Vern the second child of William (Will) Freeman Farr and Emily Frances Champneys was born 22 December 1884 in Ogden, Weber, Utah. His mother Emily died when Vern was about four years of age as a result of complicatons from giving birth to his brother Cyril on 21 January 1889 in Lewisville, Idaho.
His father married Anna Hansen, a pretty immigrant from Denmark who had come to care for the family after Emily's death. To that union six children were born.
Being the oldest in the merged families, Maud and Vern took on arduous tasks normally beyond their years. When Vern was ten, he built stools so that each of them could reach the crank device to push it back and forth manually washing the clothes for the entire family.
It is not clear how Vern met his wife Leona (Leone) Minnie Johnson. They were married on Thanksgiving Day in 1914. Vern's daughter, Norma, believes it was in Avon, Utah. That was where Leone was born in 1888. Norma remembered her mother telling her that she cooked the Thanksgiving dinner that day for all relatives and friends that came to the wedding, Norma didn't know why. So she assumes that if she cooked for wedding guests, it would have been in a familiar setting.
Alva Jay was born 18 August 1916 to Vern and Leone. When Jay was a tiny baby, Vern had a terrible accident that almost took his life. Norma said that he was driving a team of horses pulling a wagon when some kind of derrick or boom on the wagon touched an electric wire poser line which fell down on Vern. It burned him horribly and knocked him uncounscious. The power went down through the reins which he was holding in his hands and killed both horses. Vern was badly scarred, in the hospital for weeks and weeks and unable to work for about a year.
Norma said she didn't know how the family lived unless the Church members came to their rescue as they seem to do all the time when people are in need. Jack Nielson, relating the same incident, said that his mother, Lillian, for about a year had nursed Vern back to health.
Norma was born 3 June 1922 in Lewisville, Fremont, Idaho, when it was a tiny town on the Snake River just north of Idaho Falls. Vern and Leone had moved there just prior to her birth. Vern was a farmer but probably earned most of his income as a member of a sheep-shearing crew who traveled all over the state.
When Norma was about two, Vern and Leone decided to go to Gridley, Butte, California where Vern would go into business with his brothers in the Farr Brothers Sand and Gravel Company. Norma said they drove in what must have been an old Model T Truck. It took seventeen days to go 900 miles due to breakdowns and flat tires.
They had piled everthing they owned in the back of the truck and put mattresses on top of that, where Jay and Norma rode. the whole thing was covered with a tarp, so they likely resembled a covered wagon.
Vern and Leon bought a house in Gridley at 1755 Sycamore Street. This placed them roughly midway between the homes of Vern's beloved sisters, Norma and Maud, two or three blocks distant from each them. It was here where Dora was born on 10 September 1927.
The detail are not known, perhaps the sand and gravel business was not large enough to support all three brothers, so Vern's association in the company didn't work out. He continued on his own but found it challenging.
Norma recalls that her parents must have been very good disciplinarians. Vern never touched them. Leone seemed to be the one who took care of their problems. Norma remembered a time when she was about four that she decided to run away from home. She took her doll and packed a couple of things, went down to the neighbor's hedge and hid under that hedge all afternoon. Of course Leone knew exactly where she was because she kept track of her by telephone with the neighbors.
When it started to get dark, Norma decided to go home. When she walked in the house, her parents appeared "shocked" to see her, indicating they had thought she was gone forever. There was no place set for her at the table and nothing but a little bit of left over food on the stove which she had to get for herself to eat. Needless to say, Norma said, she never tried to run away again.
A second incident was with Vern. He and Leone had bought Norma a piano. (Norma said the whole family was quite musical and thought that it ran in the Farr family. Both Norma and Dora played the piano and Jay, who played the trombone as well as the harmonica very skillfully, had a beautiful, powerful bass voice.) One day Norma rebelled and decide she was not going to practice that piano. With out a word, Vern immediately went out to the shed got a board and painted "Piano for Sale" sign and put it out on the lawn. This, of course, lasted only about an hour and Norma was back on the piano again.
At the beginning of the thirties, the Depression hit. Vern and Leone lost their home on Sycamore Street and moved to a little eight-acre ranch in the county on Highway 99E. They had chickens, a cow and alfalfa to feed it, fruit trees and lots of vegetables. Norma remember it as a very pleasant place to live but that she did get sick and tired of eating chicken. They could not afford to buy meat, but they did have chicken.
During the Depression, the Mormon group got together and canned fruits and vegetables in a sort of cooperative. Vern's project was to go out and catch huge quantities of salmon, which were plentiful in the Feather River at the time and bring those in for canning. Then all the food was shared.
Leone had a terrible case of asthma. About the only thing that would relieve her breathing was by using a drug called Asmador. It was a fine green powder and some kind of herb had been pounded into this powder. It also came in the form of cigarettes. But Leone, being so religious and straight, wouldn't think of smoking a cigarette. So she placed a little powder on a small pie plate, lit it to make a little smudge of it, and inhaled the smoke, which gave her relief. It had a very distinctive odor, which Norma said she could identify today if she should smell it. She would have company.
Each in his own way, Vern and Leone experienced enormous struggle. Stake President John Todd (who had performed the marriage of Norma and Freeman Morgan) made a point one time of telling Mary Lou Taylor, Vern's niece, of his respect for Vern, that underneath the rough exterior and human frailities, he was a noble and good man that he loved him.
Vern had such a deep affection for Leone. How painful it was to see her suffer. Marcy Bramwell as a child, remembered seeing Vern in her familly's home for a brief, early morning visit. With tears welling up he would tell of Leone having to again sleep propped up on an ironing board all night. It was heart breaking.
There are other lighter and happier memories, though. Leone's immaculate housekeeping, her beautiful, enviable cakes she produced despite her complete lack of sense of smell or taste, her rightful pride in Jay, Norma, and Dora (who all went on to earn a college education). And Vern's willingness to respond to requests for him to sing ballads of the day, some tearful, some comical.
One cannot leave Vern's story without a sampling of the hilarious humor of his son Jay. At high school age he was six three or four and had feed to match his height. When asked one day what size shoe he wore, he responded, "I really take a nine but tens feel so good, I wear an eleven".
Jay's diminutive wife, Nell, who was survived his death twenty years, misses most his quik wit. Very ill in the hospital the night before he died, his darling Nell said she kissed Jay goodnight and said, "I love you, Jay". With a smile he promptly quipped, "You'll get over it".