2.
REQUIEM FOR A BOYHOOD FRIEND

Gary quickly scanned the brief obituary notice our sister Susan had clipped for him. He and his wife Lauren were home for a summer visit to see family and old friends in Salt Lake City. Sue lived on H Street, high enough in the Avenues neighborhood so that one can view the wide expanse of the Valley of the Great Salt Lake from east to west and north to south, which Brigham Young had claimed for the Mormons (never mind the resident Indians) in 1847. The obituary was for Ronald Victor Swenson—our oldest boyhood friend. It said there would be a gravesite service at 11:00 a.m. in Wasatch Lawn Memorial Park at 3300 South and Highland Drive—about an eight-mile trip from Sue’s house. Wasatch Memorial Park is a sixty-five-acre cemetery grounds, just west of Parley’s Canyon (named for one of Brigham’s fellow apostles, who explored the possibilities of constructing a road—now Interstate 80—down the canyon in 1848). Rearing up like sharks’ teeth on adjacent sides of Parley’s Canyon are the fortress-like Wasatch Mountains that had initially given the Mormon pioneers a false sense of protection from Babylon America in the middle of the 19th century.

It was just a little past 10:30 a.m., so there might still be enough time for them to make it if they hurried. They had no map of Wasatch Lawn’s complicated burial quadrants, nor had there been any directions specified in the obituary. On this sunshine drenched day, however, there seemed to be only one active burial service underway—in a far-flung corner of the cemetery— and Gary, Lauren, and Sue drove toward it. They parked off the side of a curving road on a slight hill right above the burial service site and began trudging down the grassy slope toward a small knot of mourners clustered around the casket and freshly dug grave. They had arrived late and stood quietly unnoticed on the outskirts of the small gathering. A woman was speaking a few modest words in memory of the deceased, and her voice sounded familiar: it was Sondra Swenson, Ron Swenson’s oldest sister.

Ron Swenson became our first boyhood friend when our parents moved back to Salt Lake City from God-forgotten Cowley, Wyoming, following several of our dad’s unsuccessful business ventures in sales. It was the summer of 1949. We were five-year-old twin brothers and on the verge of starting kindergarten that fall at Liberty Elementary School on Third East, right around the corner from our humble, bungalow home at 312 Herbert Avenue. That summer was when we met Ron, who was a year older. Ron lived a half a block north of Liberty School on Third East, but we first met him in “the field,” a big, vacant lot between Herbert and Williams Avenues that abutted Ron’s backyard fence. In later years some apartments were erected in this lot. But when we were growing up “the field” is where we habitually joined with Ron and other neighborhood pals to play army or cowboys and Indians or even Robin Hood or Knights of the Round Table, depending on what movie we had seen most recently.

Left, our father, Alvin Shepherd (Shep), shoveling snow off the walk-in front of 312 Herbert Avenue circa, 1955. Right, a contemporary image of 312 with foliage and garden plots now sprouting in place ofgrass.

We remember, after we first met Ron in the field, going to his home and calling loudly for him on the back steps of