The Beginning --- Baby Janice Is Born

On a warm summer day in 1946, a sweet baby girl was born. Her name was Janice Watson. Pink, fat, and bald, she was the first-born child of Leota Faye Sheen and Wayne Follett Watson. She was born at the Christensen Nursing Home in Rupert, Idaho. A few days after her birth, she went with her mother to stay for a week with her grandparents, Code and Clara Sheen. The new mother had a high fever and was in and out of consciousness for a time. In a few days she recovered and her husband took her and their baby home.

Their home was a small, old two-room house on the west edge of the tiny village of Hazelton, Idaho. One room was the kitchen. The other room was the living room/bedroom. To get water, they used a hand pump in the front yard. The bathroom was an outhouse in the backyard. Bathing was done in a galvanized tin tub on the kitchen floor. Leota heated water and did laundry in an old wringer washer on the back porch. About 5 years later, they were able to add two bedrooms and an indoor bathroom to the back of the house. But in the summer of 1946, Wayne and Leota brought Little Janice home to their humble two-room house where they were happy, and in love, and thrilled with their new daughter.