A Brief Autobiography of Wallace Aroet Hale

A Brief Autobiography of Wallace Aroet Hale
[i]

Great Grandmother and Great Grandfather Hale were born and raised in Grantsville, Utah. They were married on June 17, 1880. They moved to Gentile Valley shortly after they were married and remained there for four or five years, then they moved to Oakley, Idaho and bought land one mile north of the Oakley Dam on the east side of the Goose Creek. They built a little two room house and Wallace A. Hale was born October 11, 1886, being the third child.

As a boy I had to help around the farm and herd cows, driving them to pasture. When Wallace A. Hale came out of the water after being baptized on October 11, 1893, my Mother and Father gave me my first pair of overalls and suspender. My brother, Rosel, was just younger and he cried and didn’t think it was right unless either the overalls or the suspenders were given to him.

Whenever Wallace’s Grandfather Hale would come to see them he always made a great big kite. For days the excitement ran high while they rambled all over the ranch to find material to use. If there was a party, after the big folks had had their fun, he got down on his hands and knees and made fun for the little folks.

Once I went with my brother, Ed, to hunt a horse. We rode all day long but we were unsuccessful so we started home. Then Ed decided to pray. After we prayed we turned and went back, straight up the mountain, just as we reached the top of Warm Spring Mountain we met the horse coming directly toward us up the other side. We broke that horse and Grandfather made a bargain with Ed to harness it every time he went to see his girl. He eventually earned the horse for his own by doing so.

One time when I had been sick and was just getting well, Father [took] me down to Uncle Edward Hunter’s who gave me a pet lamb. I put it in the herd with father’s sheep and when I had sixteen sheep to call my own I traded them for a good cow. My cow herd increased until I was a young man. Then I was called on a mission and my cows were sold as needed to keep me in the mission field.

I started to school in a log school house up by my home. I remember my folks putting on my new shoes and buttoning them with a button hook the first day of school. I went as afar as the second year of high school, then was call on a mission, from which I returned December 10, 1910.

Vocation
Farmer (own 148 acres). Two years Asst. Forest Ranger. Clerk of Oakley Highway District. Meat Inspector for State of Idaho. Village Clerk. 19 years a member of the Oakley School Board.

Positions Held in the Church
Secretary of the Deacons Quorum in Oakley Ward, Cassia Stake. Served mission to Central States September 31, 1906 to December 8, 1908 where I labored as counselor to Conference President and group leader in charge of Sunday Schools in Oklahoma conference. Called to Stake Board of Religion class. Served in Sunday School Secretary of three Sunday Schools. President of Cassia Stake Elder’s Quorum. Called from Forest Service work to second counselor to Bishop John A. Elison of the Oakley Second Ward. First counselor to Bishop Elison and then First Counselor to Bishop George H. Severe. Served as Bishop of the Oakley Second Ward from January 15, 1927 to June 17, 1937. Then was Ward Clerk to three different Bishops making 45 years I sat around Bishopric Council Table. I also served 16 years as a Stake High Counciler [sic]. Two years as Stake Superintendent of YMMIA. Stake Chairman of Aaronic Priesthood and a ward teacher.
Apostle Marion G. Romney used to call me the man with many position in the Church. He asked me once when I found time for making a livlihood [sic].

Appointments
January 15, 1927 (4 pm) Wallace A. Hale was ordained a Bishop and set apart to preside in the Oakley Second Ward of the Cassia Stake by Elder John A. Widsoe [sic]. (Rosel H. Hale as Counselor and on January 16th Charles J. Smith was set apart Counselor to Bishop Hale.)

On May 23, 1937 Wallace A. Hale Bishop
Clarence L. Nelson, First Counselor
Charles J. Smith, Second Counselor

June 27, 1937 Wallace A. Hale was appointed Ward Clerk in the Oakley Second Ward and a Stake High Councilman in the Cassia Stake.

Family
Wallace Aroet Hale, son of Solomon E. Hale and Helen Louisa Hunter Hale, was born October 11, 1886 at Oakley, Idaho. He married Annie Penola Dayley February 2, 1910 in the L.D.S. Temple at Logan, Utah.

The following children were born to his union:

Relia Rachel Hale who married Melvin Oscar Paskett
Ronald Aroet Hale who married Beth Dorine Reynolds
Verla Hale who married David Ruland Martindale
Eliphet Lund Hale who married Margaret Anne Parke
Whitney Dayley Hale who married Melda Catherine Morgan
Yvonne Hale who married Renoldo J. Egbert
Anna Lou Hale who married Eldred Earl Bair
Ruby Clair Hale who married William Lunsden Spence
Hilda Rae Hale who married Q. Gail Anderson
Wallace Fielding Hale who married Betty Bean

At the present, 1965, we have 40 grandchildren and 5 great grandchildren. Three of our children have filled foreign missions and three of the boys have served in Bishopric’s, and one in the Stake High Council.

[i] Written in 1965. Source: Wallace Aroet Hale Book of Remembrance