Remembering my mother’s brother, who died on this day in 1927.
History by Grace Helen Smuin Laemmlen, Glen’s sister
My parents, Franklin Smuin and Ruby Grace Lundquist Smuin, were married in the Salt Lake Tempe September 11, 1924, and lived in Salt Lake City, Utah. Their first child, Glen Lundquist Smuin, was born June 27, 1927, at Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City. About a year later in May 1928, they moved to Glendale, California, looking for a warmer climate, and perhaps a little adventure. They piled all of their belongings into their car with a load strapped on top. Dad had to cut a chunk off of a corner of the cedar chest to make it fit between the front seats so he could still shift. As they were off and heading for California and were going down a hill, a tire came off the car and they watched it rolling ahead of them. Dad laughed as he told this story to us when we were little. I’m sure it wasn’t funny at the time.
So they came to live in beautiful Glendale. The happiness and joy their first child brought to them, however, ended in tragedy as the sweet little blond-haired Glen died at the age of one and a half years of a mastoid ear infection on December 12, 1927.
It must have been an especially joyful occasion to the proud parents when I was born at Glendale Research Hospital on January 14, 1930, at 10:03 a.m.—a little daughter with my mother’s and grandmother’s namesakes—to bring happiness again into their lives and fill the void with love and new hope.
