DAUGHTERS CRITIQUE OR THE INSIDE VIEW

By Hope A. Hilton

                        (Hope A Hilton is the late, older daughter of Annalee Skarin.)

            Annalee Skarin's often ascetic lifestyle, devoted beyond question to finding the path to God through poverty and service, befitted a sixteenth-century nun more than a Mormon housewife.

            In the early 1930s she taught drama to the sixth grade in our local Catholic school for two years.  Her reverence for the Mother Superior and the teaching nuns was evident in her conversation.  Once, during the production of the "miracle plays," she complained of her students who failed to internalize the drama with sufficient visual ecstasy.  She cried in desperation at their wooden expressionless faces, "Haven't you ever seen a vision?" One can only imagine their astonishment as they must have guiltily replied "no" to their demanding teacher.  Annalee's qualification for this teaching position was her spring quarter instruction at the University of Utah under the famed Maude Mae Babcock in 1920.

            There were people who believed Annalee saw visions, even communed with the supernatural.  She was essentially a loner and was considered to be a faithful Latter-day Saint by those in authority.  The woman they observed was one who paid 50 percent tithing, who fasted weekly-one time for three days until she could not rise from her bed-and one who was a charismatic and successful teacher, preacher, and missionary for the Church.  She never missed a meeting, compiled reams of genealogy on weekly trips to the Los Angeles Public Library on Hope Street, and made yearly 1000-mile round trips to the Mesa Temple to fulfill her other-worldly obligations; she was known to have helped the poor and needy many times.  Few, if any, match Annalee Avarell Skarin's devotion to the Church.

            Her role models stretched from Isaiah to the Reverend Aimee Semple MacPhearson with eastern mystics sprinkled over all.  Even with all of her good works there was deep within Annalee's psyche an essential cog that malfunctioned.  Whether put there by illness, as I believe, or by a childhood and early adulthood of severe trials, God alone knows.  Whatever the cause the machine eventually broke down from the inner stress of attempting to reach perfection in mortal shoes.

            Samuel Taylor portrays Annalee as coming from a normal background; in fact she was crippled by her heredity and bleak environment.  She was born to Frederick John Kohlhepp and Mary Ella Hickman into a home on an Idaho dry farm and was deprived of many necessities of life.  The father, a Jewish convert to Mormonism, was sick with tuberculosis and unable to support his Mormon pioneer wife and their ten children of whom two boys and six girls reached maturity.  The mother spoke several times in tongues trying to control her daughters while she peddled vegetables from a cart and broke wild horses to supplement a meager income.  Annalee, born in 1899, was the ninth child.  The two boys left no mark: one was mentally retarded, the other died a quiet Utah farmer with no descendants.

            Like an exploding galaxy the sisters went to homes in Utah, California, Wyoming, Arizona, and Oregon as they married.  There was never talk of a family reunion, the argument about Constance's legitimacy overshadowed all else.

            Annalee was haunted for years over the fate that had befallen Constance who denounced the Church on her mission in 1933 and was sent home in disgrace.  Annalee felt she had failed to rescue her from the devil's claws.

            Hers was a family that disintegrated before her eyes, yet Annalee wanted children of her own.  From her first marriage she had a son who died at nine months.  After this marriage dissolved, she served a mission in California.  After her mission she married Hugo Avarell in 1922.  This marriage produced a son, who died at birth, and two daughters.  Though wanting  children, the selfless commitment to motherhood was never very evident.

            Annalee's voluminous writing began during her first marriage and continued throughout her life.  Her education had ended with the eighth grade, except for the incomplete quarter at the University of Utah.  Annalee tried to cover up her lack of education by later inventing college degrees.  The five or six aliases she used made her claims difficult to verify.  She typed almost daily on her portable Smith-Corona as I grew up.  Her letters often reached a length of twelve single-spaced pages. (If she had ever met a computer there would have been a fourth marriage.)

            Her writing was more than that of a frustrated woman who desperately needed an audience and acceptance.  I believe she truly wanted to inspire and help people, yet because of her mental illness she failed to see that her loyal followers would some day be forced to choose between her "revelations" and those of the Church prophets.  It was not evident to her that her claim to be "the one chosen to speak for God" ran contrary to the priesthood hierarchy.

            Like a moth with filigreed wings of lacy substance, she hovered in a darkened room where a lone candle burned.  She desired the flame for its light, but flew too close until she turned her means of success to ashes.  She lay crumpled and excommunicated in a Church court in June 1952.  For many Church members in Southern California and Utah, and later in Buffalo, New York, where she moved in 1943, this event was a disaster for she was their spiritual guru.  The testimonies of LDS doctrines she helped build and nourish were threatened.  As always, Church members were free to make their decisions: many chose to leave the Church and follow Annalee.

            Annalee herself, crushed though unrepentant, rose phoenix-like to continue her mystical teachings already rejected as heretical by Elder Mark E. Peterson's hastily convened court.  She taught that man did not need to die; death was a state for the wicked, not for those who had the power of faith and miracles.

            In 1943, her own pathway to glory necessitated an end to her twenty-one-year marriage.  No marriage partners were ever more mismatched.  She moved to Buffalo, New York, and a new marriage to her life-time love, Reason Skarin, a convert from her California Mission in 1920.  This became a marriage of denial, poverty, and teaching, reverting to her ascetic lifestyle of continence.  Reason quit his job as a police officer just one year short of a pension.

            Annalee was a paranoid-schizophrenic who listened to an inner voice whose tapes were often garbled.  She was a dramatic actress who sought center stage and applause while proclaiming her humility.  She was a master of cover-up which only those on the inside could see.

            There is no question that she helped many.  I recall three LDS ex-convicts who told of surviving their long confinements because of the hope-filled letters they received from Annalee in prison.  Other converts who did not leave the Church have pleaded in years past, "Don't say anything bad about your mother, she changed my life."

            Annalee did change people's lives, some for good, others were less fortunate.  Her claim to being "translated" the night of 16 June 1952, five days after her excommunication, was the natural outgrowth of her diligent pursuit of earthly perfection. "Translation" offered a means of escape, becoming almost a necessity after the excommunication.  She chose this route and, once chosen, it could not be reversed.  If her earthly body was found subject to mortality her claim would be exposed to the world as a lie.

            As far as can be determined, from 1952 until 1971 the "translated" Skarins lived in southern California.  I last saw my mother in May 1952 in Chicago for two hours when she was on her way to Salt Lake City where, unknown to her, the excommunication court was waiting.

            Annalee and Reason disappeared in 1975 from the Redding, California, area where they had lived in poverty in an old trailer from 1971.  Both are presumed dead.  Annalee would have been ninety years old in July 1989.  A few of her dedicated followers remain in Redding waiting for her to return in glory.  Her twelve books continue to be printed and distributed at a minimal price by devoted believers in the hope that the minds and hearts of the downtrodden, the suffering, especially mothers who have lost infants, might find solace.  From her own experience Annalee learned the art of coping with disaster.  To help others survive the painful trauma of the loss of a child she wrote of faith, belief, and a vision of eternity, coupled with personal communication with God and angels.  The denial of her own pain accompanied by elaborate fabrication came from her slow descent into madness.  Even in this demented state she was a great success.

            I reject Samuel Taylor labeling me as "the unforgiving daughter," implying it pertained to my mother's divorce from my father.  Personally, if I had been Annalee, I would have left, him long before twenty-one years had elapsed.  I have defended the Church's right to excommunicate my mother as a necessity when Elder Peterson, after a heated verbal confrontation, withdrew Annalee's Church membership, judging her to be insane.  I do not believe sexism was an issue in this proceeding as Taylor claims.

            Today, the Church umbrella gives shelter to liberals and conservatives.  However, I believe that even by today's standards my mother needed to be excommunicated because her typewriter would not stop and her claims to Godhood multiplied.

            Overall, I feel Samuel Taylor's article captures the ethereal spirit of Annalee's voluminous writings by using her words, yet he mostly misses the dark side of her deceiving nature.  By eschewing worldly values Annalee received as pay the adoration she so desperately craved.

            If the mortal remains of the Skarins are ever discovered, only then will the mystery surrounding their 1975 disappearance be solved.

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