Lee was my uncle, my father's brother, and I felt I knew him quite well. He wrote his own history over the years, and I will use some of that here because he was kind enough to send it to me many years ago.

I spent some time at his and Aunt Ruby's (his wife) home in Lehi, Utah as a young girl, visiting with his children. He was a quiet-speaking man, not tall like my father, Sylvester Scott, nor dark haired and dark eyed like Dad. Lee was probably about five-feet nine or ten inches tall, and had a roundish face and light brownish hair. His household was peaceful, he and Aunt Ruby never raised their voices in anger when I was there. He was a true believer in God and in his church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon). His own written history conveys that.

He was born in Salt Lake City, Utah February 5, 1906, to George Grow and Sarah Wilkinson Miles Scott. The family moved from Salt Lake to Tremonton, Utah when Lee was about six, but before they moved, he and his brother, Sylvester, slept together. He wrote: "One morning the whole household was awakened by a knocking on the door. The knock was repeated. Dad told Sylvester to go and see who it was. He jumped up, put on his pants, and went to the door. There was no one there, so he went around the house. There was not a soul in sight. There was nothing within 300 yards of the house that a person could hide behind. Later in the morning, we got word that Grandmother Miles (Sarah's mother Emma Wilkinson Miles) had died about the time that the knocks had woke us up."

He shared some of his earlier memories: His mother used to tie him up to keep him from running away, evidently to the soda pop factory next door. But someone used to stick the neck of a pop bottle through a knot hole in the board fence to watch him drink out of the bottle. His Grandpa Miles moved them to Bingham Canyon, and the wagons and horses splashed mud all over the yard and windows. When it rained, his father worked in the smelter and blacksmith shop there. He rode the streetcars to school. He wrote: "As I remember, they had no glass in the side windows, just a kind of blind that you could pull down and back where you wanted them. I know when it rained, the horses big feet could sure splash mud in the street car. Most of the roads were not tarred, that is what they used to surface the roads with then."

Lee had been born with a heart leakage and was frail as a child, but he out-grew it. He had typhoid fever, but recovered well. By the time they moved to Black Pine, Idaho, Lee was about nine years old. The older children had to help out on the 320 acre homestead their dad had taken up. Water had to be hauled from 7 miles away on a wagon; the horses had to be taken care of, caught when they were running loose; cedar posts his father and older brother cut had to be hauled in and were sold for five cents each. Sylvester left home when he was 15, and Lee ran away when he was 12 or 13. He left in July, "I went up in the Arbon Valley and worked in the harvest. Then I went to Uncle Joe Pratt's home at Bingham Canyon. I got a job driving a team on a construction job." He broke his foot, and was glad to go back home.

In 1926, Lee and a friend, Max Stohl, loaded up Lee's Model T Ford (see the picture in the photo section) that was stripped down to "a couple of bucket seats and a windshield" and took off for California. Enroute, they stopped in Willows, California and worked in the rice. They went on to Los Angeles where his brother, Sylvester, worked for the Los Angeles Railway. Lee worked as a night watchman for six months, then went to automotive school there. He stayed with Sylvester (Ves) and Minnie. My Dad said Lee was "a live-wire, and sometimes a little 'hellion', and one time Dad and mother had made some beer and left it in the bath tub while they went away for a few days. When they came back, Lee and his friends had drunk it all.

He worked in various places; in 1928 in Seattle mixing mud for a plasterer; camped out in the winter in Holbrook cutting cedar posts; in Alaska on the railroad; and finally in the mines.

He married Ruby Iola Harris on May 11, 1932, in the Logan, Utah LDS temple, and they had four children. They bought a home in Lehi, Utah and he continued working in the mines. He wrote: "The morning of May 16, 1955, I went to work in the U.S. Metal Mine at Lark, Utah, where I had been working for about one month. The uppermost thought in my mind was my son who had just received a call to fill a mission for the church. I had no money saved, but I knew, if we would do our part, the Lord would see to it that the necessary funds were available. I went to my place of work. I was working in a stope. (This is when you mine ore above the level or drift as the tunnel is called.) I went to work ahead of the rest of the crew. They were busy with other things." Lee barred down the loose rock he found, but one popped out of the side above him and caught him bent over the scraper. It caused him to be paralyzed from the waist down for the remainder of his life.

There were many times the telephone would ring at my home around two or three a.m., and it would be Uncle Lee. "I can't sleep, so I didn't think you needed to, either," he'd say, and then laugh. We had some wonderful discussions in the middle of the night.

He later wrote: "Although I was paralyzed from the waist down, I find much to be thankful for. I have been able to adjust myself. I am able to read more than I ever did, and my taste has turned to scriptural books. I find much enjoyment in life. I have the most wonderful family in the world. Yes, the Lord has been very good to me. We were blessed with wonderful children. The boys both filled missions, and all four were married in the temple and are active in their church work."