History of John Smith Griffin
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School Days 1913-1918

While I was in the upper grades of elementary school I was constantly harassed by one or two bullies at the school. I was afraid of these boys and knowing it they gave me no end of trouble. Finally, one day I had taken about all I could from one of them and a fist fight resulted. I expected to get the"tar" beat out of me and was very much surprised when I found myself getting the better of the fight. Before teachers came and stopped the fight I had given the kid a pretty good beating. Although I spent most of the remainder of the afternoon in the principal's office in punishment for fighting on the school grounds, it was well worth it: Life for the remainder of my stay at the Madison school was much more tolerable.

When I was a small boy my parents saw to it that I went to church on Sunday and to all of the other church meeting; There was Primary on Monday, and Religion Class on Wednesday. My teacher in Primary that influenced me most was a sister Asterhouse, a Dutch immigrant who came to Utah for the church with her sister. She worked long and hard with us and influenced our lives for good. The leader of Religion class was a Sister Whitaker. She was a strict disciplanarian and I am sure that what she taught me about discipline has done me more good than all I learned about religion in her classes. There was one song that was her favorite and which she used to have us sing frequently. I have not heard it sung in many years. The words were somewhat as follows:

"Have I done any good in the world today,
Have I helped anyone in need,
Have I cheered up the sad and made someone feel glad, I
f not I have failed in deed.

Then wake up and do something more
than dread of your mansions above.
Doing good is a pleasure,
a joy beyond measure A blessing,
a duty of love.

YEAR (FILE ) PICTURE AND SUBJECT
---- ------- ---------------------------------
1916 (9080) John Griffin's Baptism Certificate

Next door to us on the south lived the Schady family. I remember the two boys of the family, Kenneth and Marlin, both of whom were older than I was. Ken was athletically inclined and used to organize baseball games in his back yard with all the kids in the neighborhood. He also taught us to box and what little I know about how to handle myself in a fight I learned in his back yard. Marlin was mechanically minded and was always taking his bicycle apart and putting it back together again. He used to have one of the smoothest running bikes in the neighborhood. I was very pleased recently to run into both Ken and Marlin Schady here in Southern California.

Three houses south of our house on Madison Avenue lived Dr. Joseph R. Morrell. His son Roland was one of my closest boyhood friends. We used to get into all kinds of mischief and have the usual number of fights and quarrels. I recall that his father used to call him by whistling. He had a peculiar whistle that you could easily recognize and when "Woody" as we used to call him would hear it, he would go a running.

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