Item Detail
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Allred, Twylla Dawn O'Dell
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12/07/1922
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MSS 827
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Biography
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Twylla Dawn O'Dell Allred was born 1922 in Salt Lake City, Utah to Howard Barney O'Dell and Della Lavinia Woolley. During her preschool years, Twylla lived for some time with her mother's parents, with whom she helped care for rabbits. She attended Blaine School in Salt Lake County, skipped fifth grade, and then began attending Granite High School. She interviewed to work at General Hospital, but was found to be too young. She married Alvin Earl Allred on July 23, 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts, and because of his work as a sailor, they lived several places, such as New York City, Newport, Rhode Island, Portland, Maine, and Washington, D.C. They had their first child, Dawn Joan, while in Salt Lake City, on May 28, 1943. Because Alvin, or Red, was often gone overseas, they decided that following the war, they would settle down in Utah. They rented an apartment in Tooele, and another daughter was born there on September 4, 1946. The family then bought an apartment in Grantsville, and they had another child there on July 26, 1950.
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Part of the J. Allen Parkinson collection, this is a three-page typescript biography written by Pat Allred. It is located in the second folder of the collection, which is labeled, Biographies, Ad-. Pat begins with Twylla's birth, and writes a small amount about how her name was picked from a hat. Disliking its strange spelling, she was nicknamed Farina by her uncles when she was young. Pat also writes about Twylla meeting Red for the first time, as he was the sailor who brought news to her family concerning on of her friends in Pearl Harbor, following the bombing on December 7th. The biography ends in 1960, with Twylla age 38; Pat writes that the family has had a wonderful life.