Playing a bit before heading to the church.
Here is the life sketch Cynthia gave:
NaDene was born on May 19, 1954, in Spanish Fork, UT to Norman R. and Helen Stickney Thorn. She grew up with 2 older sisters, Norma Rae who was 6 years older, and LaWana who was 12 years older. Her childhood had many challenges. Mom used to talk about feeling judged and made fun of because she didn’t have the ideal Mormon family. Her mother worked and her parents divorced at the young age of . Her Father then moved to California. In spite of the challenges, she had fond memories of visiting her dad during the summer and going to Knott’s Berry farms and Disneyland. I believe this began her love of visiting theme parks and a desire to give her children similar fun experiences. At age 11 she was on one of these trips when she was notified that her older Sister LaWana died in a tragic drowning accident. She wrote that she felt so bad for her mother who was alone when she received this information. Her mother remarried and this caused her to be exposed to violence and sexual harassment due to her stepfather’s drunkenness.
With troubles at home, she sought safety and comfort at her Grandmother Thorn’s house. She had good memories about staying at Grandma Thorn’s she talked about dipping 2 pieces of buttered toast, in her yummy hot chocolate. She also loved to listen to The One Eyed-One-Horned Flying Purple People Eater on the record player and jump on the couch. As a child, she remembered standing on the swing swinging and falling off at school. The swing came back and knocked out her front teeth. The principal searched through the gravel to find her missing tooth so the dentist could try to and reattach them. He had apparently just learned how to do it at a dental conference. After eating nothing but soup for 2 months, her gums tightened around the roots of the teeth, a dental miracle. She also relayed the story of going down to the pond and collecting tadpoles and taking them home to her mother’s kitchen. She came back later to find little frogs jumping all over the place to her mother’s dismay.
Mom loved playing with her troll dolls, barbies and baby dolls and loved taking care of these little friends and wanted more than anything to be a mother like she was to them someday. She learned basic sewing skills by making clothes for them all. This was something she would do for the rest of her life. In her teens she participated in theatre, glee club and was a High School Cheerleader. She loved her teachers and thought about becoming a theater teacher until her teacher told her it was impossible to be a good mom and a good theater teacher. She went to seminary and started going to church with her sister, Norma Rae. She loved mutual and girls' camp and was welcomed into her leaders' homes where she felt the spirit and was touched by the feeling of being loved by a Heavenly Father. Here she formed in her mind what her ideal family would look like. After she graduated from high school, she decided that she had had enough studying for a while and decided to go to work at The Dairy Freeze, and later at Payson Sportswear where she learned to be a professional seamstress. She began thinking she might want to go to snow college to do more theatre. But her front teeth began causing her problems again, and she knew she would need a dental bridge to keep her front teeth. Saving money for this became her focus.
During this time, she went to a young women’s camp where she met Ron who was the DJ for the night. Ron saw her and wanted to ask her out but she disappeared in the crowd and he could not find her. They became reacquainted at another dance and began dating. They dated for about a year. One evening as she neared her 20th birthday Ron told her he was going to take her somewhere special. She got all dressed up and went to a Korean restaurant where she said the soup was good, but the rest of the food was awful. Then he invited her to go walk up by the Provo temple. He sat her on a bench and he asked her to marry him. They were then married on May 24, 1974, in the Provo temple. At her reception, her wedding dress caught on fire. Dad says he knew she was hot stuff. In her journals, she rarely goes many pages without writing how blessed she felt to have him as her husband. They wasted no time in starting their family. The first son, Clinton, arrived within a year of their marriage. Then tragedy struck when her father had a heart attack and died a short time later. Their daughter, Cynthia, was born a year and a week after Clinton, followed by Denise 2 years later. They were having a hard time finding the income needed to raise their growing family and moving to Kansas became the solution.
They moved to Kansas in August of 1978 and bought their first home in Edgerton in 1979. Mom and Dad prayed to have each child they had and often knew it was time when they kept feeling like someone was missing. Here they added to their family with the birth of Tony in 1980, Daniel in 1982, and Tina in 1984. These early years were hard on mom and she longed to be back home in Utah. She writes about loving her Father in Heaven and wanting to trust that everything would be fine but struggling with nervousness, fear, frustration, and depression. She also struggled to create the homelife that mirrored the ones she went to as a teenager and thought she would never get it right. She felt like reading the scriptures was like learning a foreign language. She doubted whether her dreams of this perfect homelife would ever come to pass. She more than anything wanted to do what the Lord wanted her to do. She prayed and prayed to know what that was and felt no guidance, no answers. She felt lost and often alone. Then one day she got her first real prompting. A woman in the ward had had her baby at 5 ½ months and the baby lived for only a couple hours. Mom felt prompted to put her doll clothes-making skills to work to make a dress, panties, and a bonnet to bury the baby girl in. She contacted this mother who said she was an answer to prayer because she didn’t know what to do to find clothes for such a small child and was afraid she would have to be buried in just a blanket.
In 1986 they had the opportunity to move closer to Ron’s work and moved into the house where mom and dad would make their final home together. Here they finished out their family with the birth of Stephen and then Joseph. Mom made her kids her world. She was in their classrooms for holiday parties. She accompanied them on field trips; she was friends with their teachers and principles. She pressed choir robes and went on orchestra trips. She made costumes for plays and cheered louder at sporting events than anyone else. Sometimes you can kind of get lost in a big family and mom made the effort to spend one on one time with each of her children by taking each one individually out for a day with her during the summers to do whatever we wanted. Also each month she and dad would take turns having personal interviews with each one of us individually. Often her first question was if we had enough underwear and socks and then we could talk about anything else we wanted to. But her mothering went far beyond her family. She was the best visiting teacher anyone could have. She made each person she connected with feel loved and special. She served and followed each prompting she got. She would call when someone needed her most. She would talk for hours if someone needed her to. She would show up and serve and often was the first one on the scene and the last one to leave. She served with her sewing skills making blessing outfits and baptism clothes and wedding gowns. She made temple envelopes and pretty much anything anyone needed. Even if she had not tried it before she was eager to learn and figure it out. She taught others how to use their own sewing machines so they could make their own beautiful things. And when she was at a loss of how to help she would turn to fasting and prayer.
She was a faithful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and served in the nursery, and in the primary. She led young women in class and at camp, and served the sisters in the ward. She served in the primary, young woman and Relief Society presidencies. She became most excited to have a temple built close by and loved working there. She learned to read and understand the scriptures and in her later journals, she records so many lessons from them that have helped her along her way. Her testimony grew and she learned to trust her Heavenly Father and worried less. What many didn’t know was through much of her life she struggled with feelings of inadequacy and was constantly trying to live up to this list of perfection. She often wrote about not feeling she did enough missionary work even though she raised 7 missionaries and was always a missionary whether it was giving a book of Mormon to our pediatrician or sharing her testimony with our teachers or her coworkers. She went door to door inviting people to the open house of this stake building and talked to people at the open house of the Temple. She loved the inactive and befriended new members. She was even featured in the centerfold of the Ensign for her efforts. She often felt guilty or selfish for enjoying herself and taking time to get her own needs met.
She experienced a lot of physical and emotional pain throughout her life. But it never mattered what she was going through. She always greeted others with a smile and made them feel welcomed, loved, and special. As she got older she was able to let go of some of her rigid beliefs and learned to love who she was. She wrote in her journal that the more child-like she became the happier she was. She began to share her guilty secrets with others like her love of rooting for her favorite singer on “American idol” or her favorite dancer or dance teams on “Dancing with the stars” and “So you think you can dance” Especially when a member of her church was on the show. She shared her favorite movies and talked about them as seeing her “old friends.” She learned to love playing video games like Nancy Drew and Mystery Case Files. She began to step back into her cheerleader of the past and would cheer for her Chiefs and her Royals and any team from KU. She colored in her coloring books and made her own doll clothes for her own dolls, some even so fancy even her grandkids could not play with them. She made fairy doll versions of all the Disney princes. She began to see herself as an artist and creator who put her heart in everything she did.
But above all, she especially loved her grandchildren and traveled to wherever they were. She held them and sang with them and read with them. She rarely let her physical challenges stop her from enjoying them any way she could. She even learned to play roblox so she could play with them online. She made them pillowcases and embroidered towels for their baptism, she made them blankets and Christmas stockings. She taught them how to make fairy dolls of their own. She left pieces of herself all over her home and ours. You can barely find a room in our homes that doesn’t have something her hands have made.
Mom once pondered the question of what she wanted to be remembered for or what she would like to have said about her at her funeral. She wrote: “I want people to say I was a good mother and my children brought me honor.” Mom, I want you to know you did that first part, you were an outstanding mother and so much more. And I hope we fulfill the second part and bring you the honor you deserve.
