Biography of Ray Tippets by Wayne Tippets Written on May 2, 1992
Ray and Reed were twins but you would never know it by their looks for Reedy Pie was big and ugly and Ray was little and not quite so ugly. Just kidding, brethren. I probably know less about Ray than any of my brothers for he got married when I was very young, I guess maybe 7 or 8 years old. I recall him and I sleeping in the same room in Dinkyville and that was when I was five but that is all I can remember of him at home.
He married Edna Allen, who really impressed me by her credentials, for she worked for George Eclles, who was the richest man in Ogden, maybe even Utah. I believe they had either 9 or 10 kids that lived, a couple who died at birth or shortly afterward. The first one that died was when I was at Mound Fort and they had it in a casket at our home on 18th Street and that was the first dead person I had ever saw and I will never forget him. He looked like a perfectly healthy baby and it broke my heart to see that little baby and to know that we would never see him again on this earth. Got to me at the time. I must have been 14 years old.
Ray and Edna always were broke. I could not understand how anybody could be so broke all of the time. I later found out how, for I got married. They lived with us for a little while on 18th Street for they slept in the two rooms downstairs in the back on the east. One room a kitchen and the other a bedroom. After they moved out, Ma and Pa moved downstairs from up where they shared a bedroom with me and Lew.
Edna was always friendly with me, sometimes ornery but always friendly. And Ray was always Ray. I think he drank some before they got married for I remember him coming home with blood all over his white shirt where he had got into a fight with, I think it was Orlan Marell, who was a lot bigger than Ray and evidently Ray lost. Anyway, I think it was his own blood that was on his shirt.
They lived in one half of a house and Mildred and Festus (Lester Gomm) lived in the other end down by the railroad tracks in front of the old stockyard butcher house. Ray lived in the north end and Mildred lived in the south end. They had a hole cut in the wall where they shared the same telephone that sat in that hole. From there they moved to a house just below Grant on 23rd Street, in half of that house too, for Cluck’s (Clarence Bassett) future dad-in-law and his wife lived in the other half of it. Morriston. Real fine feller but not his wife. He was the one that learned Joe and Reedy how to fly an airplane. Later he was to be killed in that airplane while spraying a farmer’s crop with weed killer. Fine, fine feller.
From there, they moved out on Ray Street in a brand new home that if I recall cost they paid $4000 and it was a very nice home with a basement and a fairly sized yard. They lived there until Ray drew out on a homestead farm in Paul, Idaho. It was a nice farm and they did okay but he failed to prove up on it in the length of time and he lost it to someone else. I think he had to build a house on it in a certain amount of time and did not do it. That is what I heard anyway.
He came down back here and moved in a house out to Terrace where Edna is still living today. I think he worked at 2nd Street after that as a matter of fact, I think he worked at 2nd Street before he drew out on his farm.
He got drafted in the service, I think, when he had four or five kids. He did not stay in long for they let him out after I think nine months. Just barely finished his basic training. But he was in long enough to get all of his veteran benefits, which helped out a lot in his later life when he had emphysema and spent a lot of time down there in the VA hospital. We went down to see him a number of times and he was in sad shape but happy and fought it a terrific fight.
Ray and Edna raised a fine bunch of kids, which proves that you do not have to have money to raise good kids. I wish my kids could have turned out as good as his did. The oldest one was Dianne and she was a sweet gal but she died as an epileptic when she was in her thirties, I think. After Dianne was Karen and she was a good kid too. She was just like me. She did not learn how to talk plain until she was about nine or ten and that is exactly how I was except she did finally learn and I never did.
Then came Delton, Dill Pickle for short. Delton always had big dreams but I do not know if any one ever came true, but he was a very, very exceptionally well mannered and religious person, which I believe all of their kids were that I know of.
I cannot name the rest in order but there was Lenny, who got killed in Viet Nam, a worthless war that took the cream of the crop for in vain loss. He was a fine shy feller. I think then came Betty Jolien and then Retta Corlene, then Paul was the baby and there were two others that I cannot recall right now. (Susan and Carol.) Forgive me that I cannot remember you rest but I am getting old and forgetful old timers is what they call it nowadays.
Ray rolled a car over when I was just a young punk in North Ogden. Never got hurt, only a cut on his arm, I think. I think up on the farm in Idaho him and Reed had a lot to do all of the time for they were the oldest boys. The rest may argue that point, though. I can never recall anyone saying that either one was not a very good worker wherever they were working.
He went in the CCC right after we moved down to Ogden and here he suffered an appendicitis attack and we went up to the hospital in the mountains to see him. I do not know where it was. Not far from here, though. And he must have come through it okay.
Just before he died they called and asked me if I would go administer to him and so I took Terry, my son, with me and we did it. He had just barely been made an elder. (next 2 lines are partially cut off) Terry said at that time that he had never seen anyone look as bad as did Ray at that time and he only lived a couple of days after that. I guess my blessing did not do much good. Sorry, Ray. Maybe I can make it up to you sometime wherever we meet.
We still see their kids once in a while but not as much as we should, for they are good kids and so are we good kids, which I have said before. And we are all getting older and older and older.