Grandpa Stringham Growing Up

Mark is the second child and only boy in his family. He was born in Idaho Falls, ID on March 9, 1947 and lived in Ashton on his parents farm his whole childhood life. His parents are James Edward Stringham and Mildred Hannah Hillam Stringham who are the hardest working people, kind, generous and fun to be around.

One of the favorite things for our kids to do when we visited them was to play in the water when Mark's dad flooded the lawn to water it. It was a big shallow swimming pool. Here is Mark and his sisters enjoying the same.

I think he needed to grow more to enjoy his trike.




Mark, his mom,(holding Ilene), Nadene and Lila ready for church. His dad was Bishop for many years and so his mom had to handle all the kids in church herself.



His dad was farmer so Mark knew tractors well. His dad grew a lot of potatoes for seed.





Mark and his sisters would help raise orphaned lambs. They would feed them with a bottle until they were old enough to eat on their own

Mark in his junior high years.

Mark and I at our wedding luncheon with his parents on the left and mine on the right. My kids have only seen my dark brown hair in pictures!

I think Mark's dad would have liked him to grow up and take over the farm, but here is Mark (with his two sisters on the left and me on the right), graduating from BYU with his degree in Computer Science. After graduating, he got a job with Boeing and has worked there for 35 years now.

And that is a brief summary of his life up until we moved to the Seattle area. We lived with my parents in Seattle for two weeks, before we found an apartment just above Southcenter. Shortly, after Brian was born we moved to a small rambler in Renton/Issaquah area where Rebecca, Jason and Maria were born. When Maria was 8 months old we moved to Kent in our current house where James was born. And we have lived here ever since despite my frequent attempts to get him to move.

He is quiet, has a dry sense of humor that our kids really appreciate, and really enjoys when his grandkids want to talk or play with him. He doesn't like to tell me "no" verbally, so he frowns instead and I usually get the message (luckily he doesn't frown often). He can cry very easily at touching stories and when our children were at church with us they would always look over at him to see if he would cry at whatever sad story was being told -- and he always was and still does. He can be very self-disciplined about things that are important to him. And there you have a little synopsis of this great husband of mine.

If you want to know more you will have to ready his life history.