Church Historical Writings
THE NEAULON BUSH FAMILY
[Talk given by John E. Enslen, First Counselor, Alabama Birmingham Mission Presidency, at the Missionary Zone Conference held at Capitol Ward in Montgomery, Alabama, on November 3, 2003.]
This is a true story. It concerns the Neaulon Bush family of Montgomery, Alabama. The year was 1958. Dwight D. Eisenhower was in his second term as President. In September of the preceding year, he had used federal troops to enforce the integration of public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. It was also in the year 1958 that America launched its first space satellite, Explorer I, a year behind Russia’s Sputnik I. Alaska and Hawaii were close to becoming the 49th and 50th states.
Here in Alabama, 1958 was the year that John Patterson, by portraying himself as the more premier segregationist, defeated political newcomer George C. Wallace for Alabama’s governorship. Television programming was still in black and white, and here in the Montgomery area, there was a choice of only two channels. Cartoon Carl emceed a Saturday morning cartoon show with visiting grammar-school-age children as his guests. These same children had been receiving polio vaccines at school each year, and were most thankful that the medium of transfer for the vaccine had recently changed from needle injection to sugar cubes. [I know this for a fact because I had been one of those inoculated children and even had a Saturday morning appearance on the Cartoon Carl Show.]
Alabama was part of the massive Southern States Mission headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The mission president was Berkeley Bunker of Las Vegas, Nevada, who would later represent his home state in both houses of Congress. President Bunker had assigned two young elders from out West by the names of Howard Parkinson and John Carroll to labor in Montgomery. The city’s first LDS Chapel had been constructed on Forest Avenue near Oak Park only two years earlier, following decades of struggle by a handful of faithful Latter-day Saints, mostly sisters.
Time does not allow me to present the half-century-long series of connected events that led to an invitation for the missionaries to teach the Neaulon Bush family. But suffice it to say that a chain of circumstances, which includes miraculous healings by the power of the priesthood, began in the Providence Community of rural Crenshaw County at the turn of the century with the conversion of a man named John Lafayette Chesser, the grandfather of Neaulon Bush’s wife, Wanda. Wanda never knew her grandfather Chesser because he died in 1916 long before Wanda was born. But all of that makes for another story, and time dictates that I adhere closely to the main storyline.
Neaulon, like the vast majority of Alabamians with a religious affiliation, was Baptist. He descended from the Bush, Dennis, Bailey, Grier, Sanford, and Collier families of upper Elmore County, Alabama, a Baptist stronghold. Wanda was somewhat aware of her Mormon heritage through her grandfather Chesser, but she had never joined any church, despite visits from representatives of various churches over the years. Those visits included various Baptist ministers and a Catholic priest in nearby Tallassee.
Neaulon and his family had lived in Tallassee for a time where Neaulon managed and operated an outdoor, drive-in movie theatre. Fred T. McLendon of Union Springs was the owner of a chain of movie theaters and, liking Neaulon’s style and demeanor, had invited him to become a partner in the drive-in located in Tallassee.
Following the drive-in stint, Neaulon took a new job as a waiter at a downtown, upper class, popular restaurant—the Elite Café. Located only a few blocks from the state capitol, it was frequented by the highest officials of state government and many well-to-do Alabamians of the day.
Wanda Vaughn, who later became Wanda Bush, had been raised “dirt poor” in South Alabama near the small town of Robertsdale, picking up potatoes at age twelve with her older brother during shipping season. They worked from dawn to dusk (can to can’t) so that their mother could afford their schoolbooks. Working the rows together, they counted as one person, allowing each to make $0.10 an hour. For much of her life she was somewhat self-conscious about the fact that she had never graduated from high school, having quit school after Pearl Harbor in order to help support her mother and little brother and sisters.
Thus in the eyes of the world, Neaulon Bush and Wanda Bush were not considered to be highly influential members of the local community. You might say that they lived on the more humble side of town.
Neaulon and Wanda had two wonderful, normal, healthy children. The older was Michael, who had been a Royal Ambassador in the Baptist young men’s program at the First Baptist Church in Tallassee and later in DeFuniak Springs, Florida. In 1958, he was twelve years old. Kathryn, his vivacious younger sister, was ten years old.
That same year they met their first pair of honest to goodness “Mormon Elders,” people of whom they had heard before, but paid little attention. Of course, it did not take the two children long to develop an attachment to the friendly missionaries, Elders Parkinson and Carroll.
As the teaching process commenced, Neaulon, the father, was not particularly interested. He shunned any serious consideration of investigating a new, somewhat different religion, certainly different he thought from his Southern Baptist roots. But to his everlasting credit, he did not discourage his wife or children from listening and learning.
After a few weeks of teaching and friendshipping, the 32 year-old mother and her two children were baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints. Getting baptized was not the popular thing to do, but the three felt it was the right thing to do. Perhaps only God, two overjoyed Mormon missionaries, and a small handful of local members could sense any significance or importance in such an event, or could feel to shout from within “O Happy Day!”
Over time, the positive influences of the restored gospel began to have significant impact on the Bush family, steadily propelling them toward their inherent potential. Michael Bush made excellent grades at Baldwin Junior High School, but was too embarrassed at report-card time to tell his football teammates he had earned straight A’s.
After working part time at the A&P Grocery Store on the Atlanta Highway as a “stock boy” and then in the meat department during his senior year at Sidney Lanier High School, he graduated with no particular distinction in 1964.
Back then going on a mission was something that boys in Utah did, not Alabama boys, so Michael enrolled at nearby Auburn University, intent on studying Aerospace Engineering (AE). Although he did some rather impressive work in the AE department at Auburn during his second year, guiding at times the efforts of graduate students on NASA-funded research, his academic course work was average at best.
Convinced that Michael had some maturing to do, his branch president, Robert Chambers, convinced him that he should seriously consider a mission. Michael was assured that financial contributions would come from special people in his home branch who would make up the half of his mission costs that his parents could not afford.
Michael reacted appropriately to the challenge. In 1966, he and three friends in the Montgomery Branch, Michael Franklin, Glen Seabury, and Walter Mills, became, all within a period of not more than a few weeks, to our knowledge, the first fulltime LDS missionaries exported to the world from Montgomery, Alabama.
This phenomenon was taking place just as the Viet Nam War was heating up. The local draft board was not too sure about this missionary idea that would grant a deferment for the draft. President Chambers, himself an Air Force officer, appealed to the board and convinced them that avoiding military service was not their motivation.
So Michael Franklin, now of the Prattville Ward, went to Ireland; Glen Seabury, who now lives in the Salt Lake area, went to Italy; Walter Mills, who is a service missionary in the Family and Church History Mission in Salt Lake City, went to California; and Michael Bush went to France for his two and a half years, serving in the same mission with Mitt Romney. There in France, Michael served a successful mission, at least in the terms by which a mission should be measured. He baptized one sister and taught another family that was later baptized, all of whom remain active in the church to this day. Children from both families have served very successful missions and a grandson of the sister Michael baptized is now as I speak on a mission.
In 1969, following an honorable release from his mission, Michael returned to Auburn University, but prospects there for a Mormon wife were quite bleak. So in 1970 he transferred to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
Although he actually failed to find a wife among the many BYU coeds, in 1971 and 1972 three important accomplishments finally came to pass in the life of Michael Bush. He secured a wife, he received his undergraduate degree, and he received an ROTC commission in the United States Air Force.
For his wife, he went back to France where he happened to see, at the wedding of some mutual friends, a young LDS woman whom he had met while on his mission. Her name was Annie (pronounced Ah-nee’), and they were married in December of 1971.
In order to further his education, Michael volunteered to become a Missile Launch Officer in the Air Force’s Minuteman Missile program with its associated Minuteman Education Program, and in 1976 he received an MBA from the University of Missouri. Then, when the Air Force discovered he was fluent in French, he agreed to extend his commission in the Air Force and was assigned to teach French at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. There he taught French for two years and served as president of the Young Men’s organization of the Academy Ward.
After a year and a half at the Academy, the Air Force offered to further his education. In 1983 Michael received a PHD from Ohio State University in Foreign Language Study with an Emphasis in Computer Science. While working on his degree at Ohio State, he served as an elders quorum president.
After four years at the Academy he was offered tenure and accepted a career broadening assignment to work two years in Paris, France, for the NATO Advisory Group for Aerospace Research and Development.
After returning to the Academy for another six years, he retired from his career of faithful service to his country as an Air Force officer.
Following military retirement, he accepted an offer from Brigham Young University to teach French. He accepted that appointment at age 46 and was responsible over the next 11 years for the Teacher Education Program in the Department of French and Italian at BYU. He continued the work he had begun at the Air Force Academy, developing software programs involving the use of computers and multimedia technology in teaching foreign languages. His cutting edge work in that field has now brought him national recognition.
But more importantly, his contributions have advanced the work of the kingdom. His work with computer technology has helped teach foreign languages to full-time missionaries at the Missionary Training Center in Provo.
At BYU he has also served as bishop of a student ward. He continues today with his important research and development work as Associate Director of the Center for Language Studies at BYU.
Michael and Annie are the parents of four children: two boys and two girls. Both boys have now served their missions, one in France and the other in Spain. Three of their four children are married, all three in the temple. At the present time, Michael and Annie have six grandchildren with numbers seven and eight on the way. The fruits of Elder Parkinson’s and Elder Carroll’s labors continue to grow and expand.
Remember, in 1958 Michael had a ten-year-old sister named Kathryn who was also baptized. Kathryn graduated from BYU in 1968. She was working on her master’s degree when she met at BYU a nice young returned missionary named Andrew. In 1971, Andrew and Kathryn were married. Andrew continued his education, eventually receiving a PhD from Harvard University.
After giving birth to six children, and raising them to maturity, Kathryn capped off her own formal education with a PHD in English from Drew University in New Jersey.
While Andrew was struggling financially to obtain his PHD, he published a book that he had co-authored between 1973 and 1979. It was an LDS best seller about the life of his grandfather. Sales proceeds helped to sustain his young family through his final college years. He pays tribute to his wife in the preface of his book:
“My wife, Kathryn Bush Kimball, was deeply involved in this project from the outset and not only gave useful advice on the manuscript but provided unfailing encouragement and support. For all this I am deeply grateful.”
Today, Andrew is a successful financier in New York. He lives in nearby New Jersey with his wife Kathryn, a faithful mother and grandmother in Zion, as well as a university professor teaching English literature in the graduate Arts and Letters Program at Drew University.
Remember Wanda and Neaulon, the parents. Well, they are now both fairly recently deceased, Wanda in 2000 and Neaulon in 2002. Neaulon was no doubt blessed for his indulgence of Mormonism and was always proud to watch LDS General Conference when President Kimball would speak. Neaulon felt honored that his grandchildren were President Kimball’s great-grandchildren. Neaulon also took pride in the fact that he had financially supported Michael on his mission to the extent that he could afford to do so.
Perhaps Wanda became the most accomplished member of the family in light of the prevailing circumstances. Believe it or not, although lacking a high school diploma, her enduring love of reading and learning helped her to achieve a life-long dream of working for a newspaper. She was hired as a librarian for the Montgomery Advertiser, Montgomery’s daily newspaper. She held that job for more than nine years. After working on her own to learn as much as she could about journalism, she became a respected copy editor of the Montgomery Advertiser. She served in that capacity for 15 years. Amazingly, she later served for about six years as news editor of the Alabama Journal, perhaps one of the most difficult jobs at any newspaper, certainly one having the most pressure.
So there you have it, three baptisms out of a humble home in 1958. We have all heard it said: “You can count the seeds in an apple, but you can never count the apples in a seed.” What you are doing is very important, though undetected by the world. Great things proceed from very small things, like a knock on a door. To this truth I bear solemn witness, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.