Doral Pilling's Autobiography - a copy of a copy of a copy?

 

Growing up, a copy of our grandfather Doral Pilling's life story sat on the shelf. The distinctive blue cover with its gold lettering made it an easy find.  I knew how to find the pages with the stories I wanted to hear again and again,  mostly the stories about childhood pranks, or his time at the olympics.  

All these years later, and a copy of that same book is also within easy reach in my own home, along with pieces of paper tucked in between various pages to mark out the stories I too would return to for sharing with my own kids.  

Doral's life history is a goldmine.   There is so much stuff in there that is wonderful. This year, Duncan was taking a course on autobiography, and I suggested that it might be fun to actually use Doral's life history to work with.  He took it to his teacher to pre-vet it.  The teacher agreed that it was an amazing document, but also said that in order for Duncan to really engage with it, the teacher would need to have access to the text itself.  It is not that it needed to be 'published', but that it needed to be 'publically accessible.'  

And it wasn't til that moment that I realized that it was not.  And now it is! [click on this link to access it over at the LaRue Investments site: https://larue1964.wordpress.com/2025/11/12/doral-pillings-life-history-1975/].  Here is the backstory.

Somehow, because so many of us in the family had a copy of this book on the shelf, I often forget that it was not 'published' in the conventional sense, and it thus not easily accessible.  Afterall, it is a 'book', right?!  :-).  And that makes it look kind of 'official'. 

There are some small portions of it that are quickly accessible.   For example, way back in 2012, when someone was writing up a little history of the LDS church in Calgary, Arta shared with them some pages from Doral's life history (and posted them to the family blog):  http://larchhaven.blogspot.com/2012/09/doral-pilling-p-89-to-94.html.  But that is only a few pages of the text.

Certainly, the content is publically accessible, since it in the result of a series of interviews done in 1975:  Doral Pilling was interviewed by Charles Ursenbach as part of the Western Oral History Program, and the audiotapes (9 hours and 40 minutes) were deposited with the Alberta Provincial Archives.  I realized I didn't really know much about this Oral History Program.   A quick websearch took me to a page at BYU, which suggested maybe a context for this interview:  https://reddcenter.byu.edu/pages/oral. Other might have a richer account of the backstory.

In any event, the preface to the book does say that the written history is based on that oral history, and that the transcript was "edited and revised by members of Doral Pilling's family under his direction."

I was curious about who those 'members' were.  They are not named.  My suspicion (and bias) is that it was Arta, and that she has simply stayed in the background, minimizing the work she had done.  For sure, I have memories of seeing Arta (and Kelvin) set up one of those old tape to tape machines at the table, and of her turning the switch to stop and start again while she was typing things up at the same time on the old Underwood manual typewriter.  Now I am curious if others of the aunts or uncles helped with transcription?  Maybe.  But it does make me smile a bit to see her/them documented for the purposes of history as "members of Doral's family" rather than having their actual names appear. 

The process of photocopying also provides space for reflection. I remembered Arta pointing out in various documents that she could tell when they had been typed on Doral's typewriter because of the ways that specific keys were showing traces of wear and tear (or were a bit uneven in how they struck the paper).  Looking at the book, I felt like I could indeed see the traces of keystrikes on the text from that old beast of a machine.  It is that same heavy Underwood machine that Doral typed all his letters on, and that eventually made its way to our house on 26th ave. It is the same beast of a machine that I learned to type on, and the one on which i typed out so many of my university assignments.  Is that a real memory? 

Richard's copy also missing pages

Small side note, in making the copy, I realized that pages 26, 27 and 28 seem to be missing from my copy. I sent out a note to the other siblings to see if their copies of the book were different.  Doral provided photographic confirmation that his copy was also missing those pages.   And so, now there is a mystery!   

Is this just an error made by Arta in page numbers?  Or is there something particularly juicy in there?  Something salacious?  A map to hidden treasure?   Does one of us need to head to the audiotapes to see if they are also missing something?  If anyone has clues to the mystery, let us know!

ADDENDUM: November 25, 2025

Mystery solved!..... There IS no mystery!  I went back to listen to the original tapes of Doral telling his story.  It moves seamlessly from the bottom of p.25, to the top of p.29 (nothing salacious hidden in the gap)