Meet Darwin.

Darwin is a truly incredible man who I have the privilege of living near, this interview was one of the rare times I had the opportunity to actually sit and speak and record the interviewee. I left feeling flushed with excitement, eagerness to share, and for weeks after his words stirred in me, and moved me in a way indescribable. Darwin has the most beautiful garden, orchard, and a lovely home, he is married to a talented and darling woman, and their relationship is one that can be looked to for “hope in lasting relationships”. They are both very dear, gentle, generous, and kind people. I honestly feel honored to have sat down with Darwin in his living room, asking him these personal questions. I hope you’ll have a great time getting to know him. He is wonderful.

Who is your personal hero?
Oh, I’ve thought of that often, you know it? I really don’t have any. I don’t know why I don’t except that – I think of the things Joseph Smith accomplished and what he suffered, and what he gave the world. I think of the Savior often, I think of Alma, other Book of Mormon characters. In my personal life I think of Don & Mabel Rex, they were people who married and eventually moved to Georgetown Idaho. I went to work for him when I was 13, and lived with them eventually. He arranged for me to go on a mission, they brought me into the church. They’ve been great people in my life. LeGrand Richards has also been a great person in my life. The Rex’s parents, Don’s mother was a half sister to President George Albert Smith. So I knew him as Uncle George. So that’s why I say my personal hero- I don’t really know. My wife is a great, faithful lady, and I look to her for a lot of things. As far as having one or two, I really don’t. I look at everyone who has affected me for good as a personal hero. I think of Louis Munk who was my high school English teacher, one of the greatest teachers I have ever known. I sometimes wondered about that, but I think about it and I wonder – why chose one? That’s a bad answer to a good question.

Where did your green thumb come from?
I suspect it began because my grandfather and grandmother Hayes & Eggley both, were gardeners, my grandfather was an orchardist and his father was one of the first to settle Bear Lake County, he was a man who cultivated trees and gave them away or sold them. When Loris and I got married we lived in an apartment in Provo. There was a place by the back step that went into the apartment on the ground floor, we filled that with topsoil and planted a garden there. I just gardened all my life, I guess. I grew up on the farm, worked on the farm, I loved growing. Yesterday I spent the day taking out some holly hocks out in the back yard, and when I got through I got the tiller out and tilled the ground, and leveled it off, and it looked so beautiful. I’ve always felt that way about soil. When I was a kid on the farm working for the Rex’s, I loved sitting all day on the tractor so in the evening as the sun had set, I could look back over the furrow I had plowed – the ground I had worked, and it was this beautiful job that I had done. Since then I have equated – I think faith – in the Savior and God has been coupled with gardening or working with the soil all my life, and I think of the Savior often when he told his disciples he’d be dying, they said “no no no”, then he taught them the principle, “if the corn does not drop into the soil and disintegrate, there is no life.” and that kind of strengthens me as I think of planting things. I’ve also just been curious and fortunately had good soil. I’ve just been fortunate. Things grow, I plant them, I tend them, I learn to how to take care of them. I like to look at the ground and take the weeds out. I’m happy to do it, it’s not a burden. It’s a burden to take the weeds out if you ignore them. Get them and the soil looks good and clean. I’ve studied and bought books on gardening. I’ve always liked a good well prepared and well taken care of field. My dad was a gardener, and he worked hard all day and then to rest, he came home and took care of his garden.

What is the first life lesson you remember learning?
I learned to be obedient to my mother and kind, we lived two miles from the railroad track in Idaho, there was the railroad station and the hobos used to go through that area on freights, the hobos used to come to our house and my mother always fed them and she did so by saying “you never know who they might be.” I suspect from that I sensed they could be great people, not just bums, but great people! You never know. She always fed them, she didn’t let them in the house when she was alone with us kids, but when dad was there he’d invite them in the house and we’d sit around the table and visit. I always wondered how they knew where we lived, without later learning that they had signs they’d give for one another, and word spread. She stayed that way her whole life. I think in the process of that, I learned of her goodness and kindness.

The room we lived in wasn’t as big as this room, we had one room, that was it. A stove, a bed, a table, a wash stand. Mother one morning said as we gathered around “I don’t want you to leave home today, I just have a feeling is going to happen, I want you staying here.” So I hung around home all day, at about 2 o’clock it clouded it up and we had a hail storm, a rain storm, that just washed everything away. I knew enough by then to know that when my mother said don’t do something, I shouldn’t do it, that’s probably one of the first times I was very conscious of that. I was probably seven. The storm beat down all of the hay, if I had been out there, I would’ve been floating down a stream, not alive. That stayed with me a long time.

You were an English professor for some time at Brigham Young University (for 30 + years), in your years of teaching, what are some things you learned from your students?
I learned of their goodness when they are loved, and their ability to learn when they are loved, and taught well. Some of my students are still my good friends. I remember having a boy who just couldn’t learn grammar, he tried hard, but he just couldn’t. I remember thinking “I don’t want to fail this kid, he’s got potential.” I was teaching night school at the time, I took this boy with me on the drive to school and tutored him on the way out and back. It was about a 2 hour drive. He passed the course. I think the greatest thing I learned from him was the kind of sense of humor that was sometimes life saving, and good for me. I went to school one day and I had a cold I couldn’t shake, it turned out to be an allergy, but I didn’t know that, and I couldn’t get rid of the thing. I made a comment in class one day that he responded to. I said “I’ve been trying to fight this cold and I just can’t seem to get over it” and he said “You might try prayer!” From that I realized I tended to be proud, cocky, and self assured. He helped me see that I was missing something. That was a comment I’ve never forgotten.

What were some of your favorite topics to teach & why?
I loved to teach literature and especially poetry, I read poetry to this day, I spend hours reading poetry. I love to teach poetry, it was fun, it was easy to get discussion. I also love to teach grammar. The reason for that was in High School I had Lou Munk as my English teacher and he was probably the best grammarian I ever studied under. To that point. It was the old fashioned
eight parts of speech grammar. When I took the placement exam, when I started school at Utah State University, as a freshman, I met a professor Wendell O Keck,a little tiny short guy, his hair would stand straight back over his bald spot, and he looked like a little cardinal, because of that hair.

Anyway, he said “What are you wanting to study?”
and I told him “I’d like to study physics.”
He said, “Oh physics, oh oh, well you oughta take some classes but let’s talk about your English placement. Why’d you miss those two questions on that test?”
I said “What two questions?”
[It was dealing with the problem – he is one of those persons who is or (are)]
I said. “I never quite got that.”
and he explained it to me.

Then I thought, This guy can teach me something. That’s why I love grammar, it was fun to teach, it was analytical, it could couple with math, and set theory, and that sort of thing and then came structural linguistics and I got excited about that!

I was fascinated with languages, and studying grammar made me understand it more, I think I was fascinated in part because I had a teacher in elementary school who would scould us in French! That peaked my interest in language study!

I always loved books and I always loved poetry, when I was a kid, I looked forward to getting sick occasionally so I could stay home and read. One of the first poems I knew was a real poem and it really taught you something about the nature and rhythm and words and so on.

The Swing by Robert Louis Stevenson:

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside—

Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown—
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!

Oh there are some wonderful poems, I really enjoy the poem The Death of the Hired Man by Robert Frost, because of the story and characterization, He has another poem in which he talks about the reason for Eve coming into the Earth, “She taught the birds to sing.” Robert Frost is one of my favorite poets, the other one is Wendell Berry, who is a farmer. He does all of his farm work with horses, not tractors. He has a series of poems called The Mad Farmer, he seems to understand basic things so well.

A couple more of my favorites that are absolutely worth mentioning:
Alan Paton – his book is called Cry the Beloved Country
Ray Bradbury – Dandelion Wine (a story of his youth, of his child, I think it’s better than any of his Science Fiction.)

Have you ever written a poem?
Not any good ones. Most of my writing is with prose. I never really express myself in poetry, I never quite … I tried when I was a missionary.

Do you have a favorite Author?
Oh, I used to really like William Faulkner. I like Shakespeare. I like Psalms. I really
like the Old & New Testament, they are great works of literature. I like Mark Twain. I’ve met very few writers that I didn’t like. Henry James is a tremendous writer. Willa Cather is an artist, “Death Comes for the Archbishop” is one of the greatest novels. I equate her writing with Puccini’s technique in opera. She uses words beautifully, and I don’t know of anybody who writes more beautiful music than Puccini. Just the beauty and the fitting-ness of everything. She wrote a short story you may know called ‘Neighbour Rosicky.”

Do you believe people are innately good?
I think they are born so. Some retain that, some others if they are neglected, ignored, or hurt in some way lose that. I used to believe that every one was innately good, but when I went in the military I learned that some are not. I don’t believe there is any such thing as a “Bad Seed” child. I’ve met some really evil people, they seemed at the time, as I recall, looking back, and I try not to think about this, but they seemed to intend hurt to everyone they met. There weren’t very many like that. But I look at the things that are happening right now in the Middle East, those who are fanatically Hamas, seem to me, where they ever good? The cruelty and hatred they have for everyone, they are so far from goodness that it seems almost impossible that they were ever good. So I’m not sure.

I believe that children are born good, and how they are raised determines whether or not they stay that way. Part of that might be tendencies they have and part of it might just be the lack of knowledge of the power of love.

You’re a beautiful person.
I have some terrible weaknesses, but I find joy in helping others and sharing good things with them. I think it is my love of poetry and language and good stories that I’ve spent my life studying and reading… that makes me want to share.

How have you found joy in the journey of life?
In working, trying to do a good job, and associating with people who are good. All things beautiful and all people beautiful. (that may be the key.) I’ve also tried to see a bigger picture, instead of a narrower one, I’ve learned from the suffering I’ve seen, and seeing their strength and ability to go on. The real joy in life are the quiet things that come to us when doing the things we love.