Clair Morgan Savage
submitted by: Elli Savage
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I decided to write my ancestry report on my grandpa Clair Morgan Savage. Clair was born on a cattle ranch in Antimony, Utah with 250 cattle, 2 bulls, 3 horses, and a couple of dogs. He had 3 sisters named Debbie, Trudy, and Andrea. 12 years later he had a new baby brother named Ryan. As a kid, during winter he had to wake up early to break the ice on the water troughs so the animals would have water to drink, feed the horses, cut and split the firewood for the fireplace to heat the house, drive the truck while his dad fed the cattle bales of hay and walk about a quarter of a mile in sometimes 2 feet of snow to catch the school bus. In the spring they would drive cattle onto the mountain to graze during their busy months, plow and dice some of the fields so they could plant crops, and make furrows to water the crops. He says making furrows would take almost all night. Then would come the time to harvest the crops, they had to cut the alfalfa, rake the hay and then wait for it to be the right humidity to bale the hay. At first they didn’t have hay haulers like we do now. All the men in the valley would come to each other's farms and lift the bales of hay onto the top of a flatbed trailer and when it was full take it to covered areas to stack the hay bales for feeding the cattle and horses in the winter. Sometimes he would slowly drive the down the field while it was being loaded. Other times he would roll the bales of hay towards himself to make sure there were no rattlesnakes hiding under them, sometimes there were some. He says growing up on a big farm was the most fun a kid could have but a lot of work.
When Clair was 13 his dad was killed in a crash on his way to work. He taught elementary school and was a principal. Ryan was 1 year old at the time and grandpa says he kind of became a much of a father as a brother to Ryan. Eventually his mother passed away. A little while later on April 30, 1988 he married my grandma Jill Anderson and his brother came to stay with him through his time in middle school and high school. After Ryan moved out Grandpa went to college to become a teacher. He taught for 24 years, mostly pre-algebra, algebra and other math to middle school kids. He says it was the perfect job for him. He loved math. He says the age group of kids was fun to teach.
On August 11, 1989 he had my dad Colton Clair Savage. Three years later he had my uncle Levi Morgan Savage. Around 19 years later Colton got married to my mom Katie Bernice Savage and 2 years later they had me, Elli Bernice Savage. Grandpa lived in Cedar City, but he taught school in St George. He traveled about 50 miles a day each way to work during the school year. In that time he drove almost 500,000 miles to and from work. That’s like driving all the way around the earth 20 times but never leaving Southern Utah!
On November 1, 2016 when I was about 2 ½ years old his time teaching came to an end when he got into a very bad accident on his way to work. At about 6 am it was still very dark outside, he went around a turn in the road and there was a car upside down in the middle of the road. The wheels were still spinning and the driver was hanging upside down by his seat belt. So my grandpa came to a stop before he hit the other car and got out to see if he was okay. Then other cars started coming and slowed down to see what was happening. Grandpa was bent over trying to determine how badly injured the driver of the upside down car was when another car came upon the accident and he wasn’t paying attention and didn’t see my grandpa there. In the blink of an eye he became a real life Humpty Dumpty! The car hit him at about 65 to 70 miles an hour. The impact took out his legs, flipping him up onto the hood of the car. His head and shoulder then plowed through the windshield. When the car came to a stop he was thrown back into the middle of the road. He was knocked unconscious and didn’t wake up until the ambulance had him almost to the hospital. When he woke up in the ambulance he told them first call his wife, and then to call his principal and tell them to get a sub.
They found out he had broken his arm in 3 places, his lower leg bones in multiple places with the bones sticking out of his leg, shattered his shoulders, broke many ribs, and his head had been sliced from the middle of his forehead to about halfway on top of his head and down behind his left ear. The skin on his head wasn’t really attached to his head anymore so you could see his skull beneath. After 3 separate operations and 3 weeks in the hospital and rehab center they let him come home the day before Thanksgiving. He was in a wheelchair and he says it was kind of tough and painful. My family and I had come down for the holiday. Grandpa said he felt he looked like Frankenstein’s monster with his cuts and stitches on his face and some of his teeth had been broken out. He was so afraid he would scare me because I was lonely 2. But he says I just came in and acted like nothing was wrong. I just climbed on his lap and read with him like I always did. He says it really saved him and made him feel so much better about life that I still just wanted to be with him.
They found out that his body had mostly healed after about 6 months, but the hit on his head had caused some damage to his brain and he had major problems to his short term memory. The doctors did tests and determined it would be something he’d probably have to live with forever. Because of this he had to retire. That was really hard for him because he loved teaching math to kids. Now he’s retired and has four grandkids that he says make him a very happy person. I am the oldest, then there is Emma who is 7, and then twins named June and Andy who are 4. I loved learning about my grandpa who I am very glad to have still after his accident.