Graduating to parenthood: Welcoming Don and Bruce

Graduation

While Malcolm attended the Utah Agricultural College (UAC) in Logan, Utah, he was active in the college orchestra and band, and served as business manager one year and as editor the following year of Student Life, the college weekly newspaper. 

Malcolm H. Merrill, 1925.

He graduated with a Bachelor in Science (B.S.) in June, 1925. 

Malcolm H. Merrill, Utah Agricultural College graduate, 1925.

Malcolm was the valedictorian of his graduating class (as he had been in grammar school and high school).

Aggie Class of 1925. (Malcolm H. Merrill, second row, center, between girl with white accent and girl in black).  

Thelma didn't quite finish her degree, but she did attend for three years. As she said in Mark Merrill's recordings of "Pearls from the Past: 69 Questions":

I did not finish school.  I went three years, but I had started to major in home economics--that is cooking and sewing--but I got so bored with that that I took a regular history and literature class. So when Malcolm was away, I wrote to him and said, "Why don’t I quit school and go down to the LDS hospital and learn to be a nurse?" That’s where my sister, Marie was taking her nursing course. Malcolm wrote to me and said, "Don’t do that because I will have had enough medicine. So you major in English and cultural things so that you can bring something different into my life." Whew! I was so thrilled! I didn’t want to be a nurse. I would have hated it.  So my major, I guess, was English, but I didn’t graduate.  I only had 3 years of college, and I got married and am glad of it.

Medical School in St. Louis

Malcolm attended the St. Louis University School of Medicine, with the assistance of a teaching research fellowship. He attended for one year before he and Thelma were married, at which point the two of them moved there together.

Malcolm said of this time,

We [lived] for six years in St. Louis, summer and all. I went there on a teaching fellowship in bacteriology, and spent two years getting my master’s degree in bacteriology [in 1927]. And then they offered me a teaching assistantship if I’d stay on and take my medical course. So then I spent five more years registered in the medical school, teaching in the winter and summer and all for those five years and got my M.D. I spread the coursework over seven years, you see. I did quite a lot of research—I published a dozen or fifteen papers during those seven years, and did teaching in bacteriology and immunology. Then in summer school I had took essential responsibility for the course in immunology for the medical students for summer school.

In another of the "69 questions", Thelma was asked, "What was it like—married life with a husband still in school?  Were you poor? And did you have to work?" She answered:

Yes, we were poor.  It was wonderful – getting married with my husband in school.  He would work and I worked at the library.  I think Malcolm got – maybe $35 a month on his teaching fellowship and I made about that much in the library.   

In Malcolm's recorded history, we had this sequence of Malcolm and Thelma telling about making ends meet:

Malcolm: We were first living in a little third story cute little apartment (flat) out in north St. Louis. It would take me about 40 minutes by street car to get down to the medical school. At first, Thelma worked down in the public library of St. Louis, for the first six or eight months, and we had the massive income of $70 a month plus Thelma’s $70 a month so at first we had $140 a month for the two of us to live on. We got along fine when we had two checks coming in. Then when Thelma quit work, it got a little “sticky” with only $70 a month coming in.

Thelma: So Malcolm decided that he couldn’t do that, that he would borrow the money and go to Harvard. So, he applied for admittance to Harvard and got admitted. And then he went to his boss and said, “I have been admitted to Harvard, so I think I’m going to go.” And the boss said, “Why?” and he said, “Because, I am only making $70 here, and I just don’t have time, and I can’t afford to stay here.” So he said, “Well, we’ll pay you more.” So he paid him $150 a month. So we stayed.

Malcolm: And then, of course, all tuition was free then. I got my tuition and the income, and having access to the library I didn’t have to buy very many books, so it worked out. We ended up $67,000 in debt and it took us only 23 years to get that paid back. [Everyone laughs…]

Thelma: Oh, that’s wrong! It was $3000. 

 Don and Bruce

While at medical school, Malcolm and Thelma also welcomed Malcolm Donald Merrill to their family! He was born on 18 June 1927 in St. Louis, Missouri.

Malcolm, Don and Thelma Merrill, c.1928.

And then, a couple years later, on 3 Nov 1929, Bruce was born. (Bruce, Kay and Sharon shared the same birthday!)

Bruce and Don Merrill (late 1929 or early 1930).

Bruce, Thelma and Don Merrill, c. 1930.

Don Merrill in St. Louis, Missouri. 1930.

Baby Bruce, St. Louis, Missouri. 1930.

Don Merrill playing ball with the dog. St. Louis, Missouri. 1930. 

Thelma said that Don loved his little brother and was very protective of him, always having his arm around him.

Bruce and Don Merrill, c. 1930.

Bruce Merrill, c. 1930.

Malcolm and Thelma Merrill.

Thelma Merrill.

Malcolm and Thelma Merrill

Malcolm and Thelma Merrill.

Don Merrill on a tricycle.

Malcolm Merrill, recharging neurotransmitters in medical school.

Malcolm was a member of the Alpha Delta Epsilon "medical preprofessional" honor society.

Alpha Delta Epsilon, the medical student honor society.
(Malcolm H. Merrill, very back, left)

Alpha Delta Epsilon, the medical student honor society.
(Malcolm H. Merrill, bottom, third from left)

Malcolm graduated with his medical degree from St. Louis University School of Medicine in 1932.

Malcolm Hendricks Merrill, M.D.,
graduate of St. Louis University School of Medicine, 1932.

In our next episode, we travel with the Merrills to Princeton, New Jersey, and hear about Thelma's run-in with Albert Einstein!

Meeting Thelma Holdaway

Thelma Myrl Holdaway was born on July 25, 1904, in Vernal, Utah, to Thomas Teancum Holdaway and Mary Eliza White Holdaway. She was the 9th of 10 children born to this couple: Harold ("Harl"), Leon and Bruce (both died young), Florence ("Floss"), Owney (died young), Mark, Hattie (died age 9), Marie, Thelma and Ken.

In Mark Merrill's recordings of "Pearls from the Past", Thelma said the following.

My Birthday is July 25 and I know I was born on a Monday, because Mark [Holdaway] sent me a birthday card a couple of years ago and it said, "You were born on Monday, because the 24th of July was on Sunday and we didn’t celebrate it.  We celebrated it on the 25th.  And after we had been to the parade we came back and there was our little sister named Thelma." Monday’s child is full of grace, isn’t it? Well...I'll accept that.

Thelma wrote on 8 August 1989, in the beginning of her life story:

I was born in Vernal Utah in 1904. I don't remember the town or my first years there, as we moved to Provo when I was 4 years old. I do have some memories of that trip. We traveled in a covered wagon--not a big Conestoga wagon like the Pioneers had--but a good sized wagon, drawn by 4 horses. We took 8 days to make the trip, camping at night. My father chose the camp sites so the horses would have grass and water. I have memories of the camp fires and the food that we had. Marie (my sister) said that whenever she ate canned tomatoes or canned corn she recalled those camp fires. Nowadays one can make the trip from Vernal to Provo in three or fewer hours.

The house I remember living in was a white house made of adobe. There was a lovely lawn in front and I remember mother sitting there reading to us kids—me, Marie and Ken. I remember a book that she read to us, "Five Little Peppers and How They Grew" by Margaret Sidney.  I have a copy of that book. It is dedicated, "To the memory of my mother: wise in counsel, tender in judgement and in all charity, strong in Christian faith and purpose, I dedicate, with reverence, this simple book."

That could be how my mother was. Marie has written her life for me and Ken because we didn't remember her. She died when I was six and Ken was four. 

Thelma, Ken and Marie Holdaway, 1907.
Three youngest children of Thomas Teancum & Mary Eliza White Holdaway.

Here is Thelma at age 3 (above), and age 5 (below).

Thelma, Hap, Kenneth and Buelah Holdaway, about 1909.
Thelma Holdaway (b. 1904, left), Harold Elmer "Hap" Holdaway (b. 1908, back), Kenneth Holdaway (b. 1906, front), La Rue (Buelah) Holdaway (b. 1906, right).  Thelma & Kenneth children of Thomas Teancum Holdaway & Mary Eliza White.  Hap & Beulah children of Henry Harold "Harl" Holdaway & Maria Oldham Remington.

Malcolm and Thelma's First Date

Thelma attended the Utah Agricultural College (UAC, now Utah State University) in Logan, Utah.

Thelma Holdaway

Malcolm said that it was in his fourth year of college that Thelma appeared on the scene:

Well, she came and worked in the library, and I spent quite a lot of time in the library. I studied pretty hard. And I kept seeing this black-eyed gal with a Dutch cut, you know, and it wasn’t very long before we began dating, and we’d meet in the hall. I was editor of the newspaper, so I was always hanging around in the hall collecting news, and she was always having to dash through the hall to get to the library, and so it just happened one way or another that we’d meet several times a day. 

Thelma Holdaway (left) and two of her friends.

I remember Malcolm telling that one day he was in a building on campus and he looked over and saw Thelma talking to her friends. She did "some cute thing" that got his attention and then he took her on a date.

Malcolm Merrill, Thelma Holdaway

Thelma told about their first date (from Robert's recording of Malcolm. Click the triangle to listen):

Oh, our first date, Malcolm asked me to go to the Pantages—that’s like a Vaudeville sort of thing. I told my roommates that Malcolm Merrill asked me for a date, and I didn’t know how to say no, so I said yes. So we went, and we had a great time. We had lots of fun! And we walked along after the show was over. We walked along and looked in the windows and picked out our furniture—just hooping and hollering, thinking it was the silliest thing that we either one of us did. 

They had such fun that they continued dating.

I love these pictures of them when they were young together.

Malcolm "beating" Thelma.
(Especially funny because Malcolm was one of the kindest, gentlest people you would ever meet)

And one of my personal favorites...

Thelma and her snooty hat.

Thelma said, "We dated for about a year, just going to things once in a while." She had a "heart-break" at one point when he took another girl to a banquet (because he had invited her a year ahead of time). Then she said, 

So, I went to hear him give his valedictory speech at college anyway, and sat by his father and mother. And that’s when his father said he fell in love with me. So, after that, of course I had it made, because Edgar and Clara—they were on my side.

Clara Hendricks Merrill and Thelma Holdaway (Merrill)

After he graduated, Malcolm attended medical school for a year before they got married. We have a box full of love letters that Malcolm and Thelma wrote to each other while he was away.

"Ever devotedly thine. --Malcolm"
(And he was!)

This is my favorite picture of young Thelma.

Thelma Holdaway (Merrill)

Thelma said, "Poor old Malcolm went far away, out in the world, to go medical school. And his mother thought that was sad for him to be out there in the world all alone. (Any place out of Utah is “out in the world.”) So she was pulling for us to get married. So…we did!"

Malcolm said,

Then I went away in early September [1925] to St. Louis, Missouri to school, doing graduate work first in bacteriology that first year. Then I came back the next summer. We had it all worked out before the winter was over that we’d get married the next summer. So I came back the next summer and we got married on August 11, 1926. Then we got on a Pullman [i.e., a sleeper train car], two of us in a lower birth (heh! heh!) and went to St. Louis.

They were married in the Logan Temple (where Malcolm's grandfather, Marriner Wood Merrill, had been the first temple president), when Thelma was 22 and Malcolm was 23.

And they lived happily ever after! I remember as a child being impressed that after all those years, they would still go on walks together, holding hands. What a great example they were of love, kindness and devotion.

In the next episode, we welcome Don and Bruce to the family!

Malcolm Merrill, Thelma Holdaway

Young Malcolm and the Violin

Malcolm Hendricks Merrill was born 28 June 1903 in Richmond, Utah to (Louis) Edgar & Clara Hendricks Merrill.

Malcolm Hendricks Merrill, 1903.

He was the 5th of 9 children: (Edgar) Lionel, Orval, Norma, (Clarissa) Audene, Malcolm, Vernor & Virgil (boy & girl twins who both died as infants), Thais and (Clara) Theola Merrill. Below is a picture taken about 1910 with Malcolm and three of his siblings.

Audene Clarissa Merrill (left), Malcolm Hendricks Merrill, Norma Merrill (right),
Thais Abia Merrill (front). Photo taken about 1911.

Edgar & Clara Merrill lived in this brick home in Richmond at the time. (I have driven by the house as recently as 2014).

The house of L. Edgar & Clara Merrill in Richmond, Utah, where Malcolm Hendricks Merrill was born.
(Taken in 1953 by Malcolm Merrill and labeled "House in which I was born")

Clara (Hendricks) & Edgar Merrill, in front of their brick house in Richmond, Utah.

In a recording made by Robert E. Wilson around 1978, Malcolm told about his first day of school.

I went to grammar school then in this little town of Richmond, Utah. In those days we didn’t have kindergarten so we started school when we were six years old. So when I was just about the size of Sharon, I was six years old, and I was skinny (like you are now), and I went dashing off to my first day of school in this little town. We had what seemed to me then to be a great big brick school building. Actually, it wasn’t so big, but it had 8 rooms, one room for each of the 8 grades of the kids who went to that school. In those days when we went to school, we’d go at 9 in the morning and then we’d have recess at 10:15, in which all of the children would get out in the yard and play games and have a good time for about 15 minutes. But I thought it was lunchtime! After I’d been to school a whole hour and a half, I was hungry, so I wanted to have some lunch. So I went dashing off home—and our home was only a half a block away, so I could get home in a hurry. When I got home, my mother asked me, “What are you doing home so soon? School isn’t out yet.” “Well, they let us all out, and everybody went out into the yard,” I said. And she said, “No, that’s just recess. That’s just the time you get out to play.” So then I had to go back to school for the rest of the morning. That was my first day in the first grade in the red brick school in the little town of Richmond, Utah. [Robert: You missed recess?] Oh, I got my exercise all right, just running home and back! But I didn’t get a sandwich when I got home. She just told me to go back to school.

Malcolm was very bright. He was the valedictorian of his grammar school, high school and college. Below are two photos of his 8th grade graduation, each followed by a close-up.

Richmond, Utah 8th grade graduating class. (Malcolm H. Merrill, 3rd from right in front row)

Malcolm Hendricks Merrill, 8th grade graduation. 

Malcolm said, "I was the valedictorian of the eighth grade, and I remember that my mother was so proud, and she took me up to J.C. Penny’s and bought me a new suit, and it was a green suit. My first long pants suit with a vest. And I wore this new green suit with this vest when I gave my graduation speech."

Malcolm Hendricks Merrill. 8th grade graduation.

Malcolm Hendricks Merrill, 8th grade graduation.

Malcolm had fun playing games in his small town growing up. He said they had fun playing "Run, sheep run!" and "kick the can". He also told the following.

This lot we had...was big enough that we could lay out a diamond—not a full sized diamond, but big enough for the softball sort of thing. And we had just wonderful games out there playing softball with the neighborhood kids. There were a dozen or fifteen of us around there and we’d all get together and have these wonderful times.

We would play kickball, which was a variation I guess of rugby, where everybody on one side would line up on one end of the field and everybody on the other side would line up on the other side, and then the one side would kick the ball, and try to get it over the other side’s goal line, with all the kids scrambling every which way to try to get into the act. 

So we had a lot of fun in this rural community.

Playing the Violin

When Malcolm was a boy, he had a unique opportunity to learn to play the violin. Mark Merrill recorded Thelma telling about how this happened in his recordings of Pearls from the Past, which Beth (Partridge) Merrill was kind enough to type up. When asked about Malcolm playing the violin, Thelma said the following.

Ahhh-I’m glad you remember Grandpa and that he played the violin.  Grandpa had a wonderful mother, Clara Hendricks Merrill.  She was always on his side.  I remember Edgar said to her one time – how were you different when you carried Malcolm, because he seems so different from the other children.  She couldn’t remember, of course.  So she saw to it that he had all kinds of advantages and she used to take in boarders so that she’d have the money so that the kids could go to school and one of the boarders was a violinist.  So she had him give Malcolm violin lessons instead of paying board, and that’s how he got interested in it.  And so of course he was a very good violinist.  (He was good in everything he did!)  He was a concert violinist at the university orchestra and so that’s how good he was.  You know what the concertmaster is. He is the one who sets the down bow and everyone has to follow him.  I think he used to scold me for telling that.

Apparently the young man who taught Malcolm the violin was Leroy Robertson. Leroy went on to become the chairman of the Music Department at BYU among other things. Our current LDS hymnal has 8 hymns for which he wrote the music, including "Upon the Cross of Calvary" and "We Love Thy House, Oh God". He also wrote the words for one of these, "On This Day of Joy and Gladness."

One other interesting connection with Leroy Robertson was that our daughter Kelsi took violin lessons from Elizabeth Burton, who had had Leroy Robertson as her professor and dean of the Music Department in California. She was quite surprised when I mentioned to her who my grandfather had learned the violin from!

Malcolm also told about playing in the orchestra of his grammar school.

We had a school orchestra and school band under Mr. Omanson. He was a violinist and musician who got his training in music while he was on a mission in Denmark. As a side issue, he said that his mission president told him that he should get as much as he could out of his mission, and allowed him to take music lessons and study music while he was there. Well anyway, he organized this school orchestra and school band in our grade school, and most of the way through grade school I was taking violin lessons from him and playing in this school orchestra. And then he organized the band, and I played a valve trombone in the school band. And we’d play in either the orchestra or the band (as I remember it was mostly the orchestra) that would play for the kids to march into class, and then dash to the place where the orchestra would assemble and play it again for the kids to march out of the building as they went home to lunch and as they came back into school after lunch and as they went home in the evening. So we played in the orchestra several times a day one way or the other.

In addition to being the concertmaster for the orchestra of the Utah Agricultural College (now Utah State University), he also played the violin for silent movies to earn money for college.

Jean wrote,

Later in life he rather let that talent go, but I do remember his playing the violin a little bit when I was very small.  Later when Randy took violin in school for a brief time, Dad got out his violin and tuned it.  It had not been tuned for a while, so it took some coaxing to get it to stay in tune.  But just seeing how he handled the instrument and the bow showed me that he had had great skill once.

I remember him playing the violin with me (or trying to, since I was so terrible at the time). I thought that was so cool.

Malcolm Hendricks Merrill playing his violin.

Julie Merrill Hinkson learned the violin and inherited Malcolm's violin, which she has to this day.

Julie Merrill with Malcolm Merrill's violin.
Family recital; Riverton, Utah; 22 November 2001.

Join us next time when Malcolm goes to college and meets a cute girl named Thelma!