Floyd Alonzo Brown
Mina and Floyd wedding picture
I, Floyd Alonzo Brown, was born 17 February, 1903 to Stephen Alonzo and Birtha Teresa Reynolds Brown, in Thatcher, Arizona where my parents lived.
A few days before I was born, my father Stephen Alonzo had a dream and saw me as a little boy with my arms around his neck, and when he awakened he wept for joy that he was going to have a boy.
My grandmother Lora Ann Taylor Brown lived with my parents Stephen Alonzo and Teresa Brown. One day grandma suddenly had some red spots on her hands and arms. They soon knew it was small pox. Before long, the whole family had red spots. I was around ten days of age when I contracted small pox.
Because of the disease, my mother lost all of her hair; it affected her hearing also. When her hair came back in it was silver. She formerly had dark hair, and her children always saw her with silver hair.
I am told I was one large “scab” (as grandma would say) with two bright button eyes when they were open. We all got over it, and my pock marks gradually diminished as I grew older. My children did not know of my pock marks because they were so faint and hardly showed by the time they were born.
A little more than a year later I got a little brother, Delbert Ray. However he lived only a year and died from diphtheria.
We then moved back to Luna, New Mexico, where two sisters were born, Reita and Isabell, in 1906 and 1907. My parents took the three of us by rail to Salt Lake City, and we were sealed in the Temple there.
1909 finds us in Thatcher again where Wanda is born in May. Later that year my sisters Reita and Isabell contracted diphtheria and died one month apart. Wanda also became ill and grandma told grandpa we needed to go back to Luna or we were going to lose all of our children.
We went to Virden and Grandpa and Grandma Johns took care of Wanda who had become increasingly ill. It was decided to go back to Thatcher because Aunt Wanda might not be able to make it to Luna. So the next spring we left Thatcher and went back to Luna and here Fern was born in 1911.
In January 1913 Pratt was born, and when he was only a couple of months old, our father was called on a mission to the Central States Mission. While he loved his family, his devotion to God influenced his desire to go on this mission.
While he was gone, Mother, I, Wanda, Fern and Pratt were home with my grandmother Lora Ann Taylor Brown. Mother was devout to this experience and in great support of our Father. Our mother had just turned thirty years of age, had buried three children and had four to take care of. I was in the fourth grade when dad left and in sixth grade when he came home.
It was my twelfth year when I shot my first deer. So I helped bring home the venison.
Two years later I went to St. Johns to attend High School. When I came home for Christmas, I did not like being gone from my family, so I did not go back to High School. I turned fifteen the next month and worked with my father in cattle ranching and farming. I also worked road construction during the next five years off and on, and this was when I learned the skill of using dynamite in removing large rocks and trees from the road path.
One day I felt if I got behind a tree, I did not have to go so far away during the explosion. So I got behind a not so large tree and when the blast came, a rock sailed through the air and hit the trunk of the tree which was even with my head. Though I was not physically hurt, after that I went the distance we usually went to be safe.
I loved cutting (separating an animal out of a herd to be branded) cattle when we were doing ranching work. We would cut out the unbranded ones, rope them, and then brand them. I became quite good at this having learned from my father. Fifty years later one of dad’s cousins told my oldest living son at a Brown reunion about this.
Stephen Alonzo came home from his mission, and what a joyous reunion it was for us. While perhaps he did not mention it, four months before he came home, a young missionary from Thatcher Stake came into the Mission Field. He was President Andrew Kimball’s son, Spencer W. Kimball.
I loved chasing wild horses on the range and in the forest. Something that upset my Dad and me both was that others who loved doing this would sometimes set up barb wire to block the brummies as they ran to get away. When they hit the barb wire it tore gashes in their withers (chest/shoulders), compromising their ability to run, thus making it easier to catch them.
On the construction crews, I picked up the habit of smoking. When I was nineteen we went to a Stake Conference in St. Johns, and a returned Lady Missionary reported her Mission. She so impressed me that I knew I wanted to go on a Mission. So I prepared myself, and in 1923 I went to Salt Lake City, got my endowments, and then went by train to Chicago, Illinois to serve in the North Central States Mission. When I left home, I was saying goodbye to my family, I saw my father and was impressed that I would not see him standing straight and tall again.
We were on the train a couple or so days. There was one Lady Missionary and two other Elders. All were college graduates. They were discussing the Gospel so fluently on the way. This cowboy did not have much to say.
When we got there, it was Sunday. The mission president, President McKay (David O. McKay’s brother) picked us up at the railroad station, and we went directly to the rented place where church was held for the Sacrament Meeting. I was the last speaker. After the three other missionaries spoke so well, I got up and managed words, something like this…“Brothers and Sisters, I just do not know what to say.” And then I sat down. After the closing song and prayer, I went right down the aisle, into the area of our overcoats and suitcases, and I was quickly out the door!
The Mission President, who had followed me, said something like this. “Elder Brown, what are you going to do?” My reply was, “I am going to find that railroad station, and I am going back home.” His reply was, “You can do that. However you have gone to some expense to get here. If you would like to try it a couple of weeks and still want to go home, you can.”
I did try it, and I stayed. I was not in the first branch very long when I was asked to sing a duet with a sister in the branch. She was a soprano, and I was a tenor. Early on, I had a companion, another cowboy, from Snowflake, Arizona: Elder Eugene Flake, age 27. When Eugene was in his 80s at Aunt Fern’s home, he told of these things to my son Dewaine. “Your dad did not like giving out pamphlets at the factories as the shift change and hundreds of men were on their way home, but when he got in their homes, one on one, the people loved him. A whole family joined the Church and later moved to Idaho.” This is noteable, because some missionaries did not baptize one person. In those days it was difficult and eighty or so years before the Church had been driven from the state of Illinois.
While I was a missionary, my father Stephen fell from a wagon and pulled his leg out of the hip socket, as well as splintering one of the bones from hip to knee; it was determined the next spring that I go home to help take care of dad’s business of cattle and farms. So in May 1924, after fifteen months, I left to go home. I surely hoped I could come back and finish, but it was not so. Later in life I expressed to my children my hope of their mother and I going on a mission after they were grown and gone.
My mission had shrunk my shyness, and when I saw my father, in his condition, I told him we needed to get him to a doctor who could make some recommendations. So, the two of us, in a wagon, went to Lordsburg, New Mexico by way of the mining town Silver City. This took several days.
When the doctor analyzed things, he told my father, “We can re-break the splintered bone and put them back together correctly. Then we would scrape the hip socket and insert the hip ball back into the socket.” My father then told me, “No man is going to put a knife on me. Take me home Floyd.”
As we were leaving Lordsburg outskirts, the road came to a “Y”. The right went to Silver City and back to Luna; the left went to Virden and the Gila Valley where there was an eighty acre farm Dad had bought (in 1909) with gold coins from his chuck box. This had been rented by Grandpa Johns for several years.
I told my Dad, “If it is up to me to make a living, it will be easier in Virden than Luna.” I did not know freighting, which is what Dad made most of his income from. So we went to Virden and made arrangements to take the farm back from Grandpa Johns. We also made arrangements to buy the Houlihan house above the ditch, along with ranching areas in the hills above it.
We went back to Luna and sold the two homes we had there, as well as farm acreage and a small ranch where we had white face cattle and horses. This was completed in August some three months later, and with two wagons we moved to Virden.
As we came into the Virden community, we had learned we could buy some hay for our horses at the Peter Mortensen place. So we stopped there and did so. (Their son Marion, who was about ten then, helped us and told my kids this story many years later.) Also in this home was a twenty-two year old girl with a beautiful voice by the name of Elmina, who went by the name of Mina. I did not meet her that day.
I shortly returned to Luna and drove our stock down to Virden. Driving horses and cows together is very difficult, so I trotted the horses a few miles down the road and hobbled them. (Legs tied together to keep them from moving fast.) I then rode a fresh horse back to where the cattle were, and then riding another fresh horse that I had left there hobbled by the cows, I drove the cattle down to where the horses were. I did this every day for about two weeks as it was slow. I was twenty-one at the time.
We lived in the Houlihan House until we could build a new house on the north end of the eighty acres. This new house was for Dad and Mom. For ten or so years we farmed and ran a few cattle in the hills.
After settling in the Houlihan house, we always went to Church in the Virden Ward. Mina Mortensen and I sang a duet by assignment, and then we began dating.
In a couple of years on September 9th 1926, Mina and I were married, and we went to be sealed in the Salt Lake Temple. Mina’s sister Dorothy and her husband Parley Jones were sealed then too. Parley drove his mother’s (Laura) automobile; she accompanied us. We went by way of Needles, California, through Las Vegas, Nevada and camped out up on Cedar Mountain by Cedar Breaks. We then went to visit some relatives of Aunt Laura Payne Jones, Uncle Parley’s mother, in and around Richfield, Glenwood and Manti, Utah area. We too had relatives in this area, Mary Ann Brown Buchanan, sister to my Grandfather Neuman Brown, who had many children and grandchildren in this area.
When we got to the Salt Lake Temple, we found it was closed for cleaning, so we went to the Logan Temple, and there we were sealed.
After Logan, drove to Idaho to visit relatives of Parley. While there we met the family I had baptized in Illinois. This was a nice experience. We also picked up potatoes to help pay for the return trip to Virden.
Mina and I set up housekeeping in a house across the Gila River from the Johns property for a short while. Then when Grandpa’s house was built we moved into the Houlihan House. Illene, Dewitt, Dewaine, Steve, Cam and Ferneth lived in this house.
In 1931 while living in the Houlihan House, we lost our sweet 2-year old Dewitt who was found drowned in a ditch. Bishop Junius Payne and his son Ed were the ones that found him in the ditch above their field.
In 1937 we moved to the Cosper place for a short while. While here Colleen was born, and we then moved to the house on Gila Street. Later in 1937, Illene, along with three others in the fourth grade, got Typhoid Fever from a bad inoculation experience. Illene Brown and Clara Smith both died from this experience.
In 1934-35 I bought an International ton and one half truck, and for about four or five years did freighting. I did fairly well, and by 1938 we had saved enough money to buy a small farm west of Virden. I freighted hay and grain as well as potatoes and onions to wholesale houses in El Paso, Magdalena, Globe and Phoenix. Being gone from home was not what we wanted, so when we got the farm I also became the ditch boss to supplement our farm income. Our farm was half mesquites and half farming acreage.
When the county wanted to straighten out the road from the upper bridge across the Gila to the Arizona line they wanted to cut through our mesquite acreage. I liked that and gave them right of way as long as all of the mesquites were removed and land flattened so we could farm it. Rube Gale drove the cat that did the clearing and a Brother Andersen cut up the mesquite and sold it for firewood to people in the community.
In 1927 I was ordained a Seventy, and the Stake Quorum of Seventy had a men’s singing group directed by Spencer W. Kimball. I enjoyed his company as we both were in the tenor section.
In 1943 the need for more acreage came, and I went to Kirtland, New Mexico and bought a sixty-acre farm with a house on it. In a few months I also bought forty acres with a small house below the road from our house. A man wanted to buy the house on an acre or two, so we sold that off from the lower farm.
Within a couple of years I became a counselor to Bishop Beckstead. My assignment was over the youth and scouting. I had experience in the Virden Ward on the Scout Committee in 1927, so this helped and the Scouting program began to be more effective. At this time I also was called to be a Counselor to Alex Bloomfield in the Stake High Priest Quorum of the Young Stake.
About a year after becoming a counselor in the Bishopric, Mina began loosing weight and upon examination by a Doctor from Albuquerque found she had breast cancer. She had it operated on, but one year later it had gone to her liver and she passed away from this disease. She was taken back to Virden for burial in February 1947.
About two months before her death, we as a Bishopric went to Mesa to go through the Temple. In the Temple I saw in my mind’s eye an open grave, and my mind asked whose grave it was. Mina’s name came into my mind. About a month after that the Doctor confirmed her illness was terminal.
Getting along without Mina, though difficult, helped me to appreciate her very much. She had been a great mother to our children and a very supportive wife. If I expect to be with her, I need to be a righteous person.
About a year later I had increasing pains in my stomach. I thought it was ulcers, but did not want a stomach operation. My doctor stated it might be diseased appendix and recommended an operation. Upon the operation, the incision moved from the appendix to the entire stomach area. I had adhesion of the intestines; they had become infected. These adhesions undoubtedly were caused by an automobile accident, wherein I had cracked ribs in 1939. About twelve inches of the intestines were taken out. The walls were not strong and the sutures did not hold well. A second operation was done, but it did not help. In a short time I succumbed to perhaps acid leaking upon my pancreas which brought my death.
Account of Floyd Brown by his son, Dewaine Brown
Our dad, Floyd Alonzo Brown, was buried in Virden next to Mom, Elmina Mortensen Brown, in November 1948.
While I did not think about it at the time, as his son, I Dewaine, can remember him saying, a few weeks before his operation, in a contemplative way, “I think all the things in my Patriarchal Blessing have been fulfilled.”
Our Mother Elmina Mortensen was born in Colonial Diaz twenty miles south of the border of Mexico from Dog Springs Trading Post in the boot of New Mexico. When she was nearly ten years old the fight between Poncho Villa and the Red Flaggers caused the saints to leave Mexico. The Mortensens along with 800 other people fled. Shortly after their homes and barns were burned, and all they had was what they took with them to last them a few days, feeling they would be able to return.
After two years a group of families from Mexico, put a down payment on a piece of land on the Gila River. This community became known as Virden. This is where Mina grew to adulthood. They went to the Gila Academy for High School. While there the flu epidemic was rampant and for a while they refrained from group meetings — even funerals. The Stake President's son Spencer Kimball was asked to conduct a graveside funeral. Spencer gave the prayers and talk. He often had Mina and her sister Dorothy sing a couple of songs as a duet. Mina had a beautiful soprano voice and Dorothy was alto.
Mina worked in the Relief Society, Primary and Sunday School. She was most noted for her beautiful soprano voice. On one occasion she sang a solo in Stake Conference. She was rather quiet, not one to talk a lot, but a great mother and example to us as children. Through the years as we have on occasion seen people from the Virden area, almost without exception, reference was made to Mina's beautiful voice.
Aunt Jane Mortensen said of her. “Mina was patient and would take time to rock her children in her rocking chair. I myself had a struggle doing that, but Mina did it faithfully.” It is noted before Mina's daughter's death, Colleen stated, “I want to be rocked by my Mother again.”
A few days before I was born, my father Stephen Alonzo had a dream and saw me as a little boy with my arms around his neck, and when he awakened he wept for joy that he was going to have a boy.
My grandmother Lora Ann Taylor Brown lived with my parents Stephen Alonzo and Teresa Brown. One day grandma suddenly had some red spots on her hands and arms. They soon knew it was small pox. Before long, the whole family had red spots. I was around ten days of age when I contracted small pox.
Because of the disease, my mother lost all of her hair; it affected her hearing also. When her hair came back in it was silver. She formerly had dark hair, and her children always saw her with silver hair.
I am told I was one large “scab” (as grandma would say) with two bright button eyes when they were open. We all got over it, and my pock marks gradually diminished as I grew older. My children did not know of my pock marks because they were so faint and hardly showed by the time they were born.
A little more than a year later I got a little brother, Delbert Ray. However he lived only a year and died from diphtheria.
We then moved back to Luna, New Mexico, where two sisters were born, Reita and Isabell, in 1906 and 1907. My parents took the three of us by rail to Salt Lake City, and we were sealed in the Temple there.
1909 finds us in Thatcher again where Wanda is born in May. Later that year my sisters Reita and Isabell contracted diphtheria and died one month apart. Wanda also became ill and grandma told grandpa we needed to go back to Luna or we were going to lose all of our children.
We went to Virden and Grandpa and Grandma Johns took care of Wanda who had become increasingly ill. It was decided to go back to Thatcher because Aunt Wanda might not be able to make it to Luna. So the next spring we left Thatcher and went back to Luna and here Fern was born in 1911.
In January 1913 Pratt was born, and when he was only a couple of months old, our father was called on a mission to the Central States Mission. While he loved his family, his devotion to God influenced his desire to go on this mission.
While he was gone, Mother, I, Wanda, Fern and Pratt were home with my grandmother Lora Ann Taylor Brown. Mother was devout to this experience and in great support of our Father. Our mother had just turned thirty years of age, had buried three children and had four to take care of. I was in the fourth grade when dad left and in sixth grade when he came home.
It was my twelfth year when I shot my first deer. So I helped bring home the venison.
Two years later I went to St. Johns to attend High School. When I came home for Christmas, I did not like being gone from my family, so I did not go back to High School. I turned fifteen the next month and worked with my father in cattle ranching and farming. I also worked road construction during the next five years off and on, and this was when I learned the skill of using dynamite in removing large rocks and trees from the road path.
One day I felt if I got behind a tree, I did not have to go so far away during the explosion. So I got behind a not so large tree and when the blast came, a rock sailed through the air and hit the trunk of the tree which was even with my head. Though I was not physically hurt, after that I went the distance we usually went to be safe.
I loved cutting (separating an animal out of a herd to be branded) cattle when we were doing ranching work. We would cut out the unbranded ones, rope them, and then brand them. I became quite good at this having learned from my father. Fifty years later one of dad’s cousins told my oldest living son at a Brown reunion about this.
Stephen Alonzo came home from his mission, and what a joyous reunion it was for us. While perhaps he did not mention it, four months before he came home, a young missionary from Thatcher Stake came into the Mission Field. He was President Andrew Kimball’s son, Spencer W. Kimball.
I loved chasing wild horses on the range and in the forest. Something that upset my Dad and me both was that others who loved doing this would sometimes set up barb wire to block the brummies as they ran to get away. When they hit the barb wire it tore gashes in their withers (chest/shoulders), compromising their ability to run, thus making it easier to catch them.
On the construction crews, I picked up the habit of smoking. When I was nineteen we went to a Stake Conference in St. Johns, and a returned Lady Missionary reported her Mission. She so impressed me that I knew I wanted to go on a Mission. So I prepared myself, and in 1923 I went to Salt Lake City, got my endowments, and then went by train to Chicago, Illinois to serve in the North Central States Mission. When I left home, I was saying goodbye to my family, I saw my father and was impressed that I would not see him standing straight and tall again.
We were on the train a couple or so days. There was one Lady Missionary and two other Elders. All were college graduates. They were discussing the Gospel so fluently on the way. This cowboy did not have much to say.
When we got there, it was Sunday. The mission president, President McKay (David O. McKay’s brother) picked us up at the railroad station, and we went directly to the rented place where church was held for the Sacrament Meeting. I was the last speaker. After the three other missionaries spoke so well, I got up and managed words, something like this…“Brothers and Sisters, I just do not know what to say.” And then I sat down. After the closing song and prayer, I went right down the aisle, into the area of our overcoats and suitcases, and I was quickly out the door!
The Mission President, who had followed me, said something like this. “Elder Brown, what are you going to do?” My reply was, “I am going to find that railroad station, and I am going back home.” His reply was, “You can do that. However you have gone to some expense to get here. If you would like to try it a couple of weeks and still want to go home, you can.”
I did try it, and I stayed. I was not in the first branch very long when I was asked to sing a duet with a sister in the branch. She was a soprano, and I was a tenor. Early on, I had a companion, another cowboy, from Snowflake, Arizona: Elder Eugene Flake, age 27. When Eugene was in his 80s at Aunt Fern’s home, he told of these things to my son Dewaine. “Your dad did not like giving out pamphlets at the factories as the shift change and hundreds of men were on their way home, but when he got in their homes, one on one, the people loved him. A whole family joined the Church and later moved to Idaho.” This is noteable, because some missionaries did not baptize one person. In those days it was difficult and eighty or so years before the Church had been driven from the state of Illinois.
While I was a missionary, my father Stephen fell from a wagon and pulled his leg out of the hip socket, as well as splintering one of the bones from hip to knee; it was determined the next spring that I go home to help take care of dad’s business of cattle and farms. So in May 1924, after fifteen months, I left to go home. I surely hoped I could come back and finish, but it was not so. Later in life I expressed to my children my hope of their mother and I going on a mission after they were grown and gone.
My mission had shrunk my shyness, and when I saw my father, in his condition, I told him we needed to get him to a doctor who could make some recommendations. So, the two of us, in a wagon, went to Lordsburg, New Mexico by way of the mining town Silver City. This took several days.
When the doctor analyzed things, he told my father, “We can re-break the splintered bone and put them back together correctly. Then we would scrape the hip socket and insert the hip ball back into the socket.” My father then told me, “No man is going to put a knife on me. Take me home Floyd.”
As we were leaving Lordsburg outskirts, the road came to a “Y”. The right went to Silver City and back to Luna; the left went to Virden and the Gila Valley where there was an eighty acre farm Dad had bought (in 1909) with gold coins from his chuck box. This had been rented by Grandpa Johns for several years.
I told my Dad, “If it is up to me to make a living, it will be easier in Virden than Luna.” I did not know freighting, which is what Dad made most of his income from. So we went to Virden and made arrangements to take the farm back from Grandpa Johns. We also made arrangements to buy the Houlihan house above the ditch, along with ranching areas in the hills above it.
We went back to Luna and sold the two homes we had there, as well as farm acreage and a small ranch where we had white face cattle and horses. This was completed in August some three months later, and with two wagons we moved to Virden.
As we came into the Virden community, we had learned we could buy some hay for our horses at the Peter Mortensen place. So we stopped there and did so. (Their son Marion, who was about ten then, helped us and told my kids this story many years later.) Also in this home was a twenty-two year old girl with a beautiful voice by the name of Elmina, who went by the name of Mina. I did not meet her that day.
I shortly returned to Luna and drove our stock down to Virden. Driving horses and cows together is very difficult, so I trotted the horses a few miles down the road and hobbled them. (Legs tied together to keep them from moving fast.) I then rode a fresh horse back to where the cattle were, and then riding another fresh horse that I had left there hobbled by the cows, I drove the cattle down to where the horses were. I did this every day for about two weeks as it was slow. I was twenty-one at the time.
We lived in the Houlihan House until we could build a new house on the north end of the eighty acres. This new house was for Dad and Mom. For ten or so years we farmed and ran a few cattle in the hills.
After settling in the Houlihan house, we always went to Church in the Virden Ward. Mina Mortensen and I sang a duet by assignment, and then we began dating.
In a couple of years on September 9th 1926, Mina and I were married, and we went to be sealed in the Salt Lake Temple. Mina’s sister Dorothy and her husband Parley Jones were sealed then too. Parley drove his mother’s (Laura) automobile; she accompanied us. We went by way of Needles, California, through Las Vegas, Nevada and camped out up on Cedar Mountain by Cedar Breaks. We then went to visit some relatives of Aunt Laura Payne Jones, Uncle Parley’s mother, in and around Richfield, Glenwood and Manti, Utah area. We too had relatives in this area, Mary Ann Brown Buchanan, sister to my Grandfather Neuman Brown, who had many children and grandchildren in this area.
When we got to the Salt Lake Temple, we found it was closed for cleaning, so we went to the Logan Temple, and there we were sealed.
After Logan, drove to Idaho to visit relatives of Parley. While there we met the family I had baptized in Illinois. This was a nice experience. We also picked up potatoes to help pay for the return trip to Virden.
Mina and I set up housekeeping in a house across the Gila River from the Johns property for a short while. Then when Grandpa’s house was built we moved into the Houlihan House. Illene, Dewitt, Dewaine, Steve, Cam and Ferneth lived in this house.
In 1931 while living in the Houlihan House, we lost our sweet 2-year old Dewitt who was found drowned in a ditch. Bishop Junius Payne and his son Ed were the ones that found him in the ditch above their field.
In 1937 we moved to the Cosper place for a short while. While here Colleen was born, and we then moved to the house on Gila Street. Later in 1937, Illene, along with three others in the fourth grade, got Typhoid Fever from a bad inoculation experience. Illene Brown and Clara Smith both died from this experience.
In 1934-35 I bought an International ton and one half truck, and for about four or five years did freighting. I did fairly well, and by 1938 we had saved enough money to buy a small farm west of Virden. I freighted hay and grain as well as potatoes and onions to wholesale houses in El Paso, Magdalena, Globe and Phoenix. Being gone from home was not what we wanted, so when we got the farm I also became the ditch boss to supplement our farm income. Our farm was half mesquites and half farming acreage.
When the county wanted to straighten out the road from the upper bridge across the Gila to the Arizona line they wanted to cut through our mesquite acreage. I liked that and gave them right of way as long as all of the mesquites were removed and land flattened so we could farm it. Rube Gale drove the cat that did the clearing and a Brother Andersen cut up the mesquite and sold it for firewood to people in the community.
In 1927 I was ordained a Seventy, and the Stake Quorum of Seventy had a men’s singing group directed by Spencer W. Kimball. I enjoyed his company as we both were in the tenor section.
In 1943 the need for more acreage came, and I went to Kirtland, New Mexico and bought a sixty-acre farm with a house on it. In a few months I also bought forty acres with a small house below the road from our house. A man wanted to buy the house on an acre or two, so we sold that off from the lower farm.
Within a couple of years I became a counselor to Bishop Beckstead. My assignment was over the youth and scouting. I had experience in the Virden Ward on the Scout Committee in 1927, so this helped and the Scouting program began to be more effective. At this time I also was called to be a Counselor to Alex Bloomfield in the Stake High Priest Quorum of the Young Stake.
About a year after becoming a counselor in the Bishopric, Mina began loosing weight and upon examination by a Doctor from Albuquerque found she had breast cancer. She had it operated on, but one year later it had gone to her liver and she passed away from this disease. She was taken back to Virden for burial in February 1947.
About two months before her death, we as a Bishopric went to Mesa to go through the Temple. In the Temple I saw in my mind’s eye an open grave, and my mind asked whose grave it was. Mina’s name came into my mind. About a month after that the Doctor confirmed her illness was terminal.
Getting along without Mina, though difficult, helped me to appreciate her very much. She had been a great mother to our children and a very supportive wife. If I expect to be with her, I need to be a righteous person.
About a year later I had increasing pains in my stomach. I thought it was ulcers, but did not want a stomach operation. My doctor stated it might be diseased appendix and recommended an operation. Upon the operation, the incision moved from the appendix to the entire stomach area. I had adhesion of the intestines; they had become infected. These adhesions undoubtedly were caused by an automobile accident, wherein I had cracked ribs in 1939. About twelve inches of the intestines were taken out. The walls were not strong and the sutures did not hold well. A second operation was done, but it did not help. In a short time I succumbed to perhaps acid leaking upon my pancreas which brought my death.
Account of Floyd Brown by his son, Dewaine Brown
Our dad, Floyd Alonzo Brown, was buried in Virden next to Mom, Elmina Mortensen Brown, in November 1948.
While I did not think about it at the time, as his son, I Dewaine, can remember him saying, a few weeks before his operation, in a contemplative way, “I think all the things in my Patriarchal Blessing have been fulfilled.”
Our Mother Elmina Mortensen was born in Colonial Diaz twenty miles south of the border of Mexico from Dog Springs Trading Post in the boot of New Mexico. When she was nearly ten years old the fight between Poncho Villa and the Red Flaggers caused the saints to leave Mexico. The Mortensens along with 800 other people fled. Shortly after their homes and barns were burned, and all they had was what they took with them to last them a few days, feeling they would be able to return.
After two years a group of families from Mexico, put a down payment on a piece of land on the Gila River. This community became known as Virden. This is where Mina grew to adulthood. They went to the Gila Academy for High School. While there the flu epidemic was rampant and for a while they refrained from group meetings — even funerals. The Stake President's son Spencer Kimball was asked to conduct a graveside funeral. Spencer gave the prayers and talk. He often had Mina and her sister Dorothy sing a couple of songs as a duet. Mina had a beautiful soprano voice and Dorothy was alto.
Mina worked in the Relief Society, Primary and Sunday School. She was most noted for her beautiful soprano voice. On one occasion she sang a solo in Stake Conference. She was rather quiet, not one to talk a lot, but a great mother and example to us as children. Through the years as we have on occasion seen people from the Virden area, almost without exception, reference was made to Mina's beautiful voice.
Aunt Jane Mortensen said of her. “Mina was patient and would take time to rock her children in her rocking chair. I myself had a struggle doing that, but Mina did it faithfully.” It is noted before Mina's daughter's death, Colleen stated, “I want to be rocked by my Mother again.”
Information for Floyd Alonzo Brown
Parents: Stephen Alonzo Brown & Bertha Teresa Reynolds
Birth: 17 Feb 1903
Place: Thatcher, AZ
Married: 9 Sept 1926
Place: Virden, NM
Sealed: 22 Sept 1926
Place: Logan Temple, Logan UT
Died:1 Nov 1948
Place: Farmington, NM
Buried: Virden, NM
Spouse: Elmina Mortensen
Birth: 1 Sept 1902
Place: Colonial Diaz, Chihuahua, Mexico
Died: 18 Feb 1947
Place: Kirtland, NM
Buried: Virden, NM
Parents: Peter Mortensen & Mary Kathryn Anderson
Children
Ilene (14 Sep 1927 – 31 Oct 1937)
Dewitt Floyd (2 Jan 1929 – 17 Apr 1931)
Dewaine Martin (18 Jul 1930 – present)
Stephen LaVere (8 Jun 1932 – present)
Cameron Lavon (6 Jul 1933 – present)
Ferneth (2 Sep 1934 – present)
Colleen (6 Jun 1937 - 7 Nov 1999)
Rita (20 Apr 1943 – present)
Birth: 17 Feb 1903
Place: Thatcher, AZ
Married: 9 Sept 1926
Place: Virden, NM
Sealed: 22 Sept 1926
Place: Logan Temple, Logan UT
Died:1 Nov 1948
Place: Farmington, NM
Buried: Virden, NM
Spouse: Elmina Mortensen
Birth: 1 Sept 1902
Place: Colonial Diaz, Chihuahua, Mexico
Died: 18 Feb 1947
Place: Kirtland, NM
Buried: Virden, NM
Parents: Peter Mortensen & Mary Kathryn Anderson
Children
Ilene (14 Sep 1927 – 31 Oct 1937)
Dewitt Floyd (2 Jan 1929 – 17 Apr 1931)
Dewaine Martin (18 Jul 1930 – present)
Stephen LaVere (8 Jun 1932 – present)
Cameron Lavon (6 Jul 1933 – present)
Ferneth (2 Sep 1934 – present)
Colleen (6 Jun 1937 - 7 Nov 1999)
Rita (20 Apr 1943 – present)