Our Life in St. Johns by Elynn Badger

Bob got hired on at Salt River Project Coronado Generating Station when it first opened up in 1977, and I was so excited. We had been living in Rock Springs, Wyoming, which was so far away from family. With this new job, we would be coming back to Arizona! Bob had been applying to places in Utah where his parents lived, but nothing worked out for us there. So we packed up our two kids, Robert & Jennifer, and moved to Snowflake where I grew up. Bob commuted to St. Johns to work, but the road between Snowflake and Concho was still dirt then, and there weren’t very good fences or cattle guards yet so when they put Bob on shift work, I said, “That’s it, we’re moving to St. Johns!”

 

Even though I loved living in Snowflake where my roots run deep, and where my parents lived, I wanted more for our kids. I wanted them to have more time with their daddy than to have him on that road driving two extra hours every day. So we started looking for a house in St. Johns. We wanted a whole bunch of kids, so we chose the first four-bedroom home that was being built out in “Sunset Acres”.  Bob said he figured we’d live in St. Johns for a couple of years and then we would move on. 

My family was sad to have us move, but my mother couldn’t say anything negative about St. Johns. She only said, “I know there are good people in St. Johns, too.” My grandfather said, “You just need to know that in St. Johns, if your children don’t show signs of being a good athlete by the time they are five, they take them out and drown them!” My dad was sorry when he saw that we wouldn’t be in a ward with more of the older folks in town. He wanted us to have a better chance to get to know them. Bob’s grandpa was excited for us to move to St. Johns where his father, Miles Park Romney, had lived in the early days, but he had to flee to Mexico with his family in 1885 to avoid persecution for plural marriage.  There are no coincidences. The Lord had led us here and maybe we could finish where Bob’s great- grandparents began.

We have been richly blessed here. Bob moved up in the company even without a degree and really enjoys his work. He also found he could do lots of things in the country that he couldn’t do in the city, and he learned to love living here. He also loves working with the young men in Scouting. I worked with wonderful ladies and children in Primary and Relief Society. The last several years I have been blessed to work at the Family History Center. I have come to know lots of wonderful people in our Stake that I ordinarily would have never had the opportunity to meet without my calling. We have also been very blessed to raise our kids here. They had so many opportunities to learn and grow and associate with good people. We appreciate all of the good teachers and leaders whose efforts and caring helped us raise our children. We are so grateful that our kids could be involved in music (band, orchestra, and choir), drama, and sports. We felt safe knowing that others really cared about our kids and wanted them to succeed. Our kids had good friends who we trusted, and we knew their parents.

In these past almost 38 years that we’ve lived here, we have come to love the way of life here. We love going to the Post Office where we can meet and greet all kinds of friends and maybe stop and visit a while. I’ve always appreciated that we can get anywhere in town in just five minutes! We always took our kids to the Fine Arts events, which were such a bargain. We’ve bragged to others about the quaintness of Town Square Theater that had a wood stove for heating and the movies had the bad parts edited out by a card being held over the projector. We love all of the traditions that St. Johns carries on.  The Apache County fairs are great. It was great fun helping our kids enter their creations every year.  Pioneer Day Celebrations are the BEST. The Ice Cream Social, the Campfire Circle, and Parades are favorite activities. We enjoy having all four seasons in St. Johns. We thank everyone who has helped us in raising our family. We love St. Johns.