'We Could Wait No Longer'

William E Fox Jr and Marilyn Janice Craft Fox were interviewed near their 50th Anniversary. They were married on October 10, 1959 in the Montrose Presbyterian Church. In this section of the transcript, Papa and Munner are chatting about their sealing in the Salt Lake Temple, June 9, 1965.

M: Good to know that now (since they were baptized) we could have an eternal marriage and that was what we wanted.

Q: So what kind of plans did you have to make? (to be sealed in the temple - at that time, the Salt Lake Temple was the closest temple to Washington DC)

P: Well, again we don’t have a lot of money. I remember Munner used to make all of Sue’s dresses. And for Bill and for Sue we had a friend from our old Methodist Church that was well to do. And they would give us boxes of clothing. And their kids were just a little bit older than Bill and Sue. Many times in the box we would get would be clothes that still had the tags on. So, we were very blessed that way. We always felt that was like a tithing blessing; it was a way the Lord was helping us.

M: But in reality, when it came right down to it, we took every cent of money that we had in the world. Dad cashed in an insurance policy. That’s where our cash was and we took that to go to the Salt Lake Temple to be sealed.

P: $1,100 that policy yielded. And we had to buy our air tickets and we stayed in a motel in Salt Lake just south of the Temple. Covey’s Motor Inn. We knew when we would get home we would have a little bit to spend while we were there and we knew when we got home we would have no savings of any kind. So we were cutting it really close, but we knew this...a year had expired and we couldn’t go to the temple for one year. But now we were ready to go. We could wait no longer.

M: I love whenever Papa speaks he always talks of taking every cent of money that we had in the world. He says, “That was the best investment we ever made.” And when you look at the dividends that it has paid today, absolutely... It is the best investment...where our real earthly investments just this last year have disappeared.

P: Haha. Partially.

M: But what really matters is still in place.

P: Yep.

Q: So, you’re in the Salt Lake Temple. Tell me what you felt? How did it feel across the altar? Seeing Billy and Susie coming in?

P: Oh boy…

M: Wow…we’re in trouble here.

P: Yeah…haha.

M: You know, I don’t think…well…Boyd and Dorothy Lee fellowshipped us into the church really. And she was so helpful to me because she had been a Methodist and could understand a lot of questions I had as a new convert. She and her husband a long with several other couples, helped us prepare to go to the Temple. Well, Dorothy had been a secretary to Howard W. Hunter when he was an Attorney in California. So, she said, “I will arrange for Elder Hunter to be your sealer in the Salt Lake Temple.” We of course had no idea what an imposition this was on an Apostle’s time or really what it meant. We just knew that we wanted to be sealed forever. And so, it came time for our sealing and they said Elder Hunter’s out of town.

P: Wait, before we go on we have to go back. First, a couple of important things. Back then you didn’t enter the Salt Lake Temple like you would today. You would enter like an annex and you get down underneath and you’d walk through a long tunnel and then you’d come up inside the Temple. Now I can remember distinctly as we walked through the tunnel, I knew exactly (tears) when we were inside the walls of the Temple. That feeling will never leave me. I knew we’re in the Temple now. And then I remember to receive our endowment ordinance, someone took Bill and Sue. And then we didn’t see them for a couple of hours before we got to the Sealing Room. But I remember unlike our Temple now, walking through those beautiful rooms to receive the sacred ordinance. That we knew now that this was a saving ordinance, which had eternal covenants that we made. We didn’t understand the story, the overall ordinance much, but we knew we were making sacred covenants. That’s what we knew. That we had to be faithful to, or we would lose all of our promised blessings. So now we’ve been endowed and now they take us up to the sealing room and so then as Munner said, we’re told that Elder Hunter has been delayed and he was in South America and was late getting back. And I remember feeling, “Its okay.” We know the ordinances are going to be the same, we just want to be sealed. That’s okay. So do you want to?

M: Well I’ll never forget when the door of the sealing room opened and in came Elder Hunter - just the most magnificent white suit and just a spirit about him that I had never seen or felt before.

P: “Here is a living apostle.” That’s all I could think.

M: And I did not understand much. Very little about the endowment, but I felt the power of the Priesthood that he held. And then as they brought in you and Bill all dressed in white; little angels. (tears)

P: We had left them in street clothing. And I remember the door opening and here they came.

M: All white eyed.

P: Now they’re five and three. Five and three years old.

M: We knew as he pronounced those sacred words that we were a forever family and that those who would follow, although at that moment we didn’t know there were four others coming, but whoever might come would also be a part of our eternal unit. Never to be separated. (tears) It was the best investment we ever made.