Editors’ Notes

When we think of our grandparents, “Grandma and Grandpa,” we think of the saints we grew up knowing. Grandpa was bishop most of the pack’s childhood, stake president during our young adulthood, and after he decided he didn’t like being a general authority and absolutely despised The Rule Book and thus, Spencer W. Kimball for writing it, had himself demoted to stake patriarch for the rest of his life. Grandma held herself a bit aloof from the church. Oh, she went, supported Grandpa, reared all her children to be good Mormon girls and fostered a few girls who got “in trouble,” but she didn’t participate, preferring instead to discuss her thoughts with her journal. Aunt Ida, who found her place in the family and church, lived with them for the rest of her life.

We cannot bear to think of our grandparents as the people in these pages, so we distance ourselves by calling them “Marina” and “Trey,” two humans who weren’t really very likable sometimes.

Marina and Trey are not our grandparents.

They are our friends.

Grandma willed her and Grandpa’s journals and letters to her granddaughter Victoria LaMontagne Bautista, but they were not released to her until Bishop George and Sister Dorothy Christensen had died. Victoria did not want the family to have access to every word, but she felt everyone should know the bigger story. She knew what she wanted, but did not have the wherewithal to carry out her vision. She thought her cousin Giselle Cox Kenard might.

Thus we, Victoria and Giselle, have taken certain liberties with the raw journals. It really happened the way we compiled it, in order, with dates and locations and names left intact. We dramatized what was there, added nothing significant that wasn’t, but we did leave things out. Lots of things. Lots of things we would rather not know, but needed to to tell their story honestly. We needed to do right by Marina and Trey and our family.

Our mothers complained we left too much sex in and were too explicit and surely Marina couldn’t have been that detailed in her journals. Was Marina ever detailed! We told them they were lucky they didn’t have to read her grocery lists and decades-long internal debate over Fleischmann’s versus Red Star yeast.

Well, we like sex and with our upbringing, it was important to us to show how Marina came to like it too, to get over her shame, to go to Trey eagerly, and to miss it when he was away from her. We thought it rather romantic, especially once Marina dropped the pretense of the sweet tea and called their lovemaking extra-long hugs. We giggled like little girls and melted all over the pages.

As far as we can tell, they never expressed their love for each other in words beyond “best pal.” Maybe “best pals” was as good as it was going to get; maybe it was the time they lived in; maybe they didn’t have to say it to know.

We debated including the moment Trey nearly killed Ethel, as we were absolutely certain our mothers would not want to know this. We included it not because we wanted to show what a rotten bastard he was, but to show Marina at her finest moment. That Marina was not our fluffy little grandmother, but we—and our mothers—were happy to claim her.

Ethel lived in the house Marina bought for her until she died and the two of them were close friends all their lives. Trey never saw or spoke to her again, but he wrote often in his journals how much guilt and regret he carried for what he had done to her. Ethel renounced men altogether, changed her legal name to Wildflower (no last name), practiced devout Buddhism, became a hippy before there were hippies, and made her living teaching yoga and growing marijuana on the downlow. She babysat for single working mothers and baked cookies for the neighborhood children. Later in life, she traveled extensively. She was a beloved mentor to many people and Marina wrote that Ethel’s funeral was larger than any tent revival she had ever attended.

There were three things that shocked us all: 1) Bishop Christensen’s real name and history, which explained his singular ability to intimidate the hell out of Victoria and her siblings; 2) the circumstances under which Grandma and Grandpa joined the church and how many years it took for them to come to believe fully (if they ever really did); and biggest shock of all, 3) that Grandma really hated her Mamie pink kitchen and bathrooms, as well as all her kitschy knickknacks. She displayed them because they were gifts from people who loved her (including that hideous black velvet matador she unloaded on Victoria) (which Ethel gave her after a trip to Spain). But when you’ve got nine children, random pregnant girls to care for, a husband who’s a doctor and a bishop, then grandchildren running in and out constantly while you’re going to law school, then being an overworked and underpaid defense attorney while being told working outside the home is a sin for women, then finally landing on a bench with a gavel in your hand, you don’t have time or money to rehab your house.

It did not surprise our grandparents nor us that out of the nine children they had, one of them turned out to be just like Joyce Scarritt: conniving, manipulative, and vicious when trumped. Marina and Trey had no idea what to do with their seventh daughter, nor how to control her. They were not happy when Leona Hilliard’s son fell in love with her and married her despite all the warning signs. It shredded Marina and Leona’s friendship, and the despair in those pages is heartbreaking.

No one ever found out why Marina’s mother really committed suicide.

1520 Main stood for decades, serving as Lane Blueprint for half of those. In 2018, it was torn down and paved over.

This book is meant to be given as gifts to the Dunhams we know and love, and the ones we are always finding. It took us years to pull this together, as neither of us are writers.

Victoria is a linguist and teacher.

Giselle is a reader and critic.

We learned as we went, refined, adjusted, and finally hired an editor who tore it—and us—apart and made us start over again and again until all three of us were happy with it.

It was a labor of love for people we love, and we hope our dear, dear friends Marina and Trey would be happy with the way we told their story.