Happy Birthday Grandpa Max

Max Leroy Shirts, born Dec. 2, 1917.

This is the earliest picture of Grandpa I could find. This is him and his older sister Lorna in 1918.
Maybe Dad could post a few more recent pics of Grandpa. Here's another taken around 1938, not long before he left for his mission in Brazil.


Below is an excerpt from a short history Grandpa wrote in 1983 about his parents and his life growing up.

Lorna and I were born in Mountain Home, Duschesne County, Utah. Just before my birth, my parents were sealed to each other and my sister Lorna was sealed to them in the Salt Lake Temple on August 15, 1917. I was born on December 2, 1917. When I was two years old, dad and mother, father’s parents and possibly other relatives left Duchesne and traveled to Canada. Not finding things to their liking in Canada, they returned to the States within a matter of weeks. Lesley and Ruth, my parents and Lorna and I resided in McArthur, Idaho for about a year where my brother Carl was born, October 6, 1920.

I remember following my father from our house across a railroad trestle. He was going to work. My mother did not know I had left the house. While I was walking across the ties of the trestle, a train approached and whistled. Fortunately for me a neighbor man saw me on the track and ran, picking me up and carrying me off the opposite end of the trestle just as the whistling train rolled by, saving my life.