Grandma Tingey

My Grandmother passed away on Sunday and her funeral was held today. It was a beautiful service and it was wonderful to see cousins and family. I had the wonderful privilege of writing her life sketch (10 minutes, so don't feel like you have to read it, it's for family) it's posted at the bottom. I loved my Grandmother dearly, she was an amazing lady and a wonderful example. She will be missed. (All the rest of my pictures I'll post on mom's blog).









(Troy left after the services, with Victor, to Boys Camp)

Good morning
I’m grateful for this opportunity to speak to you about my grandmother today. When we moved back to Utah 5 years ago I had the wonderful opportunity every Monday to visit with Grandma, helping her put her pictures into photo albums and recording stories and some of her life history.

Grayce Estelle Major was born on September 14, 1922 in Kaysville, Utah to Robert Bruce Major and Pearl Estelle Burnett. She was the middle child of five, Paul and Virginia were older and Gloria and Bob younger. Grayce’s first challenge in life came when she was almost 3 years old. She had a terrible case of pneumonia and was in bed for weeks. She was told that they had to spoon feed her because she was so weak and that she had to learn to crawl and walk again after she was well.

She loved growing up in Kaysville. Grandma talked about the huge garden her father would grow every year and the games that they played around the yard. While in grade school her father started to raise chickens. So after school every day one of her jobs after school would be to clean and candle the eggs so that they could sell them. After a couple years it became a full time business for the family. At one time they had about three thousand chickens, so that would make for a lot of eggs to clean and sell.

Grandma was very involved in High School. She took speech classes (that she loved), went to all of the dances, performed in the school plays, and her senior year she was the Girls Association President and was involved in planning dances, parties and assemblies. This must have prepared her for the future, because she loved to have parties and could cook for hundreds. She also let it slip out one day that she skipped school a few times to go see Gone With the Wind. It was always one of her favorite films.

She was truly grateful for her friends. She said, “I was in with a really wonderful group of girls. It’s funny that we even got together. We were from Layton, Bountiful and Kaysville. We were great friends through school and then during the war, our husbands all went to war, so we started to get together once in a while and take the Bamberger and go into Salt Lake to see a show or something. We still meet two or three times a year for lunch. She loved these women and the women in her book group, that started up after world war 2. (They still get together and they got grandma through some of hard times in her life. She said that her family and friends are what kept her going after Grandpa passed).

Grandma couldn’t afford to go to college, but she attended the LDS Business College in SLC. She couldn’t pay tuition, so she would go out and do temp work for the school. When businesses would call looking for someone to fill in temporarily the school would send the girls that couldn’t pay tuition and the school would collect their pay. Grandma said it worked out great for her. By the time she graduated she had so much experience she got the first job she interviewed for.

It was at the business college that Grandma met Budd Tingey. Grandma said, “One day I was practicing for a program, singing in the auditorium, when Budd came into where we were practicing. I was sitting by a girl that he knew and he came over and sat on her lap and acted like a nut. She pinched him and said, “Pudge, get off me”, he told her she was beautiful and he was going to stay there, all the while winking at me. When he left I said, “Who in the world was that?” My friend said, “Oh, that’s Pudge Tingey”.

Well the thing of it was, and I learned this after I was married to him, from Aunt Lorretta. She told me that he came up to her house that day and said, “Ive found her, I’ve found her, I’ve found her”. And Aunt Lorretta said, “who have you found?” Budd told her the girl that I’m going to marry. Aunt Lorretta asked for her name and he told her that he didn’t know, but he was going to find out. A few days later Martha came home from school saying that a boy in her class, Budd Tingey, wanted her to get a group of kids together for a picnic at Mueller Park and she was to invite Grayce. Grandma told Martha that she thought Budd was an idiot and wasn’t going to go. So Budd wrote her a note on the side of a box. Grandma said,” I can’t even remember all of it, but at the end of it he said that I was invited to come and to be sure not to bring a swimming suit because we were going swimming. I just thought what a nut.” But I went and I had a lot of fun that night, I really did. He was really cute and I changed my attitude about him.” That date was on June 8, 1941 and they were married on October 24th, 1941 in the Salt Lake Temple.

They didn’t have much of a wedding. Grandpa was going deer hunting in October and worrying about being drafted, he proposed by saying, “ I think we should get married when I get home”. Grandma said, “Ok, what day?” and he said, “next Friday”. So, Grandpa got home Tuesday, they went to the temple Wednesday and were married on Friday. Aunt Luella gave them a quilt and her dad gave her some dishes. That’s all they had to start their happy life together.

Grandma fell in love with the Tingey family, pinochle and all. I guess when they got together they would play pinochle clear into the night. She loved to have friends and family in her home and would cook all day long to feed everyone. She loved to talk about her children and was incredibly proud of them. They had three wonderful boys, Darrell, Bruce and Curtis and one cherished daughter, Trina. Grandpa was stationed over seas about a year after they were married for two years. He then returned to New York for some training and ended up staying there. Grandma was able to move out there with him and she said that was one of their happiest years, poor as they were, because they were together. (On a lot of the backs of the pictures that grandma and grandpa took in NY after he was stationed overseas, they would say, “Our Happy Life” or “The best day of my life”. I believe they were really happy to be reunited).

Grandma was a hard worker and kept and incredibly clean home. She served wherever she was asked in the church and served about 20 years in Relief Society and another 20 in the Young Women program. She also taught Gospel Doctrine for many years, which she loved, she read everything she could about the history of the church and the gospel to prepare her for her lessons. One of her only callings in primary was teaching the 11 year old boys. Those boys had a record of only keeping a teacher for a month, so when she went into teach them, they tried to put her out the classroom window. Of course she didn’t put up with that and let them know it too. That class ended up being a lot of fun and she sure loved those boys. She said, “When we got home from the war we had an old junky car. It was a ford, but we couldn’t make it go very well and I’d take those boys places in it. We’d go on picnics, fly kites and stuff like that. We couldn’t make that car go and those kids would get out and push me to get it going. When I see them now they still talk about having to push the car to get it started.”

She loved the time she had with her husband and loved talking about the trips they took together before he passed on. Budd passed away on Sept 19, 1982, they had 41 wonderful years together. She truly loved and admired him. She loved his light heartedness and that he was always laughing and joking, she said it was a good balance for all of her worrying. After his passing she began traveling the world with friends and added some scripture classes to her daily schedule.

Still her favorite thing to talk about was her family. She said she spoiled her children, now I don’t know about that, but she definitely spoiled her grandchildren. She always had time for birthday lunches, shopping and presents. She would bring us treasures home from her travels. Her home was well stocked with treats and her purse never ran low on lifesavers, mints or gum. Thus, there was never an empty seat by grandma. She always had fresh bread and pies made and always left some dough for the grandkids to bake. As she got older she especially loved the great grandchildren. She could rock and love those babies for hours.

I feel very comfortable in saying that she lived a very full and happy life here on this earth and that she is just as happy being reunited with her loved ones who have passed before her. I loved her dearly and she will truly be missed.