitehead

In the fall [1919], I met the school teacher, Sarah Whitehead, at a dance. After the dance, three or four large boys picked me up and put me in the sleigh with her. I was scared to go on home with her and afraid to get out along the road for fear of being impolite. I went with her and in August of 1920, I married her in the Logan [Utah] temple.

 Sarah Whitehead and Leonard Eppich

The fall of 1920 I taught school; three terms in Mapleton and one in Weston. On September 21, 1921 Gladys was born at Sarah's mother's home in Franklin [Idaho]. About that time, I bought a dry farm in Mapleton [Idaho]. After I had my first crop of wheat bound, it started to rain. My grain got wet, and I couldn't sell it. I couldn't sell the place, so I just gave it back.

Glen was born in Franklin [Idaho] January 5, 1923.

In 1924 I rented Dad's place and worked very hard. We had our ups and downs. Dad started a store in Trenton [Utah].

Melba was born May 7, 1925 and I was working for Dad running the meat wagon for him, earning forty dollars a month. In the spring of 1926, I bought a farm in Cornish [Utah].

 Eppich's two-room house in Cornish, Utah

The next 27 years were hard ones. The place was not worth the mortgage that was on it. Disease got into the beet ground and crops were not good. At first, I could raise good crops of hay. By milking several cows, along with wages earned by hauling school children, we managed to almost make it.

I drove the school bus for about 20 years around 1936-1950. In the winter I had an old coal stove fastened to the center of the floor to keep everyone warmer. I didn't matter what color the children were when they got on the bus, they were all the same color when they got off--black from the soot!

Don was born in Preston [Idaho], February 24, 1927 and then Wayne on September 21, 1928. That completed our family.

Somewhere around 1943,  I ran a service station during the war when there was gas rationing. I was a water master on the lateral for several years in Cornish. 

Finally, after about 1935, we got a land bank and commissioner's loan on the place and slowly began getting ahead a little. By about 1950, we began to get our heads above water and could enjoy life a little.

We spent Christmas of that year, 1950, with Gladys and Esbee at Hunt, Idaho. On the 27th, we left to go home and a few miles west of Paul, we hit an icy spot on the road. The car rolled over and Sarah was killed. That was a real tragedy. Life has not been the same since. 

 Leonard Eppich

In the spring of 1952, I went to Texas as a missionary and was assigned to Dallas. It was dry and hot. My companions were all young fellows, and I couldn't seem to keep up with them. The later part of the summer, my arthritis got bad and I was released. 

I went to Hill Field [air force base by Ogden, Utah] and got a job in the electroplating shop and worked there till April 15, 1956.

In the spring of 1955 I sold my place in Cornish and began looking around for a place in a better territory. In the spring of 1956, I bought about 90 acres north of Pasco, Washington. Glen went to Othello [Washington], Gladys and Esbee are farming at Hunt, Idaho. Lyle and Melba moved to Washington and settled at Basin City in 1958 on a farm, Don and Marilyn are in Ogden, Utah. He is a beautician with his own shop. Wayne and JoAnn are farming near Eltopia, Washington.

In 1960 I sold that place to Wayne and moved to Basin City across from Lyle and Melba. 

Leonard Hodges Eppich

Leonard's family and friends call him Lynn.

Oftentimes, when a person such as Leonard write their own life history, it is difficult to really see them as others did. Through a friend Clarence Neeley we learn, "I can remember Lynn who was a live wire, full of activity and a fine sort of a fellow. I was asked to be the bishop of the ward [in Cornish], and I was certainly happy to visit them [Leonard and Sarah]  and ask them to help us out. Each time I went to visit them I felt rewarded. I knew of Brother Eppich's ability, I knew that he could do it. He was a born speaker and teacher. He developed a natural ability to teach."

Leonard died on 2 March 1981 just one month before his 87th birthday. He is buried beside his wife and parents in Trenton, Utah.