Lawana and Dick

Orlando Temple 2009

Happy Birthday to my loving,

sweet husband on his 70 milestone year!

Thank you for sharing this wonderful, incredible journey with me. All of my expectations and things of life that I had never dreamed of, have been fulfilled with you and your dreams. Our most prized possession is our marriage and faith in the eternities together with our precious daughters, their spouses and children. How could I have ever imagined what life would be like at this time in our lives. You have always known the dream and how to make it happen.



Thank you for the endless hours you have spent laboring so that our live would be so richly blessed. Thank you for allowing me to stay home with our daughters so that we would reap the rewards of a beautiful family. Thank you for your insight to teach, inspire, and direct our daughters when they were young, not only the principles of the Gospel, but in the many other rich experiences of life.





Thank you for being the leader, organizer, instructor, provider, supporter, and most wonderful husband, father, grandfather to our family. I truly love you with all my heart. Thank you for being my one and only eternal companion. We have made errors along the way, but none so great that we have lost the vision of eternity.

This journey has been so sweet and quick. It seems just yesterday we were at BYU falling in love for the first time, attending the many devotionals, forums, and ball games, carving our initials on the tree below the JS building when you "pinned" me, skipping class for the first time, playing in the snow, watching scary Friday night shows on TV, going to movies at the "drive in", (they don't even have these any more) visiting the ER for "popcorn-itis", bringing baby mittens to me when I had a cold, riding dirt bikes into the canyon during the fall, teaching me to study at the library, walking over campus with the "man" everyone knew and called by name, basking in the sun (!), enjoying the spring flowers on campus, water skiing for the first time, buying a leopard coat together that shocked my mother, dancing at the top of Bridal Vail Falls, taking a marriage prep class for credit to graduate Cum Laude, my first flight in a plane which was to Boise, receiving a diamond at 35,000 feet (I was in heaven!) Chinese dinner and call at midnight to my dad, thrown into the Botany Pond, graduating together, everyone forgetting your birthday the day before our wedding, SLC Temple, Starlight Motel, Bishop Laney's cabin, Fig Newtons, catching fish from the tanker truck, North 5th Street, our feather bed, white Christmas trees with hot pink ornaments, blue-eyed Misty, a turquoise Ford, pheasant and duck hunting, chasing pheasants for you, "smoked ducks", touring Idaho in a our new blue Pontiac, the white VW bug, MONY memories, J. Richard Clarke, teaching early morning Seminary for 15 years, Sunday naps, dinner with your family, first pair of "blue booties", huge sign on house announcing "positive results", Fairmont vegetable garden, proud papa, baby girl in blue, Sheri Dawn, our first home, a yellow house Grover Street, Shelly Lynn, needing more rooms to Bristol Street, Juliette Noel, and Rebecca Diane.....life to it's fullest.

Our joy truly began with these four daughters, our purpose, our love, our desires, our hopes, our dreams, our wonderful journey. This list just begins with these precious children and could go on forever.


And now as we celebrate your birthday, I want you to know this list of adventures with you will never end. You still have dreams, plans, and desires to fulfill. You continue to be the magnificent man I married 46 years ago, always thinking, planning, and sharing with our greatly enlarged family.

There have been marriages, births, blessings, baptisms, graduations, tennis lessons, basket ball shoot outs, dinners, celebrations, holidays, reunions, missions, vacation trips, sailing, snorkeling.




The memories begin all over again with the grandkids and how much we love them. It is hard to step back and let them move on in their directions, these become their memories, and we still desire to be a part of them too. I know of their love for you and your fun memories, of telling stories, "pill popping", "Mormon Mud", love of tennis, and sharing all you have with them.

This is a small tribute to you, because words cannot express the feelings that reside in my heart of my love for you. I know you will treasure this gift your beautiful daughters have prepared for you. I have truly enjoyed all their thoughts and love they have shared with you in this book.

All my love for you,
Your "first mate", Lawana