Dave Adams , was the best friend and Double Bass player ever. Our Bass section in the Orchestra consisted of Dave Adams, Venice Reeve, Dennis Astle, Barbara Bjornn, and others. The year the Orchestra leader was Mr. Walker, was the best year ever. Mr. Walker was a bass player in the Utah Symphony and he loved basses. We played bass solos for alot of events. We had the largert bass section ever I think there was 6 basses. Good time.
Dave was alway ready to share his talents.
We graduated for Olympus HIgh and went to BYU. Dave played in the Orchestra there. I saw him several time on campus. He wanted me to join the Orchestra. He was a great friend and had just gotten married, when the accident happened. That was a great lost to the Music world and all the people that loved and knew him. I miss you Dave. I hope you are making beautiful Music in Heaven.
My Brother, David James Adams by Wilson P. Adams 14 December 2018 Jim, as he was known in his earlier years, was born December 15, 1948, and would have been 70 tomorrow. He was the third child of a family of 12 children. Arza Paul Adams and Ruth Wilson were married on December 20, 1945. A year later on December 6, 1946, Martha Jean Adams was born, then another year later on December 9, 1947, I, Wilson Paul Adams was born. These events put quite a festive season in the Adams family between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Jim was named after his Uncle David Leroy Wilson on his mother’s side and after his grandfather on his father’s side, James Arza Adams. Jim was born in Ames, Storey County, Iowa, where his father was attending Iowa State College and getting his Doctorate. Ruth Ann was born February 1, 1951 in Ames followed by Mary Margaret who was born September 19, 1953 in American Fork, Utah. This put Jim and I together in a family of three girls and two boys. Because of this, we boys stuck together. John was born December 31, 1954, in Fargo, North Dakota, which put him 6 years younger than Jim. After Dad completed his Doctorate in Ames, the family moved back to Utah, where Dad was employed at Dugway Proving Grounds for the US Army. In Utah, to begin school, the cut-off date was the calendar year, so I attended kindergarten in Dugway and was one of the oldest kids in my class. In the summer of 1954, the family moved to Fargo, North Dakota, where Dad accepted the position of the head of the Bacteriology Department at North Dakota Agricultural College. In North Dakota, a student had to be of age by the start of school. Jim could start in first grade, since kindergarten was not required, but I was also in the same grade. This turn of events led to Jim and I going through schools in the same grade, which drew us even closer together. When we moved to North Dakota, Jim and I went to Emerson Elementary in Fargo. It was an older school but all right. Before we went to school in first grade Mom made us learn our addition tables in a grid from 1 to 10. We had to be able to complete the grid in under two minutes before we got our school supplies. The next year we had to learn the multiplication tables from 1 to 12 in under 3 minutes to get our school supplies. Mom showed us how it was done and then we had to practice to get it under the time limit. We both finally did both grids. During the summers there, we all got season passes to the Municipal Swimming pool that was located near the river. We both became very good swimmers as a result of this entertainment. In the winter, there was a toboggan run down close to the pool and we 2 enjoyed going down there for our winter entertainment. They also flooded the football fields in winter and made giant ice-skating rinks. They had wooden warming huts that they would pull out onto the ice once it was frozen so you could change your skates and get warm when you needed to. We tried to learn skating but never really got very good at it. Since Dad was usually working, and Mom was home with the kids, we would do all of the above things by ourselves, unattended. That was before you needed parental supervision, when you could do anything. It also made us very independent, which was maybe good and maybe bad. When we first moved to Fargo, church services were held in the basement of the YWCA. We would also travel to other cities for church. We had people coming at times from Winnipeg, Manitoba and Grand Forks, Detroit Lakes, and elsewhere to attend. We were a small branch, and the district headquarters were located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. On June 4, 1956, Mom’s older brother, Harold Huber Wilson, was killed in a farming accident in Midway Utah. We all went to the funeral in Midway. At the funeral, the Wilson family held a meeting to determine what to do with the farm. Helen and Paul were still in college, so the running of the farm was left to Alan, with some help from David. It was also decided at that meeting, that the next year, Jim and I would be sent out to Utah for the summer to help on the farm during the summers. In 1957, we made our first trip to Utah for the summer. Jim was 8 years old and I was 9. We cleaned barns, feed the calves, and we learned to drive a tractor. We were so small, that to stop the tractor we had to stand on the brakes and clutch, then to engage them, we would pull up on the steering wheel to drive the pedals down. This would sometimes result in us popping the clutch and dumping the hay stacks on the wagon. One of the uncles would then come up to us, put the tractor in neutral, pulls us off the tractor and kick our butts. He would then set us back on the tractor and kindly tell us “Don’t do that again”. When one of us was not driving, we would go turn over the hay bales to be sure there were no rattlesnakes underneath them. Sometimes we would find mice, which we would play with. One night we came home with mice in our pockets and had forgotten about them. Grandma Wilson told us to change our clothes so she could wash them, which we did, but still we didn’t remember the mice. When Grandma washed our clothes the next day, she went through the pockets to make sure they were empty, and low and behold, here were all the mice still alive. We heard about that when we got home that night. In the fourth grade, we were sent to Jefferson Elementary, due to school district realignment. Jefferson was only two blocks from the house, but they were the long blocks. In Fargo, the blocks were about three times as long as they were wide, so two long blocks were about the same as 6 short blocks. About the same time, we also got paper routes for the winter. We would get up at 5 am, go get the papers and fold them inside the house, and then deliver them before school. At nights, we would go out and collect the paper money. When there wasn’t any snow on the walks, we would take our bikes, but 3 when it had snowed, we walked. My route was about 5 long blocks so we got plenty of exercise. In Fargo, our next-door neighbors, the Schneider’s, had one son, Mark, who was our age and one son, John, who was a year older. They went to the Catholic school so we didn’t see them during the day. At night, we would play football and other things to generally keep us in trouble. They also had a friend, Donny Rogers that went to school with them. We formed a club called the Five Fat Fellows (FFF), even though Jim and Donny were on the skinny side. We would find all sorts of things to do that labelled us as rascals. When it was warm, we filled water balloons, then throw them into apartment buildings. In the winter our favorite method of transportation was to run out in the streets, which were never plowed, hang onto the bumper and slide around to where we were going. In the spring and fall, we climbed on garage roofs and then spray paint FFF, so we would know which garages we had already conquered. When we were in fifth grade, we joined the Boy Scouts, which were sponsored by the Jefferson PTA. We enjoyed the camping and the other activities of scouting. Every winter between Christmas and New Year’s, we went to a winter camp in upper Minnesota. They had cabins for us to stay in and we loved playing in the snow. One year, when we got to camp, all the cabins were full, so they pitched a squad tent and we slept in that. It was forty below and it was really cold. In the mornings we would cook oatmeal in a big pot. We would get a bowl full of hot oatmeal, try to eat it as fast as we could, but there was always ¾ to an inch of frozen oatmeal left in the bowl. We would dump that back in the pot, then get a new bowl full and start again. We kept doing this until we had our fill. We did this for four days. We lived through this because we were tough kids and used to being out in the cold mornings on our paper routes. One year, we rode our bikes out to Buffalo State Park in Minnesota. We carried very little food and ate frog legs mostly. They were really good. This may not sound too exciting, but the park was about 45 miles from home. I doubt that any parent now days would even think of letting their kids do this unaccompanied. We lived in different times and enjoyed those type of excursions. We were both good students in school, that is to say we earned good grades. However, we both had problems with “citizenship”. It was standard practice to bring home a report card with straight “A’s” and “2’s” or “3’s” for conduct. None of our classes were that hard for us and we could do our homework fast, which allowed us extra time to get into trouble. Jim’s and my bedroom was in the basement and we had bunkbeds. We could open the basement window and escape at night, by going from the top bunkbed. Our favorite pastime was water ballooning cars and apartment buildings. Once when we were in grade school, we met two girls who lived about two blocks on the other side of school. We figured that to see the girls, it was easier to go to their house right after school and then go home. The first time we did this, Mom didn’t see our logic, got mad and told Dad. As was the custom in the house, Dad told us that our logic was 4 unacceptable, that we needed to come home first and tell Mom where we were going. If we didn’t do this the punishment would be three spankings and the spankings would double until we could learn the rule. Dad was on to us, knowing how we would think, so he always spelled out what would happen the next time we would violate the rule. So the next day, we went to see the girls again without going home, because three spanks were not that bad. Sure enough, we got the spankings and the warning that the next time would be 6 spanks. We kept doing this for about a week. Jim finally quit seeing the girls after 48 spanks at once, but I was harder headed and went for 96 spanks. After about 100 licks for Jim and 200 licks for me, in two weeks’ time, we finally saw the light. For eight grade, we moved to Salt Lake City for a year and we went to Foothill Junior High. This was all right, and we made new friends. In Scouts, we had planned a winter camp above the house near Pencil Peak. The day of the planned camp, it snowed. The majority of the mothers would not let their boys go to the camp because of the weather. The temperature was just below freezing, but Jim and I went, knowing this was a cake walk compared to -40 degree weather in Fargo. We really enjoyed the camp. Jim earned his Eagle Scout just before we moved back to Fargo, while I earned my Eagle Scout just after we got back to Fargo. Our time back in Fargo was only for one more year, for ninth grade. We missed our friends, but when we moved back to Utah, we quickly made new friends from the ward. In Utah, our interests started to diverge. In Fargo, Jim had learned to play the bass fiddle, while I had played the cello. When we moved to Utah, Jim continued on with his music, and I dropped mine. Jim, in his junior year met a red headed senior girl who played the viola, named Janet Anderson. They fell in love, and this was to be his life. She did a good job of taming him. Jim also took up wrestling, and became very good at it. In his academic studies, he drifted towards chemistry, like his father. While we were in Olympus High School, we both worked for Grandpa Adams on the turkey ranch. Because we were young and strong, when it came time to ship turkeys, we were always on the 55-gallon drums loading the turkeys into the crates on the semi-trucks. We were still mischievous, and when the other was not looking, we would drop a turkey on the other. Turkeys would flap their wings to try and keep their balance and would try to climb on your shoulders for a better roost. The wing feathers of a turkey are very sharp, along with the claws on their feet. This was great fun, until Grandpa would get mad at us and make us quit our shenanigans. In the spring on the weekends, we went down to Pleasant Grove and vaccinated turkeys. The poults would be fenced in, then three at a time would be caught by their legs and handed to the person holding the poults for the vaccinator. The terramyacin was poured into a hot water bottle. From there, a rubber tube was attached to a refilling automatic syringe. The vaccinator would grab the skin on the top of the turkey’s neck and pull and roll the skin to form a pocket. The needle was injected into this area between the skin and the neck. We vaccinated about 2,500 birds a day. Because we were going fast, 5 sometimes we would inject ourselves. Maybe this was why we hardly ever got sick while we were young. After high school, Jim went to the “Y”, where he liked the music program and where Janet was going to college. I went to the “U” because that was where they had a nuclear reactor and I was studying nuclear engineering. Jim went to school to get a degree in chemistry. We saw less and less of each other because we were both studying, working, and trying to maintain a relationship with our girlfriends, although we were still the best of friends. After we both got married, Jim was living at Grandpa’s little house, and I was living in Salt Lake with my wife. I sadly remember the day Jim got into his accident. Dad was working in Dugway and Mom called me to tell me about the accident. They were transferring Jim from Provo to Salt Lake for better medical care. Mom was delayed and asked me if I could go up to LDS hospital to check Jim into the hospital. When the ambulance arrived and they unloaded him, I did not recognize him. His head had gone into the door post on the driver’s side of the car and he had terrible head injuries. I stayed there until Mom arrived, but then I had to go to classes. Jim passed away several days later from his injuries. I have really never talked about Jim or his passing, because of the bond we had. At home, it was me and him against our sisters. We were also “partners in crime”, and it was us against the world. We were in many classes together and grew to know what each other was thinking. I lost my best friend and there was never anyone else to replace him. To my nieces, I hope that this will tell you something about the man your mother married. He was a fine person and hopefully you will get to know him on the other side.
Lynn Flowers
Dave Adams died in about 1968 in an automobile accident.
Venice Reeve (Finlinson)
Dave Adams , was the best friend and Double Bass player ever. Our Bass section in the Orchestra consisted of Dave Adams, Venice Reeve, Dennis Astle, Barbara Bjornn, and others. The year the Orchestra leader was Mr. Walker, was the best year ever. Mr. Walker was a bass player in the Utah Symphony and he loved basses. We played bass solos for alot of events. We had the largert bass section ever I think there was 6 basses. Good time.
Dave was alway ready to share his talents.
We graduated for Olympus HIgh and went to BYU. Dave played in the Orchestra there. I saw him several time on campus. He wanted me to join the Orchestra. He was a great friend and had just gotten married, when the accident happened. That was a great lost to the Music world and all the people that loved and knew him. I miss you Dave. I hope you are making beautiful Music in Heaven.
Lynn Flowers
My Brother, David James Adams by Wilson P. Adams 14 December 2018 Jim, as he was known in his earlier years, was born December 15, 1948, and would have been 70 tomorrow. He was the third child of a family of 12 children. Arza Paul Adams and Ruth Wilson were married on December 20, 1945. A year later on December 6, 1946, Martha Jean Adams was born, then another year later on December 9, 1947, I, Wilson Paul Adams was born. These events put quite a festive season in the Adams family between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Jim was named after his Uncle David Leroy Wilson on his mother’s side and after his grandfather on his father’s side, James Arza Adams. Jim was born in Ames, Storey County, Iowa, where his father was attending Iowa State College and getting his Doctorate. Ruth Ann was born February 1, 1951 in Ames followed by Mary Margaret who was born September 19, 1953 in American Fork, Utah. This put Jim and I together in a family of three girls and two boys. Because of this, we boys stuck together. John was born December 31, 1954, in Fargo, North Dakota, which put him 6 years younger than Jim. After Dad completed his Doctorate in Ames, the family moved back to Utah, where Dad was employed at Dugway Proving Grounds for the US Army. In Utah, to begin school, the cut-off date was the calendar year, so I attended kindergarten in Dugway and was one of the oldest kids in my class. In the summer of 1954, the family moved to Fargo, North Dakota, where Dad accepted the position of the head of the Bacteriology Department at North Dakota Agricultural College. In North Dakota, a student had to be of age by the start of school. Jim could start in first grade, since kindergarten was not required, but I was also in the same grade. This turn of events led to Jim and I going through schools in the same grade, which drew us even closer together. When we moved to North Dakota, Jim and I went to Emerson Elementary in Fargo. It was an older school but all right. Before we went to school in first grade Mom made us learn our addition tables in a grid from 1 to 10. We had to be able to complete the grid in under two minutes before we got our school supplies. The next year we had to learn the multiplication tables from 1 to 12 in under 3 minutes to get our school supplies. Mom showed us how it was done and then we had to practice to get it under the time limit. We both finally did both grids. During the summers there, we all got season passes to the Municipal Swimming pool that was located near the river. We both became very good swimmers as a result of this entertainment. In the winter, there was a toboggan run down close to the pool and we 2 enjoyed going down there for our winter entertainment. They also flooded the football fields in winter and made giant ice-skating rinks. They had wooden warming huts that they would pull out onto the ice once it was frozen so you could change your skates and get warm when you needed to. We tried to learn skating but never really got very good at it. Since Dad was usually working, and Mom was home with the kids, we would do all of the above things by ourselves, unattended. That was before you needed parental supervision, when you could do anything. It also made us very independent, which was maybe good and maybe bad. When we first moved to Fargo, church services were held in the basement of the YWCA. We would also travel to other cities for church. We had people coming at times from Winnipeg, Manitoba and Grand Forks, Detroit Lakes, and elsewhere to attend. We were a small branch, and the district headquarters were located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. On June 4, 1956, Mom’s older brother, Harold Huber Wilson, was killed in a farming accident in Midway Utah. We all went to the funeral in Midway. At the funeral, the Wilson family held a meeting to determine what to do with the farm. Helen and Paul were still in college, so the running of the farm was left to Alan, with some help from David. It was also decided at that meeting, that the next year, Jim and I would be sent out to Utah for the summer to help on the farm during the summers. In 1957, we made our first trip to Utah for the summer. Jim was 8 years old and I was 9. We cleaned barns, feed the calves, and we learned to drive a tractor. We were so small, that to stop the tractor we had to stand on the brakes and clutch, then to engage them, we would pull up on the steering wheel to drive the pedals down. This would sometimes result in us popping the clutch and dumping the hay stacks on the wagon. One of the uncles would then come up to us, put the tractor in neutral, pulls us off the tractor and kick our butts. He would then set us back on the tractor and kindly tell us “Don’t do that again”. When one of us was not driving, we would go turn over the hay bales to be sure there were no rattlesnakes underneath them. Sometimes we would find mice, which we would play with. One night we came home with mice in our pockets and had forgotten about them. Grandma Wilson told us to change our clothes so she could wash them, which we did, but still we didn’t remember the mice. When Grandma washed our clothes the next day, she went through the pockets to make sure they were empty, and low and behold, here were all the mice still alive. We heard about that when we got home that night. In the fourth grade, we were sent to Jefferson Elementary, due to school district realignment. Jefferson was only two blocks from the house, but they were the long blocks. In Fargo, the blocks were about three times as long as they were wide, so two long blocks were about the same as 6 short blocks. About the same time, we also got paper routes for the winter. We would get up at 5 am, go get the papers and fold them inside the house, and then deliver them before school. At nights, we would go out and collect the paper money. When there wasn’t any snow on the walks, we would take our bikes, but 3 when it had snowed, we walked. My route was about 5 long blocks so we got plenty of exercise. In Fargo, our next-door neighbors, the Schneider’s, had one son, Mark, who was our age and one son, John, who was a year older. They went to the Catholic school so we didn’t see them during the day. At night, we would play football and other things to generally keep us in trouble. They also had a friend, Donny Rogers that went to school with them. We formed a club called the Five Fat Fellows (FFF), even though Jim and Donny were on the skinny side. We would find all sorts of things to do that labelled us as rascals. When it was warm, we filled water balloons, then throw them into apartment buildings. In the winter our favorite method of transportation was to run out in the streets, which were never plowed, hang onto the bumper and slide around to where we were going. In the spring and fall, we climbed on garage roofs and then spray paint FFF, so we would know which garages we had already conquered. When we were in fifth grade, we joined the Boy Scouts, which were sponsored by the Jefferson PTA. We enjoyed the camping and the other activities of scouting. Every winter between Christmas and New Year’s, we went to a winter camp in upper Minnesota. They had cabins for us to stay in and we loved playing in the snow. One year, when we got to camp, all the cabins were full, so they pitched a squad tent and we slept in that. It was forty below and it was really cold. In the mornings we would cook oatmeal in a big pot. We would get a bowl full of hot oatmeal, try to eat it as fast as we could, but there was always ¾ to an inch of frozen oatmeal left in the bowl. We would dump that back in the pot, then get a new bowl full and start again. We kept doing this until we had our fill. We did this for four days. We lived through this because we were tough kids and used to being out in the cold mornings on our paper routes. One year, we rode our bikes out to Buffalo State Park in Minnesota. We carried very little food and ate frog legs mostly. They were really good. This may not sound too exciting, but the park was about 45 miles from home. I doubt that any parent now days would even think of letting their kids do this unaccompanied. We lived in different times and enjoyed those type of excursions. We were both good students in school, that is to say we earned good grades. However, we both had problems with “citizenship”. It was standard practice to bring home a report card with straight “A’s” and “2’s” or “3’s” for conduct. None of our classes were that hard for us and we could do our homework fast, which allowed us extra time to get into trouble. Jim’s and my bedroom was in the basement and we had bunkbeds. We could open the basement window and escape at night, by going from the top bunkbed. Our favorite pastime was water ballooning cars and apartment buildings. Once when we were in grade school, we met two girls who lived about two blocks on the other side of school. We figured that to see the girls, it was easier to go to their house right after school and then go home. The first time we did this, Mom didn’t see our logic, got mad and told Dad. As was the custom in the house, Dad told us that our logic was 4 unacceptable, that we needed to come home first and tell Mom where we were going. If we didn’t do this the punishment would be three spankings and the spankings would double until we could learn the rule. Dad was on to us, knowing how we would think, so he always spelled out what would happen the next time we would violate the rule. So the next day, we went to see the girls again without going home, because three spanks were not that bad. Sure enough, we got the spankings and the warning that the next time would be 6 spanks. We kept doing this for about a week. Jim finally quit seeing the girls after 48 spanks at once, but I was harder headed and went for 96 spanks. After about 100 licks for Jim and 200 licks for me, in two weeks’ time, we finally saw the light. For eight grade, we moved to Salt Lake City for a year and we went to Foothill Junior High. This was all right, and we made new friends. In Scouts, we had planned a winter camp above the house near Pencil Peak. The day of the planned camp, it snowed. The majority of the mothers would not let their boys go to the camp because of the weather. The temperature was just below freezing, but Jim and I went, knowing this was a cake walk compared to -40 degree weather in Fargo. We really enjoyed the camp. Jim earned his Eagle Scout just before we moved back to Fargo, while I earned my Eagle Scout just after we got back to Fargo. Our time back in Fargo was only for one more year, for ninth grade. We missed our friends, but when we moved back to Utah, we quickly made new friends from the ward. In Utah, our interests started to diverge. In Fargo, Jim had learned to play the bass fiddle, while I had played the cello. When we moved to Utah, Jim continued on with his music, and I dropped mine. Jim, in his junior year met a red headed senior girl who played the viola, named Janet Anderson. They fell in love, and this was to be his life. She did a good job of taming him. Jim also took up wrestling, and became very good at it. In his academic studies, he drifted towards chemistry, like his father. While we were in Olympus High School, we both worked for Grandpa Adams on the turkey ranch. Because we were young and strong, when it came time to ship turkeys, we were always on the 55-gallon drums loading the turkeys into the crates on the semi-trucks. We were still mischievous, and when the other was not looking, we would drop a turkey on the other. Turkeys would flap their wings to try and keep their balance and would try to climb on your shoulders for a better roost. The wing feathers of a turkey are very sharp, along with the claws on their feet. This was great fun, until Grandpa would get mad at us and make us quit our shenanigans. In the spring on the weekends, we went down to Pleasant Grove and vaccinated turkeys. The poults would be fenced in, then three at a time would be caught by their legs and handed to the person holding the poults for the vaccinator. The terramyacin was poured into a hot water bottle. From there, a rubber tube was attached to a refilling automatic syringe. The vaccinator would grab the skin on the top of the turkey’s neck and pull and roll the skin to form a pocket. The needle was injected into this area between the skin and the neck. We vaccinated about 2,500 birds a day. Because we were going fast, 5 sometimes we would inject ourselves. Maybe this was why we hardly ever got sick while we were young. After high school, Jim went to the “Y”, where he liked the music program and where Janet was going to college. I went to the “U” because that was where they had a nuclear reactor and I was studying nuclear engineering. Jim went to school to get a degree in chemistry. We saw less and less of each other because we were both studying, working, and trying to maintain a relationship with our girlfriends, although we were still the best of friends. After we both got married, Jim was living at Grandpa’s little house, and I was living in Salt Lake with my wife. I sadly remember the day Jim got into his accident. Dad was working in Dugway and Mom called me to tell me about the accident. They were transferring Jim from Provo to Salt Lake for better medical care. Mom was delayed and asked me if I could go up to LDS hospital to check Jim into the hospital. When the ambulance arrived and they unloaded him, I did not recognize him. His head had gone into the door post on the driver’s side of the car and he had terrible head injuries. I stayed there until Mom arrived, but then I had to go to classes. Jim passed away several days later from his injuries. I have really never talked about Jim or his passing, because of the bond we had. At home, it was me and him against our sisters. We were also “partners in crime”, and it was us against the world. We were in many classes together and grew to know what each other was thinking. I lost my best friend and there was never anyone else to replace him. To my nieces, I hope that this will tell you something about the man your mother married. He was a fine person and hopefully you will get to know him on the other side.