Title of article…"Life of serving, caring, positive outlook reflected Day's poems"

ST. GEORGE --- What does it take to make a poet?

Undoubtedly the answer to that question could be answered in a hundred different ways. But the life of St. George resident Willard Day is an example of one man's odyssey in developing the art of poetic expression.

Willard and his wife Arvilla find life quiet these days compared to the times when Willard was serving in the LDS church as a bishop, Scoutmaster, Sunday School teacher, or on a Stake High Council, and Arvilla was serving on every level of the Primary callings within the ward and stakes where they have lived. Willard also spent a number of years as a member of the State Highway Commission.

Like kids

Willard says he is currently serving as a merit badge counselor for Boy Scouts. During the PowWow in the spring of 1988, he guided 60 boys (from Nevada, southern Utah and Arizona) through merit badge work. He remembers someone expressing surprise after they heard of his work.

"Someone asked, 'At your age, you take on a bunch of boys?' I said 'Sure, they don't bother me, I like 'em."

One of the boys said afterward, "Mr. Day, I liked your class, but I like what you told us better."

Willard says, "I told them about life and honesty, and what it really means, and why." It was obviously a positive experience for both the merit badge counselor and his boys. Willard believes "Kids need someone to really talk with them more than they need facts and lessons." He relates that one group of tough 13-14 year old kids got him for a Sunday School teacher "after vowing they would 'run off anyone who came in to teach them.'"

Remained with class

After the first class, when he had to assert his authority a bit, he never had another problem. In fact, when the year was up and it was time for the group to advance to another class, they refused to leave his class. After futile efforts by the Sunday School presidency and finally the bishop, the problem was solved. They passed him along as teacher with the group. The happy group of boys and girls were with him for three years. After they graduated from high school, went on missions and to college, they still held reunions, and through the years still get together now and then.

In another community, he and Arvilla were called upon to work with young people who had married prematurely, thus endangering their chances of graduating from Seminary, along with a few students who were dropouts from the regular Seminary program of the church.

"We began by having them to our house," Willard related. "But we soon realized that it would be better for them to share each other's homes, so we rotated to their houses." This class brought both the Days great pleasure as they became more than teachers -- they became friends, and in effect surrogate parents to young people who needed unconditional love, guidance and firm direction. "Each of the couples ended up going to the temple, and several of the group have become well respected church leaders". Willard said. Some, who were considered impossible to reach, have lived rich, valuable lives as good citizens and parents. "You can't ask for better than that, can you?", Willard said.

Married 68 years

Willard was born in Circleville, Utah in 1900, and Arvilla was born in Heber City. They have been married 68 years (on Valentine's Day) and are the parents of three children, and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They have recently become great-great-grandparents.

Life, according to Willard, is meant to be lived, and lived to the fullest extent possible. He is not a stranger to suffering, and he has known a life threatening sickness, and survived.

"That has made me different," he comments, thoughtfully. Though the sickness was more than 70 years ago, when he was just a little boy, it still has a profound effect upon his life. After more than 40 days of being unconscious, being given up on by the doctors, he was healed through the dedicated nursing and the faith of his mother in the administration by the priesthood.

Interest in poetry

You don't go through an ordeal like that and not come out of it different, he says, and so, most of his life he has been more sober, more intent on what is really of value in life than is usual for little boys.

Willard began his interest in poetry during the Depression, when he was making a living driving a cream route. He traveled throughout the farming community building a route, earning a small commission on the butterfat collected from the product he hauled to the creamer.

Out in those country roads he often found people flagged him down for a ride to town. After a while he began to notice that "the ladies always told me their troubles and the men always came up with dirty jokes."

"I figured if I didn't do something, I was never going to learn much of value doing that job," he remembered with a smile.

Uplifting conversation

So, he began to read and he found a poem he liked and stuck it in his hat brim where it would be handy so he could work on memorizing it as he drove around his route. Pretty soon he had it memorized and when someone got in to ride with him, he would recite the poem.

"It was really a beautiful poem," he adds.

The result was astonishing. Once he had recited the poem, nobody got off on negative conversation. In fact, it usually led to lively, uplifting thoughts and ideas which took up the miles so that when they arrived at their destination they would be surprised and asked, "What? Here already?"

From this experience Willard gained some very important values concerning conversation, and how to control your mind. It also led to his being asked to give recitations of poetry throughout the county. It greatly aided him in developing public speaking qualities. At first he just gave popular poems, but later on he began to write verses from his own feelings and ideas. Then he had an experience which stimulated him to experiment with words, and with poetic expression.

Running together

One time he was at a friend's house, and she was taking different stanzas from different tunes, running them together to create a new melody. This intrigued him, and he thought of trying this with major poetic works. So, he took a line here, and a line there, and just put enough in between to make it smooth in transition, so that the outcome was a medley of poetic lines, drawn from their original place in some famous poem, yet now part of a new creation -- one of his instructional, motivational poems.

Through the years Willard has published three books; his life history, and two collections of his poems. He is currently hard at work on another book of poems, which he thinks will benefit his posterity.

Age changes little

At 88, Willard is beginning to feel his age; he's a bit hard of hearing, his face is lined, yet his eyes are young, his smile almost boyish. Arvilla is equally alert, with a cheerful demeaner. The bond between the two is evident. In his almost courtly manner of seeing her seated before he seats himself, in her quick attention to his words, putting in a comment here and there, to clear up any misunderstanding that might exist because he didn't hear. For them "love" has a meaning deep and broad, firmly rooted in the soil of complete fidelity.

From the homestead days in the Uintah Basin, with endless hard, pioneering labor, to the quiet, almost too restful days of their life of retirement in St. George, optimism has been their gift to friends and associates, and, they agree, their own safe passage through many trials.

For the Days, wisdom has grown out of careful obedience to the commandments of the Lord, and a sweet acceptance of others. Poetry is more than an art form to Willard. It is the discipline of the mind, the vehicle of higher communion with life. And life, according to Willard, is "very good". Arvilla smiles in quiet agreement.

*Included in this article was the following poem, written by Willard.

Thoughts between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m.

Our great mistake is seeking separation instead of oneness.

We were created to be one with, and yet to harmonize with all nature.

No one part of the body can say to another part, I have no need of thee.

Why do we seek changes in others? And so content to leave ourselves the way we are?

The business of life is to refine ourselves.

The difference in people is their awareness.

We will always be lonely, lost, and confused until we find oneness with someone.

Separation is a very great sin.

Separation is the story of Adam and Eve. The story of Cain and Abel.

The story so beautifully told by the Master of oneness.

Jesus' teachings are to find oneness with all life.

Oneness is what marriage is all about. What Church is for.

Our great challenge is to bring ourself down from the top of our mountain of separation to the valley of grace and oneness.

Let's think about the journey we are all on.

Why am I here? To have experiences and make choices.

Who am I? I am one of God's thinkers.

Where am I going? As far as my thinking takes me.

I am not a body with a spirit. I am a spirit with a body.

When the spirit leaves this body, the body disintegrates.

The spirit goes on to greater knowledge and experiences.

Everything in this physical world dies. Separation takes place and disintegrates.

Separation can be a mean word, oneness is a God word.

We fail to realize separation from others is a grave sin. It separates us from our source. God.

There are two great laws in this universe; constructive and destructive. We can aline ourselves with either.

Constructive grows and increases -- destructive causes deaths and disintegration.

The difference in people is our awareness. I want to become aware of everything possible. Not just a peephole.

I want to open the door wide enough to see all beauty, truth, and love.

To be aware of sunrise, of sunset, a rainbow when it appears, see the puddles after the rain, the grass, flowers, trees, the mountains, the desert area.

The moon, the stars and what does it mean to fall out of orbit?

Willard Day

Willard Day (1900-1995)