By Helen Visarraga
This memoir began as a collaboration between Helen Visarraga and her dear friend and sister-in-law, Beth "Pug" Kikuchi. The two women began writing together in August 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, to preserve and pass forward the stories of the Day family and the lives they shared. Pug passed away peacefully on March 23, 2025, before this work could be published. Her voice, her memory, and her spirit live on in every page.
“Shadows and rainbows dance together when we view all of our lived experiences as a tapestry that we have knowingly or unknowingly woven all along.”
— Helen Visarraga
“We shall not cease from exploring, and the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know that place for the first time.”
— T.S. Eliot
George Day, Ralph Day, and Jack Day lived, worked, and died, and will never know the truth of how their lives forever changed the course of my soul’s journey, my two daughters’, and my three grandchildren’s.
The year is 2020 — a time of enormous change in our world. The coronavirus has been spreading across the globe since February, bringing sickness, death, and the need to alter our lives considerably. Senior citizens are among the high-risk population, needing to hunker down without much socializing until a vaccine or antiviral becomes available. Meanwhile, my dear friend Pug and I decided to share some of our lived experiences with all of you.
First, I have to talk about Pug. Pug is George Day’s granddaughter, Ralph Day’s daughter, and Jack Day’s sister. That makes her my sister-in-law, since I was once married to her brother Jack. She is my children’s Aunt Pug and my grandchildren’s Great Aunt Pug.
Few people outside her family knew that Pug’s given name was Beth. The nickname had been earned on her very first day at Davis High School, when new classmates noticed her button nose and christened her on the spot. From that day forward, she was Pug — at home, in the workplace, and everywhere she went for the rest of her life.
As Pug and I embarked on writing these family memoirs during the pandemic, we both wanted to share events, stories, and remembrances worth passing forward. Engaging in this effort with Pug was important to me for several reasons — but mainly because her brother Jack was my first love, my first husband, and the father of our two daughters, Jennifer and Jackie. My three grandchildren never really got to know him, and I don’t have much of his family history to share. Pug also wanted her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to know more about her life experiences and the family members who had passed on.
I was married to Jack for fourteen years. There were some great times, many learning experiences, lots of conflict, periods of abusive behavior, and of course those periods of disappointment and guilt when you know that neither party had a clue about how to build a relationship — let alone be nurturing parents. In retrospect, there were many great times we all shared as a family: camping, lighting fireworks in the backyard with our neighbors and their children, and all the day-to-day life of trying to raise the girls while we both worked full time.
Hindsight is wasted if we don’t glean the lesson and apply it to the present moment. We can only change our viewpoint about the past; we can never change the past itself. The events related here may cause some concern, sometimes embarrassment, anger, and perhaps disbelief. However, Pug and I came to a mutual understanding that we could explore our past from many different perspectives, using the wisdom we had gathered from all of our lived experiences. It is with this heartfelt connection between two women who were friends for fifty-five years that we share some tidbits of what made us who we are today.
Jack died at the relatively early age of fifty-four, a few months after he retired from government work as a warehouseman and supervisor at the Defense Depot Ogden. What is interesting to note is that Grace, Jack’s mother, had left Cove, Idaho to go to work at that same depot during World War II. It is remarkable how, over the passage of time, different family members are drawn to similar experiences.
Over the years following Jack’s death, Jennifer, Jackie, and I mourned his passing in our own ways — but never together. That left an empty space in my heart. Due to the fact that Jack directed his anger toward me, and frequently expressed it to our daughters, it was difficult for all of us to come together to share our loss. How do you grieve when the person you loved — but could not live with — used the children as a way to reach you? I left the marriage in order to keep them and me safe from an often explosive situation that we had both created.
I did not know how to bridge that gap with my daughters at that time. In all honesty, I think I was relieved at some level when he died at fifty-four. Traumatic experiences have a way of keeping one on hypervigilance, never knowing when the pendulum will swing again. If only the wisdom we have today could be transferred to the past — the outcome might have been more loving and peaceful, with less sorrow, guilt, disappointment, and regret. However, we are here today viewing the past through a whole new lens: one of understanding, lessons learned, and always forgiveness where it is needed. I forgave Jack many times over the past thirty years. I hope that wherever his consciousness is today, he has also forgiven me. There will always be an empty space because Jennifer, Jackie, and I never had the opportunity to celebrate or grieve his life together. It became an unspoken subject. Perhaps this account of Jack’s family will bring some closure and healing to all of us.
Jack had a younger brother David. I met David when I was dating Jack. I used to work at the Dipper Drive-In, a fast-food place in Layton, Utah — that’s where I met Jack. He was home on leave from the Marines. A bunch of us went to a drive-in movie, and I ended up with Jack. The rest is history, some of which I will share.
What I remember about David back then was his friendly smile and blonde hair. He definitely looked like Jack’s brother, with the cutest dimples that accented his smile. Later, after Jack and I had married and David had completed his service in the Marine Corps, I recall with disappointment the cruelty that Jack sometimes projected at David — perhaps out of jealousy for David’s successful tour of duty. I remember David, his wife Yvonne, and their children at family gatherings over the years. After my divorce from Jack, David and I lost touch. Over the years I heard that David continued to develop his skill at golf, was a wonderful father, and lost his dear daughter Spring long before her time. I never had the opportunity to meet Ralph Day, as he too passed away, at sixty-three.
Jack had an older brother Ted. What I remember most about Ted is his attempt to be intellectual and sometimes witty. He used to answer his telephone by saying, “Christian Science Reading Room, God speaking.” I got to know Ted and his wife Jane when Jane would tend to Jennifer as a very young child. Jane was a great caretaker, and Jennifer seemed to thrive under her care. I felt good knowing someone in the family was looking after her while I worked.
Another memory that comes to mind is the very sound counsel Ted gave me during a time when I was caught in a cycle of distress, going back and forth into a relationship with Jack that had become toxic and codependent. In his gentle, loving voice, Ted said: “You can look at what you are doing like a pendulum. You are standing right in the center, allowing it to hit you and knock you over every time it swings back and forth — or you can step out of the way and let the pendulum keep swinging.” That image really stuck with me as I finally moved in the direction of getting out of the way. I will always have a fond appreciation for Ted’s wise counsel and his witty, ironic sense of humor.
Jack’s older sister Lynn was someone I truly admired. She was a “tough old broad,” as they say — but to me she was always kind, loving, and accepting. She and “Uncle Russ” ran the Glide Inn, a place Jack and I frequented often to play pool, drink beer, and gather with like-minded characters. It was during those frequent visits that Jack would sometimes become abusive and aggressive when he had too much to drink. Lynn was always there, ready to defend me — sometimes threatening Jack with a pool cue and escorting him out of the bar.
I remember visiting Lynn when she was in the hospital during the last season of her life. She was still furious at Jack for how he had treated me. I have many memories of good times at bars where Russ and Lynn hung out, where Russ would often play with the band “The Rustlers.” I remember Lynn’s children: Kris, the oldest; Candy, an amazingly strong-willed young girl; Scott, with his blond hair and high energy — who, I later learned, died of drug-related causes; and Leslie. Jack and I tended to Leslie when she was a newborn, maybe two weeks old. I was dating Jack at the time. I think Leslie was the first baby I ever held, besides my little brother Floyd.
Floyd died this past June. He was found dead in his home after several days when nobody had heard from him — an eerie similarity to how Jack was found dead in his trailer after a week when his buddies hadn’t heard from him. There are many such strange family parallels in this story. But mostly what I admired about Lynn was her strength, her fortitude, and her refusal to be afraid to stand up to anyone, male or female.
Of all the Day siblings — Ted, Lynn, Jack, and David — Pug was the family member with whom I developed and retained a friendship over fifty-five years. No matter where we each found ourselves as we moved from place to place, we always found time to call once in a while and get caught up. For Pug and me, time did not exist in our friendship. We simply picked up where we left off, sharing experiences, stories, and whatever the latest development might be.
The richness of this relationship really surfaced since we began connecting once a week during the pandemic. Knowing Pug has been an enriching experience on so many levels. Her story is what matters most to convey — because through her story I have been able to glean a better understanding of Jack’s family: the rich history, the struggles, and the resilience that we all face as human beings.
To me, Pug was one of the most remarkable human beings I have ever met. Believe me when I say that after seventy-six years — forty of which I spent in the field of mental health and social work — I have met a great many characters. Pug brought the joy to life that we are all meant to experience, whether we go through hell or not. She was a believer in recognizing that everybody has faults and the potential to overcome whatever life brings them. I know this to be true simply by knowing her background, which we shared with each other freely.
“We shall not cease from exploring, and the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know that place for the first time.”
— T.S. Eliot
Too many of us do not want to look at our past because it is too painful to go there. Yet when we allow ourselves to view our lives as a tapestry we continue to weave — in order to find that inherent place of peace and wholeness within ourselves — we then can go back to where we started and know that place for the first time, the second time, or even the third.
For example: what I once believed was a terrible mistake — staying in a marriage marked by abuse, domestic violence, and codependency — I now see as a series of life lessons through which to gain awareness, raise my consciousness, and be true to myself as a soul rather than as a floundering human being with no direction.
As we visit and explore the experiences of the Day family, Grace’s family, and everyone else mentioned in our shared stories, keep in mind that Pug and I were relating these events from a space of love, wisdom, and the power we had gained to be true to ourselves, first and foremost. All the rest is grist for the mill of understanding, acceptance, and respecting differences.
Prior to moving to Salt Lake City, Utah, the Day family lived in Cove, Idaho. They lived on a dry farm of thirty acres with a big barn that Ralph Day had inherited from his father, George Day. It was situated just a half block from Highway 91 going toward Franklin and Preston. Jack was two years old when the family moved to Salt Lake City. It was during World War II.
Aunt Ade — Grace’s sister — made arrangements to apply for work at the Defense Depot Ogden and talked Grace into doing the same. Ralph agreed and let her go. Pug remembers that Grace’s first paycheck was twice what she had been earning working full time at Del Monte in Franklin, Idaho. Seeking better opportunities, Ralph took a job in Salt Lake City working for Aunt Niva’s husband at a gas company. Grace later changed jobs and went to work at the Naval Base in Clearfield, Utah. Ralph, dissatisfied with working for Niva’s husband, applied and was also hired at the Naval Base. Pug recalls that Ralph had five younger women who rode with him every day from Salt Lake City to Clearfield and back. He referred to them as “his girls.”
Women working outside the home in those days were becoming more independent — and receiving considerable attention from their male co-workers. Pug recalls that Lynn would get very upset when some of the men flirted with Grace. Ralph and Grace began to have problems in their marriage as Grace grew increasingly independent. Ralph was eleven years older than Grace, and he did not adapt well to the changes. He moved to Richmond and commuted back and forth. During that time, he started drinking heavily.
I met Jack years after his parents had divorced. His memories of his family were mostly painful ones. He remembers waiting for his father to pick him up to go fishing — sitting all day at the window, watching for his dad to come. He never showed up.
Over the years, I think Jack made a kind of peace with Grace. They seemed to have a cordial and respectful relationship. His father was another matter. Jack rarely mentioned Ralph, other than how he died. Ralph escalated his already well-ingrained drinking habit after the divorce. He moved back and forth from Richmond for a while, then to Las Vegas, then to Wyoming — where he befriended the local sheriff, who became one of Ralph’s best companions. The sheriff even enlisted some of his kids to ensure that Ralph had a way to get to the bar and back to his apartment.
As Ralph’s health deteriorated from drinking and its associated problems, the sheriff eventually contacted Bonnie and Dot — Ralph’s sisters — to come and get him, because he was dying. Bonnie and Dot drove from Preston, Idaho to Wyoming to pick him up. When they arrived, they were shocked by his condition. They placed him in a sleeping bag and laid him across the back seat of the car. The sheriff warned the sisters that because they would be crossing three state lines, they must not stop. He knew Ralph would not survive the trip. Sure enough, Ralph died before they reached the Idaho state line. Beside themselves with grief, Bonnie and Dot drove his body in the sleeping bag the rest of the way to Preston. The family gathered for his funeral in Cove. He is buried in a cemetery in Richmond.
There were warm memories of Ralph, too. He loved babies and little children. Pug recalls that at christenings, while mothers traditionally sat in the front pew with their infants, Ralph preferred to keep the babies in the back with him — playing with them, cooing and entertaining them throughout the service — then walking up to the front to hand them over to Grace at the appropriate moment.
He was short-tempered with animals. Pug recalls a time when he was milking a cow who inadvertently swatted him with her tail. He became enraged, flinging the bucket — milk and all — and beating the poor creature that was simply standing there. Another time he took a shovel to a horse. He was mean-tempered with his hound dogs as well. And yet: when he worked at the sugar factory, he would occasionally rescue orphaned baby lambs that needed to be bottle-fed long enough to be returned to the stockyard. He’d bring them home in cardboard boxes placed behind the stove to keep them warm. Pug remembers how excited everyone was when he arrived with lambs — they would all take turns bottle-feeding them. He loved Jack fiercely as a young child, taking him everywhere. It sounds to me like Ralph was very much like Jack: quick-tempered, drank a lot, loved as much as he could, and lived exactly as he pleased.
My relationship with Grace was meaningful on many levels. She was always gracious, coming by to visit the girls, always bringing her camera and sharing stories. I loved those times during family picnics when she would bring her fried chicken and potato salad. Her friend Warren also had a warm presence in my life and the lives of my daughters.
One of the most treasured memories I have of Pug and Grace was their unconditional love and support during a very stressful period of my life. I was working full time at Layton City, supporting my mother who struggled with depression, managing my younger brothers and sisters, and trying to be a present wife and mother with the awareness I had at the time. To say the least, my battery ran out. I had panic and anxiety attacks that landed me in the hospital for a week. It was during that hospitalization that I realized I had to start taking better care of myself.
I remember that Pug and Grace asked me to join them for golf lessons. Although I had no idea what I was doing, I truly enjoyed being with them. They kept encouraging me. Grace also taught me how to do macramé — I remember making kitchen curtains from it, which was an especially fond memory of doing something creative. Over the years, we golfed together in a women’s association, sharing our friendship on an entirely different level. I treasure those memories, on and off the golf course, with Grace and Pug.
Grace’s upbringing was not easy. She lost her mother at the age of nine. She was one of six siblings: Alice, Herman, Hazel, Niva, and Velma. Grace’s real name was Velva, but she never used it. Her father, Aaron Saxton, was a shoemaker who lived and died in Smithfield. After Grace’s mother died, Aaron married a woman with six children of her own — four boys and two girls. Pug recalls that Grace despised her stepmother. Grace thought of her as fat and lazy; Aaron made the girls do all the work while the boys were spoiled. One of the saddest experiences Grace and her sisters endured was sexual abuse at the hands of their stepbrothers.
During her teen years, Grace ran away from home. She went to work at a Chinese restaurant in Preston, Idaho. The family who owned the restaurant let her sleep in the back room on a sack of rice, deducting rent from her wages. Aaron would come often to try to bring her back. Grace’s sister Alice eventually married the oldest stepbrother — the kinder one. Grace carried deep rage at her stepmother for failing to protect the girls. When her father died, she refused to speak to the stepmother, stating flatly: “I wouldn’t spit on her if she were on fire.” Those deep-rooted feelings of betrayal and unprotection were the source of her pain and hatred toward that woman.
Herman was Grace’s brother. His daughter Gayle was married to Larry Miller, the owner of the Jazz basketball team. She attended the funeral wearing a fur coat. Grace was close to all her sisters, though she did not care for Gayle’s mother, Herman’s wife.
Of all the Day siblings — Ted, Lynn, Jack, and David — it was Pug with whom I maintained a friendship all those years. I have so admired her tenacity and strength, and I want my children and others in our extended family to know her story. Pug was a tapestry of joy, sorrow, loss, and resilience. She cared deeply for others and brought humor to the forefront of so many situations. What was most remarkable was that she took on the responsibility of wife and mother at a very early age.
Pug was fourteen and Vaughn was sixteen when they got together. Vaughn got into trouble for helping a friend rob a liquor store and was sentenced to reform school. Meanwhile, Pug discovered at fourteen that she was pregnant. Vaughn’s mother immediately went to court to secure his release so he could accept his responsibility. Vaughn and Pug traveled to Elko, Nevada and married — a popular destination for such occasions. Jack and I also married in Elko, on October 10, 1964 — several years after Vaughn and Pug’s own Elko experience. I was twenty-one; Jack was twenty-four. Another one of those eerie similarities.
Their son Doug was born a few months later at the old farmhouse in West Layton, where they lived with Vaughn’s brothers. Pug remembers the pastures where she and Vaughn would gather mushrooms and watercress from the banks behind the house. Vaughn’s father milked cows, so there was plenty of milk for Doug. She also recalls hunting pheasants for their meals, along with a young onion patch.
Being young parents brought its own set of stresses. Pug recalls a day when Doug was nine months old and Vaughn said he was going out to get coal for the stove. Instead, he drove to the Bamberger station to buy a ticket to California. He had no money for the fare, so he traded his car to the station owner in exchange. Pug was left behind with Vaughn’s family — pregnant with Wayne. It was then that Ralph came to get her, and she returned home to live with Ralph and Grace.
Meanwhile, Vaughn’s sister went to California and brought him back. Pug and Vaughn tried again to make things work. Vaughn took a job at Glades Candy Factory in Salt Lake City. They lived there together with Doug. Every weekend they would hitchhike from Salt Lake City to Clearfield to eat at Vaughn’s mother’s home and carry a few groceries back with them.
Wayne was born next. When he was old enough to leave with a caretaker, Pug went to work to help support the little family. Her first job was at the Woods Cross cannery. She later worked at the Naval Base, painting the word “TRASH” in yellow paint on giant garbage cans. She also made her way into working at the Glades Candy Factory for a while.
Then Hill Air Force Base started a sheet metal program, and both Pug and Vaughn secured better-paying government jobs. Pug’s assignment was working alongside a journeyman on B-26 airplane wings — drilling holes, attaching screws, and completing whatever tasks her mentor assigned. She worked mostly with men on the swing shift. Sometimes she would go out for drinks with the crew after work. One of those men, it turned out, later married her good friend Karen Kincaid — a fact discovered accidentally years later when they were bowling and Karen introduced him to Pug. It was quite a surprise for everyone.
Donny was born while Pug was still working at Hill Air Force Base. She recalls an accident during that time that resulted in a broken leg. Her boss arranged for a car to pick her up every morning and bring her in. She would sit in the first aid room and read books until she recovered.
Life brought Pug both great joy and profound sorrow. She lost two of her children — Donny and her daughter Shanna — as well as her grandson Cade, each loss leaving a space that never fully closes. And yet she carried them with her every day. It was this particular kind of strength — the ability to hold grief alongside joy without being consumed by either — that defined who Pug was.
In her later years, Pug found love again with Tom “Burt” Kikuchi. Together they became quintessential snowbirds, traveling across the country and forming lasting friendships wherever they landed. She was an avid bowler who collected trophies over the years, and golf remained a lifelong passion. She was especially proud to have hit a hole-in-one not once but twice — a feat that delighted everyone who knew her. She followed the Utah Jazz and the Seattle Seahawks faithfully, watching every game she could. Whether she was in a checkout line, at a bingo table, in the bleachers at her grandchildren’s ball games, or in the fourth row at an Alan Jackson concert, Pug was at the center of every conversation. She found joy in simple pleasures and made the most of every minute.
She was a devoted matriarch — Grandma Pug to fourteen grandchildren, dozens of great-grandchildren, and eventually a handful of great-great-grandchildren. She was smart, spunky, and opinionated. She knew something about everything and was never shy about sharing it. And she was an avid reader to the end.
Beth “Pug” Kikuchi passed away peacefully at her residence on March 23, 2025. She was ninety-three years old. Born in Cove, Utah to Ralph L. Day and Velva Grace Saxton — the same Cove, the same Grace and Ralph whose stories fill these pages — her life was itself a kind of full circle.
I have been thinking about what T.S. Eliot said: that the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know that place for the first time. Pug knew that truth in her bones. She arrived where she started — daughter of Ralph and Grace, sister to Ted, Lynn, Jack, and David, born in a small Idaho farming community — and she knew it with a clarity and joy that most of us spend a lifetime searching for.
This memoir began as our conversation. Pug’s and mine. It was born of friendship, pandemic-era phone calls, and a shared desire to pass forward the stories of the people who made us who we are. She did not live to see it finished. But her voice is here on every page — in every memory she shared, every detail she recalled, every laugh and every hard truth she offered without hesitation.
To her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren: she carried you all in her heart, every day, without exception. To her brother David, the last of the Day siblings: she loved you.
And to Pug herself — wherever that bright, spunky, opinionated soul has traveled on to — I will borrow her own parting words, the ones she used her whole life long:
“Talk atcha later.”
— Helen Visarraga
Las Cruces, New Mexico, 2025