9 Jul 1877 – 1 Feb 1950
Husband of Amanda Cardon
My father was born 9 July 1877. He was the son of William Ricks and Margaret Gordon. He was born and raised in Benson, Utah, where lived throughout his life. He was mostly interested in cattle buying and selling, which took him away from home much of the time. He enjoyed traveling and in the early part of his life he traveled by horse. I have heard him tell many stories about hs travels by horse back. He always had a dog with him wherever he went in those days. About the first memories that I have of my father was when I was four or five years old. Sometimes he would be gone for one or two months and when he called my mother on the phone and told her he was coming home us kids would walk about a half mile to sit on the side of the road to wait for him to come. He always came on a horse and he would put as many as he could on the horse and let us ride back home. When we got home we would brush his hair and take off his shoes and stockings and sit on his lap. It was always quite an occasion when he came home.
We were a large family — nine boys and four girls — so he had quite a job before him to make a living for so many. Lots of times we didn’t have all the things we needed.
My father’s father gave each one of his children a tract of land, and then he went over to the Clarkston, Utah hills and homesteaded another large track of land for cattle to graze on. He also went into the sheep business with some of his brothers. So for about ten or fifteen years he tended sheep over in the ranch; sometimes in the summer we would leave our home in Benson, Utah and spend most of the summer months there, which we enjoyed very much.
My father was a good man; he didn’t smoke or drink, but he didn’t attend church very much. I heard him say that when he was traveling around the country he would preach the L.D.S. religion to lots of people and he could really do just that. He thought a lot of his family. He always carried pictures of his sons in his purse so he could show them off to people.
My father met my mother and he told this story to my brother Claude. One day he and some of his friends and some of his brothers were sitting on the fence by the side of the road and my mother came along the road and my father said to the others, “There’s a pretty girl. I am going to marry her someday.” It wasn’t long until he was taking her to church an out to dances. They went together for a year or more and were married 19 December 1901 in the Logan L.D.S. Temple. They built the family home about two years after their marriage and lived there most of their lives. My father had good health until the last six or seven years of his life, and then he got sick and had a lot of trouble being in and out of hospitals many times. He suffered with heart trouble and dropsey, bleeding ulcers and had a gland operation which was very hard on his nerves and at the last he got so bad with his nerves that he had to be treated in a mental hospital, where he died 1 February 1950. He also had high blood pressure and suffered several slight strokes in his brain and throat and finally the last stroke paralyzed his left side, which was the cause of his death. His funeral was held in the Benson Ward Chapel and he is buried in the Logan City Cemetery.
— Norma R. Hillyard, a daughter
Logan City Cemetery, Logan, Cache, Utah, Plot B-30-4-7
