Talk Given by Jeanette Hurst Drake at the Funeral of Joy Hurst December 21, 2015

Funeral of Joy Hurst December 21, 2015

Talk By Jeanette H. Drake at Yale Ward, Bonneville Stake in Salt Lake City, Utah

I would like to begin my talk by reading Mom’s obituary:

Joy Rollins Hurst(1921 - 2015)

Together Forever

Josephine "Joy" Bybee Rollins Hurst, age 94, born December 6, 1921, in Mountain Green, Utah, to Oscar Whitaker and Zina Pearl Bybee Rollins, passed away December 11, 2015 at her home in Salt Lake. Raised on the family farm in Mountain Green, Joy attended Utah State Agricultural College on a music

scholarship, playing bass clarinet and saxophone. While there she met Elden Grant Hurst. When their courtship was interrupted by WWII she was employed at the Ogden Arsenal. She married her sailor on June 23, 1945 in Detroit, Michigan; later sealed in the Logan Temple. A matriarch of 10 children, 35 grandchildren, 52

great-grandchildren and one great-great grandchild, Joy loved her family. She provided them nutritious meals, including beautiful Sunday dinners with her famous rolls. An excellent seamstress, she hand stitched quilts and sewed much of the family's clothing. She passed those homemaking and music skills to her posterity. A faithful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Joy served in numerous callings including President of Relief Society, YWMIA, and

Primary as well as genealogical researcher and name extractor. She also served a mission to Coventry, England with Elden. Many hours were spent volunteering with 4-H Club and Boy Scouts. She enjoyed her association with the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, serving in many leadership positions; all her ancestral lines come through Utah pioneers.

Survived by children Jeanette (Ron) Drake, Lucile "Lisa" (Grant) Anderson,Wendell (Jo Ann) Hurst, Laura (Art) May,Lowell (Lucy) Hurst, Evan (Grethe) Hurst, Elizabeth (Van) Lund, Paul (RosaMaria) Hurst, Susan (Kindree) Hurst Brownbridge; siblings Afton (Edward) Jacobson, Norma (Clyde) Maughan, Myron (Erma) Rollins. Preceded in death by her husband; eight siblings Viola, Lee, Theron, Harold, Alice Sorensen, Marjorie Rose, Gilbert and Delbert; son Farrell Hurst, grandson Thomas Hurst, great grandson Jackson Hurst.

{Services Mon, Dec 21, 11 am, Yale Ward, 1431 Gilmer Dr, Salt Lake City. Viewing Sun, Dec 20, 6-8 pm, Larkin Mortuary, 260 E South Temple, and Mon, 9:30-10:30 am, Yale Ward. Interment, Mountain Green Cemetery.

Funeral Home

Larkin Mortuary

260 East South Temple Salt Lake City, UT 84111

(801) 363-5781

Published in Deseret News from Dec. 16 to Dec. 20, 2015}

How do you condense 94 years of living into a short talk? You know someone could spend years researching Mom’s life. It has been said that when an old person dies it is like a library has burned down. Or it could be said that the hard drive of a computer has been erased. Certainly someone could write a doctoral dissertation on Mom’s life and all its implications.

Celeste has written a book. Anne and Jane have interviewed Mom on video at the Riverton Family Search Library. Susan has collected many wonderful photographs. Michael has collected and scanned photographs. Others have also written about her. I am going to have to write the long version of my talk on my blog. Mom herself kept numerous journals.

There are many important things about Mom’s life that we, her descendants should know. There are many important things that we should emulate.

The German philosopher Goethe famously wrote, “What from your fathers’ heritage is lent, learn it anew, to really possess it!” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, trans. Bayard Taylor [1912], 1:28).

Mom and Dad and other ancestors have given us a rich heritage of sacrifice, service, living a virtuous life, and achievement. We are very blessed; but unless we follow their example, we do not really fully benefit.

When I was about 18 years old (about the age when you think you know more than your parents) I met some men who from Morgan, so I asked if they knew Joy Rollins and I found out they were her classmates at Morgan High School. They told me that she was very smart and she always got A’s. They kind of raved about how smart she was. Mom could be described as a “brilliant student who disappeared into a good home.” She could have done lots of things but she chose to be a wife and a homemaker. Here is another example of her determination. A few days ago I asked Mom’s sister Norma who lives in New York what she remembered about Mom when they were growing up. She said that Joy was always practicing her bass clarinet. She was in a lot of competitions and had a lot of performances and she spent a lot of time preparing and practicing for them. We know that she was part of the greatest generation and that she was patriotic because when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and World War II the day after her 20^th birthday in 1941 and Dad enlisted in the Navy, she dropped out of college to work at the Arsenal in Ogden. They were part of “the greatest generation.”

There are a lot of things I could tell about Mom and Dad about their years living in Hinckley, Utah where Dad taught school. I could tell about how hard Mom worked cooking, sewing, ironing, washing clothes with a wringer washer and hanging them on the clothes line, baking all our bread with a yeast start in potato water, canning and freezing. Mom had no family living nearby to help out. Even after we had a telephone, long distance was expensive and so she communicated with Grandma Rollins mostly by letter. We didn’t have a TV or a telephone until I was nine years old. I could tell about our great American road trip with seven children in a Rambler station wagon and spending the summer in Murfreesboro, Tennessee where Dad was attending Middle Tennessee State University. I could tell how dedicated Mom was as YWMIA president and as a 4-H Leader and how she supported Dad in his church callings. Both parents supported and encouraged all of us in our school work and everything we did.  They went the extra mile to give us every advantage.

I could tell about how Mom and Dad had marvelous team work. When our son David finished his mission in Brazil, Mom and Dad went with Ron and I to pick him up. For 21 days we travelled all over the country of Brazil. It was helpful to have Mom and Dad with us because they were such experienced travelers and were very organized and efficient. I could tell lots of things about Mom.

However, I feel impressed to take a different direction in this talk. Last night my granddaughter Jordyn told me that she knows where Heaven is. She said, “Heaven is all around us. The angels in Heaven can see us, but we can’t see them.” Are any of you wondering if Mom is here attending her funeral? Where do you think she might be? She is an angel so do you think she is flying round among the light fixtures looking down on everybody? Do you think she is sitting up here sitting on the piano or organ with her legs crossed and a big smile on her face. Do you think maybe she is back sitting in a corner holding hands with grandpa and they are smooching.

Mom and I talked about the spirit world and I invited her to come back and help me with Family History. But we also said that we don’t know if she will be allowed to do that. We don’t have access to the church handbook of instructions for the spirit world. We don’t know what the Missionary Handbook for the Spirit World says about visiting or communicating with your family while serving as a missionary. Knowing Mom and Dad we can be pretty darned sure that they have accepted callings in the Spirit World. But we don’t know the laws of physics governing spiritual matter and we don’t know much about the the different dimensions in the Universe.

We do have some information from someone who has been to the Spirit World though. This is President Joseph F. Smith. Here is a QUOTE from him:
"Surely those who have passed beyond, can see more clearly through the veil back here to us than it is possible for us to see to them.…I believe we move and have our being in the presence of…heavenly beings.…We can not forget them; we do not cease to love them; we always hold them in ourhearts, in memory, and thus we are associated and united to them by ties that we can not break, that we cannot dissolve or free ourselves from.

If this is the case with us in our finite condition, surrounded by our mortal weaknesses, short-sightedness, lack of inspiration and wisdom from time to time, how much more certain it is and reasonable and consistent to believe that those who have been faithful, who have gone beyond…can see us better than we can see them; that they know us better than we know them.

2.       I claim that we live in their presence, they see us, they are solicitous for our welfare, they love us now more than ever. For now they see the dangers that beset us; they can comprehend better than ever before, the weaknesses that are liable to mislead us into dark and forbidden paths. They see the temptations and the evils that beset us in life and the proneness of mortal beings to yield to temptation and to wrong doing; hence their solicitude for us and their love for us and their desire for our well being must be greater than that which we feel for ourselves.

3.       On another occasion President Joseph F. Smith said:

4.       We are told by the Prophet Joseph Smith, that “there are no angels who minister to this earth but those who do belong or have belonged to it.”

5.       Hence, when messengers are sent to minister to the inhabitants of this earth, they are not strangers, but from the ranks of our kindred, friends, and fellow beings.…Our fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters and friends who have passed away from this earth, having been faithful,…may have a mission given them to visit their relatives and friends upon the earth again, bringing from the divine Presence messages of love, of warning, or reproof and instruction to those whom they had learned to love in the flesh." UNQUOTE

6.   

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Sources

7.         1.  Joseph F. Smith, Eighty-Sixth Annual Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (April 1916): 2-3; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/ConferenceReports1910s : accessed 28 July 2015), image 1637. (drop outs may not match exactly)
     2.  Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book, 1986), 435-6. (drop outs may not match exactly)

 Personally I believe that we receive communication from our loved ones on the other side of the veil in very much the same way we receive revelation from the Holy Ghost. I believe that our agency is totally respected and that usually we have to invite spiritual revelation. Many times these angels come in answers to our prayers.  We can get messages in the form of a butterfly or a humming bird or a flower. Maybe we have a familiar sound or smell or we feel extra strength or extra skill when we are accomplishing something. We get warm feelings and we feel peace.

When we go to the temple or do family history we are serving the dead. But service goes both ways and sometimes we are receiving service from the dead.

In closing I want to express my gratitude that I was able to serve Mom this past year. I am grateful that Ron supported me in taking her in to our home. She was a courteous and gracious guest. We learned a great deal and Heavenly Father blessed and paid us generously for everything we were called upon to do. I am grateful for the experiences I had with my siblings as we worked together to take care of Mom. I believe that everything happened for a reason. Our experiences did us good. To quote my cousin Lynn Coray “The Lord’s timing is perfect.” We do not understand everything, but the Lord does.

I have a testimony of our Lord Jesus Christ. I know He is our Savior. I am grateful for His teachings and especially for His Atonement that saves us from sin and from death and makes it possible for us to change our lives and become like Him. He helps through all of our trials and sorrows. I say this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.