About Ben Pack

In this article I present a brief history of my life.

I was the second child born into a loving family in Philadelphia PA. My father has a long pioneer heritage and my mother is a convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We soon moved to Benjamin, a small country town south of Provo UT. I have vague memories from there, mostly having to do with the few farm animals my father raised. By age three, we moved back to Philadelphia to a government -assisted apartment. My predominant memories consist of:

1. Playing games and running wild with the neighborhood kids.
2. Setting fire to a neighboring apartment building.
3. Some fort built in a wooded area behind a tall chain link fence that someone had cut a hole in. I think the wooded area was on a hill beside some rock yard that had heavy equipment operating in it.
4. Antoine, the neighborhood bully, bullying me. I don't remember what he did, just that he was a bully.
5. Having rocks thrown at me and my sister while riding our bikes under a railroad bridge. We ditched the bikes and ran home. I don't remember if we ever got the bikes back, but I suppose we did.
6. My Mom having her purse ripped from her shoulder while we were walking back from the library or grocery store or somewhere like that. 
7. Bars outside the grocery store doors so that people could fit through, but not the carts. You had to haul your groceries from the door to your car by hand. There were kids there to help you, for a fee. It wasn't a problem for us because we didn't use a car. We used a two-wheeled tall wire basket to transport our goods home.
8. Riding the trolley to school and sometimes doing, or at least contemplating, sneaking in the back doors and not paying our tokens like some of the other kids did. I am pretty sure we got the tokens for free and I doubt I had any other use for them than getting to school and back, but somehow that was still a temptation for me.
9. Trying to save some baby birds after the tree their nest was in was uprooted in a hurricane. By the way, at the beginning of the hurricane my siblings and I were outside enjoying the rain wearing garbage bags as rain coats. Our mother called us in when the winds started getting severe and was grateful we were safely inside when the large and heavy steel door to the apartment complex was slammed shut by the wind. 
10. Hearing about my family being robbed at gunpoint while I was sleeping. I believe all they got from us was $12 and an old digital flip alarm clock where the digits are hinged in the middle on a spool or wheel and change by it rotating ever so slightly so the top of the current digit would flip down to display the next number.
11. Hearing about my father being chased on his way to or from school by a guy with a knife and having to duck into some convenience store or similar to save his life.
12. Watching through drawn blinds as the convenience store across from our apartment got robbed. 
13. Skipping kindergarten. When asked to say the ABC's at the start of first grade, I couldn't. 
14. Riding in the back of a '66 Chev 1/2-ton with a tarp over two side boards as we traveled across the nation in our move to UT.

Good times!  I wouldn't change a thing. 

Wallsburg

From ages 6-12 I grew up in Wallsburg, a beautiful small country town nestled in the Wasatch mountains in UT. I enjoyed the outdoors. My father was a professor at BYU and my mother was a stay-at-home mom. I was a shy, but happy child. Some of my memories are:

1. Breathing through my gloves while waiting for the bus in 32 below 0 weather. We were bussed to the nearby town of Heber since the only school building in Wallsburg was vacant.
2. Going camping with my friend the same age as me by ourselves in the hills behind his house. There was a pond up there with a little wooden raft. One time I had bought a hatchet at some Chinese-junk-selling venue and it had completely rusted, I believe in one day. I remember being amazed how fast it had rusted. Note that I was 12 when I moved from Wallsburg, so I was at most 12 while doing this. 
3. Doing chores like moving sprinkler pipes with my sister, feeding rabbits and chickens, etc.
4. Peeing wherever I wanted outside. (My current three-year-old seems naturally inclined that way as well.)
5. Cutting, hauling, and chopping wood year after year to heat the house. ( I was mostly involved in the hauling part.)
6. Running to Mommy and Daddy's room to get dressed in the mornings. Their room was heated with electric heat to 60 degrees, while our rooms were heated to 55 degrees. We did have electric blankets though.
7. Going hunting from our back door. One year my father shot a deer on the hill right behind our house.
8. Sledding on the hill right out our back door. I think the snow was deeper than my legs. The best part was coming in and warming up by the wood stove.
9. Shooting out one pane of the double pane window by the front door of the house. I was swinging my BB gun around to unload it into the field before entering the house and pulled the trigger a little too soon. I was quite worried about the expense of it, but I believe my parents footed the bill in the end. I believe it was $85.
10. Hiding in the bathroom with the door locked when my little brother was chasing me. One time he beat a hole in the door with the barrel of probably the same BB gun. I must have done something especially aggravating that time.
11. Burning trash in a barrel outside. Then when it was full of ashes, hauling the barrel of ashes to the dump.
12. Saving scraps of food and feeding them to the chickens.
13. Growing a garden and trying to keep the deer out.
14. Raising animals for food: pigs, rabbits, chickens, and geese. We also took care of several horses for the landlord in exchange for cheaper rent. 
15. Laying on my back on my bunk bed at the end of a satisfying summer day and listening to the sprinklers (Rainbird) ticking in the alfalfa field outside my open window.
16. Staying up late at night reading a "Hardy Boys" mystery on a lazy Summer day.
17. Jumping down I believe a full eight foot story from a banister railing on an open staircase while playing tag. The "it" person could never get you because you could climb up the stair railing on the outside of the staircase high enough that they couldn't reach you, then jump onto the floor below when they came up the stairs to get you.
18. Sliding down the same flight of stairs on a sled or maybe even just in a sleeping bag.
19. I could go on and on...

Overall, Wallsburg was an awesome place to grow up. 

Early Teens

When age 12, we moved to Provo into the first house my parents owned. It was small by today's standards, maybe 1,800 square feet, but we fit in just fine. It sat on 1.5 acres. Address 882 S 1100 W, Provo, UT 84604.

By now, there were 5 children in our family. I went to a private school for 7th and 8th grade. My Mom taught there part time so we got free tuition. For at least the second year, I rode my bike. My options were take the bus and go to public school or ride my bike and go to Carden-Lee. I had tried the public schools for the first few days and hated it, so I opted to ride my bike. I have good memories from those years of school. Except for one time when I crashed while riding my bike. I had fractured by wrist playing football and was riding single-handed. I tried to reach over to the opposite side with my good hand to shift gears and pushed or pulled the wrong way. 

At age 12 I bought my first vehicle, an MB50 motorcycle. The 50 designates a 50cc engine. This was supposed to be a street legal bike. For reference, weedeaters come in at about 30cc's. I also bought my first car. I had seen an ad for an old International pickup for $100. When I mentioned it to my Dad, he offered that, if I wanted to buy an old pickup, he would sell me his.  It was the '66 Chev 1/2-ton that we rode across the country in. I believe he had owned it since new. It had been a gift from his parents. I bought it. It was beginning to run rough, which is probably why he wanted to get rid of it, so I needed to fix it. My dad had bought a tune up kit a while back so he could tune it up himself. It was old enough to have points in the distributor and so required periodic tune-ups. My Dad also had a small set of tools. A neighbor mechanic (Glenn Williams) helped me look at it. It turned out that the gasket between the carburetor and the intake manifold had aged and was half missing. I ended up rebuilding the carburetor. Fortunately it was as simple as they get. Only one barrel. It had a straight six 292ci engine. Plenty of room for a young boy to climb around in the engine compartment. There was also a book on cars in our house. I don't remember if it was Dad's or if it was in the sheds when we moved into the Provo house. I know there were several other car books that were left in the shed. I devoured that book, learning all about all the systems in a typical automobile. I still have the book and the Chem-Dip carburetor cleaning solution that I bought and used for that project in my garage (24 years and counting). 

Of course I couldn't drive on the streets, but I could drive in the driveway and pasture. I remember one time my father was out of town for several days. I took the old truck out in the corral area in the back yard and did all kinds of donuts etc. I believe I tilled it up afterwards to remove most of the evidence before he came home.  I don't remember any discussion about it.

I financed these purchases by my paper route. Dutifully delivering papers every day, including delivering the largest paper by far (all the ads) early Sunday mornings. I also got to go around every month and collect checks from my customers. I hated going to the big scary guy in the house at the end of the trailer court.

High School Years

By 9th grade I was back in the public school system at Provo High. Somehow I never quite became integrated. My close friends were from my ward and were all a year younger than me. I pretty much didn't know anyone else. My nature was to be quite reserved. I remember sitting in a seldom-used hallway to eat my lunch all by myself. I dreaded school. My first report card in 9th grade proved that I could get good grades with rather little effort. This gave me the confidence to do well in my classes academically. I guess it didn't hurt that my older sister was nearly a 4.0 student and so had set the bar quite high.

I enjoyed my vocational classes like wood and metal shop. I never did attend any school dances or even date.

As I grew older, I quit my paper route and worked part-time at a neighbors ranch as a pooper scooper. Later I hired on at Reams, a local grocery store that the rancher (Lee Collard) managed. At Reams I started as a bagger. I believe I started at $4.35 or $4.85/hr. Then I was promoted to a produce clerk, which came with a pay raise to $5.25/hr. I would work evenings and Saturdays and even an occasional Sunday. I also stumbled upon an opportunity to work with Kevin Stubbs doing auto body repair in his backyard shop. Just before my mission I converted a section of my parents former chicken coops into what was intended to be a paint booth so I could do auto body repair myself. I only painted two cars in that booth, both of which were my parents' and one of which I finished late in the night the day before entering the MTC.

I rebuilt the engine in my 1984 dodge Daytona Turbo Z. The previous owner (Gordy's Mom) had run it out of oil. I also spent one day (16 hours) replacing the engine in my Chevy Blazer. I remember having the engine on the engine stand I built in metal shop (extremely heavy duty) and firing it up to see if it would run before installing it. It ran and it was LOUD. No exhaust hooked up. 

I also raised several animals during these years. Several goats, a calf, two pigs (fed from scraps from Reams) and probably a number of chickens and rabbits. Although I can't remember if any of them were mine or just our families. I even built a milking stall for the goats.

In the house I remember carpeting my bedroom. The carpet I picked up for free from someone who was replacing it-truly one mans trash can be another man's treasure.  The padding was a scrap my parents had kicking around from who knows where. My father also had a small plastic container with carpet tacks in it. That is how I fastened it down. None of these tack strips the wimpy carpet layers use to lay carpet. At the time I didn't know about tack strips and the container had them labeled as carpet tacks. This is how I learned-by doing, and also by reading, but remember, no internet in those days. I was limited to the books I had on hand. Fortunately one of those books was Readers Digest "Complete Do-it Yourself Guide". The carpet is still there today. Dad's birds get to enjoy looking at it.

Mission

Since life is divided into three segments: 1) before mission, 2) mission, and 3) after mission, I have to include a section on mission. I saved my money, sold my snowmobile ('72 Yamaha), my truck ('68 Ford 3/4 ton) and everything else I hadn't already sold to come up with half the money for my mission (my half was $5,000). My parents paid the rest. I served in the Czech Republic as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from February 3, 1993 to January 30, 1995. They truly were formative years. I thank God for the blessing of being able to serve Him full-time as His missionary. I will leave the details for another time, except to note that there were two women in our class in the Missionary Training Center, one of whom was Sister Christine Moss.

College and Marriage

After getting home from my mission at the end of January 1995, I took a job with Glen Way and Rich Moss building wood decks. I attended BYU starting spring term that year. My major was Mechanical Engineering. Somewhere along the way I figured out if I stayed one extra semester I could also complete the requirements for Manufacturing Engineering. I graduated at the end of winter semester 1999 with both degrees, 3.66/4.0 GPA.

School was still not intriguing to me. I pretty much tried to get by with as little effort as possible. Of course this may have been in large part due to time constraints I imposed on my life. I completed both degrees in four calendar years while simultaneously paying for all of my expenses and half of my tuition (my parents paid half of my tuition, lucky for them it didn't cost them a penny since Dad was a professor there I qualified for a half tuition discount). I lived at home to keep expenses down and because I didn't see any reason to move out. Looking back on it now I see how important living on campus is for social purposes and to focus on studies.

Fortunately the Lord knew my needs and blessed me with the woman of my dreams. When I met Christine Moss in the MTC, I knew she was way out of my league. Beautiful, wealthy, well developed socially and spiritually. It has been amazing to see how we have complemented each other in our quest together to return to our Heavenly Father. I have learned much from her that I am confident I could have learned from no one else and I know she has had to learn a lot being stuck with me.

At one point my parents moved to Israel for a semester so we moved into their house. I installed a 'new' kitchen utilizing cabinets removed by someone else's kitchen renovation-once again, one mans junk is another man's treasure. I sanded the dark stain off of everything. Lot's of work. Also textured, painted, and carpeted the entire upstairs. And I think redid the bathroom for the 2nd time during that semester.

Career

Having looked for a job for several months during my senior year, Chris and I were ecstatic to receive our first offer shortly after the school year ended. It was at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory. The amount was $44,000/year plus typical benefits. I was expecting somewhere between $36k and $40k so the offer was enticing. The only draw back was it was in upstate NY.  I looked online (by now, 1999, internet had come on the scene) and found a house somewhere near the area for $50k. We took the offer, but we rented instead of buying. Houses were a bit more expensive where we needed to live. More like $85k.

A year later we bought a house for $65k. It had originally been screened from our list because it was too cheap. It was also screened from our list as being too nice and in too nice a neighborhood for our budget when we drove by it. Then we pieced together that they were the same house. We had to go see it. Turns out it was a foreclosure. Heated by oil. Prior owners had moved out and when the tank was empty, no more heat. The water supply was damaged and leaking in 12 locations throughout the house. Extensive water damage. Hardwood floors curling, entire basement molded, kitchen walls and ceiling non-existent. The upstairs was in the middle of a renovation so there was no carpet. At the time I didn't know 'normal' banks don't give loans for houses like this. We chose a local bank because the closing costs were low. They happened to hold their own mortgages and use their own appraiser. I didn't realize how blessed we were to get a loan at all on this place. It also turned out to be a lot of work, and a lot of learning.

A year and a half later we transferred to Idaho to help implement some new regulations at the Naval Reactors Facility (NRF) at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL, now INL). I had to pay people to come in and finish up work on the house including putting in the kitchen, downstairs bath (I had installed the tub so we were at least able to wash dishes in the tub for over a year), and siding on the outside.

I worked at NRF for over two years and moved to UT in September 2004 to work at MOXTEK, Inc. We sold our Idaho house ourselves for what we had paid. Fortunately we did not have to pay realtor fees or we would have lost money.

July 23, 2009 I was asked by my boss to come with him to the HR office. I was the first of 25 or so to be laid off. Earlier that year Chris and I had sold one of our two duplexes and were in the process of purchasing a nice big house in Highland. It was a gorgeous house. Oversize 3-car garage and detached, brick two-car shop. It would have fit our family very nicely. All it lacked was a bit more land to park in-process cars out of the way. Nevertheless, Chris and I were both very excited about the house. I had convinced myself that it was right because I could convert the basement into a legal apartment. I had even had the city inspector come out and go through it with me.  Needless to say, we are still in our old house. 1097 N 910 E, Orem, UT 84097. It suits us just fine. 

The money for the down payment has been used instead to buy my freedom from 'the system' for the past almost two years. This has enabled me to study, feel, and experience life in ways undreamed of before. I have been able to truly seek to find and do what I feel the Lord wants me to do with my life. I didn't start living until I was weaned from 'the system.' As it turns out, life has little to do with big houses and perfect circumstances and lots to do with family and serving our fellow man. I still struggle to stay focused each and every day. Maybe that is why I have been taught since my youth to have daily scripture study and prayer; because it really works. We are really distracted by 'the system'. 

As I look back on these last two years I see the Lord's hand in my life all along the way. Not necessarily how I expected, and certainly not how I thought would be best (isn't easy always best?), but certainly how is best for my eternal salvation. As I look toward the challenges in the future, I know that, to the extent I am able to understand and do the will of the Lord, life will be successful and joy-filled. 

Love,

Ben