2017 Christmas Greetings from Dennis and Ramona Dalling

DENNIS AND RAMONA’S LOVE STORY         

FOREWORD

As we review the fascinating journey of this thing we call “our life,” it is abundantly clear that we have not come this far alone. We stand on the shoulders of so many wonderful family members, both ancestors and present-day, friends and associates, church leaders and teachers, that we are overwhelmed with our gratitude and sense of humility! These threads have become virtual bonds in all directions, vertical and horizontal, and have linked us together, inextricably, forever!

The late Pres. Gordon B Hinckley, our hero, profoundly reminisced about his three generations of ancestors father, grandfathers, great grandfathers, and three generations of descendants: children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren., He then said “I suddenly realized that I stood right in the middle of these seven generations – three before me and three after.…there passed through my mind a sense of the tremendous obligation that was mine to pass on all that I had received as an inheritance from my forebears to the generations who have now come after me.”

In a similar way, the love and concern that Ramona and I have for our wonderful posterity overshadows everything else in our lives. Inseparably entwined with our love for our ancestors and descendants, is our love for our Heavenly Father and our adoration for His Son, our Beloved Savior!

Since we all are always the center of “our sphere,” we may view our own lives as “the meridian of time” between our noble ancestors and our delightful descendants.  

“The meridian of time” began for me on 16 Oct 1933, for Ramona it began on 25 May 1935, and will extend until this mortal span of life is over, perhaps hopefully, more than the 80 plus  years we have so far enjoyed.

Our three generations before consisted of fathers, mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers, and great grandfathers and great grandmothers, some dating back to the early 1800’s. One of Ramona’s GGF’s, William Cresfield Moody, was born in 1819. One of my GGF’s, John Loader Dalling, was born in 1856.

We will append some genealogy pedigree charts for your reference.

Our three generations after, as of May 25, 2015, include 6 children and spouses, 29 grandchildren and many spouses, and 33 great-grandchildren, and still growing! Together with all the wonderful spouses, it is now almost 100 birthday cards for us to remember!

Think of the contrast of the world of horses and wagons, oxcarts and handcarts, which our forebears knew, with the modern world that we enjoy. Three generations back, there was not even a transcontinental railroad and now we travel in space, almost routinely; it staggers the mind! Nevertheless, the quality of life that we take for granted, with our modern transportation and technology and instant communication, has not helped us to exceed the quality of the character of those noble ancestors!

The stories of sacrifice, sorrow, suffering, and tragic deaths, endured by these heroic figures from our past, motivate us to discover and remember their lives with honor! We should then be inspired to live our lives with honor, and then pass our own stories down to our descendants. This volume is our feeble attempt to write to those generations that follow; we wonder with great imagination the kind of world they will eventually contrast with ours.

We hope, in this exercise in history, to include some of the wonderful family stories of some of our heroes of the past. I assume most people’s lives are fascinating, but we only know about those who write it down. This is a not too subtle hint to you, dear reader, to do something about your own written history!

I have always been impressed with people who had instant recall of everything of importance that ever happened in their life. For them a personal history ought to be a breeze. Of course, there are also those who faithfully write daily in a journal, or at least occasionally!

I have not been so fortunate or so diligent in my life, but it is not a lack of information that has hindered my efforts to assemble a personal history. I have been a calendar diary keeper for many years, and notes and scraps of paper fill many boxes.

Why have I not commenced to do something that I have so long desired to do, and that only grows more difficult with passing time? It may not be anything more complex than a keenly developed, lifelong habit of procrastination.

On the other hand, there may be some deeper psychological reasons. ... such as the fear that too much probing will disturb the carefully woven tapestry of pleasant memories and reveal some very painful experiences and possibly cause some embarrassment for us, and those that care for us, and our beloved family.

We have come to know, however, that some tapestries can be more beautiful as the weaver incorporates inadvertent mistakes of thread into colors and patterns that make the finished product even more desirable. It is also the process that makes each one of us unique….. just like everybody else!

The value, then of a written history, other than the interest one's own posterity may have, would be to identify some faults that may be corrected and some virtues worth developing for the writer! From the latter viewpoint, if it is to be of any real value, it ought to be done early enough to make some difference.

Truly, we are writing our life story from our first mortal experience until our last, but as they say, "it ain't over till it's over! The challenge is, still and always, to put it in writing. There is also a very real time limitation. I have tried to save the last few years of my life to prepare a written summary, but I have been unsure exactly when to start.

Much of this narrative will be in first person for Dennis, but parallel accounts for Ramona’s early years will be included. Moreover, after a very early marriage, spanning more than 63 years, our history and our emotions are mostly synonymous though viewed from our own different perspectives.

We acknowledge that we will freely use stories and quotes from others, some with attribution, and some without. I thought at first to use footnotes because it makes the finished work look so much more impressive, but it is just too much trouble for the appearance of intellect!

With those thoughts in mind, let us proceed with the fervent hope that, even at this advanced age, there are still some positive adjustments possible! We hope you enjoy the trip with us down memory lane!