One of the great initiatives given by EJ Wood was to get a satisfactory vote in during the Prohibition years. It was a thing during those years in this area, as well as in the States. To this day, Cardston remains a "dry" town after they drove the saloons out.
There is a place south and east of us known as Whiskey Gap where the hooch was smuggled in the dry years of Prohibition.
My Grandfather, Earl Woodward was a freighter to the mining towns in Montana and this region. It was a tough life filled with hardened people who were versed in gambling and addictive substances. My Gpa picked up a smoking habit in that line of work, and eventually settled down and married a non-Mormon girl that has a striking resemblance to my oldest daughter. President Wood's brother was their home teacher - and she was pricked by the HG while he was in their home and took the request to get her life in order and be baptized. She did - but my Gpa struggled with this addiction and could not take her to the temple. My mother, the oldest, was not born under the covenant due to this. One day, President Wood came up to my grandfather on Main St in Cardston (who had a cigarette in his hand) and told him that he needed to quit the habit. He was promised that if he would give it up, all of his children would follow his good example and serve missions.
He did, and took my Gma to the temple having my mother sealed to him as a young child. My mother served a teaching mission to the Maori along with my dad in 1958 as they helped establish the Church college next to the temple in Auckland, NZ. They were called personally (in a face to face meeting) by the Prophet, David O McKay. My dad taught shop and my mother taught home economics for three years. I have three siblings born in NZ from that adventure. My parents came back by boat and my father bought a white dinner jacket in Hong Kong (personally tailored). My mother wanted my dad to wear it to dances and formals she expected him to take him to as he went on to get his Phd in Industrial Engineering. He ended up teaching at Western Washington for several years until he tired of the politics of campus life and left for the private sector. I wore that coat in the 1980's to several formals and wore it the day I was married in 1992. It made my mother happy to know that I got some good miles out of it.
My two uncles both served honorable full-time proselyting missions. The youngest, my Aunt Kaye served a full-time mission after her husband finally converted to the church as a married adult. I figure she always knew he would come around from that prophecy made earlier.
This prophecy was fulfilled perfectly - just one of many of that honorable man; EJ Wood.
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