Great Stories From Family History - Honesty

Above is a picture of Greatgrandpa and Greatgrandma Robison. They have 4 children, 19 grandchildren, and 16 greatgrandchildren as of today. On Sunday, February 1, 2009, Greatgrandpa Robison and his oldest grandson Reid Justin blessed Justin and Lisa's twins, Henry and James. The photo was taken on the blessing day.

Grandpa Robison was born 57 years ago next month in Delta, Utah. It was on the 27th day of March. Grandpa's mom and dad had been married almost a year and Greatgrandpa Robison had just been employed by the Farmers' Home Administration, a branch of the Federal Government that made loans to farmers.

Here is a story related by Aunt Elizabeth, who recently had the opportunity to talk to Greatgrandpa Robison about what it was like at the time he was hired:

"When he first started his job in Delta, the office would sent him out to hold office hours at different county field offices so borrowers could come in an ask him questions about their loans and the rules, regulations and climate conditions, crop advice etc. Most of the time no one came. So he was paid to sit there for hours and hours waiting.

What would you do with the time? Would you read a book, the newspaper, a magazine, the scriptures? Would you prepare a church lesson and justify that you were doing something religious on work time? Greatgrandpa Robison said the time did not belong to him. Greatgrandpa Robison felt it wasn't honest to do something non government related with the time they were paying for.... so he memorized the Farmer's Home Administration rule manual. No one else went to that effort. Whenever he was up for a promotion, they would interview him and ask him questions about the
agency, and he knew the answers right off the top of his head. He became the unofficial "rule expert" because he knew the rules and how to apply and interpret the rules without even looking them up. No one in the agency knew the rules like he did.

When Jim Lee, a big official in the head office came out from Washington D.C. the leaders of Farmers' Home Administration in Montana wanted to impress him so they assigned Greatgrandpa Robison to work with him. Mr. Lee realized what a gem Greatgrandpa was knowing the agency from start to finish and took him to Washington D.C. as a national rules expert."

This was all because greatgrandpa Robison did not "steal time" from the government by sitting idle while on the payroll. And he did not tell Aunt Elizabeth this experience. She dug it out of him because they were driving by one of the old field office territories in Fillmore and he said that he used to spend a lot of time here and Aunt Elizabeth asked why and finally got the story out of him.