Editor's Notes
In early 1997, shortly after publication of Tora Thurston: The History of a Norwegian Pioneer, my father gave me a notebook filled with 150 handwritten pages. "I've written a draft of my life story," he said, "but I'm not sure what to do with it now."
Needless to say, I was thrilled to receive such an unexpected gift. I hadn't been aware that my father was working on his life story, although I had often asked him details about his younger years and had recorded a couple of interviews with him and my mother. Of course, I knew what to do with his manuscript. "We're going to publish your story," I said.
However, there was a lot of work required before that could happen--more than I had anticipated. My dad was a civil engineer. He was most comfortable in fields such as mathematics, trigonometry, agriculture and geology, but not particularly English. His draft history was an interesting read, but it needed a great deal of cleaning up. Stories and incidents had to be reordered and re-worded. I tried to pull out details that he had forgotten to include, and clarify details that were a bit confusing. I was conscious, however, of the importance of keeping my father's voice. While I might correct faulty grammar or smooth out a confusing passage, I tried not to meddle with the colloquialisms that were my father's. I tried to keep his manner of speaking while polishing the words that were written.
Although this was time-consuming, it was also rewarding, because it gave me a better understanding of my father and the life he had led. I felt fortunate that he had lived into his eighties so that we could have this opportunity for bonding.
The book was finally published in 1999. The printing was done at a facility in Las Vegas. In order to save shipping costs, I rose early one morning, drove from our home in Orange County, California, to Las Vegas, loaded the books in the back of our SUV, and traveled back home. It was a long day. The next morning I drove up to my parents' home in Ventura and delivered the books to my father. The look on his face as he leafed through the book was priceless. Anyone who has ever held a book they created in their hands for the first time knows what I'm talking about, except that it is a hundred times more exciting when the person holding the book is your father and it is his story you have helped to publish.
My mother called me the next day. "Your father spent all day reading the book and then I found him up in the middle of the night looking at it again. I told him, 'this is your life! You don't need to read about it.'" But, of course, he did. We all do.
Dad spent the next few days writing personal notes in the books to all of his children and grandchildren and then shipped them off. Over the next several years, until he passed away in 2006 at the age of 94, my dad would give copies to his many friends who asked about the book--people who worked with him in the Los Angeles LDS Temple, his golfing buddies, his former work colleagues, his extended family. He received a lot of rewarding feedback from these people. I believe it helped bring a sense of closure to a life well lived.
Every once in awhile I'll pick up the book and read a chapter again. It is still a compelling read; proof that one does not need to be a professional writer, or to have lived a life of fame and fortune, in order to write a moving life story.
-- Morris Ashcroft Thurston
