Home of Lee Ross Christensen and wife Eva Lenora Parke

KATHY:  We started construction on the house we latter called “the white house” mid Spring 1934 and hoped to be in by school starting time or mid-September.  Construction was delayed during the summer when our two carpenters, Charles Jacobsen and Ferry Peterson took time away from our job to help build the CCC camp.   The Wright family did the cement work. Oscar Amundsen and Charles Christensen (Minnie Rutishauser’s father) did the brick work and the Bohne’s the plumbing and electrical.   And we moved in just before Thanksgiving 1934.

   Our architect was a Mr. Young from Salt Lake City and rumored within the family as a major architect on a number of LDS temples.  He was unhappy with what he considered three major mistakes by our builders.  The outside brick wall was to have been constructed with “weeping mortar” giving it a very rough look. While the mortaring is thicker than usual it is not weeping.    The exterior 2nd floor walls went into the roof line by about 8 inches and had been curved up to meet the roof.  That curving was to have been carried out thru out the 2^nd floor on the interior walls even though they did not need it to meet the roof. And the roof shingling was to have been given a wavy effect (I never knew how). 

   Our family lived here for 10 happy years with these artistic mistakes until we sold in 1945 to the incoming Superintend of Schools.     lee

Lee R. Christensen Adds Further Information About Lieut. Dick Ericksen

And our Friend Lee  R. Christensen adds:

  Dick Ericksen was one of three Mt Pleasant boys who learned to fly in 1938/39 and the three may be the first locals who learned to flyt;. The three, Dick, Leon Holman and Don Nielson , all 1938 high school grads took flying lessons thru Snow College sponsored by the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 which may also have paid for the Mt Pleasant airport completed 1938.

Both Dick and Don went on to become military pilots flying for the Army Air Corp . Leon was heard to say "Had I been born to fly I would have had feathers:" and was not known to have flown other than as a passenger ever again.

Dick was well known as a "flyer" around Mt Pleasant years before he took flying lessons;. In the 1930s both grocery stores, Erickson's and Johanson's, delivered their groceries to your kitchen door. Dick was the driver for Ericksons and probably started at age 14 or earlier;. State street was un paved and mostly ungraded until summer of 1938 and was the rub a dub champion of the streets universe;. Dick was well known for driving it at high speeds hoping to just brush the tops of the washboard ridges;. No one did it better than Dick;. But good as he was he frequently broke every egg in his delivery.