Forever Friends: The Lunt and Martines Families
My life has been shaped by what I call the Four M’s of my identity: Mormon, Military, Martines, and Mortensen. The Gary and Lorie Lunt family is connected to all of those defining aspects of my life.
There is no time in my life I don’t remember the Lunt family in it. I was three years old when my family moved to the Air Force Academy in January 1971 where my father was a Spanish language instructor. My father has shared that Gary joined the Spanish department a few months later in the summer of ’71. He recalls the department head asked my dad to go introduce himself to the new guy in the department. Col. Geffen told my dad, “His name is Lunt. He’s from Mexico. Check out his Spanish.” When I asked my dad how Gary’s Spanish was, he replied, “It was good. But it was from Mexico.” As a child, it was always somewhat ambiguous to me if Gary was Hispanic like my dad, or not. His dark hair made me think he could be Hispanic, but I was never really sure!
My father grew up in Salt Lake City, the son of a native Spanish speaker from Northern New Mexico. Spanish was spoken in his home, but it was not their primary language. In my own childhood, we moved to San Javier, Spain in 1974 where my father was a foreign exchange officer for two years. My siblings and I all attended Spanish schools and learned to speak Spanish fluently. As a result, we’ve all had a life-long love of all things Spanish and more broadly Latin American. We all understand Spanish and speak it to one degree or another. Several of my nieces and nephews have served Spanish-speaking missions in South America.
Being a Martines was a one of the defining aspects of my identity because I always felt a little different from many of the military kids I grew up with. But when I heard Gary speak Spanish with my father, I felt a kinship with him and his family. I knew he was from Mexico and that made him similar to my family.
A funny story that my older sister Leslie and I remember about Shon from our childhood was how much of a big operator he was as a young boy. During the summers at the Air Force Academy our parents would let us walk up to the Officer’s Club pool and spend the day. The pool had a grill and snack bar and we frequently saw Shon ordering food and living the “good life” while Leslie and I looked on with awe and envy. It never occurred to us that we could order food and charge it to our parents’ account. We only learned that in recent years as adults when we shared this memory of Shon with them. Shon always seemed like the coolest guy we knew!
Being Mormon further defined me and made me feel different growing up because there were so few of us on military bases. Knowing the Lunts went to the same church and shared the same values made me feel close to their family. I remember my sophomore year of high school at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois (1983–1984) we lived in the same neighborhood with the Lunts and consequently attended the same ward, and school with Shon and Lisa, the ones closest to my age. A small group of the ward youth attended early morning seminary at their home that year. I remember Shon coming down each morning to the living room with a blanket wrapped around him and appearing to be sleeping through every lesson! Then Gary was named Bishop of the ward and that really caused me consternation. I wasn’t sure if I should call him Brother Lunt, Bishop Lunt, or Col. Lunt!
Shon was two years ahead of me in school and was closer friends with my sister, Leslie. I remember being impressed with him because he was the very definition of Big Man on Campus at Mascoutah High School. He was the star player on the football team and everyone seemed to know him. For years I used to laugh at a funny story Shon used to say about himself. He told people he graduated with a 4–0 grade point average. After a short pause, he added “point-4–0.” I thought that was the funniest thing I’d ever heard!
I remember Lisa was teased mercilessly by her older brothers and that made her very tough. She could take care of herself. When I was in Spain my family bought her a Nancy doll, the Spanish version of the Barbie Doll. Lisa told me her brothers flushed the doll’s head in the toilet! I was horrified! Not having older brothers, I had no idea they could be so mean.
Like the Lunts, our lives were defined by military service. Even though it was our fathers that served in the military, it defined the lives of the entire family. I really enjoyed reading Gary’s military stories and was surprised to see how similar his career was to my father’s. My dad explained that Gary actually helped pull my father along in his career and that explains why we were often stationed at the same bases. The fact that we overlapped on some assignments was unique for our family. I cannot recall ever having military friends that we were assigned with at multiple bases together.
In reading Gary’s history, I laughed at his story from his college days of driving from Provo to Mexico in a broken down car and siphoning gas from others’ gas tanks at night! I was shocked at reading about his night at the Playboy Club restaurant in Los Angeles. I would NEVER have thought Col./Bishop Lunt that I knew would have been involved in any of those antics!
Gary shared that in college, Lorie’s classmates commented on her beautiful skin, with one classmate saying that she once wanted to reach out and touch Lorie’s skin in English class. I, too, always remember Lorie’s beautiful skin. But more than her outer beauty, I will always remember her inner beauty and how kind she was to me as a child. I never saw her get angry or heard her yell at any of her children. In college my parents moved to Okinawa, Japan, while the Lunts were stationed at McChord Air Force Base near Seattle. On a couple of my trips home from Boston to Okinawa, my dad arranged for me to stay at their home. It was such a dream to be with the Lunts because it felt like my own home. Lorie was always so kind to me. I remember her telling me that the best part of having her children grow up was becoming friends with them. At that point, both Cory and Traci were married and as my own children have grown up, I’ve often thought on those words.
My brother Matthew is the same age as Christy Lunt and when they were teenagers, I remember my parents saying how “neat” it would be if they got married because they would love to have Gary and Lorie as relatives!
Finally, in reading Gary’s history, I learned we are connected in another defining aspect of my life, my marriage into the Mortensen family, descendants of the Mormon pioneers in Mexican colonies. In 1991, I married Gregory Payne Mortensen in the Salt Lake City temple. His ancestors, like Gary’s settled in the colonies of Northern Mexico in the 1880s. Along with the Lunts, the Mortensens fled Mexico after Poncho Villa’s revolution on 1912. They settled across the border in Virden, New Mexico, the same town that Gary’s father is buried in.
Around the time Greg and I were engaged, the federal census had just been completed for the previous decade. We heard on the local news in Albuquerque that the town in New Mexico that had the greatest percentage change in population the previous decade was Virden. Having never heard of Virden, Greg, quipped, “Several of my relatives died there last year and that caused the population to drop significantly.”
Both of Greg’s parents and his grandparents and other relatives are buried in the Virden cemetery. Greg and his brothers and nephews go hunting near Virden each fall and they visit the cemetery each time they go. Greg’s father, Bevan Mortensen, in the final years of his life, helped identify graves and made white wooden crosses for the small Mexican cemetery in Virden.
Gary wrote in his family history about the importance of his family name and honoring his ancestors. The Mortensens are the same way. They know and share their family history often and work hard to honor the faith and sacrifices of their pioneer ancestors.
The Mortensen family has been a tremendous blessing in my life and helped me to grow in the Gospel. Those families that went into Mexico faced some of the greatest hardships of any of the Saints, but, I believe their sacrifices have blessed their posterity. I was saddened to read of the death of Gary’s father at such a young age and devastated to think of his mother’s crippling poverty for a number of years. Her struggles and faith reminded me of experiences my husband’s ancestors faced in New Mexico where they were farmers and ranchers for several generations. The Mortensen family, like Gary’s, is full of Temple and Missionary Presidents. They are people who are firm in their faith and love of God.
So, now you see, how the Four M’s that have defined my identity are so connected to the Lunt family. I will always be grateful for the immeasurable influence they have had on my family and me personally.
