The Daily Spectrum from Saint George, Utah • 24

Oldest woman in Enterprise is still busy at 87 Manna Bushes' Kf fi. W'i? SSCvAf ii i has constructed from tons of beatuf ul native stones. She also boasts a very large garden, from which she feed not only herself, but many of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. ENTERPRISE A tour of Hannah Bustler's home and lot will reveal dozens of projects she has undertaken to beautify the area. Here, she stands in the midst of a rock garden, fish pond and waterfall she ENTERPRISE Hannah Busher is a tal- contains several specimens of native ented lady, and her handiwork is evident rock) she holds to the quilting material everywhere in her home.

From the beauti- visible behind her, Hannah finds plenty to ful laminated miniature table top (that keep her busy, active and happy. marrying Jacob Busher. They were wed in 1918, and spent their entire married life in the Escalante Valley, first as farmers, then later as storekeepers. Jacob passed away some 20-odd years ago. "My husband was born in Yugoslavia as Jacob Boun-cha," she says of the man with whom she spent nearly 45 years.

"He was recruited by owners of some Pennsylvania coal mines, who paid for his passage to the United States in exchange for his services as a coal miner. Soon after he arrived in the U.S., he changed his name to Busher and eventually he left the mines and bummed his way across the country with a friend. They were sitting by the side of the road out a little ways from here when Lou Terry (one of the areas first ranchers) spotted them and offered them a job. They accepted." Pay in those days wasn't much more than a dollar-a-day plus board and room, but it gave Jacob Busher a start in the Escalante Valley. He was to spend eight years on the Terry Ranch, and subsequently with, as Hannah remembers, Man Thomas Earl." Respected by those who knew him, Jacob Busher was often called "son by Mr.

Terry. Homestead After their marriage, Jacob and Hannah bought a 40-acre homestead west of Enterprise and settled down to wrest their living from the land. Not long after their marriage, Jacob joined the LDS Church, and over the years, their home was blessed with five children, three sons and two daughters. Then, as now, most of the activities in Enterprise centered around farming and the LDS Church. "Every Christmas, just about every night a dance was held, with the MIA sponsoring one one night, the Relief So "When we pulled into Enterprise, we had nothing; no money and not much in the way of prospects," Hannah reports.

"Father had sold our home in Arizona, but the man who bought it had been unable to pay anything on what he owed and so we just had to go to work." ciety the next, the Sunday School the next and so on," she recalls with a slight smile. "The Staheli family were the musicians and still are, and they really made the dances fun." She also cites Ray Staheli, who was the ward choir leader for many years, and his daughter Beverly Dawn Staheli Cramer, who even today leads an Enterprise ward choir, as examples of the Staheli families musical talents. First telephone "I can remember the first telephone in Enterprise too," boasts Hannah, "and how Sadie Morris was the first switchboard operator." Down through the years, as she watched her children grow to adulthood, Hannah has maintained her church activity. She served as president of the Mutual, was a Primary teacher for several years and also served in the Relief Society presidency. One of the things she is proudest of is her 60 some-odd years as a Relief Society Visiting Teacher.

"When I was first put in, there weren't many cars in Enterprise, and I had one, so they assigned me to visit the sisters in all the outlying areas. That took me all over the valley, but I enjoyed it." For several years while her children grew up, Hannah and her husband operated a small store that now sits empty and forlorn next to her well-cared for home. When Jacob Busher died two decades ago, he left his widow debt free, but with little means of making ends meet. So Hannah went to work wherever she could find it. Table top "I've always liked to stay busy, so I started raising some chickens, then started making tables to sell." Proudly, she still has the first such table top, a miniature one, hanging in her living room.

She explains that she scoured the surrounding country for interesting rocks which she carried home by the truckload. Using a rock saw, she sliced them to thicknesses of about 14 inch and sealed them in plastic laminate. The unique tables, of which about 80 were made, sold well for several years until interest declined, and then she switched her manufacturing talents to quilting. "I guess I've made quite a few quilts over the past several years. I just piece things together, and I've made a lot of money sewing quilts." When finished and if they are not being custom made for friends, neighbors or grandchildren, Hanna boxes the quilts and sends them either to Salt Lake and the Mormon Handicrafts shop, which has sold a number of her works, or to her daughter in Washington City, who has a gift shop.

"The money I make," says the sprightly quilter who sits not three feet from at least three quilts in various stages of completion, "gives me a little something extra for whatever I need." Cliffrose In addition to a dining room that contains the various tools necessary to the quilter, Hanna's home is decorated with other examples of her handcraft. There are beautiful lamps with bases of sagewood and cliffrose, and a table with a sagebrush-wood base also adorns one corner. Central to her little factory dining room is a woodburning stove, on which rest two ancient flatirons, of the type that kept many a grandmothers ironing arm in shape for spankings any of her brood might earn. The whole front porch has been converted to serve as a greenhouse and display area for numerous geological rocks and gems. Even several lemons, the last thing one would expect to find in Enterprise, are thriving on a tree nurtured by this lady of many talents.

"My word, I have tons of rock (no doubt left over from the manufacture of table tops) in my back yard, and I enjoy getting out and puttering with them when I have the strength and the weather is nice." Visitors are likely to be shown hundreds of square feet of patio layed down by the same hands that now tie beautiful quilts and a tour of the back yard will also reveal a fish pond and water fall crafted from the literal "tons of rock" the energetic widow has accumulated. In addition to the patios, Hannah also build a large 8-by-18 foot rock-walled green house, in which she continues to exercise her considerable green thumb talents. by GAIL THUESON Staff Writer ENTERPRISE Although she's the oldest woman in Enterprise (and said to be third oldest resident of the area), Hannah Busher has the outlook someone much younger. Besides, "I'm not really a pioneer to the area," she confides. "When I got here, they already had the second chapel built.

Enterprise was founded about 1904 by the Pulsipher family, and I didn't get here until 1917." "I'm almost 87," she confides'tut I still take care of myself, and manage to get around pretty well on my own. A sick spell three years ago has given me some problems and slowed me down a bit, but, like I say, I manage to keep busy." Bounded on the north by the fertile fields of the Escalante Valley and on the south by the cedar-covered Black Hills, Enterprise is noted for it's excellent potato crops and a wealth of character. Hannah Busher is one such person. Unique outlook Having spent 65 years almost her entire adult life in the community and watching it change over the years, has given this bright-eyed little lady who confesses to 25 greatgrandchildren a unique outlook on life. "My father, Joseph Fish, was quite a historian," she says.

"He compiled a history of the area that was never published, but the original manuscript is a part of the special collections at Southern Utah State College in Cedar City. "We came to the area in three wagons, one driven by my father, one by my brother and the other by myself. "Father was 4-years-old and living in Nauvoo when the prophet Joseph Smith was killed, and was seven when the Saints were driven out." With a clear and concise memory, she recalls the later history of her father; how he was raised in the Salt Lake Valley, married, and was called to settle in Parowan when that city was only 3-years-old. There he raised six children and buried his first wife. From Parowan, he went into the Arizona settlements, specifically Snowflake, where he eventually met and married Hannah's mother.

Poly ga mist "Father was a polygamist," she relates. Throughout the telling of her father's history, she points out that he was often called to go to new areas shortly after their founding to buoy up the colonies, and how it was often difficult to support a family by doing so. "When we pulled into Enterprise, we had nothing; no money and not much in the way of prospects," Hannah reports. "Father had sold our home in Arizona, but the man who bought it had been unable to pay anything on what he owed and so we just had to go to work." The family, in order to survive, used their only real property, the three teams and the wagons, to haul freight for the old Lund Store, an early landmark of several southern Utah communities. Her brother, Wilford Fish, maintained that trade route for many years.

In fact, one of Hannah's sons still maintains the trade today, although he uses a diesel powered eighteen-wheeler semi-trailer truck instead of the old horse drawn wagon. Shy Having arrived in the area just at the end of the First World War, Hannah, a shy young lady, wasted no time in SPECTRUM CHURCH LIFE FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4. im.