Meeting Wayne

The first Sunday in January 1974, I was singing in Church and Wayne was in the congregation sitting with a girlfriend. After the meeting was over Wayne told his friend, "Excuse me for a minute" and walked up the aisle a little where I was sitting and told me that he enjoyed my solo. He went back and got his girlfriend, and I didn't think too much of it.

Before this Sunday I had already met Merrill, Alan, and Jay. I attended Merrill and Mary's wedding reception with a date in Heber City because Mary had invited me. We both belonged to the same service club at Brigham Young University. I asked Jay and Alan one day if there was another brother. They said "yes," but told me that he was kind of weird, spent a lot of time in his tool room, and liked to reload bullets. From their comments I formed the impression that Wayne wasn't very friendly or social and was probably boring.

Before meeting any of the Osmonds, I didn't know one specific thing about them. I don't ever remember watching them on the Andy William's show or remember seeing or even hearing anything about them other than they were a group of brothers that sang together and they were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints like I was. I don't think I even knew what songs they sang. Later, after attending one of their shows in Las Vegas, I recognized their hits but didn't know they were the artists.

I was living at the Riveria apartments in Provo when one of my roommates called, "There's the Osmonds," and everyone dashed to the glass sliding doors to watch them walk across the parking lot from our apartment. By the time I got to the window I only saw one Osmond, who I think was probably Wayne.

The Osmonds had bought Riveria apartments, which was BYU housing. They remodeled the area of the office building that was behind and above the main office where there had been other businesses previously. Mother Osmond wanted her boys to get acquainted with some friends of their same faith and what better place could there be? Provo was basically a college town with students that attended Brigham Young University, which is a private university owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The following Sunday I noticed that Wayne was sitting right behind me in Sunday School, and after the meeting we chatted for a few minutes. I was totally surprised when a couple of hours later he knocked on my apartment door and wanted me to go flying with him in his new airplane. That afternoon and evening I discovered that Wayne was really nice, friendly, humble, easy to talk to and fun to be with. He was totally different than what I had assumed.