An Interview With Leonard Marion Haynie

During the 1960s, when La Vere N. Bagwell was Stake President of the San Luis Stake (now the Manassa Colorado Stake), he interviewed a number of people and recorded their conversations on cassette tapes, as a form of oral history. President Bag well has permitted me to borrow these tapes, some thirty of them, and I hope to be able to make a copy of these interviews in this collection of historical accounts.

One of the first interviews which I have listened to was one in which a conversation with my uncle, Leonard Marion Haynie, was recorded.  That conversation follows.

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My name is Leonard Marion Haynie.  I was born in Manassa, Colorado, on May 12, 1893. My father was Robert Milligan Haynie and my mother was Lydia Belinda Stover. My grandparents on both sides brought their families to Colorado when my father and my mother were very young. They came here in 1879 and 1880 from near Rome, Georgia. My mother's father was the Presiding Elder in Georgia at the time that Elder Joseph Standing was killed by a mob and he took Elder Standing's body to the rail road station to be shipped back to Utah. My grandfather's name was Cornelius Jasper Stover.

My father was the village blacksmith and I was d I was raised to work in the blacksmith shop in Manassa.  Along about the turn of the century, my father had to get a few more materials for his blacksmith shop, so it developed that he began a hardware store as an addition to his shop.  I helped in the blacksmith shop when I was quite young, working with wagons and buggies. I worked in the hardware store from the time I was big enough to look over the counter, until I went on a mission.

My mother and father went to the temple to be sealed in 1904.   I was born just about a month after the Salt Lake Temple was dedicated. I was very interested in that temple when I was a child and have been ever since.  My parents were sealed there and the children who had been born to them up until that time were sealed to our father and mother.  My sister just younger than I acted as proxy for an older sister who had passed away. 

Several years later, I went back to that temple on my way to a mission to England in 1911.  I went to the temple again in 1916  when I was married to the best girl in the country, Hazel Gertrude Mortensen.  I still feel that way about her, more than ever. 

I was in England before the First World War started and, just a few months after I was released from my mission, in 1913, the English and the Germans worked up a war which developed into World War I, and kept us all busy for a while.  After the War was over, I went to Denver in 1919 and attended law school for three years.  I had been deferred from active service in World War I because I was married and had a child. A year after returning from my mission, I had gone to Provo, Utah, and had attended the Brigham Young University for a year and a half.  At that time, BYU was a very small school, being mostly a high school, an academy in fact, with a few college students just beginning to enroll.

In 1919, I was accepted in the law school and, after three years, I was admitted to the bar in 1922.  We moved back to Manassa where I worked in the hardware store for about ten years.  I was Conejos County Attorney from about 1929 to 1933, and I did a lot of auditing for the Conejos County Commissioners during that time.  I moved to Alamosa in 1933 and served as District Attorney. 

At that time, the Church consisted of a very small branch of the Western States Mission. I was quite well acquainted with this Mission, because we had been members of the Denver Branch while I was attending law school.  While we were members of the Denver Branch, I served in the Sunday School and was, for a time, Counselor to the Branch President.  Elder Harold B. Lee served a mission in Denver and, later, he reminded me that I had been one of his teachers while he was on his mission. My brother, Harran, was a companion of Harold B. Lee in the mission field. 

From 1933 until 1949, I was the District Attorney caverning the entire San Luis Valley, consisting of six counties.  From 1949 until the present time, I have been Probation Officer for the six counties of the Valley for the District Court.  So, I have been in Criminal Law and the Law Enforcement Business for about thirty-seven years.    

In the Church, I have held just about all positions there are.  I have worked in the Sunday School most of my life.  I think I was a Sunday School teacher for about fifty years, including teaching Sunday School while on my mission in England. When I was only ten years old, I was called to be Assistant Sunday School Librarian, assisting old Brother Cotton. 

In the Denver Branch, Charles Carr from Manassa, a brother of Bertha Gibson, and who had married May Boice, was the Branch President, and I was one of his Counselors. Charlie Carr work ed for the federal bureau of public roads and he was located in Denver at that time.  He spent a lot of time working in the several western states. 

I had been President of three branches of the Church while on my mission.  The missionaries did practically all of the work of the Church in England. 

After returning to Manassa in 1922, I worked continuously in various ward callings.  I was Superintendent of the Stake Young Men’s Mutual Association for a while, having been a member of the Board before that. In the late 1920s, I was called to the San Luis Stake High Council. 

In 1933, when we moved to Alamosa, attendance at the Branch was very sparse, sometimes only a dozen people in attendance.  The Presiding Elder would sometimes ask me to administer the Sacrament and then pass it.  There were a few people living in Alamosa who were inactive but who could have helped out if they had attended.  My oldest son, Elwood, was taking music lessons at that time, so he played the piano for church services and I led the singing.  When Elwood left for school, my oldest girl, La Rue, played the piano and I still led the singing. 

I remember the old Manassa Town Band.  I didn't have a horn, so I never was a part of it.  The Troy Sowards Orchestra was one of the hottest musical organizations in the whole Valley. They played all over the country, from Taos to Creede.  Troy was a fiddler, a good fiddler.  Troy told the story of his first fiddle.  When he was a boy, he came across some other boys who were dragging a violin through the dirt, pretending it was a wagon.  They let him have it and he took it home.  He made a bow from some horse hairs he had pulled from the tail of his horse. Within two weeks he could play one tune on this violin.   He taught himself how to finger and play his violin.  Troy was very good on the violin. He had a cousin, Willard Sowards, who was L.W.’s son, who was very good on the cornet.  John Jarvies was the drummer, and his sister, Jane, was the pianist.  Doyle Hunnicutt may have played with them later.  Buren Aydelotte also played cornet with this orchestra. They played mostly for dances.  Theirs was the most famous musical organization in the entire Valley. 

Willard Sowards used to practice his cornet in the chicken coop because his mother wouldn't let him practice in the house. 

Olen and Walter Huffaker built the Huffaker Hall on the corner of my father's lot. They made the adobes and built their hall where cultural events were held for many years. Troy Sowards said that is where he met his future wife, Vida Jackson, at a dance.    

My father, Robert M. Haynie, used to "call" the square dances at the Huffaker Hall.  The Church wouldn't let them have many dances where a man and a woman danced together holding on to each other.  At the square dances, they would have a tub of lemonade and a freezer of ice cream for refreshments. My father had an organ which would be carried from the house to the Huffaker Hall where it would be used to provide the music for the square dances. 

I have been President of the High Priests Quorum and have served as Superintendent of the Sunday School.  I had been a member of the Stake High Council a second time when I was called to be  Stake President in 1955. I served as Stake President until 1959. 

On my wife's birthday in 1958, I thought I was going into a classroom at the Stake Center in La Jara, but I went in the wrong door and fell down the stairs and broke my shoulder.  In the fall of 1958, I went to New York to visit our oldest daughter and to attend the pageant. There, I had an attack of asthma. I came home and was sick for several months.  Between the broken shoulder and the asthma, my health was such that the First Presidency decided to release me as Stake President, and I was succeeded by you, La Vere Bagwell. 

My counselors when I was Stake President were Ivan Thomas and Joseph C. Mortensen.  They were the same counselors W. Fred Haynie had had when he was Stake President. 

The Church in Alamosa had a pretty tough grind for a long time.   A lot of good bishops have served in Alamosa.

I have a testimony of the Gospel. The Church has helped me in life more than anything else by providing the good women who have helped me.  The only school my mother had was in that little school in Manassa where her teacher was Joseph F. Thomas.  She went to school only a very few months.  My mother was a very good reader and she did a lot of reading and studying.  She started teaching me from the "Book of Mormon" when I was about three or four years old.  She worked in the Primary a lot, and in the Relief Society and the Young Women’s Mutual Improvement Association.  When she was in the Primary, she and her counselors assumed responsibility for beautifying the Stake Center block, building a fence around it, cleaning it up, and planting trees and shrubs. They sold popcorn in the movie theater to finance the project.

We have four children, two boys and two girls. One of the boys lives in Colorado Springs with a wife from Virginia; his name is Elwood Haynie.  He married a girl from Virginia while he was in the Army. He spent four or five years in the service and he was in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge.

Our oldest daughter was a Registered Nurse at the time of World War II.  She joined the Army Nurse Corps with a friend of hers, and they were sent to England and, then, to France.  They were in the southern part of Germany when the war ended. When peace came, they were put aboard a ship and were on their way to the Pacific Theater.  When they were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, they got the news that the Japanese had thrown in the sponge. The ship they were on was then diverted to Virginia on the East Coast.  They were sent overland to the West Coast where she served in a hospital where "shell-shocked" soldiers from the Pacific Theater were treated.  They were all in terrible condition.  Her name is La Rue Elliott.  She is married to Ted Elliott whom she had met in the service. They have two children, a girl and a boy.  La Rue and her husband live in New York, close to Palmyra and other Church historical sites.  We have visited there several times and have seen the old house where the Prophet Joseph lived. We have been to the pageant (at the Hill Cumorah) four times. 

Our second daughter went to school in Logan where she majored in social work.  After she got out of school, she worked for Travelers Aid in several places in Salt Lake City.  After World War II was over, she married a young man from Brigham City, who had served in the Far East during the War. They went to Minnesota where he got his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in the field of plant breeding. While in Minnesota, our daughter continued to work for Travelers Aid at several train stations in Minneapolis and St. Paul. They then went to Salinas and Spreckels, California, where they lived for about twelve or thirteen years.  They have four children and, about four years ago, they moved up the coast of California to the San Francisco area where he works in an office of the Spreckels Sugar Company where he is a vice president.    

Our youngest boy, Delph, joined the Navy V-12 program during the Second World War and was sent, first, to Doane College in Nebraska for about four months. Then he was sent to the University of Notre Dame at South Bend, Indiana, for about eight months.  At the end of the War, he was discharged.  While at Notre Dame, he played trumpet in the University Band, as well as in the Navy Band at Notre Dame. He was solo trumpet player in both bands. After discharge from the Navy, he went to Salt Lake City where he studied at the University of Utah, graduating with a degree in pharmacy.   After that, he went to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and traveled for a drug company for a while. He also worked some in several drug stores here in the San Luis Valley for a while.  Then, he went to Durango, Colorado, to work in a drug store, went back to Albuquerque, and back to Durango.  Now, he and another fellow have a couple of drug stores in Durango. He and his wife have three girls.

We have eleven grandchildren al together now. 

1-9-1990  (1966)