A Short History of Dahl Hatch

Dahl Hatch was born on May 26, 1926. He was the sixth of eleven children born to George P. Hatch and Dora Palmer. He was born in Taylor Arizona which is next to Snowflake and was settled by his great grandfather. H e lived in a brick house with four bedrooms and a path. It was in the center of a 10 acre lot, and the children had lots of room to run around and play. They got their water from a windmill. Bathing was usually a Saturday night project in the kitchen with water heater over the stove.
The big depression was in full force and his parents found business difficult for the general store that they owned and ran. He remembers visiting the store and seeing an ice cream parlor in one end. As times were really difficult, costumers charged all of their purchases and were unable to pay. When the store was empty they were out of business.
With the store closed his father was unemployed as were most of the people in Taylor. The family moved every few years as his father sought employment to support his large family. Dahl said if it hadn’t been for beans they would have all starved. His father found work in St. Johns . He was in charge of the federal project of building privies for all of Apache country. He attended school in St. Johnsfrom 1936 to 1939 until he was in the ninth grade. This was a time of his youth that he remembered most and thought of it as his home town. This small farming town was filled with poor people and everyone worked.
Dahl learned to work early in life. By the time he was twelve he had a job selling the Albuquerque Journal newspaper. He worked for both the local papers, folding papers as they came off the press and then delivering them. He did small jobs carrying wood in by the stove and other things. He had his first full-time summer job when he was fourteen working at a gas station and motel. When he worked for the local farmers he would usually earned about fifty cents for 8 hours hoeing weeds. They had a family project of hauling wood from nearby cedar forests, sawing it up for firewood and selling it for $5 a cord. From that early age he seldom asked for money and was able to buy his own clothes and other things. He says he never had a job he didn’t like.
When his Dad’s job was finished they moved to Kirtland, New Mexico. Dahl says that at his high school there were 14 boys and the school only had 12 football uniforms. He was not large enough to fit any so he and another kid didn’t get on the team but got to play basketball on the second string. It was there that he bought his first gun and paid about $5 for a 22 rifle from the Sears catalog. He enjoyed hunting rabbits and would usually come home with one for supper. Later his father recommended that he sell the gun and buy another better model for about $7. He kept that gun all his life
It was while they were living in Kirtland that his Grandfather Hatch came to visit them one summer and gave each of the children a Patriarchal blessing. While they were living in Kirtland the U.S. was brought into the big war in 1941 and people began entering the armed services in large numbers.
The family moved to Winslow, Arizona where his father found work on the Santa Fe R.R. Dahl was in the 11th grade. There were no homes available so they moved into an old vacant store. Because of the man shortage, he spent a summer working for the forest service as a fire chaser. He enjoyed being out in the forest at Buck Springs with three other boys. They lived in a tent and did their own cooking. They mostly worked on the forest roads but did chase a few fires and put them out. When the summer rains started they were sent home.
The family moved to Provo, Utah in Dahl’s senior year. He graduated in 1944 from Provo High School and attended a special vocational school and studied radio. He hoped to become an electronic whiz at that time. His sisters said that he loved to take things apart and figure out how they worked.
The September after he graduated he was drafted into the infantry and went to Camp Hood, Texas for basic training. When he got to Texas it was hot and dusty. By the time he went out to the rifle range and for bivouac it was cold and raining. He was then sent to the Philippines by way of New Guinea. He spent 31 days on the troop ship in route and very sick. He was soon in combat and out on patrols doing “mop up” work in the jungles until the end of the war. It was a very happy day when he heard about the new atom bomb. They were in a rest camp and were starting to take special training to invade Japan. Shortly after that Japan surrendered and they were sent to Korea as occupation troops to replace the defeated Japanese. Dahl said they were received in a mostly friendly manner. He applied for the signal corps and was sent to Inchon as a telephone operator. Later he was transferred to Pusan and other places. After about a year in Korea he was discharged in November 1946, after serving about 19 months in the Foreign Service. The only time he wore a class A uniform was while he was in route from Texas to California to get on the ship.
Dahl thought he was going back to Provo, but when he arrived in California, he found that his grandfather Hatch had died. His parents had moved back to Taylor, Arizona to care for his grandmother. He bought a motorcycle in Burbank where he had been visiting his sister Glena Sherwood and road it to Taylor.
Shortly after returning home Dahl enrolled in Arizona State College and graduated in 1950 with a bachelor’s degree in Science. His parents had moved to Phoenix by then so he lived at home most of the time he attended college. Phoenix became his home town and he had many friends there. In June of 1950 after graduating from college, he received a mission call to the Northwestern States. He spent three days of instruction in SLC where he went through the temple for the first time. He spent most of the next two years around Portland, Oregon. He thought it was very wet there.
After returning home in 1952 he worked for the water and power company for a time. He finally went to California to work with his brother-in-law Bill Sherwood for the Century Records Company making phonograph records. That is where he met the beautiful and very eligible Bethe Choate at a stake dance. Bethe was introduced to Dahl and his sister as “Dahl and Dixie Hatch.” She assumed they were married so showed little interest until she figured out what their relationship was. Bethe left for a summer in Europe shortly after they met and her mother, who liked Dahl almost as much as Bethe did, kept an eye on him that summer. They became officially engaged while attending a Hatch Thanksgiving family reunion. It was 1953 and the Hatch family had gathered at a lodge in Running Springs, California. On April 13, 1954 Dahl took Bethe to the Mesa Temple where they were sealed.
They soon bought a home at 2729 N. Myers St. in Burbank where they lived for three years. During this time Dahl decided to go back to college and become a high school teacher. He enrolled at Los Angeles State. After graduation he was hired to teach for a beginning salary of $3800 a year. He then spent seven more years at night and summer school until he received his master’s degree in education administration. His first job was teaching electricity in James A Garfield high school in L.A. He finally located a job working for Compton school district and they moved to Bellflower and located at 10466 Ives St.
During the next few years five children came into their family, Michelle (or Shelley), Traci, Diane, Kent and Rex, all born within seven years.
During the years the family was growing up they went on many vacations and enjoyed his time off as a teacher. They usually traveled during the summer, at Easter break and at Christmas time. The most memorable vehicle of travel was a ‘67 Ford van. They traveled to all parts of the western United States and Canada until the children became older and started to do so many things that they were no longer able to get everyone together for the trips
There was a tradition of the big “Hatch Family Reunion” every Thanksgiving holiday. Usually, they were held in Parker Arizona. The big Thanksgiving meal would be at the Parker LDS church. It would not be uncommon to serve 100 to 200 Hatch relatives at the main dinner. They would spend the next two days playing sport, games, dancing, eating and catching up with the extended family at a park on the Indian reservation nearby. Other traditions included all of the California family meeting at the Sherwood’s in Burbank for a Christmas Eve dinner and program, and gathering at Dahl’s home on the 4th of July for a barbeque and swim party. They also would enjoy a beach party and corn roast in the summer. A day outing into the mountains to gather pinions in the fall was another fun tradition. These events created many fond memories and friendships. Dahl’s family continues to meet every year for a “Dahl Hatch family Reunion.”
Some of Dahl’s great loves and hobbies were Scouting, hiking and camping. The words “vacation” and “camping” were always the same to him. He has been on top of Mt. Whitney four times. He enjoyed music. He was more concerned about the volume than the type. He was famous for his harmonica playing. He could play anything that he could hum. The most memorable being “If I Were a Rich Man”, which seemed to include some extra measures of Da,da,da,da.
Dahl served faithfully in many different calling in the church. He taught seminary, was explorer leader, Sunday school teacher, counselor in the Bishopric three times, on the High Council, Stake Sunday School President and financial clerk to mention a few. He spent many years working with the youth. The young men lovingly referred to him as “Good Ol Brother Hatch”. He was a very good teacher and speaker. He was called to be the stake Young Men’s president when he was 70 years old! At this same time his son Kent was serving as the High Priest group leader at 36 year of age. He served many years in scouting, in the ward, stake and council level. He looked forward to going to scout camp every year.
He taught high school for 35 years, taking only a few days of sick leave the entire time. Being a school teacher gave the family extended vacation time and they used it to see the Western United States. After retiring he and Bethe served a mission to the Family History Center in Salt Lake City in 1992, and later an Institute Service Mission at the Cerritos Institute. They also enjoyed traveling and saw much of the world. He often said he would have liked to be a summer forest ranger, but he bought a house with a yard and that became his master instead.
He and Bethe made it possible for their family to have many Dahl Hatch reunions, alternating one year with all their children and grandchildren and the next with just the original children and their spouses. Some of those vacations included beach houses at Ventura and Cambria, Aspen Grove Family Camp, Cabins at Sundance and Cedar Breaks, Cruises to the Caribbean, Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska just to mention a few treasured memories.
Dahl passed away November 25, 2008 after battling pulmonary fibrosis. He was 82 years old. His last journal entry dated Nov 14, 2008 stated, “A phone call from Christopher and Lindy to announce great-grandson ‘Hunter Dal Cannon.’ All is well in Zion!”