1-Where did you meet? At church, at a practice for a dance festival. Bill's mom and sister were active when they moved to Davis a few months before. Gwen was called as the dance director for the ward, and we had a couple of practices when Bill came. He was dating a girl in the ward, and she got him to come to practice. Then he started coming back to church and never went back to inactivity.
2-How long did you date before you were married? This is a more complicated question. I had a crush on him at one point in high school, and we had one date to a girl's ask dance when I was a senior and he at a junior college, but we didn't date until I was a senior at BYU. I had been engaged to a missionary, and during the summer back in Davis we were just hanging out some because there weren't many young adults around in the summer. But I had increasingly conflicted feelings and finally decided I wanted to date him seriously, so I broke the engagement. We actually seriously dated about a year-maybe a year and a half. We got officially engaged about 2 months before we got married.
3-We have been married 38 years this past June--and yes I am still counting because we are still married!!!
4-What did he do that surprised you? He used to give me the most interesting gifts--or present them in the most unusual ways. He also would come up with fun activities for the family to try.
5-What is your favorite feature about him? I was first attracted to him because I thought he was very good looking, and I loved his smile.
Who could resist that grin? It was just as appealing when he was older!
6-What is your favorite quality about him? Again, when I first got to know him I saw two characteristics that I liked best about the Savior: kindness and gentleness. He always made the people he was with feel like they were important and were equal participants in an activity, even if they were just beginners at it. I still see the kindness and gentleness as he best qualities.
7-Did he have a nickname for you? He just called me Vic. He never used terms of endearment, but he always wanted to hold my hand, or sit by me. I was the most important person in the world to him.
8-What was his favorite color? He tended to like darker colors, but he really liked pure chroma colors best.
9-What was his favorite food? Pizza, shepherd's pie, and for desert - pie of any flavor.
10-His favorite sport? He was not a big sports fan, but he liked the Indy 500 (which happened on his birthday until the Monday holiday thing passed), and he really liked the Olympics-winter and summer.
11-Who said I love you first? I am pretty sure he did, because I was way to shy and insecure to say it first. I think it was sitting out in front of my parents house in his car, about a year before we got married.
12-When and where was your first kiss? I honestly can't remember, but it might have been on a bike ride around the arboretum on the UCD campus two summers before we got married.
13-What was your favorite thing to do together? Ballroom dancing and board games were the two things we did consistently all throughout our relationship. We also did things like build and fly model sail planes, and astronomy-we bought a small telescope and learned quite a bit about the night sky.
14-He was 61-nearly 62 when he passed away.
15-We have seven children-all wonderful, talented and good looking!!!
16-What hidden talent did he have? He was a jack of all trades and could figure out just about anything. He was a very talented problem solver. When he was going through the psychological evaluation part of the disability exams and tests, the psychologist said he did better on the problem solving puzzles that college professors--so even in the earlier stages of his mental impairment he was very sharp at that.
17-Favorite types of music? He liked a lot of kinds, but mostly similar to my list: hymns, classic rock, folk, anything positive and upbeat!
18-What do you admire most about him? His deep and abiding testimony-and solid determination to do whatever the prophet said. He was the one who made sure we did family prayer, family home evening, family scriptures and were on time (which was 10 minutes early!) for all our meetings. I usually had the follow through, and a lot of the planning out of things, but he was the driving force.
Bill with Thane, Trevor and Trent
19-Will he read this? I kinda think he will be totally aware of this.
