Sallie Jean Wyant was the first member of the LDS Church in her family and is the most recent convert to the Church in the ancestry of Dayton Gray Thorpe.
Dayton Thorpe
5/30/03Selected Family History
My maternal-grandfather, Richard Velsa Gray, was born in Provo, Utah. He was a member of a devoutly Mormon family. At about age nine he moved to Sacramento, California. Through High School he received his schooling in Sacramento. During High School he particularly enjoyed math and science. Many of the adults around him, as well as his peers, advised him to become an engineer of some sort. In his senior year he was President of the California Scholarship Federation. He graduated 25th in a class of over 500.
After High School he went to the University of Southern California. While he went to college he held a full-time job; despite this he still finished a 4 year college program in 3 years. After graduating from college in 1953 on a scholarship from the NROTC he was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy. He served active duty for three years in the Far East and the Carribean. After his service in the military, which earned him the National Defense Service Medal, Korean Defense, and the United Nations Defense Medal, he became an architect.
While he was in the military he served aboard an aircraft carrier. There he worked in the engineering department. A year after this he was sent to the Navy Salvage School in New Jersey. He learned how to be a deep sea diver and salvage officer. He was transferred to a salvage division in the Carribean where he served until his discharge from the Navy.
In 1956 Richard Gray was employed as a Junior Structural Engineer at the State Division of Architecture in Sacramento, California. One year later he was promoted to Assistant Structural Engineer. He worked for the State of California as an Architect until 1979. Then, being bored with Architecture, he went into Real Estate until 1993. He lived with his wife in Sacramento, California until his death on May 26, 1994; days before his 63rd birthday.
My maternal-grandmother, Sallie Jean Wyant, was born on May 7, 1931 in Sacramento, California. She was born to wealthy parents during the heart of the depression. Her father, Edmund Morrison Wyant, was of English dissent and her mother, Theodora Frederika W. Ewert, was of German dissent. She grew up in Sacramento, California.
She went to Sacramento High School. There one of her particular areas of interest was history. During this time period at Sacramento High School there were High School fraternities and sororities. Of these my grandmother was a member. Her Greek sorority held the name of Manana. Being an only child of wealthy parents and having an aunt with no children who was also wealthy, she, in her own words, was “spoiled rotten.” She was raised very affluently. She played golf and tennis at the local country club. She played tennis for several summers at this country club, she played so much that she had an article written about in the local newspaper. While playing these sports, which she claims to have performed badly, she claims to have performed and enjoyed roller skating and swimming, which she passed on to my mother.
She met Richard and fell in love. On July 13, 1953 they were married. As her husband went to USC on an NROTC scholarship, she went, too. She completed the 4 year program and majored in merchandising. She did this with the dream in mind of going to New York and other cities and buying all sorts of beautiful clothes. All on the same day she was married to her husband, they both graduated from college, and her husband Richard received his commission for the military. Richard went away for nine months to serve in the military. During this time Sallie worked in a local shop called “Weinstocks.” Her job there was always as a “Sales Lady,” according to my grandmother’s words. While her husband was away Sallie lived with her parents.
Eventually Richard came back. When he came back, he was still in the military. He came to get her so she could be with him for the remainder of his service. They then moved to Puerto Rico where he would finish his duty. While in Puerto Rico for a year and a half they had one baby, my uncle Jim. His service was then ended and they returned to Sacramento. As her husband began his career as an architect, she became a stay-at-home-mom. After Jim Sallie has my mother Gail, then Linda, then finally Gary.
After Puerto Rico Sallie and Richard moved to a house on 13th Avenue in Sacramento, California. While living there they had a next door neighbor who was very messy. This neighbor was very messy, often leaving her children’s toys lying around. One of her smaller children one day ate on of these toys and began to choke. The mother, not knowing what to do, brought the child to my grandmother. My grandmother took the child, performed the Heimlich Manoeuver to save they young child. She then moved with her chidren to another home in a well-to-do neighborhood in Sacramento. She lived in this house for the next 32 years. She lived there until her husband died. When he died she moved to SunCity California, a closed community for the retired, where she still lives today.Richard Velsa Gray Funeral Program. [United States]: n.p., n.d.
Thorpe, Devin D. Sallie Jean Wyant and Richard Velsa Gray Draft Family History.
Utah: Devin Thorpe/Gail Thorpe/Dayton Thorpe, 2001