Nell

Nell Creer was a last minute replacement in the group of girls sent to Zion National Park. She replaced Marjorie Burrows, who got a leading role in the university play and had to back out. Nell was said to be the first girl from Spanish Fork to earn a college degree when she graduated from the University of Utah in 1922. After graduating, she taught in several local high schools until she married a doctor in 1930 and moved to California. She made a big impression on her students at Murray High School. One of her students, now in her mid-nineties, still can vividly recall what she learned under her watchful eye. Nell was left handed, and that intrigued her students so much that they all tried to write left-handed, too. She organized a girls' basketball team, and they would play against the University of Utah's team when they couldn't find another high school to play. Nell also trained and directed a posture team of 32 girls for an invitational meet at Brigham Young University, where they won first and second place awards during the four years that they entered. (Now, why don't they bring back that competition? Our modern high school students would be better off for it, I think.) Nell had met her future husband, John Frame, while going to the University of Utah. He finally came back to get her after going out of state to medical school. Nell must have loved to work with youth because in Los Angeles, during World War II, she organized large public dances for youth in the American Legion Hall. She felt that it was better for the youth of the city to have a fun place to go and socialize, under supervision, than to be aimlessly wandering the streets on Friday nights. 1,800 to 2,000 students would come to the dances every Friday where name bands and movie stars would entertain them. Nell had 2 sons of her own, but her youngest son was killed in an automobile accident while on his way to Brigham Young University. After his death, Nell dove into genealogy, and produced several books on her and her husband's family history, for which John and I are very grateful. We haven't been able to contact any of her family, so her own words about her life that she wrote in her family histories have been very helpful in getting to know her.

John's First Presentaion

John gave his first presentation on Zion's opening day as a national park last Friday at the Utah State History Conference. The presentation was given in a meeting room at the Salt Lake Library. We came early so that we could drop off some of John's posters and our latest mock-up at the University of Utah Press's table at the conference. We also wanted to test our equipment with the library's power point projector before the presentation. It was a good thing that we did because it made it so much easier to set up for real later on. The above picture is of John just before starting his presentation.

Here is John giving his presentation. I helped him out by running all the photos. I think it help to keep the presentation flowing because he didn't have to stop his train of thought to change pictures. I think he did very well, and he was complimented by many for his presentation. One of the State History staff, who has come to many history conferences over the year, said that it was one of the best that he had ever seen. The U of U Press liked it well enough that they thought John should give it again sometime, maybe down south closer to Zion. The only disappointment of the day was that there wasn't a very large crowd at the conference. Less than twenty people came to our presentation. So all you people, who told John that you were going to be there and didn't show up, really missed out. Just because it is history, doesn't mean that it is dry and boring.

We were very pleased that Merle Casper came. Merle is a bright 95 year old lady who John interviewed for our book. She was one of Nell Creer's students at Murray High School in the 1920s. She sat right up in front so that she could get a good view of the photos, and you could tell that she was enjoying it. She told us that Nell Creer was a very popular teacher at Murray High School. Here she is looking at the page on Nell Creer while her grandson reads her quotes from the book.