Richard C. Cornelison Memories of his Parents

Eben is the oldest of seven children and had a lot of attention as a child. It was a good bit of discipline for him, a good bit of time [was] spent bringing him along. He was the most serious of the children. He was probably the most intellectual. He was obedient and he was a good son I think, and they were proud of him. He did the farm work, went to high school. I think he was valedictorian of his class at Shell Lake. I have that in a little pamphlet or memento that he gave me from his memorabilia.

He went to Lawrence College at Appleton, Wisc. He was born in 1886. He probably went there when he was 18. That doesn’t add up with some things I told you earlier. He must have gone in 1904 and graduated in 1912. I know that my Aunt Meroe said that he visited them one time in Estelline, SD while he was still in college. So that would date the move at five years later than what I said. He finished at St. Lawrence. (Ella went to St. Lawrence also.) He was very good in debate which at the time was called forensics. He was a good student.

When he got out of college he got a job with I believe Carpenter Paper Company. He had taken a special interest in the paper industry because it was really coming into its own when he was graduating in the early 1900s. He was moved by Carpenter Paper to Spokane, Washington. He and my mother bought a home there. They lived there about five years.

Immediately after he graduated from college he got an assignment in Salt Lake City with Carpenter Paper. He drove a wagon and made his first sales and covered his route on his wagon. Plus when he went out of town he’d always use the train. He’d leave for about three weeks at a time and he’d go on trips to Butte, Montana. My mother and I went on one of those trips with him but usually he went alone. So he’d go to Butte, Helena, Great Falls, Idaho Falls, sometimes South Dakota, sometimes Colorado, sometimes Nevada and all over Utah.

He was selling newsprint and meat wrapping paper. Those items were really big in those days. The meat wrapping paper had a faint, grainy, pink tint to it. The newsprint was relatively thick compared to what we now use. He sold that as a broker for Graham Paper Company. The product was made at the mills in St. Helens, OR. He would sell the product into that territory [mentioned above]. He worked for a company called Graham Paper Company which was headquartered in St. Louis. He actually owned some stock so that at his retirement that was his principle nest egg. Kansas City Star bought the company around 1960-1965 so all the stock ultimately got bought.

Eben and Ella had less money than Margie and Richard when raising their children. Our family pinched pennies a lot. We were pretty poor. In fact, in 1945 after the war was over [at age 59] my father only had about 25,000 bucks that he was ahead. You know, ahead of the game for the very first time since he got out of college. He was not too well off. He owned some stock in Graham Paper Co. so that was a positive. It was after that that he put away some money. After he was 55 years old is when he was able to save some money. He was often[?] going against it, always after the Depression he had a strong opinion that there could be another. That inhibited him from certain investments, like he wouldn’t have dreamed about buying an IBM because it was too risky! He didn’t want to use any borrowed money and he lived very conservatively.

Yes, almost all this was due to the Depression (versus WWI or WWII or his family upbringing). I don’t think his family could have told him how terrible it was and what kind of privation and uncertainty it would introduce. Yes, they cut his salary five times during the Depression. Every time that it would be cut he would go to the place where he was renting an apartment and he would say, “Well, I just had my salary cut. I’ve got to move out of here. I got to find a lower cost place.” The people that were renting the apartment would invariably say, “How much do you want it cut to?” because they were so desperate for customers! Isn’t that something!? It was real bad misery.

So my dad and mother in effect kept a line item journal for years about much money they spent on what. I have those. [Now Anne does.] They’re rather interesting reading, they’re in such detail. Yes, Eben was very detail oriented and he could handle detail in enormous depth. Yes, he was pretty well organized. He had a secretary for years in Salt Lake City known as Miss Piper. Even after she got married she was known as Miss Piper. She helped him a lot but basically he was the boss and he made it very clear what he wanted done and he got it done. He had his office in a number of buildings. He started off in the Beason Building and then he moved to the Phillips Building and there was one more move towards the end that I don’t remember but they were all in downtown Salt Lake City.

Eben and Ella settled in Salt Lake City because Carpenter Paper Company/Graham Paper Company told him where they needed an outpost and so he moved there in response to that. Before that he worked in Salt Lake— he worked in the paper mills for awhile, then he worked in Salt Lake City for a while, then he got married and then they moved to Spokane and he worked there for 2 or 3 years. Then he was moved to San Francisco and he and my mother lived in Oakland and it was there that Robert was born in 1923. [In Priscilla’s life story Richard said that his brother Robert was born in Spokane, probably at the same hospital as Priscilla.] No, let me think about that. 1923 was when Robert died and he was 9 years old and so it was 1914 when he was born. I have his birth date in the records. He is buried in the cemetery in Oakland. I don’t know which of the Oakland cemeteries but I’ve been to his gravesite a couple of times and it’s in the records.

Anyways my father was moved to San Francisco. Then in about 1925 he was moved to Salt Lake City by Carpenter Paper Co. and I was born July 24, 1926.

So my mother and father married I would suppose in 1909 and they lived in these different places and finally by 1924 or 1925 maybe they had moved to Salt Lake City and there they were befriended by two marvelous families. They happened to move into the same apartment complex that these families were in. One was the Mitchell Stewarts, Jane and Mitchell Stewart, and they became lifelong friends, both the men and women of our family and their family and the William Kochs. It was like an extended family for me because the Kochs had Robby and Mary and Billy and they were like brothers and sisters to me. Helen and Billy Kochs (Pope?). At the same time Uncle Mitchell and Jane had John Stewart who was about three or fours years older than I was and he and I became very close and are to this day. So I was most fortunate. It was a wonderful incubator for me.

We lived in the Prescott Apartments on S. Temple and 5th. We lived first of all with my grandparents on my mother’s side during one of the depression years. My father had to reduce overhead and he sent the money that otherwise would have gone to some additional rent and sent it to my mother’s father so they could exist. They had a big house in Glenwood City, Wisconsin. They wanted to make sure that stayed afloat because it could be a home for them as well as my mother and myself. So we moved there and stayed there all through one winter. And my father held down the fort in Salt Lake City. When we came back to Salt Lake City, when I was about 8 years old, we moved into the McMillan Apartments at [1156?] First Avenue and T Street. A few years later the old Prescott Apartments burned to the ground. It was there that we made good friends with the Kochs and the Stewarts.

There were no houses up on the foothills whatsoever; the cemetery was the last thing up there. As a kid I used to speculate that there would possibly be houses up there one day but didn’t do anything about it. Land at that time was maybe a couple dollars an acre and now its probably 300,000 dollars an acre—if you can get any!

Salt Lake City was a good place to grow up. The Mormons had reinvested a lot of wealth in the city and had very good schools and very good musical programs. Crime was quite low.

—from 1/22/92 JHHFC (sick with flu) “interview” with Richard C. Cornelison during a busy rush hour (!) drive from Cleveland to Hiram

From Michael J. Payne’s May 20, 1990 letter to John H. Cornelison: “I remember Aunt Ella and Uncle Eben visiting at least twice during my childhood, also, that I wrote letters to Salt Lake City as a child. They drove all over the country and visited us during those excursions. (As I recall, Ella did the driving.) When I was nine or ten, Uncle Eben gave each of us a silver dollar. I saved mine for a year or two and then spent it. I still regret my error. The last time I saw them, we met (Ella, Eben, your father [i.e., Richard C. C.], and myself) for lunch at a cafeteria in Bloomington, IL where I was going to college. I believe your father was then working for State Farm. I was about 20 years old. Your father may have visited us in Rock Island once—I’m not sure. My mother recalls him as very tall. I have a vague memory that we once received a picture of some of Richard’s children in a Christmas card.”

Eben met Ella while attending St. Lawrence College in Appleton, WI where they both were in the Epworth League, a Methodist club. Lived in Spokane and San Francisco before settling in Salt Lake City for most of their adult lives.