I was born September 2, 1933 in Portage, Utah. I was born in the Sam Kemp home which is across the road from the school house we had then but it is torn down now and the Portage City Hall is located there. I had black hair and blue eyes. My brother Doraine "Ace" was sick with Scarlet Fever and my Mother thought I would die being a new born. She was planning on naming me Darlene but when she heard the name Carolyn, she liked it. My first words (she told me) were "cow can't get baby." Not sure about this one. We had our milk cow they would bring home around the same time every evening and she "ole Lil" would pass by the window.  So Mom must have said "cow can't get baby" to me every time she passed by.

My Father was Franklin Everett Harris. He was born in Woodruff, Idaho on April 9, 1890. He was a farmer. We didn't actually have a farm but he fanned grain and worked for the local farmers and Grandpa some of the time. Grandpa was John Crumwell Howell and had farms in Utah and Idaho. Grandma was Margaret Rebecca John Howell. These are my mother's parents. My father's parents passed away before I was born.

My Mother was Margaret Rose Howell Harris. She was born in Portage, Utah on June 29, 1902 and was a house wife and Mother to us five siblings. My youngest brother, Clinton, and last child was born about 7 years later.

We didn't have a lot of worldly goods but we had a nice garden with fresh vegetables and my Mother worked very hard to get all the fruit we'd want all winter put up in bottles which was stored in the cellar. I made many trips up and down the steps to bring empty bottles when it was time to put everything up, especially tomatoes. It seemed like we used tomatoes in most of our suppers. Our bread was homemade and delicious. I wish I had some now. Mom kept a starter of yeast on top of the stove for use most every day when we were all home. The thing I really disliked doing though was going down in the "tater cellar". It was the cellar where we kept squash, and root vegetables. It was a deep hole in the ground and was scary to me.  I always thought there were spiders and everything else.

We had a happy family life when I was growing up. Dad was a big tease and we joked around a lot. I helped Dad in the garden. He made rows to plant the seeds with a wagon that he had rigged up by adding a piece of wood with a point on it to make the row. He hooked it up with a rope to pull it with and I would put it around my waist and he would stand at the end of the row and guide me so I would try to go straight. He was always rigging something up. I also helped Mom in the house. We mopped the floors and did our weekly cleaning on Saturday.  Monday was wash day. Sometimes on Saturday night I would get to go to the show in Malad with Gayla Harris or Carol Harris (distant cousins, but not sisters) if their parents went and let them invite me.

We spent much of our time with our grandparents and aunts, uncles and cousins on the Howell side as we all lived right there in the Malad Valley.My grandparents had 14 children and two grandchildren on my mother's side that they raised. My grandparents on my father's side also had 14 children.  So you can see I had lots of relatives (mostly deceased now).

My siblings except one also now deceased and I miss them very much. They are:  Maxine Richards, Elaine Alford, Norman Harris, Doraine "Ace" Harris. Clint, my younger brother is still living and we keep in pretty close contact and reminisce about our childhood. He was only 4 when Dad passed away.

I went to school from 1 ^st grade to 8 ^th grade in Portage except for the few times we were in Colton California where I was in Jr. High. I rode the cold and rickety school bus to Bear River High School in Garland for 4 years where I graduated from Bear River High. Some of the kids around my age in Portage were Gayla Harris, Norma Hall, June Gibbs, Calvin Gibbs, Gordon Gibbs, Carol Harris, Florene John and others.

After graduation, I worked odd jobs when available as there were not any full-time jobs in Portage except baby sitting. I tried to top sugar beets (failure). They were so big I could hardly pick them up. I picked turkeys for a few days. This was my prize job in my life. HaHa! After a few of those jobs failed, I went to Bingham/Copperton and lived with Aunt Nona and Uncle Cliff and my cousin Sandra. They were good to me and I got my first real job in Woolworth's in Salt

Lake where once again, I had to ride the bus every day. I didn't mind this job but Mom went to San Francisco to help Maxine and wanted me to go with her around 1950-51. I got a job at Pacific Telephone there and stayed for more than 30 years. This was several different jobs and departments in the company until I retired on December 31, 1983.  When I was about 19, I married Richard McNew.  We were together about 3 years but it didn't work out, so we divorced.

In November 1958, I met Bobby Grace from Nashville, Tennessee at the Richelieu Hotel in San Francisco. We both went there for a railroad dinner/dance, he with his Aunt Ruth and Uncle Ben and me with my sister, Maxine, and brother, Ace, and their spouses, Boyd and Helen. He was younger so I wasn't very interested but we started dating and became close. Just before Christmas my sister's husband, Boyd Richards, was killed in a window washing accident where his safety harness pulled out from the building and he fell to his death at San Francisco General Hospital. Maxine had three young children and I went to live with her in San Mateo. I commuted to San Francisco on the train to my job. After about three years Bob and I decided to get married so we went to Reno, Nevada and married on August 26, 1961. We got an apartment in Millbrae Ca. and lived there about a year and then bought a house at 1901 Newbridge Ave, San Mateo. We stayed there about 5 years then bought our house at 811 Anita Ave., in Belmont, Ca where we still live.

We never had any children but spent a lot of time with Bob's family and Maxine and family.  We enjoyed camping and had a Volkswagen camper bus and other vans and went all over the West when we had time off work. Later, we traveled to see the world. Went to many foreign countries and was just starting to travel the United States more when I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. Bob took good care of me but I wasn't able to travel much anymore so we built our lives around home. I have had a good life and so now in our twilight years we have slowed down and we'll see what the next phase will bring.

On June 10, 2021 Carolyn fell in the kitchen of their home with a broken hip. Although she had surgery (Kaiser Hospital in Redwood City), she did not do well with Rehab and had to be returned to Kaiser because of fluid on the lungs and a urine infection. She returned to a Rehab facility in Mountain View, California where she passed away quietly July 13, 2021.