The Force is Strong in Our Family

Ray and Constance Strong

In one of the Star Wars movies, Yoda tells Luke Skywalker that the Force is strong in his family. I recently had the blessing of attending a family reunion for my mother’s family (The Strong Family). So, I can say that in our family the Force IS Strong. Ray & Constance Strong are my mother’s parents, and it was their decedents that were there to celebrate the legacy that they built. Ray and Constance had seven children and four of the siblings were there. The oldest brother passed away a few years ago and two could not attend. My mother, Allis, is the one on the far left.

Ray and Constance Strong's Children

One of the forces that was strong at that reunion was the love that all the family members had for Ray and Constance and for everyone that was there. It had been many years since the last time I had been with this side of our family. We had a wonderful time. Many times, family reunions are filled with drama but in this family, while there was a lot of drama it was in the telling of stories about our parents growing up and sharing memories of when we were young, the family visits, and time spent with aunts, uncles and cousins will never be forgotten. There was a joy that is difficult to explain but remains in my heart today. There were cousins that I had not seen for a long time and others that I had never met. I had so much fun getting to know these second cousins (the children of my cousins) and hope that I had the same impact that they had on me.

Third generation Strong's

They are all beautiful young women and full of life. I am sure that they will remember me as one of the craziest of uncles because of the experience that I shared with them one morning at breakfast. I woke that morning and went to take a shower and found a little blue dot with the number 806 printed on it on my chest. I had no idea where it came from (I was not wearing any new clothes that would have had a tag on it). I told them that I thought that maybe the angle of death had visited me during the night and marked me but never got around to number 806 so I was still alive. Whenever any of them saw me they would always ask how 806 was doing and I would respond that I was still alive and well. I told them that I had my invisibility cloak and was still avoiding the angel of death.

Waiter with the Deathly Hallows Tatoo

Another fun fact that I learned at the reunion was the circumstances about how my father and mother met in Washington D.C. My aunt Jo had come to visit her sister (my mother) there and they met my father and his friend one night. The story they told was my dad was initially interested in Jo but when he found out she was only 16 he turned his interest to my mother and the rest is history. I was joking with Aunt Jo that it sure would have been a different Potter family if she had married my father not her sister, Allis. You could see the shudder and frightful thought that ran through her mind as she pondered that thought. Not sure if what frightened her most was the thought of being married to my father or the thought of having all the potter children as hers. It was probably both! I think she probably slept well that night counting her blessing for being so young at the time.

We at lunch at a pizza place just off the Indiana University campus, where we were staying, and our waiter had a deathly hallows tattoo on his arm. When he found out my name, he had to have a picture with the “real” Harry Potter.

Uncle Ray and family

Another force that was strong with this family was the spirit of Elijah. In Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi prophesied that before the second coming of Jesus Christ would happen, the Prophet Elijah would be sent to “turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers” (Malachi 4:5-6). During one of our evenings together we had a laptop connected to a large TV and we had our family tree showing. Several of the family members were very interested in looking at the Strong ancestors and who their relatives were. 

Our Strong family is descended from Elder John Strong who immigrated from England in the 1600s. We also have ancestors that came to America on the Mayflower. We even have royal blood coursing our veins. We have John, King of England (who signed the Magna Carta), Charlemagne, and William the Conqueror as our ancestors. We followed one of the lines all the way back to Adam and Eve. There are 140 generations from my children to Adam. One of my cousins found out her grandparents (or great grandparents, I don’t remember which) were from Russia. The power of Elijah was strong and the excitement evident as we looked up our ancestors and discovered new things and our hearts were indeed turned to our “fathers”.

One of the most evident forces that the Strong family have is the love that they have for God. There were many different faiths represented in the family, but the love for God that Constance and Ray instilled in their children is strong and continues with their grandchildren, great grandchildren and will continue for generations yet to come.

Ray and Constance not only taught their children to love God but to love their country and the importance of being involved in activities that promote the values we have as families.

Here are more pictures of those that were at the Strong family Reunion.

My cousin Narissa (Uncle Doug's Daughter) and family

Aunt Abbie and her husband Dick

My Mother, Allis and family

I want to express my appreciation to all those who worked hard and long preparing for the Strong family reunion and especially to my mother, Allis Potter, who made it possible for all her children to be there. I am grateful for the kindness and love that we all felt as we met together and for the bond that ties us together as a family. Not only is the force strong in our family but the Strong family is the force that binds us together now and forever.

Your comments are welcome.

The Mirror of Erised

In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Harry finds the Mirror of Erised. When Harry looks into the mirror he sees himself with his parents. When Ron looks into it he sees himself as Head Boy and the Quidditch Captain holding the Quidditch Cup. Professor Dumbledore explains that “the mirror shows us the deepest desires of our hearts. It gives us neither knowledge or truth. We must not dwell on dreams and forget to live”.

 The Mirror of Erised from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

One of the greatest thing about reading books like the Harry Potter series is we get to witness the epic lives of the characters in the books. We laugh with Harry when he traps Dudley in the snake pen, or when Harry tries to ask Cho to the Yule Ball. We cry with him when Serius or Dobby die. We swell with pride when Harry conjures his patronus for the first time. The same is true about the characters in Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings. It doesn’t matter what the book or movie, we can lose ourselves in them just like the mirror of Erised. If we are not careful we can live our lives through the characters of a book instead of living our own lives. Saying that does not mean I don’t love to read, I do. I love the classics and other books. I really like to read the historical fiction where fictional characters are used to tell historical events.

When we look at our lives or our family and friends we don’t see the epic lives like we read in the books. But if we really look at our lives they are more epic than story book characters because they are real. When we read a biography or accounts from history, the people we read about probably did not think their lives were all that exciting or epic. There are some exceptions to this like the signers of the Declaration of Independence. I’m sure they knew that what they were doing would change history. But before that they probably thought their lives were mostly normal and not worthy of the history books.

When we take the time to write down events that happen in our lives, even ones that seem ordinary when we read them later you will see how epic our lives really are. Our family recently had a family reunion where we celebrated the 90^th birthday of my mother. All six children, five boys and one girl, of mom and  dad (my dad passed away in 2006) were there along with many grandchildren and great grandchildren. One of the fun things we did was show movies of past family reunions when many of our children where the age of the great grandchildren. The great grandchildren loved watching their parents doing silly things. Each evening we sat around a fire or in the pavilion telling stories of when we were young. Stories were told of playing hide and seek with our friends as we ran all over the neighborhood, stories were told of growing up working at Hal’s Drive Inn (like McDonalds), stories of our town cop that looked and acted like Barney from the TV Show Andy Griffith, stories of how we managed to stay out of Dad’s court (he was the Justice of the Peace for our town) when we got into mischief, and stories of meeting our wives and getting married.

4 Generation of Potters - My part of the family is in red!

Some of the stories I told were falling in love with Peggy Sue in the third grade. All the boys were in love with Peggy Sue. I even bought her a plastic diamond ring. The story of how I broke the school cross country record running bare foot was a favorite with the great grandchildren. The time in high school when I flunked speech class when I gave a speech about making chocolate chip cookies (you had to be there) was my favorite. I told stories of practical jokes played on teachers, going to prom, how I managed to get accepted to Brigham Young University, dancing with the BYU Folk Dancers, playing soccer for BYU and eventually deciding to serve an LDS Mission.

The third generation (our children) are now old enough that they have exciting stories to tell. My son, John, told a story of when he went to Florida one summer to sell animated stories from the scriptures. It was a disaster for him and one day he was in a car accident and totaled his VW Rabbit. The car was still able to drive and he had no other way to get home so he drove the car 3000 miles from Florida to Utah. The windows were all broken out and the sides all bashed in but he could drive it. On the way home it rained and even snowed, he almost froze to death but he managed to get home to Logan, Utah. When he tells the story it is a lot funnier.

I am in the process of writing down stories from my life. The book is called Stories of the Real Harry Potter. I have included stories of growing up in Argos, Indiana; stories from my elementary and high school years, my college years, my mission, marriage and family. I have included faith promoting stories like “The Ironic Priesthood”, my dream of becoming an airline pilot, deciding to serve a mission, how I met and married my wife, my call as a bishop, and many other times when the Lord had a hand in directing my life and protecting me or my family.

Our children, great grandchildren and beyond will read these stories and know how epic our lives really were. But it will only happen if we take the time to record them. The inscription on the mirror of Erised (which is desire spelled backards) says “Erised stra ehru oy tube cafru oyt on wohsi”. If you look at that statement in a mirror and changed the spacing it reads “I show not your face but your heart’s desire”. What is it that we desire most of all? I believe it is that our posterity will know that the lives we lived were epic and that we lived lives of faith and integrity.

Your comments and questions are welcome.