California youths help clean up city's beach
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. — Huntington City Beach looks better these days thanks to more than 100 Mormon youths from the Garden Grove California Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The teenagers, from 14 to 18, got up early on a Saturday morning and went to Huntington City Beach to work for several hours with the Surfrider Foundation to clear the beach of trash.
The youths chose the service project at the suggestion of Marie Bowcut, who is a Young Women leader. The cleanup was part of their yearly three-day Youth Conference where the youths gathered to have fun together, serve the community and be uplifted by each other and their leaders.
The weekend began on a Friday afternoon at Huntington Beach State Park with games, a boogie boarding contest, bonfires and dinner on the beach.
On Saturday at 9 a.m., the youths gathered at Huntington City Beach where they met up with Surfrider Foundation representatives, who are the organizers of the beach cleanup.
Josh Morel, a youth who helped organize the youths who attended the cleanup, said, "My favorite part of the conference was the beach cleanup. I got to walk along the beach, and it was great exercise as well. The Surfrider Foundation people were well organized for us. They had bags and water for us … I loved the beach cleanup." "The Surfrider Foundation is a non-profit grass roots organization dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of our world's oceans, waves and beaches," according to its Web site at www.surfrider.org.
"I really liked it … It was a good experience because lots of beaches are dirty," said Tara Tolman, a youth who helped plan the conference. "A lot of the trash we picked up were cigarette butts — it was really disgusting, we don't want little kids picking up those, and there was tons of that kind of stuff." She said they also picked up a lot of pieces of foam cups, and plastic from straws.
About 40 adults at any given time chaperoned the youths throughout the week-end conference, and helped clean up the beach as well. Bowcut said, "We can have a good time without the drugs and alcohol, and those kinds of things that many kids feel like they have to have in order to have a good time. I think it was a great success. I think everybody had a really, really good time."
— Denise New-Hamilton
Twin Falls, Idaho, pioneer celebrates 100th birthday
Virginia Kirkman Nielson, a native of Twin Falls, Idaho, and resident of Ephraim, Utah, since 1933, turned 100 years old July 19.
She is the daughter of Laurence Gomer and Nellie Marquardson Kirkman. Laurence was the first stake president in Twin Falls and was also called to be a stake patriarch, and Nellie was the first stake Relief Society president there.
On July 26, 1919, a hot summer day 90 years ago, the first Twin Falls Stake was organized in her family's one-room playhouse, which was painted to match their home.
"The brethren were drinking lemonade with ice tinkling in their glasses and fans whirring in our house when one of them suggested they adjourn to the 'summer house' outside. There the stake had its earliest beginnings, and father was assigned its president," Virginia wrote in her personal history.
"Mormons were a minor group [in Twin Falls] and were ridiculed to a certain extent, rather ignored in city business." Virginia recalls. "My best friends were Catholics who attended Sunday movies and had parties on Sunday, but I didn't participate in these."
Virginia recalls a number of general authorities who stayed in their home when coming to speak at church, including President Heber J. Grant, Elder Melvin J. Ballard and Elder James E. Talmage.
Later, as a well respected nurse at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City, she tended to Elder Ballard following an appendectomy. Other notable patients she tended to include Emma Ray McKay, who was the wife of President David O. McKay, Patriarch Hyrum Gibbs Smith, Elder James E. Talmage and Salt Lake City Mayor Lewis Marcus.
Virginia is still quite alert in her old age. She lives in the majestic Victorian home to which, as a young bride, her husband Glen brought her home
"I had a wonderful early life, midlife, and old age," she says. "I couldn't ask for more."
– Emily Sanderson