Happy Birthday Inez Player Smith

 Last Sunday, May 8th would have been Inez Player Smith's 110 birthday.  I must be old if my grandma would be 110.  She was the 5th of 10 children.  Five girls and five boys.  She is pictured above with her sister Melva (Inez on the left and Melva on the right).  What a blessing to have this beautiful picture - matching dresses, and hairdos.  The value of pictures cannot be underestimated.  Melva was only 15 months older than Inez.   All the sisters were quite close.  When I talked to my mom on mother's day I mentioned that it was her mom's birthday, it made her weepy.  I guess you never get over loving your mom so much.  In that phone conversation she corrected me on how to say her name.  I always have said Inez like "eye NEZ", but she said she always liked to be call "EYE ness" with the emphasis on the "I" and soft on the "z".  She was born in Bennion Utah, being a direct descendant of John Bennion who founded the town.  That area is now called Taylorsville, incorporating  in 1996.  I am trying to drain my mom of memories of her mom.  We talk about her on as many occasions as possible.  This past Sunday she talked about how much Inez loved her family.   My mom doesn't recall too much about her mom's childhood.  The vivid memory she does have is that after eighth grade when it was time to go to high school, which was a distance away, it was decided that was too far for this busy farm family and so Inez dropped out of school and ended her formal education with the completion of the 8th grade.

At age nineteen she married Ilo Leslie Smith and they moved right around the corner from his parents in Murray Utah.  Even though Bennion was only three miles away, it might have proved quite a distance in those days.  She had my mom when she was 21 (1927)  and Carol when she was 24 years old (1930), right during the depths of the depression.  My mom said that she was so kind and she often let Les have the attention and the spotlight.  She was pretty quiet and reserved until it came to one topic.  SPORTS!!!  Oh boy would she and I have had a great time discussing the sports of today.  In her day there were really only a couple of sports she could follow.  One is baseball - the national pastime.  My mom says she wasn't afraid to let a umpire have it if she felt it was the wrong call.  The other sport she was interested in was professional wrestling.  Maybe you were a little desperate for sports in those days.  She really liked my dad except when he tried to convince her that wrestling was all an act.  My mom said that Inez asked Melvin to leave if he was going to keep insisting that it was fake. I love the gorgeous smile and the beautiful legs in the picture below.  I don't have any personal memories of my grandma as she died five days before my third birthday of a brain tumor at the age of 54.  I'll be excited to sit down and have a visit - are there any sports in heaven?

Another Grandma in an APRON!!!