My life, the beginning.

I've decided to do some writing on my blog. My story seems to be something I can share. So, I'll write about memories I have, as well as things I've been told about myself. This is one of the latter.

I was born October 6, 1944, at a hospital at Kearns Army Ordnance Depot. That makes me almost an Army brat. My parents were Lt. John A. Hippen and Shirley Gale. They had met at Camp Kearns. My dad's best friend in the army was John Hartman. Dad was from Detroit, and 'Jake' Hartman was from Long Island, New York. My mom and her sister June would go to the USO dances at Camp Kearns. Mom and June lived with their parents at 1070 Lincoln St. Salt Lake City, Utah. Dad and Jake started dating these two gorgeous sisters (I've seen pictures of Mom and June that were published in the Deseret News at the time of the wedding, and they were gorgeous.) and ended up marrying them in a double ceremony at the Garden Park Ward building on Yale Avenue in Salt Lake City, on August 4, 1943. (I may have to correct that date after further research.)

My earliest memory, and it may just have been a dream from a later date, is of lying on my back in a baby carriage and seeing Mom pushing that carriage. It was winter, the sky was gray, and I could see bare trees going past above us. Mom had on a dark winter coat and shoulder length dark hair.

Soon after I was born, Dad was sent to Germany in World War II. He and Mom drove from Salt Lake to Maryland where he was to report before being shipped over. It is amazing that she then drove by herself back across country. Her worst memory was of staying in a hotel in Medicine Bow, Wyoming. The hotel had only one bathroom per floor, and there were drunk cowboys staggering up and down the hallways all night. The trip was really hard on her body, too soon after giving birth to me, and she started hemorrhaging while in that hotel, with only the sink in the room to contain the blood. She always said that physical trauma was why I was an only child for 6 1/2 years. She was just unable to sustain a pregnancy for a long time.

I stayed with my grandparents and aunts and uncles at 1070 Lincoln Street while Mom and Dad were gone.

Dad was in Army Intelligence in Germany. His job was to interrogate German prisoners. He was born in Germany, and German was the principle language in his home as a child. His family immigrated to the US in 1926 and landed in New York just a couple of days before his 7th birthday. Dad was with the US Army group that liberated Dachau toward the end of the war. He never talked about it. The only thing I knew while growing up was that he had books showing the emaciated bodies of the people interred there. He finally told my niece Shaye Hawkins about it when she interviewed him for a school assignment years later.