Pt 35-B:
Alma Dayer LeBaron, Lou Gehrig’s Disease,
and “Who Got the Button?”

For Mormon fundamentalists, allowing everyone, including people of color and women, to have equal rights, is a sin against God.

We were regimentally trained in blind obedience and self-sacrifice from our earliest memories.

We were taught that the priesthood leaders spoke for God and we knew no I other way of life.

In my world, the men had the power; the women had the responsibility.

The men had the freedom; the women had the servitude.

The man made the rules and if anything went wrong, the women got the blame and the consequences.

Men were to become Gods in eternity, which most of them believed started NOW; and women were born to serve them and have their children.

Rebecca Kimbel:
Speaker, Producer, philanthropist, activist, Artist,Parent, Educator, writer, and Ex-Mormon fundamentalist:

Born in Polygamy (a speech)
(YouTube, 425-polygamy: What Love Is This?)

 I left off in the last web-log/blog, “Pt 35-A,” saying:
My sister Judith Spencer Gardner died at age 64 of ALS. Like Grandfather-like granddaughter? Or you could say it was a coincidence these two relatives died of ALS. Sure hope you’re right.

Judy exhibited and died of the same debilitating symptoms that eventually took her Grandpa Dayer’s life.

Shortly before his death, in 1951, when we lived in St. George, Utah (I an inquisitive, observant five-year-old then), my uncles Floren and Verlan brought Grandpa Dayer to visit us and say his last goodbye to his daughter Esther/my mother.

During Grandpa’s visit, he couldn’t utter a sound, had to be spoon-fed; and was carried about in a “chair” his two sons formed with their arms.

Being in his last stages of ALS, he drooled as he ate. But even his swallowing muscles were failing him, adding to the rest of his defunct muscular system. As typical with ALS, Only his eye muscles and brain remained intact.

During that final visit, while his young son Floren gallantly held him up in a chair so he could join us at the dinner table, Grandpa looked sadly and intently into my eyes, as though he were trying to tell me something; because he couldn’t talk nor touch me.

Then he began to concentrate on the struggle of swallowing soup his son Verlan spooned into his mouth; most of it dribbling down his chin quicker than Verlan could get it in.

What I’m getting at in this essay is:
In the last stages of ALS, you aren’t able to lay your hands on your son’s head; let alone give him a long blessing …

Let alone tell him you’ve bestowed upon him the Melchizedek priesthood; anointed him with the Johnson mantle; and appointed him to take your position as “the one mighty and strong” — Pontiff over the whole wide world.

Bottom line:
Grandpa Dayer was incapable of saying anything, in his last days; nor lifting a finger — let alone his arms!

No way could he have told Uncle Joel the special “Mantle” or “Scepter of Power” he, Dayer, supposedly held was now being passed on to him, Joel … as in “From father to son.”

Apparently, Grandpa Dayer had told his and Maud’s seven sons that he held a special priesthood power; the highest priesthood on earth — the same priesthood power the Prophet Joseph Smith held. And they were wanton or crazy enough to believe it.

I only know most of his sons claimed to have received this “mantle/scepter of power” from their dad Dayer before he died. But: “Button, button! Who did get the button?” The answer is still up for grabs.

At least none of them got ALS passed down to them —
none but my sister Judith, his granddaughter, it appears.

(To be continued)

Thanks for visiting my blog!
And for your comments.
Till next time, take care … and be aware of things that go bump in the night!
~Stephany Spencer-LeBaron

(Continued July 25, in “Pt 35: Mom, Dad, and Dayer LeBaron’s Death”