I believe my first memory involving Mom was when my baby brother David and I were standing at the window looking out on a rainy gray morning.  David was so young. He had pulled himself up to the window sill hanging on with one hand (because he couldn't walk yet) and holding a bottle he was sucking on, with the other.  I was kneeling beside him sucking on his earlobe.  I remember so clearly Mom coming to us and hugging us and asking me if I would like a bottle too, which I got.  Evidently, I had just been weaned.  This was the beginning of her countless acts of compassion toward me.  She was sensitive to our tiniest needs.

I have a mental picture of our excursions in the snow.  She would take our sleigh and wire a cardboard box on it, then with pillows to our back and underneath us and blankets covering us, she would run pulling us down Ohio Street swinging us in a great circle.  That was the most exciting thing one could experience.  I remember her young with such energy and she was so beautiful to me.  She had the ability to make everything so fun and exciting.

It seems her whole life was centered around serving everyone and done so in a very creative manner.  She was a master at improvising, making our home a heaven on earth with her many talents.  Home to me was sitting around the kitchen table where Mom was busily sewing one of us a new dress, usually of her own creation.  The atmosphere was one of order and peace as the house was clean and comfortable, along with the wonderful smell of food cooking or bread or pies being baked.

The best thing about the whole scenario was the stories she told us as she painted vivid word pictures of her life as a child.  I can still see, in my minds eye, the orchard where an apple was picked on the way to the gully.  Now, the gully was a magnificent place, with a stream running down the center and many trees growing so tall that the tops were accessible from the orchard above it.  You could actually crawl out on a limb from there, eat your apple and read a book with the stream below you.  Mom would describe this spot with such clarity that I feel I spent many hours there myself.  I often wonder if, as a spirit child, I didn't come there and play with her.  I remember it so vividly, even the smells and sound of the birds especially the Meadowlark, who always trilled (according to Mom), "Beaverdam is a pretty little place."

I received my education about people from her stories.  I learned of death and caring for the dead, and how people of that time reacted to such situations, and their incredible superstitions.  I learned the proper way to act socially from Mom's stories of someone in Beaverdam who had no social skills.  We would laugh 'til our sides ached, as she would describe some person and her social faux pas.  I have often wondered if she just made these characters up to teach us lessons about life.  It worked well on me, because I would learn so much and never felt she was lecturing me.

Mom would tell us of her father, Fred Simmons, how he bled from his pores from the excruciating pain, when he died of brain fever.  She told us of his dying words, "My poor little girls."  I feel I was there, as Mom, Grandma, and her brothers and sister would take turns reading a book while they sat around the kitchen wood stove on a cold winter night, dreading to go upstairs, where there was no heat and only a coal oil lamp to light the way.  I remember the snowy winter night, while reading, when a thud was heard on the back porch.  Going to investigate, they found Mom's brother Fred lying there.  He was returning home from his mission.  Taking the train from Salt Lake City, he arrived in Beaverdam in the evening.  Having no telephones or means to reach his family and tell them of his arrival he had to walk home.  The snow was so deep and the night so cold the coyotes, feeling he would not make it, followed him at his heels all the way home.  He collapsed from exhaustion as he reached the house.

I can still feel the eeriness of the Gypsy lady who came to Mom's house when Mom was a child and demanded from Grandma Simmons her quilts up in the big trunk in the upstairs bedroom.  Mom said they were really there and she had no idea how they knew that.  When Grandma Simmons refused to give them to her, the Gypsy put a curse on Grandma and the whole house.  With the superstitions of that day, the curse was a great worry to all of them.

How I loved my mother's stories.  In all of them, I always felt the great need she had for her father in their lives.  How different things would have been if he had lived.

Mom had an unusual energy about her.  She radiated her enthusiasm, ambition, and determination.  She was very competitive.  Her washing had to be whiter, and out earlier, than anyone else's.  I remember one lady who had hers out earlier, and Mom determined that she had to have done it on the Sabbath and was up by five to have it on the line.  That was a big thing in those days.  Her house was spotless, and her front walk was swept by ten in the morning.  She dressed Maretta and I in homemade dresses, designed like the ones she saw in the movies of Shirley Temple.  I think one of David's greatest burdens in life was going to grade school in the beautiful slacks made from Dad's old ones, instead of the play pants that the other children wore.

Mom could not ever understand her children's lack of competitiveness.  How often she would tell me, "If I had been able to take piano lessons as you are able to do, I would have been a concert pianist.  Mom bought her own piano and paid for her lessons, when she was old enough to do so, and she played very well.

Mom had a temper that would flare, and it always terrified me.  I remember one morning, Maretta and I had been jumping on the bed in the cold room where we slept, and it broke.  We were scared to death.  We sat out on the sofa in a slumped down position side by side waiting for it to be noticed.  Finally, Mom passed by us.  She was humming a tune, and she was in a very good mood and she was on her way to the bedroom.  The minute she entered, we heard the explosion.  Neither Mom nor Dad ever spanked me in my whole life, but Mom's displeasure with me was always more than I could bear.  Mom could clean the house in record time when she was angry.

I remember times when I would come home from school feeling badly because some child had said something bad to me.  Usually it was in P.E.  Because of my left arm that was paralyzed during my childhood, I could never catch a ball well.  When others would complain about me being on their team, or would scream at me when I would not catch the ball, I would come home crying.  Mom would get upset and tell me what to say next time they said these insulting things to me.  She could go on for ever, it seemed, telling me what I was to say in return to their insults.  They were always such clever things and so insulting.  I always wished, as a child, that I had her quick tongue and cutting ways when she was angry.

To me, Mom's compassionate nature was her most dominant characteristic.  I have a memory of Mom on a Christmas Eve.  I remember the beautiful house, the tree, and the music and I was so happy.  I noticed Mom was crying and I asked her why.  It was during the war and she told me it hurt her to think of all the men spending that Christmas Eve in a fox hole, and of their wives and children, so sad and lonely.  She wept a lot that Christmas.

Mom hated injustices, bullies and any suffering, especially caused by poverty.  Her life was a testament to this.  It was spent trying to correct all of these ills.  I remember the coats which were made for the poor children who went by to school without coats.  I also remember the men who came to our house, begging for food.  They were never turned away hungry.  I remember their meal usually consisted of ham and eggs, pan fried potatoes and a couple of slices of homemade bread and milk, and often a piece of home made pie.  This seemed to be the meal, no matter what time of the day they came.  Mother liked the title her friend Mrs. Strayer gave these men, instead of the common title of "Bums."  She called them traveling men, and Mother preferred this title.  They were usually men who had left home, looking for work during the Depression.  They were mostly very pitiful people.

Mom was always first to sit with the sick or to take food to them.  I was often amazed at her compassion for anyone ill.  I remember that it could even be someone that she didn't particularly care for, but if they were ill, they had her full compassion, and she could not do enough for them.

If Mom saw a bully beating up on a child smaller than himself on his way home from school she would go out there and rectify it.  The older child got an outpouring of her wrath, and sent on his way, feeling very small in character.  I have seen her cry with anger over such things.

I remember Mom's innovative talents.  She could make something really lovely out of nothing, it seemed.  My first memory of that was during the war.  Mom and Nellie Jackson had remodeled the upstairs, without Dad knowing it.  They did most of it with Mom's trusty kitchen knife.  At a certain point, Dad discovered it and finished it in his manner of perfection, in which everything was done.  When it came time to decorate it, there was not fabric to be had because of the War.  Mom took flour sacks that she had saved, and bleached them white, and then dyed them pink.  She made the most beautiful dust-ruffle and bedspread for our bed.  Then she got orange crates and painted them white, and put the pink ruffles around them.  Pulling back the ruffle in the center, she made shelves in the crate to hold our books, etc.  When she was finished, the room looked like one you would see in the movies.  How Maretta and I loved that room.

Another thing I remembered was, during the war Mom could not find a doll for us.  She told us that we may not get a doll that year, because Santa simply could not get the supplies to make dolls at that time.  Everything was going toward fighting the war.  I remember Mom seemed pensive and worried during that time.  However, she eventually found a most ordinary doll, without any clothing on her.  She made her the most beautiful dress, just out of scraps she had at the house.  The dress was pink with blue net over it.  On top of the net, she cut out these sparkles that came on a tape, and put them all over the dress.  I still have the doll, and I remember that Christmas with such fondness.  I had been very sick, and when Mom and Dad carried me out Christmas morning, I saw Maretta and my doll unwrapped under the tree.  All of the sparkles on her dress glittering, from the tree lights, was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life.  It was unwrapped, because you could not get Christmas paper.  Mom always made things so special, no matter what the circumstances, a quality I tried to emulate as I went through life.

Mom's whole house was decorated by her clever methods of doing with what she had (although later in life she had a great deal).

I remember Mom's burning desire to always better herself.  Because of her little education, she was always anxious to learn.  I think the crowning event in her life, which attested to her accomplishments along this line, was her experience in Relief Society.  When Mother was in the Relief Society presidency, she received word that Belle Spafford, the President of the General Relief Society Board in Salt Lake City, was coming to speak in a Relief Society Conference in La Grande.  She requested specifically that Zelma Hunt be a speaker there.  Mom was beside herself with anxiety, and prepared her talk with great care.  The time came for her to speak, and she did so.  Afterward, Belle Spafford told my mother that, in all of her travels she felt that here was one of the best talks she had ever heard.  Then she asked my mother, "What college did you graduate from, my dear?"  She could not have given my mother a compliment which meant more to her.  Mother always held that memory dear to her heart, as long as I could remember.

Mom was my best friend as a teenager, and she spent endless hours listening to me talk.  She would always respond to my conversations with her incredible sense of humor, and would make me laugh and make light of the things I saw as problems in my life.  What a blessing she was to me.  She had great wisdom in her dealings with me.  I remember one night, when I went out with a boy she did not want me to go out with.  When I returned home that evening, she had made me a dress while waiting for me to return.  She said she couldn't sleep so she spent the evening sewing.  That gesture told me so very much about the anxiety she felt, and the love she had for me, that I didn't ever go out with that boy again.

We all decided that I should tell one story in my memories.  When I was about three years old, Mom and Dad had their house remodeled.  They hired a carpenter, who had a reputation for having an affair with every woman whose house he remodeled.  Mom was over at Nellie's house, and they were laughing and talking about this, as young girls will do.  Nellie told Mom, "Well you are next Zelma, to have an affair with him."  I listened to all of this very carefully and that night when my father came home from work, we were at the table eating dinner.  My father was asking Mom what the carpenter had accomplished that day, and they were discussing the work done.  I piped up and said, "Daddy, I saw Mama kissing the carpenter today."  Everyone stopped talking and stared at me.  Daddy said, "What?"  I repeated my exciting statement.  Mom said, "Mary, why would you say such a thing?"  I said, "Because I saw you."  This really caused quite a fuss.  Dad kept saying, "She is too little to make something like that up; she wouldn't say such a thing if she hadn't seen it."  Dad was really upset.  Mom kept telling me to tell the truth and I kept insisting that I had seen it.  I remember being in bed that night and Mom came in to me and said, "You will probably be getting a new Mama."  I said, "Why?"  She told me because I had told Daddy that I had seen her kissing the carpenter.  I got out of bed and told him I was just "tidding."  Dad said to me, "Did Mama tell you to come tell me that?"  I said, "Yes."  They had quite a time over that.  I still remember the fear which I went to sleep with that night.  The thought of getting a new mama was more than I could bear, and I was so sorry I had told such a story.  Dad would not believe me when I told him I was just tidding.  Mom loved to tell that story all of her life.  How the whole Dave Hunt clan almost ended before it got started.

Some of my dearest memories of Mom are of her in these last years.  I see in her, even with her mind as it is, the many beautiful qualities which exist in her basic nature:  her sweet disposition; her incredible sense of humor.  When she hears people laughing she enters in, although she knows not at what they are laughing.  She still closes her eyes when she hears the family sing as if she is in ecstasy.  One day while tending her during Sunday meetings, I played the hymns for her.  Although she didn't remember who I was, she remembered every word to the hymns and she sang in her still beautiful voice.  She is quick to reply that she loves you when you tell her that.

One night we had her at Sandy's, and she decided that she was sixteen and was to go to a dance.  She was very anxious, and she was afraid it would be over before she got there.  I had put her in bed, and it was about 11 p.m.  I tried everything to calm her down, I read the scriptures to her, sang her lullabies, and during that time she became very lucid.  She remembered me, and she told me the way she had seen me as a person and the great love she has for me.  This was a gift to me, one I will always remember.  I still do and shall always feel the love she has for me.

I could write a book about the memories of my parents who I love so well.  What great and marvelous people they are.  I am thankful for our eternal relationship.