About Morris
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 Dinner with Hovland family, Bergen Norway, 1964 |
Six hours of daylight and persistently sub-freezing temperatures were disorienting. Having no training in the Norwegian language didn’t help. Although I was dedicated and worked long hours, but we had to deal with persistent rejection and depression was lurking in the ever-present shadows. Somehow I survived. Gradually I began to understand what was being said, and even more gradually I became fluent. With the language and experience came a new-found confidence. By the time I had finished, I had grown to love and respect the Norwegian people and had made many close friends.
When I returned home after two and a half years in Norway, I felt I could conquer the world. My post-mission grades at Brigham Young University reflected this attitude. I was invited to join the honors society and switched my major from engineering (which had bored me) to political science, with a minor in English. Within a year I had managed to convince a beautiful, blonde freshman named Dawn Parrett to marry me. We set out on what has become a fantastic adventure together that has lasted forty-one years and counting.
 Dawn and I were married Sept 25th, 1966 |
We were married during the Vietnam Warwhen the shadow of the draft hung over my head. I was in a rush to get my education; who knew what the next day’s mail might bring? I compressed four college years into three and in 1967 I was ready to graduate. I knew I wanted to continue my schooling, but the question was, in what field? As I contemplated a career, I was looking for something that would help me avoid the financial worries that had beset my parents, who had struggled to put six children through college. Doctors’ offices made me queasy, so I eliminated the medical profession. The law seemed much more up my alley. Besides, my mother had always said I was a master at argument.
Somehow I was able to convince Harvard Law School to take me, so in the fall of 1967, we headed east from California in an old Plymouth Valiant, pulling a small U-Haul trailer with all our belongings. We drove across the country to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Neither of us had been beyond the Rockies and we marveled at the green beauty of the landscapes we passed through. Law School proved to be exhilarating, intimidating and exhausting. Dawn graciously put her own schooling on hold so she could earn the money to support us. Her first job was secretary to a young hotshot Harvard law professor named Alan Dershowitz (yes, that one).
It was fun to have Dawn on campus with me, but soon we learned she was pregnant and knew she would have to give up her job. In those days neither maternity leave nor day care was offered by the University. Insurance covered sicknesses, but pregnancy was not a sickness. Fortunately, we were able to find a position as “dorm parents” at Mt. Ida girls’ college, and this paid our room and board, plus a small cash stipend. At age twenty, Dawn was about the same age as some of her dorm “children,” but marriage and an expected child probably made her seem more mature.
Shortly after my arrival at the law school, I entered the Ames moot court competition, then a requirement for all first year law students. I was matched up against a student who had previously received a PhD in English and had taught in an Ivy League school for several years. I don’t think I have ever felt so intimidated—as I was preparing on the afternoon before the argument, I had to strip down and put towels under my arms to sop up the beads of nervous sweat that were rolling down my body. When I finally stood to argue, however, everything seemed to fall into place. I went on to the higher levels of the competition in my second and third years. In those rounds we were divided into teams of six, each taking the name of a famous jurist (in our case, Learned Hand). Eventually we won the school-wide competition in our third year. Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court presided over the final argument, which was held before a packed house in the venerable old courtroom in Austin Hall.
At the conclusion of law school, I accepted an offer to become an associate at Latham & Watkins, then a Los Angeles firm of about fifty lawyers. There were several firms in California that were twice as large, but I liked that Lathamwas not an “old boy’s club”—those who were there had come from all over the country. I was lucky in my choice and spent my entire career with the firm, formally retiring in 2004 as a senior partner specializing in trademark and copyright litigation. Latham has become recognized as one of the top law firms in the world, with nearly 2,000 lawyers in over twenty offices (half overseas).
It was a great privilege to spend my entire legal career among the brilliant and talented lawyers at Latham & Watkins. For me, however, my legal career was not the most important thing in life. Family, church, history, writing—these were first in my heart. But the discipline that a legal education and a high-level practice brought to my mind was invaluable in shaping who I was becoming.
 My family when we were all a lot younger |
When I began at Latham, the firm had less than fifty lawyers in one office—in Los Angeles. Dawn and I settled into an apartment on the west side of the city with our first child, Matt, who had been born while I was a law student. Now that I was supporting the family, financially, Dawn enrolled in UCLA, and four years later graduated with a degree in English, cum laude. During that time she gave birth to our second child, David, and also to our third, Lara, who was born three months premature and lived only ten days.
After graduation, Dawn became a full-time mother. We bought our first house in Glendale and welcomed two daughters, Ashley and Elise, into our family. Shortly after Elise’s birth we moved south to Orange County, where we have lived ever since. At age three months Elise passed away from sudden infant death syndrome—another painfully sad time for our family. Perhaps this made the arrival two years later of our son, Tyson, all the more welcome.
Ever since we took a genealogy class together at BYU the year after we were married, Dawn and I have shared an interest in family history. We are interested in more than just names and dates; we want to uncover the stories of our ancestors’ lives. While working full time as a lawyer I began to indulge this interest. My great-great-grandfather, Thore Torstensen, had been born in Norway’s Numedal Valley and made his way to America with the first immigrant ship from that area in 1838. In America he became Tora Thurston, our family’s first progenitor with that surname. Using a four-page biographical sketch as a starting point, I began to spend vacations and weekends in libraries, researching as much as I could about this elusive character. I continued to plug away until, ten years later in 1996, I published Tora Thurston: The History of a Norwegian Pioneer, a full biography of this interesting man and his families. I was pleased when the Dallas Genealogical Society gave it the top book award in their family history writing contest.
As I was working on my Tora Thurston biography, Dawn returned to school to receive her MA in communications from California State University, Fullerton. With our children mostly grown, she was anxious to continue her studies, and she did so with great distinction, receiving straight “A”s in her coursework.
Because of the success enjoyed by my Tora Thurston book, I accepted an invitation to lecture at a genealogical conference on how to write a family history. At about the same time, Dawn published a history of her Miller grandparents, which also led to her lecturing on life story writing. Soon she was teaching a course on that subject at Santiago Canyon College in Orange. Over the years her followers have grown until she now has over sixty students spread over two classes. Many of them have studied with her for years, have published their memoirs and family histories, and have won writing awards. All would agree that she is a marvelous teacher.
A few years after I published Tora Thurston, my father handed me a bundle of handwritten pages. “This is my personal history,” he said, “but I don’t know where to go from here.”
 My father and mother, Morris Almo and Barbara Thurston |
“I do,” I said, and this kicked off wonderful two-year collaboration on my father’s memoirs, which we published in 2000 as
Long Trail Winding: The Personal History of Morris Alma Thurston. My father was in his late eighties when he gave me the draft. It provided a fantastic opportunity to become closer to him during his late years as we examined his life together. His book is a sterling example of an interesting and immensely readable personal history written by an otherwise ordinary person.
Over the years since Dawn and I published our first family histories, we have lectured together (and she separately) to many groups, from small genealogy societies to large crowds at BYU Education Week. We always enjoy the interaction with people who want to leave their own life stories for posterity, or who want to preserve the story of a parent or other ancestor. We are passionate about the subject and are pleased to be able to share our passion.
Life can be full of pitfalls for a husband and wife who work together. This is especially true for two strong-willed people. Dawn and I each are first-born children and have a tendency to want to take charge. Several years ago we tempted fate by deciding to co-author a book on life story writing. The result is Breathe Life into Your Life Story: How to Write a Story People Will WANT to Read. We had the obligatory arguments over everything from the proper placement of a comma to what subjects to stress, but our marriage stayed intact and strengthened. The result is a book that is better than it would have been if just one of us had written it. We’re anxious to hear others’ reactions.
Now we are excited about another way to reach out to those who want help with their life stories. With the launching of our websites, we are beginning a series of Memoir Mentor podcasts, which we intend to produce once or twice a month, with focused tips and reminders on all aspects of life story writing. Be sure to check back periodically or, better yet, subscribe to the podcasts through
iTunes. They’re free! And while you’re at it, be sure to check out Dawn’s great website at MemoirMentor.com if you haven’t already done so.
As I have eased into full retirement from my legal practice (I’m not all the way there yet), I have been pursuing other interests. I have accepted an assignment as an editor of the
Joseph Smith Papers Project, conducted under the auspices of the LDS Church History Department. This project draws on some of the outstanding scholars of the Joseph Smith era of LDS Church history, and its object is to make accessible, in text and images, all of the papers authored by or on behalf of (or connected with) Joseph Smith, the first Mormon prophet. I am part of the “legal team,” a small group of committed lawyer-historians who are seeking to organize and make sense of the more than one hundred legal matters Smith was involved in during his life.
This interest in Joseph Smith’s legal history has led to further lecturing and teaching. I am working on a series of articles about the attempts of the state of Missouri to extradite Smith from Illinois. I’m also an adjunct professor at BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School, part of a team teaching a course on Joseph Smith and the law.
When I can find the time, I want to write and publish additional family history books. At the moment I am collecting materials on two of my ancestors—Edson Barney, one of the early converts to the Mormon Church in 1831, and William Griffiths Reese, the son of Welsh converts to Mormonism, who immigrated to Utah in 1862. If you are a descendant of either of these men, please follow the link to the page describing these men and their families, and please also use my contact page to send me a note detailing your relationship or interest.
 Hiking recently near Sedona, Arizona |
Finally, Dawn and I have other interests besides life story writing. For example, we both enjoy literature, movies and travel. Dawn likes gardening and cooking, while I am passionate about sports—especially basketball. Until a recent knee injury sidelined me, I’ve been a lifelong player, always finding time for basketball even when work and other activities threatened to bury me. We also enjoy following the lives of our four children and three grandchildren.
Perhaps nobody has made it to this point in this lengthy biography. But if you have, I’m honored.
Morris Thurston