JOE’S VALLEY, Utah — The Book of Mormon’s first verses provide a look into the family of Lehi and Sariah and their life in Jerusalem from the perspective of their son Nephi.
Thousands of years later, the ways families share stories about one another have evolved from engravings on metal plates to typing, recording and saving to the cloud.
Keeping those stories alive and present for living family members is a slightly different task than protecting them for future generations. At this year’s reunion of the Abinadi and Hannah Olsen family in Joe’s Valley, Utah, aunts, uncles and cousins stepped to a microphone and shared stories of family members that they have discovered over the years.
Anne Carroll Peterson Darger, a great-granddaughter of Hannah and Abinadi Olsen, spoke about her father, Nad Alma Peterson. She said her dad weighed only 2 pounds when he was born in 1926 and that he was not expected to live past a few days. Defying those odds, he lived to be 90 years old.
“Daddy never missed one day of school and emphasized and considered it a privilege to provide for the education of all five of his children,” Darger said. An example to his children, he studied at the University of Utah and George Washington University, where he earned a law degree after serving in World War II as a Seaman First Class in the U.S. Navy.
“At the tender age of 30, he became a bishop in the Alexandria Ward with the daunting task of building the beautiful Alexandria Ward chapel,” Darger said. He served in various other callings throughout the rest of his life.
Nancy Brown, a great-granddaughter of Hannah and Abinadi Olsen, shared a story about her uncles, Don Dee Olsen and Homer Nad Olsen. Homer Olsen died while serving in Germany in World War II at age 33. Don Olsen lived to be nearly 80 years old and was known partly for being the family photographer while always wearing “his zippered, short-sleeved jumpsuit,” Brown said.
She shared that Homer Olsen loved Jules Verne’s book “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” so much that he decided to build a diving apparatus that would allow him to do underwater rescues at local lakes in Utah.
“When [Homer] was just 19 years old, after a year of college, he and a friend spent $300 and one full year buying, repairing and testing a diving suit and helmet,” Brown said.
The week after their first successful test of the apparatus, two aluminum fishing boats crashed into each other at Pineview Reservoir, an hour north of Salt Lake City. One of the boats sank, and Homer Olsen was called on to make his first — and perhaps only — recovery dive, Brown said.
In 2026, more than 600 “Joe’s Valley cousins,” as many in the family call themselves, joined the Olsen family reunion. Due to extremely dry conditions, there were no stories told around a campfire this year. But there were still plenty of stories being told on the trails, at the pond or under pop-up shades.
Shanna Olsen Spencer is a granddaughter of Hannah and Abinadi Olsen’s youngest son, George Olsen. She made an acrostic out of her father’s name — Paul. She said he was patient, amusing, under the radar and loyal.
“He never wanted to be in the spotlight. He just kind of quietly served and quietly did,” Olsen Spencer said. “And he just never wanted to be right in front of people, but he just did everything.”
Julie Webster is a granddaughter of Farrier “Foyer” and Fae Olsen. Farrier went by his middle name of Foyer and was the second-to-last child of Hannah and Abinadi Olsen. Webster spoke of the love her father, Fayne Olsen, had for her and her siblings.
“He loved his family. He was so dedicated to us,” she said.
“He told me one day, ‘Julie, you know you’re my daughter.’ And I said, ‘I know, Dad.’ And he says, ‘No, you’re my daughter.’ And I said, ‘I know, and you’re my dad.’ And he says, ‘I know.’ And I remember that, and I think he probably did that to every one of us kids and told us that we were his. And we were his,” Webster said.
Family reunions don’t have to be built around the stories of ancestors, but for many in the Olsen family, sharing the stories of their parents and others helps bring them together. And because the family gathers every other year, there is always space for the telling of a newly discovered story or photograph to help the family bonds grow stronger and “turn the heart of ... the children to their fathers” (Malachi 4:6).
