Recently, I was editing an AI transcription of a cassette tape recorded by my mother in November of 1974.  My parents had moved to Virginia a couple of years earlier when my dad was stationed at Fort Eustis as a transportation officer in the United States Army.  Long distance phone calls were expensive so my mother would mail her mother “newsy” cassette tapes and her mother would respond in like manner.  

 

When Dad’s military service was completed, they accepted a job that took them to Herndon, Virginia and the tape tells of their participation in the “public viewing” for the newly completed Washington D.C. Temple that drew 758,000 people.  Dad and Mom participated in follow up visits to those who had requested more information after touring the temple and they were getting ready to take a turn cleaning the temple in anticipation of the dedication.  My mother’s thoughts flowed into the cassette tape, “I remember it used to bother me very much that in a very common statement, President McKay said, ‘No success can compensate for failure in the home,’ and I thought that’s true, and I know it is but what about the things that sometimes don’t happen…and I remember Elder Ashton giving a talk and he said that failure was when you gave up.” (Ann Summerhays, November 1974). In a simple sentence she bore witness of the continual hope of the gospel of Jesus Christ.