The Controller position at the Colton, CA, Deseret Industries near San Bernardino became available, and I applied. I was offered the position, which included a generous moving package covering the cost of selling our Kaysville home, professional packing, and closing costs for a new house. Because I needed to be on the job before we could close in Utah, I headed to Colton ahead of the family.

I was tasked with finding us a place to live and found a brand-new house right across the street from a city park. I bought it sight-unseen and selected all the finishes without Kathy ever checking them out. Fortunately, she loved everything I picked. We later realized, though, that the area fed into junior and senior high schools with rough reputations, which meant a future move was likely once the kids outgrew elementary school.

When the sale of our Kaysville house finally closed, I returned to Utah to drive the family down. It was early December, and the roads were a mess, plunging us into blinding blizzard conditions all the way from Kaysville to St. George.

To make matters more challenging, we couldn’t close on the Colton house yet. We had to move into a hotel for a few weeks with a young family of four children. With Christmas fast approaching, we packed our immediate needs and holiday decorations into the car, while the movers temporarily stacked everything else into our locked garage.

Showing mercy, the home builder made a rare exception to their policy and allowed us to move into the house on December 24th before the official closing. We spent the entire day before Christmas hauling our belongings out of the garage. By the time we finished, we were exhausted and decided to go out for dinner, only to find that absolutely nothing was open past 6:00 PM on Christmas Eve. We finally found a Pizza Hut that stayed open, and we all had our Christmas Eve dinner there. When we got back, a Christmas tree had been mysteriously left on our front porch—likely a quiet act of kindness from my new co-workers at Deseret Industries. We decorated it together and had a lovely, miraculous Christmas in our new home.

Not everyone liked the management style of the local Deseret Industries manager, but he was good and he was fair. I have always been disappointed in myself for not being more assertive in standing up for him when he was criticized—a mistake I vowed never to repeat. Because this job was far less demanding than my previous payroll position, I constantly looked for more challenges. I taught myself BASIC programming skills and developed a few custom applications that we used for facility management and marketing.

A Heavy Choice and a Financial Blessing

Ben’s injury was incredibly severe. A tiny chipped bone was shifting inside his arm, stopping his pulse every time the doctors tried to set the fracture. Recognizing the danger, they transferred him to the advanced facilities at Loma Linda University Hospital.

Ben had to spend a full week in traction to let the massive swelling go down. Halloween took place during his stay, and the wonderful healthcare workers dressed up in costumes, visiting the wards to bring candy directly to the patients’ beds. The only issue we ran into was getting Ben to drink his milk. He flatly refused it, and we finally realized he was rejecting it because he was used to the half-regular, half-powdered milk mixture we stretched our budget with at home. We had to resort to smuggling his usual “home-brewed” milk into the university hospital.

When the time came for surgery, the doctors handed us a stack of paperwork. Tucked into the forms was a heavy authorization giving them permission to amputate his arm if they encountered complications they couldn’t resolve. Holding a pen over a document like that is a profoundly heavy, humbling parental experience. We signed the form, knelt in prayer, and placed our little boy’s outcome entirely in the Lord’s care.

The surgery went perfectly. Ben made a full recovery and has never suffered any lasting effects from the injury.

However, our insurance at the time only covered 80% of major medical costs. Because of the intensive care and transfer, we were left with a remaining balance of about $30,000—a monumental, impossible sum of money for us in 1986. We had absolutely no idea how we would ever pay it.

A few weeks later, the hospital called our home. The administrator informed us that because Ben’s injury was so rare and complex, it had been used as a primary case study for training their orthopedic residents. Because of that, they were charging off our entire balance as an institutional training cost. It was a profound, undeniable blessing from God.

Miracles and Milestones

Adam was a very energetic three-year-old who loved to test his physical limits. Not long after the bicycle incident, we were at a ballpark watching Aaron play T-ball. Adam was playing alongside me in the bleachers, but then climbed higher up, unnoticed. He started scaling the safety bar at the very top of the stands when he lost his grip and fell headfirst to the concrete below.

When I reached him, Adam was completely unconscious. Someone called 911, and while we waited for the paramedics, I gave Adam a priesthood blessing right there at the ballpark. He remained unresponsive throughout the ambulance ride. But the moment they wheeled his stretcher into the emergency room, Adam suddenly sat up, looked around, and wondered where he was and why everyone was making a fuss. He demanded to get down, which the doctors finally allowed once they completed their examination and confirmed there were no serious injuries. Adam acted as if nothing had ever happened. They sent us home instructing us to keep him inactive for a few days—clearly, they didn’t know Adam.

“The Week”

Then came what we still refer to as “The Week.” It was a rapid-fire series of accidents that stretched us to our absolute limits.

Adam started the chaos. As Kathy and I were heading out for the evening, he ran after us to say goodbye and accidentally stuck his fingers into the hinge side of the front door just as it slammed shut. When we opened the door, his fingers were completely flattened. We rushed to the emergency room, but miraculously, the doctors found no permanent damage and sent us home.

A couple of days later, Kathy’s mother came to visit. On her drive home, her brakes completely failed as she exited the freeway. Her car careened through a red light and smashed into a concrete barrier, breaking both of her legs.

Just a few days after that, I was riding my bicycle home from work. I picked up speed going down a long hill when my front tire dropped perfectly into a slot in a drainage grate. The bike stopped dead, but I didn’t. I flew over the handlebars and slid through traffic flat on my face. Cars skidded all around me, barely missing my body. It hurt terribly. The police called Kathy to tell her, “Ron is hurt, but he’s going to be okay,” and brought me home. I ended up right back in the exact same emergency room we had taken Adam to days earlier to get my wounds cleaned and dressed.

The climax of the week happened a few days later. Our five-year-old son, Ben, was playing at the park across the street when some older kids convinced him to climb inside a large trash can. They then rolled it down the hill. Recognizing the danger, our other kids ran across the street to get Kathy. Ben tried to scramble out of the trash can while it was still moving, and his elbow was shattered in the process.

For the third time in seven days, we rushed back to the hospital. When we walked through the double doors, the ER staff looked up and called Kathy and me by our first names.

In the frantic rush to get Ben to the hospital, we had left the other kids in the care of our nine-year-old daughter, Melissa, while calling our Church home teacher to rush over and take over. He arrived at the house within minutes, but the kids stubbornly refused to let him inside because he didn’t know the family safety password. Committed to his assignment but locked out of the house, he spent the evening “watching” them by sitting dutifully on the front porch.

Moving On

By 1987, the Church made the decision to close the Deseret Industries facility in Fountain Valley as they shifted their operational strategy in Southern California. The controller there was losing her position, which was especially difficult because she actually lived near Colton and had been enduring a brutal daily commute from San Bernardino to Fountain Valley.

At the same time, I had already begun a job search, looking for a corporate role that offered greater professional challenge and depth. In those days, the best leads came from the classified ads in the Los Angeles Times. An employer based in Lancaster, California, saw my resume and called me in for an interview. He was thoroughly impressed and hired me on the spot as the company’s corporate controller.

My departure created an immediate vacancy at the Colton Deseret Industries, which the Fountain Valley controller was able to step right into, saving her career and eliminating her commute. My new employer generously covered our packing, moving, and closing expenses.

As the moving trucks pulled away, Kathy was 8½ months pregnant with Jacob. It seems that moving trucks and late-term pregnancies were simply the required theme of our journey.