John Campbell

Biography

June 4, 1924 – March 18, 2013

JOHN WILLIAM CAMPBELL HISTORY

I was born the fourth day of June 1924, at Salt Lake City, Utah. The sixth child of eight children born to Samuel Campbell and Della Mar Tate. My brothers and sisters were: Leland Samuel, born January 9, 1914, Ruth Elizabeth, born July 21, 1916, and Mary, born June 21, 1919. Another sister Alice Ramona was born March 9, 1921, Alexander Reilly, was born July 21, 1922, Della Mar, born February 1926, and Margaret, born September 17, 1928. All we children were born in Salt Lake City, Utah. Three of the children died in infancy, as all of the children were premature. I was the remaining boy with four sisters. I spent the first five years of my life in Salt Lake City, in a large house surrounded by an iron picket fence. My father was a building contractor and had built several homes around the Laird and Princeton Avenues area of Salt Lake City. At that time these houses were some of those built highest on the east side of the Salt Lake Valley.
The depression of 1929 caused conditions such that my father couldn’t sell his homes. He lost all he had including the house we were living in, and our furniture. We moved to Mesa, Arizona and dug a basement for a future home, and we lived in the basement and the home as we built it. My father was able to get work on Hoover Dam at Boulder City, Nevada, and left the family in the uncompleted home. I remember we were very poor; I went barefooted summer and winter, including to church, the three years we lived in Mesa. Many other children were also going barefoot at the time. Some of our meals consisted only of milk we obtained from a neighbor at five cents a gallon and watermelon that we grew ourselves. We also went down to the railroad yards where they would dump lettuce that couldn’t be sold. It was supposed to be for animals; but I think much of it was used for human consumption.
There were no air conditioners at this time and temperatures in Mesa, a desert town, would sometimes get up to 120 degrees in the summer. We all suffered from what they called prickly heat.
My mother always stressed how we should observe the Sabbath Day and not do things like swimming on that day. One hot Sunday a group of the neighbors went to the canal for a swim and talked me into going with them. The youngsters swam in a ditch and the older ones in the canal. I refused to swim on Sunday and spent my time watching the others. While walking along the canal bank I fell in, I couldn’t swim and I remember trying to catch a pipe as the current swept me under a bridge. The next thing I remember was regaining consciousness, lying on the bank, while someone was giving me artificial respiration. Another time I was climbing on the roof of my neighbors two story house with the neighbor’s children, I slipped and fell and as I went over the side of the house with my arms extended, a large nail caught me under the left arm pit, I hung there, swinging back and forth like a pendulum until an adult came out of the house and lifted me off. He said the nail had protruded into my armpit coming within a fraction of an inch of the main arteries of my heart. I was bleeding heavily and they rushed me to the doctor who sewed up the wound. This also happened on a Sunday; and my mother reminded me I was not observing the Sabbath. On another occasion I was standing on the edge of a chair trying to get into a top cupboard when the chair tipped, I jumped, landing my barefoot on a lard can. The rim slid down and the sharp edge cut my heel off except for the back skin; and my heel was turned back on itself. This also happened on the Sabbath and I was becoming paranoid about doing anything on Sunday. My mother wrapped my foot in bandages, as we couldn’t afford a doctor again; and eventually my foot healed with the help of prayer and good home doctoring.
I missed much of the second grade in school, because of accidents. The teacher told me I should stay after school and make up the work; but, I thought it was more fun to leave with the other kids and to try to beat the bus home by running a distance of five miles. I also remember a teacher breaking a ruler on the knuckles of my hand; but I can’t remember what it was for. It was probably well deserved; anyway I flunked the second grade.
While in Mesa, I remember riding on the floor of the back seat of a crowded car when the door flew open and I fell out. My older cousin grabbed my feet and I remember my hands dragging on the gravel surface in front of the rear wheel until the car came to a stop. It was very frightening, and painful, and my hands were badly torn for a long time afterwards. I really think youngsters have extra guardian angels; I don’t know how they would ever make it to adulthood otherwise.
In June 1933 we moved to my Grandmother Tate’s family home in Tooele, Utah, as my mother was having a challenging time raising her family while my father was working at Boulder, Nevada. My mother had a difficult time getting me to wear shoes in time for school in the fall. We went barefooted all winter in Mesa and I thought I could do the same in Tooele. I even remember occasions in Mesa when there was ice on the ground and some of the kids with shoes would step on our toes on the school bus. It was very painful; but I thought learning to wear my shoes again was more painful.
When I started school in Tooele, I went with my cousins in the fourth grade and tore up my report card from the second grade so they wouldn’t know I was supposed to go into the third grade. I had a difficult time at first especially in arithmetic because they were doing things I had never heard of such as division of numbers. This turned out to be a blessing, because I learned to study and read intensely so that I could catch up with the class. This taught me good study habits, which stayed with me the rest of my life. Although it was simple arithmetic it kindled my interest, and I learned to love mathematics. I couldn’t get enough books from the libraries on science, astronomy and mathematics from that time on. I was always at the top of the class in these subjects through the later years of my schooling. I used to joke with my children how that If I ever became a school teacher I would teach the second grade, having spent two years in that grade, so I would know more about it. However, I wouldn’t be able to teach the third grade, because I never attended it.
The winter of 1933 and 1934, was a very dry and warm winter in Tooele. This was discouraging, because as a young boy, I really looked forward to being able to go sleigh riding. I was told that, that winter was the warmest and driest on record.
I loved to read, but my father didn’t like it except when I read the scriptures. This is how I read the Book of Mormon three times before I was thirteen and all the other scriptures before I was fifteen. My father believed very strongly in the work ethic. I remember his favorite statement was, “make yourself useful”. He didn’t believe a person was working unless they used their hands in hard manual labor.
On one occasion I was able to go swimming at Ocean Beach with a friend, Hugh Churchill. The water was very rough, my friend got caught in an undertow, and since he couldn’t swim I went after him. I got hold of him and braced my feet against an underwater rock. The coral cut my feet some, but I was able to hold on until a large man pulled us both out. We both had enough of the ocean for that day, so we went walking along Sunset Cliffs that was near the beach. The water would spray upon these cliffs in many places and the cliffs were slick with moss. I slipped and fell and went over the edge of one of the cliffs. I grabbed the edge as I went over, but it was so slick there was no way that I could have held on. Somehow, I felt a lift that I can’t explain, and I was lifted back upon the cliff and was able to work my way back up to safety.
When I was about the age of fourteen I was able to go on a vacation with my friend Raymond Angle, to his relatives in Safford, Arizona. On one occasion, we were exploring one of many ravines formed by the Gila River. Many were covered by overhead brush and some were dead-ends, as we approached a bend in this one ravine, suddenly, there was a large mountain lion in front of us. We slowly turned and the mountain lion slowly turned while letting out a low growl. We were very glad of this because he could have made mincemeat out of us. I learned a lot about mountain lions after this experience. One of the things I learned was that they are a very muscular animal and they fight back easily when trapped. Someone had to be looking over us. I am sure that on a probability basis all kids have a guardian angel; or they would never make it to adulthood.
From the age of thirteen to seventeen I had an early morning paper route, 4:00 AM on weekdays and 3:00 AM on Sundays. This was so I could acquire spending money for school and my individual needs. It also developed the early to bed and early to rise habit for me. My father thought college was a waste of time and didn’t encourage my going, even though I had a partial scholarship. At that time there really were not many jobs for college graduates. It didn’t matter because right after I turned eighteen and graduated from high school the government dropped the draft age from twenty one to eighteen and I was drafted into the army. I remember basic training when everyone complained about marching all day; I thought it was quite easy compared to working for my father.
Since my interests and hobbies were in radio I was sent to Scott Field Illinois, to become a control tower operator. I was much better as a radio technician than I was using the morse code at high speed, so I spent most of my three years in the Army Air Force in Panama, where we maintained electronic equipment on the aircraft in that area. As a matter of interest the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal is actually west of the Pacific side of the Canal. At Colon on the Atlantic side it rained very heavy and all of the buildings were on stilts. During the wet season it rained all of the time and a good deal of the time during the dry season. The army had cut revetments in the jungle where the fighter planes were stored under camouflaged conditions. Occasionally I would get guard duty at night at these revetments. It was difficult to see in the dark of the night, especially with mosquito netting over our face. I can remember one occasion when a flash of lightning beamed on a large black panther slinking across the road. They never bothered anyone as they had plenty to eat; but in the dark of the night and alone in the jungle they were a bit scary knowing that most of the time they could see you but you couldn’t see them.
January of 1946, a large number of us were released to go home. We were all so eager to go home that we overloaded the troopship. Crossing the gulf of Mexico we were caught in a hurricane. I was on guard duty to make sure everyone stayed in the hold, so no one would be washed overboard. We were all sick and because of the smell from everyone being sick, that didn’t last long. The ship would shudder every time the propeller would come out of the water. We didn’t lose anyone overboard, but we lost a lot of material that had become unsecured. After the storm was over it was a lot colder and wand we had only our tropical clothing, and almost everything was wet. It was still very cold when we docked at New Orleans, and remained on the ship one night. The next day we were issued winter clothing and sent to camps where we were to be released from the service.
After I was released from the service and attended church, the Bishop approached me about going on a mission. I told him that I wanted to be home long enough to get my bearings. I worked at the Naval Electronics Lab, in San Diego California for nine months and saved enough money to keep me in the mission field for the first year. My father sent the money for the second year. When I went on my mission I was interviewed in San Diego by President Kimball, who was an Apostle at the time. While on my mission my first assignment was in Toledo, Ohio, here I had a number of interesting experiences. My mission president, Creed Haymond, wanted to experiment with country work without purse or script during the summer. Most of the people we contacted didn’t know what “without purse or script” meant. We had to point blank ask for food and a place to stay. My companion and I were a little too proud for that and I guess we needed to be humbled. We walked one hundred and twenty miles in four days, sleeping out on the open ground, and having nothing to eat except occasional grain from some of the fields. We really looked like tramps after sleeping between rows of corn on the muddy ground, one night. We started hitching rides where we got some good gospel conversations and a more receptive audience. While we were waiting for a ride in one area we noticed a police road block. We shortly got a ride and had gone about thirty miles when we came to another road block. The officers asked the driver who we were, and he told them he picked us up down the road a short way. All of a sudden there were police all around us with loaded rifles pointed at us and telling us to get out of the car and reach for the sky. This seemed funny to me at first until one officer lunged at me with his finger on the trigger shouting get those hands up. I must have frozen solid, with my arms immediately in the air, when I realized he meant business, and I thought how easy it would be for that gun to go off. They questioned us and tore everything out of our briefcases and threw it all on the ground. When they realized we were who we said we were with our Bibles and Books of Mormon, they ordered us to pick up everything and move on without any explanation or apology. Later we stopped at an inactive member’s house in the area who fed us and gave us a place to sleep for the night. Reading his local paper, we found out why we had been arrested. Two well-dressed bank robbers, one dark complexioned, and one light complexioned, about twenty four years old, had robbed a local bank and carried the money away in a briefcase. My companion and I fit this description completely. I think the police were sure they had the actual robbers. An article concerning this event was printed in the Church News, after I told them what happened. We had many other missionary experiences such as, all kinds of delays and interference’s on the day that we baptized a member. On another occasion we were having a gospel discussion in a man’s home when suddenly he jumped up and wanted to know what spirit we came in. I told him the spirit of the Holy Ghost, whereupon he kicked us out of his home. As we left my new companion said, “I brush the dust off my feet against that home”. My companion wasn’t out in the field in time to attend our last missionary conference. I told him our Mission President had just given instructions on being very careful before we used that ordinance, as it was a very strong ordinance. We didn’t think any more about it, until an investigator who knew this man told us that he died during the following week. This bothered my companion the rest of his mission.
After my mission, I stopped in Salt Lake City, Utah to visit my sisters and Grace Skinner whom I had met in the mission field. Grace and I became engaged after which I returned home to San Diego to report my mission and prepare for my coming marriage. I returned from my mission in February 1949 and Grace and I were married April 7, 1949. After our marriage Grace continued to work at First Security Bank and I took an electronic course at a local electronics school. During this time Grace gave birth to our first child, a girl, whom we named Diane after a girl we had both known in the mission field. I completed my schooling about 1 ½ years later after which, I began repairing TV sets that were new on the market at that time. There was only one TV station in Salt Lake at the time. Few people owned the sets as they were expensive, big, bulky, and with very small pictures. I had built my own set that we used without a cabinet. Shortly after this the instructor I had at school got me a job as a master control operator for the inter-mountain network located at radio station KALL in Salt Lake City, Utah.
This position consisted of controlling all of the programs sent to forty-one stations. Also, all recordings, sound effects, and disk spinning were handled by us. Our toughest assignment was recording and playing back one half hour later, long baseball games from spring through fall. Later we did the same thing with basketball games.
In February 1952, we took a family vacation to San Diego, California. It was so cold and miserable in Salt Lake at that time and so beautiful and warm in San Diego that I talked to a friend about a job there and was able to acquire a much better paying job. As a result we moved to San Diego. I had a job at the transmitting tower of station KFMB about two miles from any built up areas. There wasn’t a lot to do on this job except during maintenance after midnight once a week. I spent a lot of time studying electronics and working on hobbies and electronics. I also started acquiring college credits by attending school in the evenings. I was later able to teach an electronics course at San Diego Junior College, even though I had no college degree. I desired to obtain an electronic organ so; I started repairing them after work to get the required funds. I was able to purchase one later and learned to play it by ear. I was burning the candle at both ends, at this time but I needed the extra finances as I had purchased a larger home and was paying the first and second mortgage at the same time. Later I was offered a chance to get into research at a local electronics firm, changing circuit designs from vacuum tubes to semiconductors. This was a brand new field. I had always wanted to become an inventor when I was a youngster. I was also teaching semiconductor theory at the Junior College. I jumped at the opportunity even though I had to take a cut in pay in the beginning. I was also able to have my Sundays free which I didn’t have at the radio station.
A short time later we had our fourth baby, a girl. Grace had been having some problems before the baby was born. After the birth of the baby, she developed phlebitis and the doctor wanted to put her in the hospital, but agreed to let her stay home if she stayed in bed. They were giving her anti-coagulants and there was danger of internal bleeding. This was to help get rid of the clots and prevent them from spreading to vital organs in the body. I was working ten hour days and with my school responsibilities and four children under six, one a new baby, the situation became difficult. Someone needed to be with Grace and the children twenty-four hours a day, and additional financing was needed for medical care. For a few days relatives and the Relief Society helped out, but I felt they were resentful of the long hours I was gone. I was trying to get organized to handle the situation. I found twenty-four hour nurses were out of the question or I should say pocket book, as that would require a total of three nurses a day. A friend told me of the similar situation where he acquired the help from across the border in Tijuana, Mexico, not far from San Diego. The situation was desperate and although it wasn’t legal, I felt that I had no choice.
During this time I worked my way out of some of my other obligations at school and work except my main job at the electronics firm. I also realize that I had neglected my family and these other things were not as important as my family. I hardly knew my six year old daughter because I was so involved in work and education. My church responsibility at this time was Stake Missionary work. I eventually filled two Stake Missions. My wife was usually in the MIA or Primary presidency during these years in San Diego.
While working for Ryan Electronics I helped develop many useful pieces of electronic equipment. I received a patent on a high voltage, semiconductor regulated power supply, which saved many pounds on airborne equipment. It was very difficult at this time to control large voltage swings with transistors that could only handle a few volts through large temperature variations without destroying them. The firm had a new, continuous wave radar using a new magnetron of which there was only one in existence at that time. Production of more was six months in the future. The magnetron could only be obtained from the company president. The test using the two pieces of equipment came. With the expert on the magnetron standing by we hooked up the equipment and threw the switch, nothing happened. The radar man thought that my equipment furnished the filament power for the magnetron and I thought his equipment furnished it. Discovering this we acquired a transformer for the filament power supply and wired it into the circuit. With a number of dignitaries standing by I threw the switch and was immediately enveloped in a cloud of smoke. Many came running from other areas of the plant. My world caved in, as the magnetron was ruined and my high voltage power supply was suspect. Investigation disclosed that the filament transformer was defective, that the connecting leads had been wired backwards by the manufacturer. Instead of stepping the voltage down 6 volts from 115 volts it stepped the voltage up by the same ratio. Applying about 1600 volts to the 6 volt filaments for the magnetron causing it to burn out. I felt terrible about what happened and was looking for new employment the next day. The President of the company got wind of it and told me it wasn’t my fault, that they appreciated my work and not to let it bother me. Somehow I just couldn’t feel comfortable working there anymore and I began sending resumes to other companies. Semiconductors and their applications were new at this time; the demand for the experienced personnel was tremendous. I could’ve gotten a job almost anywhere in the country. I had told my wife when I went to San Diego that if I could ever get a good job in the electronics field, that I would return to Salt Lake. She never did want to live in California and I felt I was safe making this statement as Utah didn’t have any good jobs in the electronics field when I left for San Diego. However, Sperry Univac, a recent electronics firm in Utah accepted my application and paid my moving expenses back to Utah. We moved into a new home in Taylorsville, Utah, where we lived for seven years.
During this time Grace was again in the MIA, Primary, and Relief Society Presidency and I worked in the Adult Aaronic program. Later being one of the oldest in this young ward they made me a High Priest and I was made executive secretary in the Adult Aaronic that was combined with Welfare Clerk at this time. My two oldest boys became very active in sports and remained active in sports for many years. In April 1964 and again in April 1966 we added two more boys to our family, which became our second family so to speak as they were eight years younger than our youngest daughter. It was almost like starting over only we were much older; Grace was forty-one when our youngest son was born. In 1967 we made a move to the Val Verda area in Bountiful, Utah. During this time I was in the MIA Presidency and Grace was in the Primary Presidency. In 1970, Sperry Univac had a large layoff, I was told that I could save my job by moving to Valencia, California and to learn to become a computer programmer of electronic test equipment. We moved to California after selling our home in Bountiful and bought a home in Saugus, California about two miles from where I worked in Valencia. Here I was given the position in the church of Historical Clerk and High Priest Instructor. Grace was given callings in the MIA first on a ward level and later in the Stake.
While we were here in Saugus, they had a large brush fire driven by high winds. At one time we were surrounded by fire and were standing by with a hose to protect our home. A number of nearby homes had burned and it was spreading rapidly. My oldest son, Eldon, was coming home from working at the Seven Eleven and at first was blocked by the fire at a roadblock; they eventually let him through along with others who lived in the area. Eldon was waiting for a mission call at this time and a short time later that call came. He was sent to Ireland the home of his Grandfather Campbell. He was given his Grandfathers name as a middle name because he looked a lot like his Grandfather even as a baby. He served a good mission and was able to travel over much of Ireland as he was a Zone Leader and was in the southern part and had to travel to Belfast for leadership meetings.
We had been in Saugus a little over a year when the Sylmar earthquake struck in the early morning about 6:00 AM. My daughter Carol was already up and getting ready for early morning seminary. It sounded as if a big truck had run into the house, then everything started shaking it was really frightening. I leaped from the bed and hurried to the children’s room and told them to get up and under a door frame. The shaking continued so I told everyone to hurry outside and to get into the car; I started to drive to higher ground and discovered we had a flat tire. Everyone started to get in the other car, but I decided that if the dam had broken the water would be there by then. The shaking had temporarily stopped so we went back into the house. The TV was on emergency broadcast and would come on and off with reports of what the status was and what was going on and what to do. There were helicopters flying over the area and they showed a dam in San Fernando that had developed a leak and they were afraid it might break, so they were going to drain it. The people below this dam, about 10,000 of them, had to be evacuated until they could drain it. Later that day I drove to the store that had sold me a new tire a few days previously, it was the tire that was flat. When we arrived we could see the building had been completely destroyed, and they never did rebuild it. Needless to say I was not able to get my tire replaced. This quake registered 6.5 on the Richter scale, termed a medium quake, but it did a tremendous amount of damage in our modern civilization. It was especially bad in the Sylmar area where the epicenter was. Two hospitals in this area were damaged, one almost completely, the other built to earthquake specs had the buildings on each end drop one complete floor to the ground. All of the homes in our area had some damage. Our brick chimney was damaged, as was almost everything in the area that was brick. I found structure in our attic that showed cracks. The neighbors’ brick chimney had pulled away from their house and was leaning toward our bedroom. Funny things you wouldn’t expect happen in these quakes. We had a large shed out behind our house and we had our bottled fruit there. Some of the bottles fell off the shelves but only about six bottles were broken. It was as it the floor had come up to meet them or something. Our dog always slept in this shed, but she had disappeared and didn’t come back home for about three days. When she did return home she would not go back in the shed. Several months later she had pups and the sun was hot so I talked her back into the shed, she stayed there until the pups got their eyes open and then she wouldn’t go back in the shed. All of our lamps had fallen on the floor and being cement everything that fell broke. Many of our pictures fell off the wall and other little what not’s fell and broke. A neighbor told us their refrigerator door came open and everything would be thrown out at the same time their oven door would open and catch the items from the refrigerator. The earth was shaking almost constantly for the rest of the day as aftershocks kept coming. The initial quake wasn’t as scary as the aftershocks that followed for a year afterwards. They were a constant reminder of the potential bomb we were sitting on. Between the fire and quake our children had a difficult time sleeping, so our king sized bed became the family bed for some time after. The teachers at the school had told the children if an aftershock came to crawl under their desks. I remember Boyd saying, “But how will I know when to get under my desk or a door frame”. Meaning he wanted to know before the quake struck. A new freeway from our area to San Fernando and Sylmar was destroyed and the concrete buckled, also many of the overpasses were completely down. Our phone didn’t work as the phone company switchboard and many of their cables were in the basement and it was flooded by the many broken water pipes. Our water was contaminated and we had to boil it for approximately two weeks. Some of the TV announcers said they thought our valley was wiped off the map, as there had been no reports from our area and they couldn’t get through by phone. Our families here in Utah and elsewhere were very concerned because of our isolation from the rest of the world. It was like Tom Sawyer being at his own funeral. Many homes were condemned. The only person in our stake that was killed by the quake was a woman whose husband had jumped out of bed to check on the children in another room. While he was gone a brick wall fell on his wife and killed her. I have pictures of a housing tract in Sylmar that was completely destroyed. Luckily no one had moved in this tract before the quake. None of the news media showed this housing tract damage. They moved the damaged houses out so fast that it appeared to be a cover up. When the quake aftershocks came and we tried to guess the intensity, there were so many we got so we could guess pretty close to the announced results. This quake was not on the San Andreas Fault, but a small branch fault. The dam above us and a number of other lakes were along the San Andreas Fault. Before the quake this was high priced real estate, but values fell after the state had all title insurance’s in this area stamped in large red letters “Earthquake Fault Zone”. This area was called “Canyon Country” the canyons had been caused by previous quakes.
Fifteen miles from us at Gorman, California in the 1850’s is where the largest quake ever recorded in California took place. It was 9.6 on the Richter scale. Since each step on the scale is multiplied by ten in power this Gorman quake was 1,000 times as powerful as the one we experienced. This Gorman quake isn’t heard of much as there were few people living in the area at the time it happened. The statistical Clerk that worked with me in the ward, made a study for the Los Angeles police department about what would happen today if they had such a quake. His report disclosed that there would be lack of water, food, panic, mobbing, and it would take about a year to evacuate the remaining survivors by helicopter. All roads and airports would be damaged. The area would be considered the modern disaster of the world because of the large population now there.
The man that was instructing me in computer programming was in an apartment in Sylmar during the quake. When he jumped out of bed he saw the ceiling over him was resting on his open closet door. The building was condemned and he was so shaken he went back to Minneapolis without getting his personal belongings. Indirectly this caused me to lose my job, as my test manual was completed and experienced programmers from a completed project in San Diego came back to Valencia.
Having a boy on a mission, no job, and with about every third house in the area for sale, it seems the Lord was really testing us. It took a year to sell my home and the Bishop and my quorum leader kept asking us if we needed any help. I told them we would live on my investments until they ran out. As it turned out, the Lord did bless us. I made more on my investments that year than I did in my former job. I learned to apply engineering mathematics to inve