Category: David

50 YR Wedding Anniversary of Roger and Anne Berky

Dear: Children (David, Daniel, June, Douglas, and Julie),

This is your parents saying ”Thank You” for being our children and for helping our family live the Gospel. The most important callings and positions we will ever have will be in our family relationships. You are our children and we are your  Mother and Father, your earthly parents.

Life is all about learning to love God and one another and the Family Organization is the best method for us to live and learn to Love God and our Brothers and Sisters with all our heart.

We all start this earth life in the same way as an infant totally dependent on our parents for love and care 24 hours a day. One of the reasons for having children is to help us learn to Love. Who needs our help more than an infant? By giving our infant children their care we learn to love them. This serving and teaching our infants is a great encouragement to love one another.  

It is a sacrifice of our time and effort to care for our children and watch over them. It’s kind of like our Heavenly Father watching over us.  It is an amazing learning experience for both children and parents as they live and learn together serving and helping one another.

Anne and I have enjoyed not only having you all as our children but also seeing how well you have worked with your families. So keep up the good work.

Love you all,

Mom and Dad and your children’s grandparents

Emailed reply: Happy anniversary!

50 years is quite an accomplishment these days. 

We decided our family will go out to Arby’s to celebrate your anniversary (or are you mostly doing Taco Bell now?).  We don’t have a Peter Piper Pizza so that one’s out.

Wish we could have been there to celebrate with you but better safe than sorry.  Hopefully we’ll be able to get together at New Years.

Ben has a varsity football game tonight and Ammon’s game is tomorrow morning. Ben’s game is a home game so we’ll be sitting in the stands with our masks on.  But at least they are able to play.  Most of the Utah High School teams have a few out of state players who moved here to play this season from states that are not playing.

James is having lots of quiet time as he works late night and graveyard shifts for his security job.  He’s getting in a lot of reading and occasionally we stop by and drop off some food for him.  He’s usually sitting in the car keeping an eye on the location he’s at.  Luckily no exciting shifts and no trouble so far.  James bought a new/used car last week.  It’s a stick shift, so LaReita had to drive it home from Salt Lake and then teach him how to drive.  He likes it because none of his other brothers can borrow it since they don’t know how to drive stick yet.

Anthony is working at the furniture business, sanding, finishing and building pallets of product for shipment.  The Leavitt family car he bought a few months ago died last week and isn’t worth fixing.  So he’s back on the lookout for a new car.  He will probably be able to get his money out of it between selling the new tires and the rest for scrap.

Ben is keeping busy with his 2 football teams and school work.  He stopped working at WalMart when school started and is glad that phase of his life is over.  Had an ok time working there, but not his dream job.  He is enrolled in several “concurrent enrollment” classes where he gets both High School and College credit for taking the class – no AP test required.  And enrolled in a few AP classes also.  He didn’t get into the aeronautical classes he was hoping for because the HS counselors changed over the summer and lost his application in the shuffle.  Maybe next year.

Sam is enjoying marching band as one of the few 9th graders in the High School marching band.  They will be playing this evening in the stands at the football game, but not marching on the field.  Apparently the marching band does not do half time performances at the football games, they only do competitions with other bands. Sam is also in three other bands during normal school hours – like he was last year.  Jazz band before school, intermediate band playing the tuba, and advanced band doing percussion.  He talked about taking up the tenor sax this year, but hasn’t yet.  He is still doing the mountain biking and had one of three races a couple of weeks ago.  He will have one in Sept and one in Oct.
Jacob is still swimming and doing better and better.  He will have a few swim meets this year, but probably less than last year. Not all of the swimming clubs are active right now.  He is enjoying being the top of the elementary school in 6th grade.  I think this is the last year the elementary school will have 6th grade – they are going back to the Middle School (6-7th) and Jr High (8-9th) system next year.  Our neighborhood Jr High is turning back into a Middle School, so he’ll still go to the same place next year that he would have anyway.  Not sure where he will go in a few years for Jr High.  Maybe the one over by LaMont’s house – where his cousins went.

Ammon is doing 1st/2nd grade football and they are having 2-3 practices in the evenings and then their games on Saturday.  The coaches stay out on the field with the referees and coach the kids during the plays.  The league asked me to help them with their website and get all the teams, players and game schedule put online.  Got it all done before their first games last Saturday.  Ammon is doing well in 1st grade and comes home excited about making new friends – we are encouraging him to remember their names.

LaReita is going strong on her Masters of Social Work classes.  And trying to keep up with the Families Mentoring Families non-profit that she is the secretary for – that the one that is operating in Ghana, Africa.  She and James/Anthony/Sam/Jacob? were going to go to Ghana in September but they are still requiring a 14 day quarantine for visitors – so that doesn’t make the trip worth it right now.  Maybe in the spring.  Between those things and driving kids to all their music classes, football practices, bike practices, swimming practices, doctors appointments and shuffling the cars in and out of the mechanics (we had all of our cars in once and some in twice for repairs these past two weeks – in addition to Anthony’s dying)  – she manages to keep her day full.

I’m still keeping busy with Find-A-Code and our other websites.  Still doing some programming but trying to have our other programmers do more and more. Still doing some work for Guckenheimer, but not as much lately.  They mostly been shut down these past few months and had a big lay-off a few weeks ago.  The lay-off caught Suzy or at least allowed her to completely retire – which she has been trying to do for 2 years now.  So she is entirely gone now – and they are switching to their new parent company’s accounting system over the next few months, so this should be exciting.

Julles has news about her job but I’ll let her tell you about it. She now has 2 motorcycles in the garage and is looking to sell her “training bike”.  Let her know, Mom, if you are interested.  We had a good time in Park City when June came up to visit.  Julles and June went on a side-by-side off-road vehicle ride while LaReita and I went on a hike.  We enjoyed eating out at an adult restaurant without all the kids and went to the alpine slides for a ride down the mountain.
We’ll keep plugging along and hope we can all stay safe and sane.
Love you, thank you for your examples, and have a great Anniversary Day!

Love,
– David, LaReita, James, Anthony, Benjamin, Samuel, Jacob, Ammon and Julles Berky (plus assorted pets, chickens and spiders)

Anthony had his unique 2020 graduation today. It was a drive-by graduation. We drove up to the platform, Anthony hopped out walked across the stage, received his diploma, posed for pictures and hopped back into the car.

Video of Anthony receiving his diploma:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8ry7j2K-hg#t=1h11m18s  (about 15 seconds of Anthony)

Pictures:

James had a dream a while ago that he arrived home and there was no one to meet him at the airport.  His flight arrived 30 minutes early this morning and there was no one there to meet him.  We got there about 30 minutes after he arrived.  We were suppose to meet him on the 2nd level of the short term parking garage at the Salt Lake airport, but we couldn’t get the van on to the 2nd level because of the bike racks on the roof.  So we had to park on level 1 and get out and go up the stairs to level 2 to meet him.

The reunion was very joyous and his mom cried.  He was surprised to see how much his brothers had grown and got a long hug from Ammon.  We told James that we were going to help him get used to non-missionary life by picking up some chicks on the way home.  We stopped by the farm (which is also a petting zoo) but the chicks were not ready.  We petted the animals, held baby bunnies and fed baby goats.  Then drove home.

The boys had fun showing James all the changes in Spanish Fork over the past two years, and more fun showing off all the changes in our house over the years – new deck, wood floor in the living room, hall bathroom remodel, new carpet on the stairs and in the upstairs bedroom, newly painted upstairs bedroom, new Lazy-boy chairs in the basement, and Julles game closet.  Julles worked from home today so she could greet James when he arrived.

LaReita also had a sign company put up a huge sign in the front yard.  Tonight we’ll play some games as a family, then have dinner.  At 7pm the ward youth are going to do a drive-by to welcome James home.