Wendy Williams-Dew
Hi. My name is Wendy Olivia Williams-Dew. My father was heavy in the Mormon church. He really, really studied religion his whole life because it mattered to him that he was following the right religion.
My father had been speaking to my other mother about the fact that he thinks that polygamy was stopped for the wrong reasons. He said, "I think, honestly, that polygamy could be a nice way to live if it was done right."
So my dad and my other mother had this conversation with my mother, who was just a little bit of a spitfire. My mom told me, in many conversations, she says, "Wendy, I tried so hard to stay out of this." And she said, "I prayed and prayed, 'Please, God, tell me what I want to hear'." And she said, "Everything pointed back to 'Yes, this is probably the best thing for you'." And she said, "I bawled my eyes out and bawled my eyes out." And finally, she said, "Okay, you know to marry into the family."
Well, my mother came in when there was six kids and just mayhem, and she's like, "What have I done?" We had an 180 acre farm up right over the border in Creston, British Columbia. We were affiliated with Colorado City when we lived up there. They came up there, and they would come and preach to us. My dad was a little leery of them, and for a good reason, but we ended up moving to Colorado City. We lived there for three years, and then I had a couple siblings that got married.
You don't know until the day, day before, or the night of, maybe, that you're going to marry some s.o.b. that you don't even know. That happened when my sister, she was beautiful, Nola. Got married to a guy that had nine other wives just overnight. And I was so upset, because I love Nola and we were always had good rapport, I chased them all the way down, probably a mile down the road. "You bring her back!" I'm screaming and yelling and getting on the windows, and "You bring her back!" It was pretty sad.
And I'm watching real close to that crap, going "hell no. I don't know how, but I'm not this is not happening to me." And so I never did get married till I was 50. And my dad moved out of Colorado city after we lived there three years.
At one point, a couple of the priesthood brethren approached my dad and asked him if he'd go in a business deal with them. And he said, "Well, I don't have any money to do that." He says, "Yeah, but you have land. Let us hold the title as collateral." Well, they took his title and without him knowing they forged his name and stole his 180 acre farm.
And you don't own land in Colorado City. They assign you a lot to build your house on their property. So if you don't jump to the beat of their music, they kick you out of your house, off of their property. And that happens often and it's sad. People have left for a weekend and come back and their furniture is all out in the yard, and other people are living in their house, and there's nothing they can do about it. My father never ever recovered from that. He was so angry, so we did move.
He saved my ass because I was at the age where you get married!
