45 Ollie’s Death

Ollie’s Family

By 1906 the Kimballs had been in Arizona for eight years and had settled into their roles. Andrew stood out front as the community leader in both church and secular affairs. Ollie took a less-visible, supportive role, giving leadership within the Relief Society, both stake and ward. She was an efficient, soft person who had a great capacity for love and exemplary service. From the beginning of their marriage she had shared her husband generously with others. Andrew trusted and relied on her. She bore and reared his children.

Andrew and Ollie, 1906.

Death

In the fall of 1906 Ollie suffered a miscarriage and poor health.⁷⁴⁰ On September 28, Andrew sent her to Salt Lake City for better medical care. She took five-year-old Helen with her and had thought also to represent the stake Relief Society by attending the October general conference, but after attending just one meeting she could do no more. After days of misery she was admitted on October 10 to LDS Hospital, a brand new eighty-bed institution.⁷⁴¹ The doctors debated, unsure what to do. Ollie suffered constant nausea.⁷⁴² Her condition deteriorated, and the doctors finally decided that an operation was necessary. Ollie asked that Andrew be sent for, and President Joseph F. Smith sent him a telegram. Andrew immediately caught a train for Salt Lake City, bringing with him Rachel, twenty-one months old.⁷⁴³ Relatives took care of the girls while Andrew spent his time with Ollie.

On October 18 at 10 a.m. the doctor informed Andrew that Ollie was in a dangerous condition. Andrew wrote:

Her head was gathered and her ear in sore and swollen condition. Dr. Stauffers came and examined her head. . . . Ollie commenced to flow. . . . Dr. was summoned, soon Ollie was so weak she could hardly speak. She was taken to operators room and as soon as possible operated upon. I was at her head and saw that she got chloroform and helped her all I could. They put her back on her bed where she died 5:30 P.M.⁷⁴⁴

Andrew felt devastated at Ollie’s death, especially since she was just forty-six years old. They had expected many more good years together. But she was gone. A telegram to Bishop William A. Moody in Arizona asked him to notify the children of their mother’s death. The bishop summoned the children from school and told them that their mother would not be coming home.⁷⁴⁵ They had known she was ill, but her dying fell entirely outside their contemplation. Spencer, then eleven, later described his feelings:

Ma dead! It couldn’t be! It came as a thunderbolt. I ran from the house into the back yard to be alone in my deluge of tears. Out of sight and sound, away from everybody, I sobbed and sobbed and each time I said the word “Ma” fresh floods of tears gushed forth until I was drained dry. My eleven year old heart seemed to burst. . . . Each time I had come into the house through those years of childhood, I would hang my cap on the hook by the door over the wash dish and holler “Ma! Ma! Ma!” When she asked what I wanted, I just said, “Nothing.” It was enough just to know she was there.⁷⁴⁶

Andrew arranged a funeral in Salt Lake City, in the assembly hall of the Thirteenth Ward, where Ollie had attended church until marriage and where her father had been the long-time bishop. A second funeral, held in Thatcher, drew a huge crowd. Upon arriving in Thatcher, Andrew had opened her casket and found Ollie’s embalmed body in good condition. He placed the casket on a bier in the living room and friends came to see her all day there because it was against policy to open the casket in the meetinghouse.⁷⁴⁷ Sixty-five carriages followed the hearse. The Relief Society ladies dressed in white and formed in procession. Her bishop said he never knew her to speak an unkind word or to gossip. Tributes poured in.

The community that had showered her with flower petals when she arrived eight years earlier now showered her casket with flowers. She had said she could never stand to have rocks and gravel dumped on her casket, so Andrew had a large wooden box made, into which they placed the casket, then he placed the whole in a brick vault in the grave. Those who closed the grave took care to fill it without clatter.

Heber J. Grant wrote, “I do not know any couple of all my acquaintances who have seemed happier in their married life and more congenial to each other. It will be a hard blow to him.”⁷⁴⁸ In his journal Andrew said, “I was terribly broken up in my feelings. More lonesome than ever.”⁷⁴⁹

A week after the funeral in Thatcher, Andrew’s sister Alice left, and the family was on its own: Clare, twenty-two years old and married, had two children of her own. She and her husband, Hyrum Brinkerhoff, lived in Artesia, seven miles south, seeking to establish themselves on a homestead. Gordon, eighteen, planned soon to leave on a mission. Dell, sixteen, was still in school. The others at home were Ruth, Spencer, Alice, Helen, and Rachel. Maude, the first-born, had died and been buried in Salt Lake City. Two others had also died, so Andrew had responsibility for himself and seven children still at home. Ruth, at fourteen, left school for the next several months to care for the family, but she still managed to graduate from the eighth grade with her classmates.

Andrew walked the floor with baby Rachel to get her to sleep, as he sang over and over, “Come, Come Ye Flowers.” He called the baby “Ray,” his ray of sunshine.

A month later Andrew wrote, “While in the parlor my feelings were overcome and I had a hard spell of sobbing, makes me sick for hours, but somehow at some times I can’t help it.”⁷⁵⁰