4 Feb 1926 – 28 Jan 2009
2nd-Great-Grandson of Philip Cardon and Martha Marie Tourn
Great-Grandson of Louis Philippe Cardon and Susette Stalé
Grandson of Joseph Samuel Cardon and Selenia Mesenile Walker
Son of Junius Welborn Cardon and Mae Whiting
Brief History of the Life of Herman Elwood Cardon
I was born on February 4, 1926 in a small frame house that my father had just built in the community of Vernon, Arizona.
I was the sixth of nine children. My birth was very difficult for my mother who almost didn’t pull through the ordeal. Little did she know, her problems with me were just beginning. Due to wear and tear on the family property and wrecked vehicles, I’m sure I was the most expensive of the nine for my parents to raise Of course if you’re after quality you’ve got to pay the price, huh?
I can’t recall anything about living in Vernon since we moved to Kirtland, New Mexico in 1928-29, when I was only 2 years old. I do remember vaguely the move in our 1928 Chevrolet touring car, and an old Model ‘T” truck which had chickens in wire cages hanging on the back. I liked the chickens in the cages and thought that would be a good place to keep them all the time.
One of the high lights of my early life was the day Daddy drove a brand-new Model “A” Ford truck into the front yard. It was probably a 1928 or 1929 model and was green. I remember how excited my sisters were and when I was sitting in the cab with Carmen and Ethelynn, how it smelled and could be started from the inside instead of a crank on the outside like the Model “T” truck. This truck was the one that we were all hauled to the Mesa Temple in, to be sealed to our parents. It took us two and a half days to get to Mesa. We stopped someplace near Winslow and watched an airplane take off. I’d see planes in the air before but had never seen one on the ground. I was quite surprised that it had to run along the ground for quite a ways to get into the air. When we got home, Bob fashioned a plane out of wood scraps for me and from that time on through my life I have been hooked on airplanes.
Another event that is pretty vivid in my memory was in my eighth year. I was walking to school, a little late as usual, with a friend, Sherrill Stolworthy, when we saw a large truck stop ahead of us to pick up a man standing by the road. We recognized the driver, Merrill Taylor, and the truck loaded with flour from their mill. We ran to catch a ride just as it began to move again.
We jumped onto the running board opposite the drive side, and since the only thing to hang onto was the door handle, I grabbed it. Sherrill had nothing to hold to so he wisely jumped back to the ground. I hung on until we got in front of the school but before the truck slowed down the door came open and I fell under the rear wheels of the loaded truck, crushing my right leg pretty badly. I spent seven weeks in the hospital but count my blessings, since they had considered amputating my leg. I believe the faith and prayers of my parents were the main reason I got to keep my leg, which has served me well to this day.
I remember spending Christmas in the hospital that year, I got so many nice gifts I considered breaking my other leg the next Christmas. I guess everyone took pity on a dumb jackass spending the Holiday in the hospital.
We lived in Fruitland, New Mexico for about three years. We had a large, cold and drafty brick house which was of the same style seen in many Mormon settlements in the west. It was typical of the
1890-1920 era. It had a Victorian flare, which I have always thought was one of the ugliest styles to
evolve in America, but my memories of that place are still some of the happiest of my life. Wig and Rose were married there and later lived there themselves for a while. I had lots of good friends my age living close. I played with Roses brothers, swimming in the river and all the things that growing boys do, even a good fist fight or two and a black eye.
We moved to Farmington the summer that I was 12. We were building a new home on West Apache. My father had designed it and it was one of his dreams coming true, after a hard depression. Mom used to say she never thought she would actually get to live in a house with hot and cold running water and a bathroom, and there she had it all. Bob went on his mission during this time. There was also a young girl who moved into town from Manassa Colorado. I had begun to think all girls were kinda nice but there was something special about this one. So at age 14, while sitting behind her in church, I tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to marry me. She giggled a little but didn’t say no; so I hung
in there for four more years and we were married. I guess that turned out to be about the luckiest silly thing I ever did. She has been a wonderful wife and mother to my children all these years.
I attended Farmington High School and had a job in the Farmington Bakery. In the summer when school was out we would go to work at 1:00 AM and work through until the days tasks were done, which was usually about 2:00 or 3:00 PM. I thought I would die the first week, but then came Saturday and the boss handed me $15.00. This was the most money I had ever had at one time in my life, so I had found my new lease on life and a career. In the winter during the school season I worked from 4:00 AM until 8:30, went to school to sleep and get my rest, went to football or basketball practice, and then back to work about 5:30 PM for another hour and a half. For this I was paid $10.00 a week, so I felt like I was one of the richest kids in the high school.
Sunday December 7, 1941, we had come home from church. I was upstairs in the bedroom that LaMarr and I shared, working on a model airplane and listening to the radio. They stopped the program to announce that unidentified aircraft were attacking Pearl Harbor. At first it didn’t hit home, because the war in Europe had begun about two years earlier, and I thought it was just more about that. Then I thought, hey, Pearl Harbor is in Hawaii and that belongs to the US of A, that us! So I jumped up and raced down stairs (via the ladder out the window that served as stairs), with the news.
I was just 15 years old when the war started for the USA and thought sure we could whip the Japanese in about 3 weeks, and I would miss all the excitement. But the war raged on for about 4 more years and I got enough to last me the rest of my life (at least until the next war). Of course I was going to be a hot pilot in the air force, then the Army Air Corps. I could hardly wait until I was seventeen so I could enlist in the air cadet training program. I did this, and was called to active duty 18 days after my 18th birthday, in my junior year of high school. I washed out of pilot training about 3 months after reporting to school, and was sent to Kingman, Arizona for aerial gunnery training. After gunnery training I was given a short delay in route on my way to Tampa, Florida for combat crew assignment and air crew training at Drew Fed. I was during this 10 day delay en route, that Cheryl and I were married at her home in Farmington, by President Troy Burnham. We were very young and everyone was worried that it wouldn’t work, but it’s still going strong after 42 years, five children, and fifteen and two halves grandchildren. The army may have saved our marriage by sending me to Italy to face my first combat. I was trained in Florida with a crew of ten men to fly bombing mission in a B-17 Bomber.
When the war ended I had flown 18 combat missions out of Italy, up into the Rut Valley in Germany, Austria, and Yugoslavia. On my eight mission we were assigned to bomb a bridge at the Brenner Pass near Innsbruck, Austria. We were severely damaged by anti-aircraft fire and began limping home on two of our four engines. The pilot had to crash land the plane on a beach quite a ways north of Rimini, Italy. We thought we were still on German held territory and since the war in Europe was about over, we decided to surrender to the enemy in lieu of dying as heroes there on the beach. We pile du pour side arms and were standing waiting when a military vehicle pulled up and ask in the loveliest British accent I have ever heard, “A bit of trouble, ey yanks?” I could have kissed him right through his proper beard and all.
When the war ended in Europe they shipped me home for a 30 day furlough and then we were assigned to report for training on the new B-29 bombers to go to the South Pacific and fight he Japanese. It was while I was home and on our honeymoon to the temple to be sealed, that the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan. The war ended shortly after probably saving millions of lives, both American and Japanese.
I was discharged from the Air Force in February 1946 and returned to Farmington, my new wife and the bakery. I worked there for about two years when I decided to go back to school on the GI Bill. I wanted to study architecture, but had not complete high school. I took a high school equivalency test and was accepted by a small vocational technical school in Kansas City, Missouri. I moved Cheryl and our two year old daughter, Charlee. I also found a job in a baseball cap factory which fit my school schedule and allowed me to work an eight hour shift while attending school full time. It even seemed easy after the bakery.
It was while we were in Kansas City that my father and mother in law visited us and were killed
in an automobile accident near Rock Springs, Wyoming. These were two of the finest people I knew and had learned to love them very much.
I finished school and returned to Farmington where we had begun building a small home on Schofield Lane, on an acre of ground we had received from Cheryl’s parents as a wedding gift. I took a job with Big Jo Lumber Company as a draftsman, designing houses and small commercial buildings.
I had joined the National Guard and had my Air Force reserve rank transferred to the local unit. When the Korean War started my unit was activated and sent to Fort Bliss, Texas for training, so I was back in the Army. My hitch was not so bad this time as we were sent to Germany to fight the Korean War. It was during this second trip in the military that my two sons, Randy and Roger were born. I’ll always feel like Roger was the reason I did not make the army a career. When he was born it game me enough points to be discharged from the service and I chose that rather than a Warrant or commission and a military career. I’ll always be thankful for this because we had a tendency not to be very active in the church when we were away from home.
I returned to Farmington and Big Jo Lumber company. I later had a small architectural design service. In 1962I took a position as staff architect with a land, development company owned by Ed Leslie. I moved my family to Roswell, New Mexico. The family now consisted of five children, Cheralynn, Randy, Roger, Connie Jo and Colleen.
We moved to Los Alamos with the same company in 1964, where we developed and built most of the community of White Rock. It now consistws of about 7000 people and is basically a residential area for the Los Alamost National laboratory, which developed the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japana, eding WWII. Except for Charlee, all of my children graduated form Los Alamos High School.
I have recently had the privilege of being the architect on our new chapel in White Rock. Our family was the third Mormon family to move to White Rock 22 years ago. We have been averaging 300 attendance at Sacrament meeting. (our ward membership is about 360). We will have our first meeting in the Los Alamos Ward Chapel which is about 11 miles away).
I am very proud of my children, all of whom have married wonderful mates and all active in thechurch.
I feel blessed to have been born in this dispensation, to wonderful parents, having fine brothers and sisters to grow up with, whom I still love very much, and last but not least for my wife, Cheryl, who has been patient and loving all these years as I grew up with my children. I’ve even learned to love her more than when I first asked her to marry me during that boring genealogical meeting 42 years ago.
I guess I’d better wind this thing up as I’m beginning to believe some of this tale myself.
Herman Elwood Cardon, 82, prominent New Mexico architect who designed many Farmington homes, died Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2009, at his beloved Jemez Mountain home, following a lengthy illness.
Funeral services will be at 12:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 6, at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1967 18th St., in Los Alamos.
Interment will be at the National Cemetery in Santa Fe.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to either LDS Humanitarian Services, LDS-Charities@ldschurch.org or to La Cueva Volunteer Fire Department Search and Rescue, 122 Twisted Juniper, Jemez Springs, NM 87025.
Arrangements are with Santa Fe Funeral Options, 417 E Rodeo Road, in Santa Fe; (505) 989-7032.
Santa Fe National Cemetery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
