Maurine Whipple

IN MEMORIAM MAURINE WHIPPLE By Veda Tebbs Hale MAURINE WHIPPLE, author of The admission, and made enough to buy what Giant Joshua, died in St. George on 12 April she needed. Former students remember her 1992. She was eighty-nine. She was born on as "having red hair (hennaed), friendly and 20 January 1903 in St. George and lived innovative, with great vitality and a good there most of her life. The Giant Joshua, a dancer.’’2 However, none of her principals 637-page novel published in 1941 by ever offered her a contract for a second year. Houghton Mifflin, celebrates the history of In 1928-1929, her third year of teaching, her Southern Utah city; the richness of tex- she taught in a two-room school in the tiny ture, the vividness of its characters, and its community of Virgin, Utah. She liked being forthright treatment of the rigors of both free to organize in her own way, but it was a pioneering and polygamy have insured that lonely time, a time of reflection. She was it has never lacked for enthusiastic admirers twenty-six years old, felt she had missed her during the past fifty-one years. chance to marry, and knew that she was Maurineg serious writing began, she said, overqualified to teach in a small rural school. when she hitched a ride with a tourist to Salt She spent many hours sitting on the bank of Lake City to begin her college education with the Virgin River meditating. She claimed that only her dreams and a cheap cardboard the germ of The Giant Joshua had been in her suitcase containing two middy blouses and mind for as long as she could remember. Her one skirt. She grew up envious of girls who despondent musings on her personal life had social skills, financial backing, nice beside the Virgin gradually turned to serious clothes, and important family names. How- dashed by the end of the school year. In fact, thought about the characters and the story ever, her high school education, experience it concludes with her premonition that she line of her future novel. as the editor of the school paper, keen mind, would never find the love and marriage she The next year the students of the Virgin and determination combined to help her so desired. school were bussed to Hurricane, so Mau- graduate with honors from the University of But Maurine did not become that staple fine went to California to do post-graduate Utah in 1926. She financed her college edu- of small-town society--the unmarried work that summer. Supervised recreation cation by working wherever she could-- schoolteacher. She had trained as a teacher was a new and popular profession across laundry, housework, library, or cafeteria. because teaching was the only profession her America then, and Maurine studied that field Sometimes she held two jobs at once, sacri- father could visualize for her, and his patri- along with her specialty, dramatics. She re- ficing her social life. archal opinions dominated the family. Dur- members that summer as one full of prom- In high school and college, she observed ing the six years she did teach, she greatly ise. She lived near the beach and rapidly the romances of other girls and ached to find enjoyed working with young people, idealis- made friends with other young people, even love herself. She was sure that it was her own tically rejoiced in helping them become their having a boy friend; but the feeling that her inability to play insincere flirting games that best, and delighted in imparting knowledge mother needed her steadily grew. stranded her on the beaches of unpopularity. and seeing ideas strike roots. Unfortunately, Finally, the feeling was too strong to resist This view often depressed her; but in other whatever Maurine’s skills with young people, and Maurine went home. Her mother had, in moments, she was willing to wait for the her ability to deal successfully with her col- fact, been wishing for her, lying on her bed unusual man who would see and love her for leagues--and more particularly with her saying her name over and over. And so Mau- her honesty. Her only diary, covering less principals--shortened her career. With her fine was once again pulled into the continu- than a year but describing her first year as a strong, vivacious personality and original ing conflict between her parents--her high school teacher, candidly records her ideas, she was impatient with their conserva- father, strong, virile, harshly authoritative bright hopes and dreams, most of them tism and resentful of their heavy-handed im- and selfish, was interested in a wider world; position of authority~ When, for instance, her mother, sweet, passive, and faithful to one of her dramatic productions needed VEDA TEBBS HALE, a novelist with St. George Mormonism, was content within the out- lighting that the principal said they didn’t lines of her culture steeped in Victorian roots, is editing Maurine Whipple’s unpublished have, Maurine hitchhiked to a neighboring fiction and personal writings with the help of attitudes. Maurine’s fiction gave her tools to town and convinced J. C. Pennyg to lend analyze her parents’ unhappiness and also a Lavina Fielding Anderson. Entitled Maurine some they owned. On another occasion, the Whipple, The Lost Works, this book is forth- way to distance herself emotionally from it. principal informed her that there wasn’t any But she was never successful at effecting coming from Aspen Books in 1992. She will then money for girls’ gym equipment. Maurine write Maurine Whipple’s biography. enough change so that she could move on. It organized a dramatic production, charged may have been one reason why she did not AUGUST 1992 PAGE 13 finish a sequel to The Giant Joshua, in which fine emptied all of her feminine energy into was fifty years ahead of her time. the protagonist was Jimmy, the son ot; Clory a self-consuming and sacrificial writing effort In 1945, she published her only other and Abi.jah Maclntyre, who was patterned that gave the novel genuine power. But un- book, a travel book for tourists called This Is after her own father, Charlie Whipple. De- like Margaret Mitchell, Maurine received lit- the Place: Utah. Although it was a critical spite her resentment of her father, she under- tle financial reward and never acceptance by success outside the state, it was a financial stood that he grew up abandoned by his own most of her own people. She claimed she failure because of her criticism of some father and forced at an early age to take on a never received much more than $7000 in Church policies. Maurine then turned to ar- man’s burdens. royalties spread over a forty-two year pe- ticle writing, trying to make her association After Maurine finally abandoned teaching riod."~ The money she did have she gener- with other journalists compensate for her in 1932, she found a.job in recreation man- ously shared with her family, particularly lack of companionship. She felt obligated to agement on the west side of Salt Lake City. with her younger sister whose husband was write more novels and hoped to provide an She worked hard with disadvantaged chil- paralyzed. income that would allow her the freedom to dren and received rewards and commenda- The publication of The Giant Joshua in write a novel in the long, painful way she tion for her efforts. But because of cuts in January 1941 came almost simultaneously knew. Particularly she felt compelled to write federal funding, her opportunity disap- with the release of the Hollywood movie, the sequel to Joshua because she had to end peared. It was a time of losing on every front Brigham Young, which was given a hearty it before she had originally planned due to its as one romance after another ended tragi- endorsement by HeberJ. Grant, president of length. Her editor assumed she could finish callF: By 1936 she found herself stranded in the Church. The film undoubtedly won the rest of it in two more books, making a San Francisco contemplating suicide. But many friends and even converts for the trilogy But it wasn’t to be, much to the then she found her friend, Lillian Church. Maurine’s book did not receive sorrow of the many fans of Joshua. MacQuarrie, from her St. George school Church endorsement, and she suffered from Her national periodical publications in- days. Lillian, whose husband had left her for the fact. However, she kept hundreds of fan clude "Anybody’s Gold Mine," an exciting her daughter from another marriage, was letters expressing admiration for the spirit of account of possible treasure buried near also in the depths of despair and in the last the Mormons in Southern Utah. Kanab, Utah, published in the Saturday Eve- stages of pregnancy. Also the publication of The Giant Joshua ning Post in 1949; "The Arizona Strip, Maurine postponed taking any self- coincided with World War II, and the book’s America’s Tibet," in 1952, Collier’s, a history destructive action to see her friend through portrayal of the spirit of dedication amidst of the area cut off from state government by childbirth. Between contractions, the two great hardship was appreciated by another the Grand Canyon; "Why I Have Five women discussed their options. Lillian had generation fighting for freedom. Maurine, Wives," published in Collier’s in 1953, the seen some of Maurine’s early stories, and herself, threw her considerable energies into story of the massive and disastrous raid on insisted that she attend the Rocky Mountain the war effort, lecturing in behalf of a na- Short Creek’s polygamists by Arizona law Writers’ Conference held each summer in tional speakers’ bureau of writers.

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