Chapter Eight Brigham Young University: 1946-1948

As I entered my home, discharge in hand, I was greeted at the door by Octava Barcia as well as by my family.  A lovely, intelligent, talented girl, something of a poet, Octava had fallen in love with me in Pergamino, Argentina.  Joining the Church, she became the mainstay of the Pergamino branch during World War II.  Although coming from a family with limited financial resources, she somehow managed to travel to Salt Lake City, suddenly appearing on may parent's doorstep as my announced fiancée.  Although we had corresponded during the war, I had never intentionally given her any indication of a romantic interest.  She won the affections of my parents who could not understand why I did not embrace her upon returning home.  My father sponsored the immigration of a brother, Primero, and a sister, Cora.  Primero and Octavia soon began teaching Spanish at the University of Utah.

I simply could not cope with Octava.  She wanted a commitment from me which I was unable to give.  At the time I could not have entered into a serious relationship with any girl.  Still recovering from my experiences in the war, I was unable to communicate my feelings to her or to my family.  I, therefore, simply fled to Brigham Young University.  Within a few months, Octavia became hostile towards me, left the Church, later married a man named Peterson, went to Hawaii, and there was divorced.  I had never seen her or any member of her family since then.

However, my major reason for going to Brigham Young University was that at the time it had the best department of sociology in the state.  As a result of the war I had changed my major from zoology to sociology.  A large number of my mission and army friends had enrolled at Brigham Young University.  Two of my sisters had graduated from that school.  My sister, Sarah, with her husband and two small children were living there.  I had, over the years, developed friendships with various B.Y.U. faculty members.

Before going down to Provo, I applied for veterans' educational benefits.  At the time, the average veteran received books and tuition free, plus a subsistence allowance of $27 a month.  Because of my purple heart, a kindly civil servant in the Veterans' Administration declared that I was eligible for rehabilitation benefits and would need a Ph.D. in sociology to rehabilitate me.  He granted me tuition, books, and a magnificent subsistence allowance of $125 a month, plus a pension of $11 a month.  I had become an aristocrat among veterans.  I thus started my academic life free from financial worries.

In 1946, civilian clothing was still scarce.  As a result, like most veterans I wore army pants, shirts, sweaters, socks, and shoes for most of my first school year.  Shopping for civilian clothing was an art.  I dressed up in my military uniform with the discharge symbol, the ruptured duck, prominently displayed.  Marching into a clothing store I announced that I was recently discharged and needed civilian clothing.  The clerks always managed to find something concealed in stock rooms or under shelves.  Thus, gradually, I built up a respectable civilian wardrobe.

After six years of traveling I was apprehensive over my ability to settle down.  however, I arranged my books in my bookcase, placed pens and paper on my desk, snuggled down in an easy chair, turned on a lamp and took part in a discussion with Ross and six or seven other veterans in great contentment.  I still remember the very vivid intellectual and spiritual pleasure that I felt that night.  For the first time in almost seven years, I was my own master free to come and go as I pleased.  I had no financial worries nor obligations to anyone but to myself.  I intended to enjoy my classes, to take advantage of the cultural offerings, and to participate fully in the social life of the University.

Under the able administration of President Howard S. McDonald, the Brigham Young University was intellectually alive and stimulating during the 1940s.  The campus was open wide to intellectual winds from all corners of the United States.  The sharp increase in enrollment had brought to the campus a large number of mature veterans and an influx of young, vigorous faculty members with degrees from major American universities.  For a few precious years before the dark, repressive days of President Wilkinson, the Brigham Young University experienced a real effervescence of learning, of intellectual excitement, and of intellectual freedom that it was seldom to know again.

Among the faculty who played important roles in my academic life and intellectual development were Hugh Nibley, M. Wells Jakeman, Reed H. Bradford, Harold Christensen, Ariel S. Ballif, P.A. Christensen, Vasco M. Tanner, and Sidney B. Sperry.  Nibley was one of the most stimulating, demanding and cantankerous teachers on campus.  For several years I took every class that he taught, including Russian and classical Greek.  A very demanding, charismatic teacher, he had little patience with lazy students.  He fascinated us by his running commentaries, illustrated by quotations from many different languages.  He put his students into  contact with ancient, medieval, and modern thinkers on subjects that concerned him.  I studied harder for him than I did for any other teacher, except P.A. Christensen.

I can still remember his arrival on campus.  He joined Ross and me in the cafeteria line in the Joseph Smith Building one late afternoon.  Like most of us, he was wearing a combination of army and civilian clothing.  As veterans will, we commented on the charms of the many lovely co-eds in line.  He told us that he would marry the first girl he talked to on campus.  We teased him rather unmercifully about his statement.  But, leaving us after lunch, he walked over to the University housing in search of accommodation and married the receptionist in the office, the flutist and fine musician, she made him a good wife in a very fertile union. 

Nibley and I became friends during my student years.  A campus radical, he rode a bicycle to school dressed in his own imitable mixture of army and civilian clothes.  He expressed his contempt of the University establishment and faculty with many cutting jibes, relished by his student friends.  I was rather saddened and amused to see him gradually become part of the University establishment that he had once derided.  It was a bit painful to see him settle down to the fleshpots of academia.  As his children increased, his reputation spread, and his status in the Church improved, he began to wear suits and ties and seemed to enjoy his honorable status.  However, when least expected, his rapier wit would flash at some bumbling target.  The modern Nibley may purr when stroked by the authorities, but one senses that the real Nibley regards it all as a joke on himself and on the University.

A shy, introverted bachelor dominated by his mother, M. Wells Jakeman arrived at the University to head the newly formed Department of Archaeology.  Ross and I were among his first students and took every class that he taught.  Although not a charismatic teacher, he infected his students with his zeal and his vast knowledge of the achievements of the Indian civilizations of Mesoamerica.  He persuaded Ross to major in archaeology and almost converted me.  Solitary and shy, Jakeman attracted many older girls who, without success, cast their nets before him.  But he did not marry until after his mother died.  I developed a deep respect and liking for this inoffensive, vulnerable, tenacious scholar who first awakened my interest in the achievements of the Mesoamerica Indian populations.

Reed Bradford came to the B.Y.U. shortly after I arrived.  He was and is a very kindly, caring, deeply-religious man, a charismatic teacher--one of the finest teachers I ever had at the University.  A graduate student of Dr. T. Lynn Smith, he had served as an editor of the Rural Sociological Society journal and laid the basis of a productive scholarly career that never quite materialized.  He found the B.Y.U. environment far more conducive to teaching than to research and became one of the most loved faculty members of the University.

Shortly after his arrival his first wife died.  After an interval he married a girl from one of his classes.  The marriage, although raising many faculty eyebrows, turned out to be quite happy and productive of a fine family.  Either shortly before his marriage or shortly after, he came down with the red measles.  Deeply spotted he isolated himself in a small room in one of the numerous army barracks that dotted the campus to nurse his illness.

Harold T. Christensen, brother of my close friend, Ross T. Christensen, was chairman of the Sociology Department upon my arrival.  The finest scholar in the Department, he insisted upon high standards.  Although kind and caring, he was concerned about the intellectual and scholarly development of his students.  He communicated an enthusiasm about sociology and its potentiality in both understanding society and improving it that captured my interest.  He taught and wrote during the nine months of the academic year and worked as a carpenter during the summer months.  He told me that he earned more money as a carpenter in three months than he did as a professor during nine months.  That may have been one of the factors that induced him to move from B.Y.U. to Purdue, where the developed an international reputation in the field of marriage and the family.

Dr. Ariel S. Ballif, an old-timer in the Department, seemed to be always in a hurry.  A big, loveable man he challenged his students about their ideas and was willing to spend endless time with them.  He was an enjoyable teacher with a fine sense of humor who never lost his temper or patience.  I came to love and respect him.

Perhaps the most scintillating and fascinating teacher I encountered at Brigham Young University was P.A. Christensen of the English department.  Brilliant, imposing, and charismatic, he dominated his classes and attracted a large, loyal following of students.  Passionate, intellectual and a convinced liberal, he developed the reputation of being the campus radical, ever eager to challenge what he defined as reactionary tendencies in the University and in the community.  A firm Democrat, he was an elitist in literature, believing that democracies could not develop the rich literature that more stratified societies did.  He made Shakespeare, Arnold, Chaucer, and other great English writers live for us, using them as mirrors to reflect the modern world.  I loved his classes.  They were filled with fire, enthusiasm, learning, and the cut and thrust of intellectual debate.  He attracted the best students on campus.  He stimulated and invigorated me as few teachers have ever done.  His presence at the University was evidence of its intellectual freedom during those years.

A supporter of Wallace, he found my support of Truman hard to take.  We debated politics vigorously.  Although I knew more about international affairs, socialism, and world history than he did, he pushed me to the very limit in our discussions.  A gentleman, he never permitted intellectual disagreements to disrupt his friendships or his support of his students.  He lives in my memory as one of the finest teachers that I have ever known.

Vasco M. Tanner, a zoologist, an excellent teacher, and a humble scholar often made me repent of my decision to major in sociology rather than zoology.  During the war he constantly urged his students in the military service to send him zoological specimens sending them instruction about preservations and shipment of such specimens.  I enjoyed his classes, respected his passionate commitment to his science, and admired his humanism and humility.  Other faculty members whose classes I enjoyed were Deans Wesley P. Lloyd and Harold R. Clark and professors Gerrit deJong, Benjamin F. Cummings, Sidney R. Sperry, and Elmer Miller.

One of my main purposes in attending college was to secure a broad humanistic education while majoring in sociology.  I took enough courses in geology and geography to almost major in the subjects.  I avoided physical sciences and mathematics.  Minoring in English literature, a minor regarded as frivolous by many in the Department of Sociology, I took many courses in German, Russian, and classical Greek, as well as Spanish.  I resented having to narrow down my interests to secure a major.  I enjoyed my classes and was seldom absent.  I read voraciously in history, international affairs, philosophy, archaeology, and related areas, and I continued to subscribe to a wide variety of intellectual and political journals.

A good part of my education took place outside the classroom. I attended almost every concert, lecture, play, and art exhibit at the Brigham Young University during my stay there.  I had the opportunity and the pleasure of listening to a variety of speakers and scholars representing different political and cultural points of view.  I was also active in many of campus organizations that ranged from department clubs such as sociology, Spanish, and Russian through social fraternities such as Delta Phi, the returned missionaries' fraternity, Lambda Delta Sigma, a Church fraternity, to such intellectual and political associations as the International Relations Club and the Young Democrats.  I was also a member of the University debate team and for my efforts, was awarded a "Y".

Delta Phi, a fraternity for returned male missionaries, was organized by Apostle Widtsoe to bring together returned missionaries.  Jointly with it twin, Beta Phi, or Bake-a-Pie as it was called, a sorority for returned lady missionaries, it sponsored many fireside and religious discussions.  Apostles and other Church leaders appeared, to interact informally with returned missionaries.  We got to know and to love many of them such as Apostle Widtsoe.  Many intellectual events were also sponsored, such as informal speech contests.  One year I won the informal speaking contest, receiving a triple combination as a prize.  A number of very close friendships and marriages grew out of the joint activities of Delta Phi and Beta Phi.

Although I quite enjoyed the social activities of Delta Phi, my two favorite campus organizations were the International Relations Club and the Young Democrats.  I had the pleasure of being president of both.  The International Relations Club, with its focus on international relations and foreign affairs, brought together quite an interesting group of campus intellectuals, such as Bill Gay, later employed by Howard Hughes as one of his Mormon mafia, along with other friends of mine like Virgil Harris, who later disappeared into the C.I.A.; Marilyn Tanner, daughter of Dr. Vasco M. Tanner; Cyril M. Argyle; Bert Lincoln; Douglas Woodard; A. C. Todd; David Law; James S. Coleman; Rachel Nelson; George M. Addy, who later joined the B.Y.U. political science faculty; Betty Thayer, a charming, talented girl from Long Island, New York; and Gabriel Della Piana.  The International Relations Club sponsored lectures, panel discussions, and debates on foreign relations and international affairs on campus and organized a weekly forum on the Provo radio station about international affairs.  The club played an important role in the intellectual life on campus and drew considerable attention in Provo and elsewhere in the state.

Members and officers of the Club participated in regional programs on the united Nations and on the foreign affairs held in Salt Lake City, Denver, and elsewhere.  I enjoyed meeting students from other universities and hearing representatives from foreign embassies, the state department, as well as writers and others speaking on international affairs.  Club members had good times on these trips.  We laughed, played, and pulled practical jokes on each other and on the citizens of the communities we visited.  Perhaps the most famous practical joke took place in Denver during a late fall trip there to attend a practice United Nations Assembly.

The session had ended about noon, as I recall.  We roamed through the central business district.  Over rootbeers and hamburgers we decided to see if we could attract a large crowd by pointing to the top of a tall building.  We found a good site where three or four streets came together.  Just about dusk, as many people were going home and others were coming into the district, we divided up into couples.  One couple running down a street hand in hand suddenly stopped.  The boy, in a loud voice, said to the girl, "Look, there is someone on the top of that building"--a tall building across the street.  Another couple behind them stopped and the girl exclaimed, "I think someone may be getting ready to jump off the building."  Twenty or thirty people gathered around them.  Another couple of our group ran across the street and stared up the face of the building, exclaiming, "Look, look.  Someone is getting ready to jump."  Within thirty minutes the intersection was packed with people.  rumors spread through the crowd about someone getting ready to jump.  Fire and police cars screamed up and their occupants jumped out, some with large nets.  They moved the crowd back and officers went into the building.  About that time, we faded from the crowd and boarded our chartered bus, urging the driver to depart immediately.  We rode a good part of the night through western Colorado.  At a rest stop a few miles over the Utah border, I bought a copy of the morning's Rocky Mountain News and read the following headline, "Police Looking For Utah Students Who Hoaxed Denver Citizens."  We laughed and giggled all the way into Provo feeling a bit apprehensive.  But nothing happened.

The Young Democrats Club, composed of students with Democratic and liberal leanings, was extremely active on campus and in the community.  Working closely with George Ballif, the Democratic County Attorney, we sponsored political rallies for Democratic candidates on and off campus.  We registered all the students we could and worked to register voters in Provo.  We took over several precincts in Provo, naming all precinct officers.  Elected county and state delegate to the Democratic conventions, I became disillusioned about the competence and ability of state and county politicians.  I will never forget one rally held on campus.  Governor Maw had been invited to attend.  Unable to be there he sent a state road commissioner to represent him.  The man arrived on campus drunk.  We hustled him off and found a quick replacement.  The gentleman shortly thereafter abandoned his family and ran off with another woman.  Our relationship with the Maw administration chilled and our opinion of his political appointees fell drastically.

As part of our efforts to inform the student body and faculty, the Young Democrats sponsored a popular political forum at which representatives of most shades of political opinions in Utah from the far right to the far left presented their ideologies and programs.  Before inviting Communist representatives, I met with President McDonald, who advised me to hold the meeting off campus.  Virgil Harris, Bill Gay, myself and others scurried around to find a hall.  But before we rented one, the president called me back and said the meeting ought to be held on campus.  He asked me not to publicize it and to chair it tightly.  I traveled up to Salt Lake City and contacted the Communists at their bookstore on West Temple, just around the corner from Hotel Temple Square.  Quite surprised as being invited to speak at B.Y.U., they accepted my invitation.  Word spread rapidly around campus and we had a very large audience of students and faculty.  Four heavily bearded male Communists appeared.  Their presentation on the Communist prescription of America's future was not very good.  Audience questions were polite but penetrating.  I enjoyed chairing the meeting.  I have been told that the F.B.I. and the University Board of Regents later investigated the International Relations Club several times for bringing the Communists on campus.  The event demonstrated that in a free market place of ideas, the baser ideologies lose out.  I admired the courage and integrity of President McDonald in granting us permission to hold the forum.  I doubt that any subsequent presidents of the school would have given permission. 

I regarded myself as a democratic socialist during my B.Y.U. days.  I subscribed to the Socialist Call and other socialist publications.  I ardently presented socialist ideas in my classes.  I besmirched big business, the Capitalist system, and right and left wing totalitarian movements.  Within a short time I developed a reputation as a campus radical and was asked to speak numerous times on and off campus.

At one of the meetings I met a Leonard Willis, an accountant, who had similar ideas.  We organized a socialist club that met bimonthly to discuss socialism, its potentialities in America, and international affairs.  Quite a group of steel workers, mechanics, other skilled workers, several professional men, and one or two small businessmen joined us.  We held our meetings quietly, debated into the wee hours of the morning, and invited speakers to address us.  I developed several close friendships with steel workers who had fine self-educated minds.  I learned the valuable lesson that formal education and a white collar are not essential for the development of intelligence and wisdom.  I developed a deep respect for those steel workers with good libraries, keen questioning minds, and a hunger for a better economic and social system.  Those experiences turned me into a non-academic sociologist determined to keep strong contacts with minorities and with working class people.

Among those who attended our meetings was a Fred Benson and his wife, relatives of my mother.  He, with a group of farmers and workers, had organized a gas and oil cooperative in Orem.  Although I did not have a car, I visited them each time I hitchhiked to Salt Lake City.  They had a fine young son who later was hit by a drunken driver and left a living vegetable.  I came to hate drunken drivers with a strong passion and would deprive them of their licenses and put them in jail even on first offenses.

Socially I enjoyed my years at the Brigham Young University, school events, the many private parties, and the numerous discussions with friends that went on long into the night.  My numerous friends such as my half cousins, Bruce and Marden Clark, as well as others like Ross Christensen, Virgil Harris, Bill Gay, George Addy, and many more were very important to me.  I have always regretted that our professional lives did not permit a closer association.  Some returned to the Brigham Young University as faculty and remained there during their career.  Fate, in exchange, carried me across the United States.  Yet, as I observe so many of them of them forced ruthlessly into retirement in their sixties or preciptiously fired for one reason or another, I am deeply grateful that I never accepted a position there.

I also developed many close friendships with a number of charming young ladies such as Betty Thayer, Bonnie Theobald, Julie Andelin, Genevieve Coleman, Reola Clark, and Winifred Ellsworth.  I dated extensively during my first year, but none of these friendships moved towards anything more.  It was not until my second year that I began to think of looking for a wife.  Then, on July 12, 1947, I hitchhiked to Salt Lake City, my usual manner of transportation, to visit my parents, to attend a wedding reception of a good friend, Ernest Wilkins, a returned Argentine missionaries at Lagoon.  Wilkins married the daughter of Apostle Harold B. Lee.  Many years later she died and Ernest went through some rocky experiences.

Entering my parent's house, I barely noted the presence of my sister, Sarah, and her friend, Ruth DeYoung, who had just returned from the Eastern States Mission.  Taking out my address book I sat down to the telephone and began to call several girls in Salt Lake City to secure a date for the Saturday Argentine missionary reunion at Lagoon.  Sarah interrupted my telephoning by suggesting that I should ask Ruth for a date.  Swinging around, I noticed that Ruth, whom I had met several times over the years, was regarding me with a quizzical look.  Liking what I saw, I invited her to go to Lagoon with me.  She said no.  However, under the combined entreaties of Sarah and myself, she gave in. 

I was several hours late on our first date.  My good friend and fellow missionary, John Edwards, dated a girl who lived in an obscure neighborhood on the far western side of the valley.  It took us almost two hours to find the girl's home.  We reached Ruth's house just as she was walking out the door to go to a movie.  Watching her descend the stairs, I fell in love with her almost at once, entranced by the vigorous movements of her body in a white dress, by her humorous, good natured teasing, her emotional and social maturity, and her independent self-assured personality.  I jumped out of the car, apologized and pulled her into the back seat before she could change her mind.  We drove to Lagoon.  Although consumed by mosquitoes, we talked throughout the evening about our experiences, our missions, and our goals in life.  I had a marvelous time.  Before permitting her to enter her house, I secured a date for the next weekend.

For some inscrutable reason, I told her on our second date that I loved her and intended to marry her.  I was shocked at my forwardness.  She told me that she was not eager to enter into a serious relationship.  She wanted to graduate from the University before getting married and she felt that her parents needed her.  When I tried to get another date, I was turned down.  Discussing the situation with my sister Sarah, I was urged to go ahead by both her and my mother.  They both emphasized what a fine wife she would make.  So I called her during the week and she agreed to go out with me.  We dated almost every weekend from June throughout August.  She gave me a photograph to grace my apartment.

As the summer quarter ended I was standing in front of the Heber J. Grant Building one late August morning with Bill Gay and Kimball Romney when, much to my surprise, I saw Ruth walking up toward the administration building.  Hastily intercepting her I was delighted to learn that she had come to register for the fall quarter.  I spent the rest of the day with her.  The next weekend I hitchhiked up to Salt Lake City to see her.  Leaving her home late in the afternoon, I was almost run over by a former boyfriend.

Ruth lived at the Weona House, a residential house for a small group of girls, with Irene Briggs, Hulda Parker, Rosemary Alice Ross, Betty Nielson, and Doris Bergstrom.  Most of my free time was now spent with Ruth.  Several times other boys came to see her, but I warned them off.

On the evening of October 16, 1947, I went out with her.  As we were walking to Weona House, where she lived, I suddenly asked her to marry me.  We discussed the subject for over three hours walking back and forth between my apartment and the Weona House.  Finally she said yes around 1:00 in the morning.  The next morning, I hurried over to the Weona House to make sure that she had not changed her mind.  She said she had not and put me to work washing windows.  We kept our engagement a secret until December.  Many old girl friends were surprised at the sudden end of my dating and surmised that I had a girl friend somewhere, but no one was sure.

My parents were elated at my choice of a wife.  They had known Ruth for many years.  She had become not only a favorite of my parents, but a close friend of my sister, Sarah.  They had worked together at Sears Roebuck during the war.  Ruth's parents were not quite so happy.  I had come into their daughter's life rather suddenly.  Trying to support, educate, and send on missions a very large family, they depended on Ruth's earnings.  I suspect that Ruth's mother may have wanted her daughter to become a professional classical pianist.  Her parents were not sure that a sociologist would ever amount to anything, let alone support a wife.

I finished my requirements for a B.A. degree in sociology with a minor in English literature in the fall quarter of 1948.  To celebrate, Ruth and I selected her engagement and wedding rings at O.C. Tanner's Jewelry Store, securing a good discount from the clerk who waited on us, a former Argentine missionary, Robert McKay, son of President McKay.  I put down a payment and we paid off the ring in monthly payments for over a year.

I was accepted into the graduate program in sociology about the same time.  The thesis committee, composed of Drs.  Parley Christiansen, Reed Christiansen, Reed Bradford, and Ariel Ballif, was incredibly kind and helpful.  With their concordance I decided to do a study of social change in a Mormon village.  My father, Ruth, and I drove around Salt Lake and Utah valleys before deciding on Goshen, Utah.  Every day for three months during the summer quarter I hitchhiked to Goshen from Provo to interview village families.  Before the summer was over I interviewed every villager in the community except three.  I met so many interesting people that it was hard to bring my field interviews to an end.  By the end of August, I had finished my thesis and taken my thesis defense for my master's degree.

My good friend and roommate, Ross T. Christensen, also married a Ruth.  His wife, Ruth Morris, had been widowed during World War II.  A talented girl employed as a legal secretary or court reporter, she waged a very successful campaign to marry Ross.  She first began to take classes with him. They studied together.  She did his typing.  She invited him to eat and then began to do his laundry.  She once asked me about Ross' character and personal habits.  I praised him highly, with some mental reservations.  I felt uneasy about the marriage.

My sisters, Jayne and Virginia, and my brother, Paul, attended the Y for varying periods of time during my presence there.  We boarded at my sister Sarah's, who lived in Provo at the time.  Her husband, Thomas B. McKay, worked as a buyer at the Geneva Steel Mill.  The only son of Apostle Thomas McKay, brother of David O. McKay, he frequently accompanied his parents on trips.  As Tom was gregarious and extremely friendly we had many wonderful evenings in their home.  Tom and Sarah had two small children, Marilyn and Tommy, who were adored and petted by all of us.

During my travels to and from Goshen, I worried over where I should go for my doctorate and how would I finance it.  An offer of a scholarship had come from Dr. H. T. Christensen at Purdue as I started work on my master's degree.  If Ruth had not given me her hand I would have gone there.  With the help of Dr. Reed Bradford I was offered and accepted a research assistantship by Dr. T. Lynn Smith at Vanderbilt University.  Just after I wrote my acceptance, an offer of a fellowship came from Dr. Charles P. Loomis at Michigan State.  Having come to know him well in recent years, I realized that I missed a great opportunity by not going to Michigan State.

On August 30, 1948, Ruth and I were married in the Salt Lake Temple by Apostle George F. Richards, a relative of mine who had also married Ruth's parents.  As Ruth and I kneeled at the alter, I was dazzled by her beauty, her charm, and her intelligence.  I made a personal vow to myself that I would try to make her happy and to never give her cause to ever regret marrying me.  After we were married, Ruth and I wandered over the State Capital grounds, spending a few minutes alone.  Our reception that night in Memory Grove ended in a formal dance and a reception.  All the men in the wedding line wore tuxedos except Ruth's father, who refused to wear a "monkey suit".  After the reception, poor as we were, we checked into the Ute Hotel on North Temple, now gone, and had an enjoyable several days together without pressures or responsibilities.  Then we shared Ruth's parents' house for a day or so before our next adventure began.