In my family history researches I have come across several tragedies.  There was a young man who drowned while canoeing on a lake in Washington.  There was a young woman and her 7-year-old niece who died from being burned in an explosion in the home.  I theorize that the explosion was caused by refilling kerosene lamps after dark (when the flames were lighted), something my mother said was never, ever to be done.  There was a young man killed by his shotgun while crossing a fence.  My hunter's safety course instructed us to always lay our guns on the ground before crossing a fence, something that young man apparently failed to do.

Then there was the young man lost at sea in the Pacific Ocean in World War II when his ship was sunk.  His name is inscribed on a memorial in Hawaii.  There was also the handsome young man who graduated from college with a law degree, who got married, and who had a baby son.  He was shortly thereafter sent to Europe in WWII.  (Paul Wesley LeCrone, G6WN-936).  He was killed in France two months after arriving there. His wife died a couple of years later.

I got special permission to do the temple work for the young man whose ship was lost in the Pacific because he left no close relatives who would have been able to do his temple work.  I was able to do Paul Wesley LeCrone's work since he was born exactly 110 years before I learned his story in 2023.  That was a great privilege.

But most recently I uncovered perhaps the greatest tragedy that I've yet encountered.  Susan E. Fansler (9NS1-GNM) was 16 years old when she was married to a man 16 years older than she.  They were together for only a short time before he became deranged from syphilis.  He spent a couple of decades in a facility that cared for the insane before he passed away.  Susan probably divorced him, and remarried a man 9 or 10 years younger than she.  I can't find records to confirm my suspicions, but I think that Susan must have contracted syphilis from her first husband.  She had five children with her second husband.  The last two died as babies, something that commonly happens if the mother has syphilis.  She died at the age of 45, leaving three youngsters needing a mother.  I theorize that Susan had syphilis-induced dementia, causing her husband to put her in a care facility.  He needed someone to care for his children, so he moved a woman in with the family.  The woman had a baby four months before Susan died.  He married her four months after that, and they had six children together.

The tragedies in those lives were caused by the immorality of Susan's first husband.  She didn't know his past, and suffered the consequences of his sins.

These tragedies were all caused either by violating common safety rules, by war, or were caused by another's sins.

There is safety in keeping the commandments.