College, Courtship, and Career

Freshman Year at BAC

Florence at BAC 1931

In September 1930, Florence headed off for Cedar City with her friends Lillian Adams, Georgia Jensen, and Della Smith to attend the Branch Agricultural College (BAC). Lillian was a pro at the college scene, having already completed a year in Cedar. For the other girls, this was their first time living away from home. Florence moved in with Fae and Cleo and secured a part-time job as a secretary for Cedar Mercantile. She was paid $50 a month and managed to put herself through college with her salary. While the rest of the world slipped into the economic famine of the Great Depression, Florence remembered this time as a relatively prosperous period for her personally.

The new co-ed plunged straight into an active freshman year. Continuing her love of the theater, Florence auditioned for the Peruke Club and was one of 10 new members admitted to that drama society. She performed with the drama club and also gave periodic dramatic readings. In addition, she participated in the Sunset Dance Festival as a dancer and a speaker. On the social side, Florence pledged the Phi Alpha Beta sorority and joined the staff of the Agricola, BAC’s yearbook. On weekends, she returned home to Parowan to help her father and her teenage brothers.

Elwood's Missionary Passport

Not long after Florence arrived in town, Elwood left on a mission to England. They knew each other briefly before his mission, perhaps through Lillian or through the activities of the Second Ward, which they both attended. Elwood remembers that he thought fleetingly of asking her for a date, but mission plans took precedence over most things. Tennis may have proved an exception, at least for a few weeks. In September, Elwood won the men’s singles portion of the Cedar tennis tournament, beating out Mike Jones for top honors. Elwood and N. J. Barlow also advanced to the championship in men’s doubles, beating out Mike and his brother Demoin, a good friend of Elwood’s. Tennis over for the time being, the new missionary left Cedar on October 29, stopping first in Salt Lake City for his setting apart before heading to New York City and across the Atlantic to England.

For her part, Florence took little notice of Elwood at first. He had missed a year of school when the Spanish flu epidemic came to Cedar City in 1918, and, for a time, Florence thought she was older than Elwood. “I didn’t know he was dumb enough to get held back,” she used to joke.

While Elwood preached the gospel on street corners in England, Florence entered into a busy year of work, drama, family and social engagements. Along the way, she managed to make an impression on her professors, as well as her fellow students. Ira Hayward, the director of the drama department at BAC, chose Florence as the narrator for the grand 4th of July pageant to be held during the summer of 1931. Florence’s niece, Trudy Adams Jones, remembers this as a huge honor. Florence had returned to Parowan for the summer, and the pageant directors arranged for her travel back and forth to Cedar for rehearsals.

Shortly after the 4th of July pageant, Alvin Norris died in San Diego. The Decker children were close to “Uncle Al” from the days when he lived in Nevada and came to Parowan to visit his sister Harriet. Much further away, and perhaps unknown to Florence for a time, another uncle died. Long lost “Uncle Fred,” William Norris’s son from his first marriage, passed away in 1931 from Bright’s disease. He lived in New York City, having retired from his post as an Episcopalian minister.

Sophomore Year

Florence at BAC 1932

As she had before her freshman year of college, Florence celebrated the end of summer 1931 with a trip to Mammoth. This time, she and her friends Della Smith and Ruth Clark joined with  three boys (Elmer Gurr, Grant Benson, and Bill Dalton) for a weekend outing and fishing trip to Mammoth and Panguitch Lake. In an interesting side note, Della later married Elmer Gurr. Whether any romance blossomed between Florence and one of the other boys remains a mystery.

Blanche joined Fae and Florence in Cedar City for the 1931-32 school year. Following a short-lived marriage in the spring of 1930, Blanche returned to the University of Utah and earned her teaching certificate in the spring of 1931. She was able to secure a position teaching fifth grade in Cedar City and consequently moved back to Iron County for what she once called the happiest period of her life.

This year proved successful for Florence, as well. Not only was she elected president of her sorority, but when the student body secretary failed to return for fall semester, she was appointed to that position, as well. She earned a leading role in the BAC production of “The Youngest,” an autobiographical comedy from the playwright who created “The Philadelphia Story,” and she was voted one of two students to receive a drama award for the year. In the spring of 1932 she earned her two-year degree in business.

Life After College

Shortly after Christmas Day 1932, Lillian dragged Florence to church for a missionary homecoming. Elwood had completed his mission in England and sailed home just in time for the holidays. In his history, he makes no mention of seeing Florence at the homecoming, but she did make a striking impression shortly thereafter. A mutual friend, Bertha Seaman, threw a house party at her home on 200 West in Cedar about two weeks after Christmas. Elwood went to the party alone and arrived just after Florence.  He describes seeing her: “As I stepped inside the house, she had just taken her coat into another room and was returning in my direction. I was struck by her appearance, and the thought flashed through my mind,’Here comes the bride.’”

Unfortunately, the bride had come to the party as the date of Waldo Adams. Elwood thought about asking if he could take her home, but decided against it and returned home alone, still thinking about her. About a week later, on an impulse, he called Florence at her work and asked her to go with him to an M.I.A. party at church. Thus began a courtship that would last more than two years.

Courtship

Neither Florence nor Elwood left much record of their courtship. In his 1968 personal history, for instance, Elwood writes six pages about his mission and includes the following sentence about his courtship: “Soon after returning home I started taking Florence Decker out and on June 21, 1935, we were married.” In his history of Florence, he devotes just a paragraph to their courtship. Florence, apparently, did not keep a journal. From newspaper records and stories the couple told their children, however, one can piece together a picture of those years.

Elwood arrived home in the midst of the Great Depression. The scene that greeted him that Christmas 1932 made a lasting impression. For the first time, he began to realize what great sacrifices his family had made to keep him on his mission. The Bank of Southern Utah, with which E.M. Corry (Elwood’s father) was closely associated, closed its doors in December 1931. Although the bank reopened just a few months later, through the herculean efforts of the community, the experience sent E.M. into a deep depression for the next four years.

At the same time, those early years of the 1930s brought a drought that affected the farmers severely, including the Corrys. Elwood ran the Corry family farm, first with Clifford Norton and then with Rex Maxwell. Although he earned enough to pay his way through two years of college at BAC, the farm provided only a meagre return for their labors.

President Roosevelt took office in March 1933, bringing his New Deal to a distressed nation. Although Iron County remained firmly Republican until 1936, in the years between 1933 and 1935, one quarter of the population of the county received either direct relief or work relief through government programs. National unemployment soared to 25%, and between 1929 and 1932, the income of the average American family was reduced from $2,300 to $1,500 per year.

Still, even in dire circumstances, life moved along. Movies provided an escape with the likes of Errol Flynn, Bela Lugosi, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Katherine Hepburn, and Alfred Hitchcock. Away from the big screen, folks gathered for board games and parlor games or crowded around the radio to listen to the Yankees and to President Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats. Agatha Christie and other writers gathered a following with their mystery novels.

Elwood at BAC

Against this backdrop, Elwood completed his schooling at BAC and worked the family farm while Florence continued working at Cedar Mercantile. He played tennis, competed on the debate team, and served a term as Student Body President. He was also president of the Ag club and joined the Chi Theta Iota fraternity. She kept up with her sorority, continued doing dramatic readings and plays, and became involved with the newly formed Business and Professional Women’s Club.

While they waited to build sufficient finances for their marriage, Elwood and Florence watched close friends get married. One of those friends was Lillian Adams, who married Hunter Grimshaw in 1934. In later years, Florence shared her admiration for Lillian for not letting the love triangle with Elwood interrupt their friendship.

As time passed, day-to-day life and increasing responsibilities crowded in. Florence and Elwood each supposed the other had begun to lose interest in the relationship. In the summer of 1934, Elwood accepted a call to serve as Leland Perry’s counselor in the Cedar Second Ward bishopric. His bishopric duties sometimes overshadowed romance. Florence recalled sitting in the living room at the Corry home one evening, listening to cries of “horsler” from the kitchen. Elwood had a bishopric meeting and needed someone to take Florence home. In time-honored Corry tradition, the last one to yell “horsler” pulled the short straw and played chauffeur.

But Elwood got a wake-up call one day from his friend Demoin Jones, who announced that Florence was dating someone else. As the story goes, she even kissed the competition. Perhaps that was just the motivation Elwood needed.

Elwood’s writings mention nothing about their courtship after the first date until an incident that occurred the day before the wedding. It was June 1935, and Elwood was putting up hay on the farm with Rex Maxwell. Rex had no idea about the quickly approaching wedding until Elwood casually mentioned that he would be gone for a few days as he “had a little detail to take care of.”

“What detail?” asked Rex.

“Oh, I’m getting married.”

A bit put off by Elwood’s casual approach, Rex raised his voice. “Man, you call that a little detail?” Elwood says Rex went on to lecture him about the importance of the step he was about to take. Apparently, he took the lecture to heart. In any case, Elwood and Florence married on June 21, 1935 in the St. George LDS Temple. He was 24, and she was 23. Following their marriage, they took a weekend trip to the Grand Canyon before settling into family life.