Ancestral Histories (Grandpa Packard and Papa Webb)

Heber Avon Packard (Paternal Grandpa)

Heber Avon, who went by Von all his life, was born to Ester Carter and Forrest LeRoy Packard on May 5^th 1926 in Nampa, Idaho. One funny thing I learned was that he thought, and celebrated, his birthday in October all his life until he was in college and joined the Navy to go to Dental school. Grandpa was one of 17 children and multiple of his other siblings were also born in May, so his mother told a fib so she had one less birthday to worry about in May! Von was the 6^th of 17 children and grew up on a farm. Him and his siblings were taught to work and play hard. During World War 2, Von’s father went to the Pacific Islands as a civilian construction worker to build air field for the allied forces, leaving Grandma Ester and all the children home to take care of the farm. Within a few days of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the island which Forrest was on was taken, making Grandpa Forrest a POW. The family did not know if he was alive or dead for the entire duration of the war. This left a large responsibility on Von’s shoulders to take care of his mother and the farm. He was one of the oldest boys which meant a large amount of manual labor. My favorite story my grandma told me was about their first date. Grandpa was in a choir at BYU and invited grandma to go with them to a competition. Grandpa had a magnificent voice and it capture her heart. That night she told her roommate that she was going to marry him, and a week later he proposed! The power of music! Grandpa continued to sing all his life, until his body no longer permitted him too. He was always a participant in his ward and stake choirs, and even had some quartet groups that won awards on multiple levels. My dad said that he loved grandpa’s voice so much that he had spent countless hours trying to make his voice have the same tone and sound as grandpa’s when he was a teenager.

Richard Emery Webb (Maternal Grandpa)

Richard was born to Florence Wilding Emery and George Francis Webb on October 8^th 1925 in East Midvale, Utah. He was the last of five children (four boys and one girl). Richard grew up in the church and his parents taught him to be strong and faithful in the gospel. When Richard was older he was drafted into World War 2 and spent his service in France.

The family does not know much about his service, he never talked about it much, but the one thing everyone knows is that he did not like the French after his experience there. Apparently he was among the troops who were among the first to land in German occupied France, there to liberate the people. When their ship came into port though, they apparently did not receive any help with pulling in or anchoring their ship from the dock workers, because they were on strike. According to Papa (Richard), they had been on the ship for a long time but these workers refused to help these people who were there to liberate them. The only other thing we know about his experience in Europe is that he did enough to earn him very honorable medals, and his wife thinks she remembers one of them being a Purple Heart. According to my mother, Papa never talked about his military experience, and most of the family can understand why he did not. He was very young and was most likely exposed to horrific scenes of war which one would really rather forget. Almost immediately after his service in the war papa went on a mission to Oregon. At the time his mission consisted of the very northern parts of California and south rural Oregon. He served for two years, making his time away from his family over 6 years, but he served very honorably. It was even on his mission that he meant and even helped convert Nana (his wife).