I, Charles Lorenzo Burdett, was born September 8, 1987 in the old home at 872 26^th Street (Ogden, Utah), which is still (as of October 6^th, 1971) occupied, the home now of my half brother George Grant and which has been changed but very little. I was the seventh and youngest child, the fourth son, of Eliza Jackson and William Burdett who joined the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and emigrated to Utah, from England.

My father died when I was six months old in an accident at a brickyard owned and operated by an uncle of mine, Joe Jackson. The brickyard was in the vicinity of the present site of the Aultonest Memorial Park at Monroe and 36^th Street.

At the time of my father's death, mother was left with a daughter and three sons, the oldest Eliza (Lizzie) was eight years of age, no life insurance. Dad was just coming in to worth. The death of father meant the leaving of school for both Lizzie and my oldest brother Fred. To help support the family, to keep the family together, mother took in washing and ironing. Lizzie helped mother at home and Fred got a job running an elevator downtown. This meant lots of sacrifice and hard work for them for many years.

There were no electric washers or irons then. I can remember the first electric light in our home, a single lamp bulb hanging on an electric cord dropped from the center of the ceiling. There was great ado at that time. Thomas Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park, as he was called then, had just invented his light bulb followed by many great and time saving inventions as the electric washing machine, the phonograph, etc.

This wonderful electric washing machine, however, was not for mother and company until years later. Hers was a washboard and a sad iron. The hot water and the sad irons both heated on an old coal stove.

My elder brother Art, out of his meager earnings, one day brought home one of these phonographs, the Victor. It had a hollow wax cylinder, on which the words of dialogue and the notes of music were inscribed with a large morning glory type of horn out of which came the music and songs and comic stuff of the day. Its trademark was a slick-haired Spaniel dog, sitting with his ear cocked to the horn, taking in the wonderful music coming out of it.

I owe very much to my sister Lizzie. She became as a second mother to me and my next brother Art, particularly me though. She not only helped put the bread of life into my mouth, slaving from daylight to dark, but she also helped to take care of me when I was sick. I was the one that came home first with a small pox germ or typhoid or scarlet fever germ or something else. She was the mother when my real mother was not on hand. Thank God for Lizzie, she has gone but she will never be forgotten.

Now back to me. I attended the Quincy School (26^th & Quincy) and then the Madison School (between 24^th and 25^th streets) for the seventh and eight grades. Then to Ogden High School, which at that time was located at 25^th and Adams Avenue. I left high school in my junior year, not as a drop out but to go to work for the Union Pacific Railroad as a messenger boy at a starting salary of $25 a month. I no doubt could have finished high school but in those days, unless you could go on to college, parents didn't seem to care whether you went on not and mother knowing it was out of any question that she could afford it, didn't think or say much about it. This was in June of 1905.

From 1910 to 1912, I worked as manifest clerk at the yard office and as passenger brakeman out of Pocatello (Idaho). While doing a short stint as brakeman, I had two incidents happen that later were very funny but at the time they occurred they taught me two good lessons. The first - always be alert - don't turn around watching and waving at the passing train while you are on the siding or you might get left - that is was happened to me. The other incident was don't let the other fellows take advantage of your ignorance or inexperience. Our train pulled in to Glenns Ferry, Idaho on my second or third trip with a hot box on a car loaded with mail. The car had to be taken out and the mail transferred to another car. The two other brakemen let me lug the heavy sacks of mail from one car to the other while they took it easy, very much amused. They did, however, compliment me on being a very good worker. Now I know it was so much "Apple Sauce".

In 1912 I left the railroad to go to work for the Pacific Fruit Express, first at Ogden as night agent where I worked until July, 1914 when I was transferred to Pocatello (Idaho) as agent. I worked in that position until August of 1917. By that time I had three sons, Grant, Paul and Ren. It was a good job and had good opportunity for promotion but I let my brother-in-law talk me into going to work for the F. W. Woolworth Company. My bother-in-law had a position with them as construction foreman. The picture he painted was lovely.

Woolworth had me move to Ogden (as assistant manager in training for a manager) where I stayed for 14 months at a salary of $75 a month. We moved the family into Rose's mothers home just below the Southern Pacific tracks on 2^nd Street. We lived upstairs, that is, we all slept upstairs. I rode a bicycle or walked up to Five Points and then took the streetcar into town. At night I took the streetcar back to Five Points, got on my bike and pedaled down to the farm. Woolworth required all of their assistant managers to trim their windows after the store closed and as we had four windows to trim and which had to be changed every week, it was generally the last street car at midnight that I caught for home. I was training with Woolworth in their Ogden and Butte, Montana stores until October 1918. At that time I was sent to Bozeman, Montana to manage a new store, at a salary of $150 a month with commission.

At that time the flu epidemic was on and nearly every family had one or more deaths. When I was at Butte, I rented a room from a Mrs. Kelly. Two of her children died while I was there, in just a few months.

The family (mine) was still living on the farm waiting for me to get a store. They, mother and the three boys, joined me in the winter of 1918 when the temperature was way down below zero and we had no more than got settled than we all came down with the flu. We were strangers in a strange land, we didn't know a soul, hadn't looked up to see if there was a branch of the church or anything else. We had been able to find a place for rent.

Don't know what we would have done if it hadn't been for Doctor Piedalou, who had been recommended to us. He rustled around and got a few extra blankets for us and located a woman to come in occasionally and look after us. Quite a difference from the doctors of today.

I will never forget when I came down with it. The boys had it first and were upstairs in bed. Mother had just come down with it and she was upstairs in bed. That particular evening I was going up the stairs to go to bed and as I got to the upper landing I just keeled over and laid there. She heard me fall but she just let me lie, making no effort at all to get to me. It was a very peculiar disease. No feeling, no pain, caring for nothing, just weak, whether you died or got well didn't seem to matter and it was the same in regard to the other fellow. However, we survived, no doubt through the goodness and will of the Lord.

I was at Bozeman for a little over 15 months when I was sent to Pocatello, Idaho, to take over their store there. The store there was in poor shape, the previous manager had let the store run down and sales and profits had tumbled. This was in January 1920. However, by hard work and proper management we brought the sales up, as well as the profits, each year until 1927. From 1920 our sales increased from $66,000 to over $100,000 and our net profit from $8,900 to over $30,000.

This was a good period in our lives. We were getting along nicely financially but what was of more importance, we had become active in the church. I married your mother on October 4, 1911. Stake President Charles Middleton performing the ceremony and on June 13, 1923 our marriage was solemnized in the Salt Lake Temple. When we arrived in Pocatello we moved into the First Ward. Elder Lonnie Pond was the bishop and it wasn't long before I was made an elder and was teaching the Elders Class. I became the president of the YMMIA, Sunday school superintendent, and president of the 3rd Ward YMMIA, under Bishop Horsfull. I also served on the Stake Board of the YMMIA. We felt the children needed religious training, as the boys were growing up and a new daughter, Barbara, had come into our home. We were among some very fine people and we enjoyed our work and felt it to be our responsibility to do what we could to promote the Lord's work. Another daughter, Colleen, was born at Pocatello on November 21, 1926.

But a bomb dropped on us in 1927. Kress, a competitor of Woolwoths came to Pocatello, putting up a new store (5 cents to 25 cents, with various items up to $1.00). Woolworth prices were kept at 5 to 15 cents as they had always been. The consequence; Kress cut all their 15 cent items to 10 cents and pushed their 25 cent merchandise. Not only that but Woolworth also had a new building built for them with rent at $900 a month. We made a profit that year but it was a small one, a little over $5000 and my salary for the year dropped to $2500. In 1928 our showing wasn't much better, so in January of 1929 they thought that a new man would do better and they offered me management positions at either a new store in Havre, Montana or an existing store in Coeur d' Alene (northern Idaho). The Coeur d' Alene store sales were down. There was a depression going on and I decided on taking the new store. It developed later that Coeur d' Alene got better and not only that, it was put back into the San Francisco district where Mr. Weber was the manager and. Mr. Weber, a fine gentleman, had been my manager when I was at Pocatello. Life is hard at times and at times our judgment is not always the best, but such it is.

We moved to Havre, Montana in February of 1929. The depression was on and while the store increased in both sales and profits, I only made the guaranteed salary of $2000. On the first of January 1931, the Woolworth Company adopted a ruling that any manager that didn't gross 60% or better on merchandise cost would automatically be discharged. The reason for this was that the depression was still on and many of the managers had a contract of 20% of the net profit. If a manager, for any reason, left their employ the company would issue a new contract to the new manager at a lesser percentage. This would give the company a greater share of the stores profit and the new manager would be perfectly satisfied. My gross for 1931 was 59%, so I was out. I thought it was dirty pool but then that is the way that the chain stores operated.

When I left Pocatello I continued in doing what I could to stay in touch with the church and we began holding Sunday school in our home. Colleen was then three or four years old and we thought we should keep the children interested in the gospel. That was in 1929 and 1930. There were only three LDS families in Havre but they did have a ward at Chinook, 25 miles from Havre. For a time we had a missionary and his wife with headquarter in Havre and we also had regular calls from our missionary president whose home headquarters were in Minneapolis. While there was only a few of us at Havre and there were no new ones baptized we seemed to be of some importance as one of the largest (non LDS) churches (pastors) there highly advertised that his sermon would be entirely about the Mormons. Of course it wasn't favorable to the Mormons.

The depression was still on and jobs were scarce, so I took a job as assistant manager of the basement store of the Buttrey Company store in Havre, Montana. Later, I was made manager of the basement store and on October 1934, I was made manager of their Fort Peck, Montana store, where the US Army was putting in a flood control dam on the Missouri River. I was there until May 1937, when the boss thought a new manager could do better.

In May of 1937, I moved back to Utah and opened a store in Bringham, a Gamble's Store, which seemed to be popular then but the Second World War was brewing and Bringham was too close to Ogden to do the business to hardly make a go of it. I had a chance to sell out and get my money out of it, so I did. When the war started, hard goods were regulated and they couldn't get hardware or tires to sell, so I had done right by selling.

After trying my hand in a mattress making business for 18 months and a year in the grocery business at Eagle, Idaho, I went back to the department store business with the C. C. Anderson chain stores in Idaho and Utah. I was at Logan, Utah as merchandise assistant for six months when I was called to go to McCall, Idaho as manager of their store there for $225 a month plus bonus. That was in January, 1943. I was then 56 years old. In nine years I would be retired. The war was coming to an end. Then, what with the young fellows coming home from the war, I saw the handwriting on the wall.

The good Lord must have been with me as the postmaster at McCall was resigning and I took the examination and passed, with the support of Mr. Carl Brown, who owned half the town, including a million-dollar lumber mill. I received the appointment for 15 years. I took over the post office June 1, 1944 and retired June 1, 1959 at the age of 72.

I will never forget the years at McCall. The ones I spent there were the happiest and most profitable of my life. I knew I was there for 15 years, which gave me an opportunity to build a home of my own and also to really get back into working for the church.

I bought me a little old place on the highway to Boise, about three blocks from town. It had a living room, a kitchen and a bedroom, which was a small lean-to on the back. We literally built around it (the old house). We pushed the front wall out six feet, after putting in a cement foundation all around. After the walls were up and the roof on, we used this six foot extension as our bedroom, knocking out the old lean-to, which had been our bedroom for a couple of years. When we were through, we had a nice home with two bedrooms, large living room, a modern bath and kitchen. The only part of the old place that was in the new home was the west and east walls.

The 19 years I was at McCall were the best years of my life. I felt secure. I had built a new home. I was busy in the church and am sure we did some good, not only for ourselves but for others.

It was in McCall that I really got into the swing of working in the church. When we arrived at McCall they had a little Sunday school going (four families). It wasn't long until we were made a dependent branch with Sunday school and relief society operating under the jurisdiction of the First Ward of Emmett, Idaho.

Soon we were made an independent branch of the Weisor Stake and I was sustained as the first president. Prior to that, I was superintendent of the Sunday school and president of the dependent branch.

In 1951 and early 1952, when McCall was part of the Cascade Branch, I was first counselor to Bishop Blackburn. However, that did not work out very good and in July, 1953, I was sustained as president of the McCall, Idaho branch.

We had 60 families in the branch covering a distance of 30 miles but many of these were split families, others had been away for years. As McCall was a summer vacation and summer hometown, our attendance would jump from fifteen to thirty in the winter to a couple of hundred in the summer but we were always short of those holding the priest hoods. Our main source for members and officers was the United States Forest Service (Payette National District). The USFS at McCall employed many young men, some single and some married, as assistant engineers, smoke jumpers, officers and clerks. Some came to McCall to work during the summer as jumpers or assistant engineers and then went back to school. Others had selected the Forest Service as a career. As a rule the Forestry transferred their men in promoting them, so they were moved quite frequently, which resulted in changes in the branch and caused our attendance to go up and down as they came and went.

During the time I was at McCall, there was only one young man that was called on a mission but then many of the boys, after spending a summer or two at McCall, were called on missions after they returned to their homes. They were prepared and ready to go with a lot of practical training as teachers, speakers, administrators or officers. They had also grown spiritually, had a fine spirit of the gospel and were thus very anxious to be called as missionaries. They also became officers in their home wards when they returned or became married. Some of these boys went on to become bishops in the ward where they lived. In the local paper this last week, I read where one of our fine young men (Bruce H____) had been transferred from the Ogden office of the Forestry to one of their district offices (as chief deputy forester). It was noted that he had been released as bishop of the Ogden Ward. I was surprised, as I didn't even know he was a bishop. You never know what may be the fruits of your labor.

From January 1943, when I arrived at McCall until September 1956, when I was released as branch president, I had been head of the church there as Sunday school superintendent, dependent branch president or branch president. I asked for release as the work at the post office (particularly in the summer with the influx of summer vacationers), branch president duties (assignments, etc.) and the work to complete my home was too much for me. A (church) building program was coming on also as we had already bought the lot. I continued working in the church until we left for Ogden in October of 1962, principally as teacher in the Gospel Doctrine Class.

In October of 1962, I moved to Ogden, Utah, (my hometown) but on May 5, 1963, I returned to McCall for a couple of days having been asked to return and speak at the dedication service of the branch chapel, construction of which began in September 1958. The branch has since become a ward and is still growing in spirit and number. Also, since I left McCall they have built onto the building, which is still located across Highway 15 from beautiful Payette Lake.

After leaving the Post Office, I loafed a year and then went to work for the May Hardware Store for a couple of years when we moved to Ogden. That was in October 1962.

When we arrived at Ogden there were no homes for rent. I had already bought the old home of my mother from the estate but it was in such a condition as not to be fit to live in. I was forced to buy a home, so I purchased a new two-bedroom house in a nice location at 1008 Chatelain Road. I put the old homestead up for sale. I had it rented for several years when I was in Idaho and it had gotten so rundown it was just like a haunted house. I was offered $6000 for it but this amount was silly, so I decided to fix it up myself. It was a mess. The wastewater from the kitchen sink was running on to the ground underneath the floor. The plaster in the kitchen, living room and two bedrooms was hanging, supported only by the wallpaper. The electric wiring was loose and two of the outlet boxes were swinging loose. The linoleum had rotted out, the floors sagged and creaked, and cobwebs hung everywhere.

I scraped off the old wallpaper everywhere it was loose and where it wouldn't come off with scraping, I got a steamer and steamed it off. Where the walls were brick, I had them re-plastered but the bath walls were knocked off and sheet rock was applied. The old wiring was pulled out and replaced. New plumbing was installed. The old baseboards were cut down to four inches and new trim was put in where needed. New plywood floors were nailed down over the old flooring and carpeting, tile or linoleum was installed. All in all, after nearly two years, I had a nice home but it was a lot of dirty work.

As for the work in the church, I was made teacher and secretary of the High Priest Group in the 11^th Ward. I held these positions until 1970 when most of the 11^th Ward was incorporated into the 9^th Ward. As I was then 83, they put me on the shelf and that is where I am this date of October 6^th, 1971, Labor Day.