The following is a brief overview of the life and times of Mike Meservy.Shortly after returning from Israel I was called to serve a mission in what was then called the Delaware Maryland Mission. I departed in late July. At that time the mission home was a one week experience. An interesting aside is that I had not been set apart before I left because my Stake President was out of town and so I had the privilege of being set apart for my mission by Hartman Rector. I served in areas around Washington DC, Baltimore, MD, and near Camden, NJ. The Washington DC temple was under construction and in one of my areas we got to work at a temporary booth that had been set up. Today there is a very beautiful visitors center constructed where that humble booth was located. It was an amazing two years.
After my mission I returned to BYU in the fall of 1974. My major was Accounting. While pursuing my education I met my future wife Sally Oxborrow in the spring of 1975. We dated for about 6 months and I proposed in November and with her acceptance we were married in May of 1976 in the Provo Temple. Sally had graduated with an associate degree in December of 1975 and took a job that would help with some of the future education and living expenses.
Our first child came in the spring of 1978. I thought it was to be a son and back in those days it was a surprise until the delivery in most cases. Much to my surprise we were blessed with a beautiful daughter.
At this time I had taken a break from my education to sell real estate which I did until the market took a down turn. At which point my wife requested I get a "real" job and finish my education. I took her advise and found a job as an accountant with an herbal manufacturing company in Orem. This job lasted until I graduated in 1981 and would have lasted longer as I was offered a job as assistant controller and had accepted. A friend had his boss invite me up for an interview with his company. He worked for a computer software company. They were looking for someone with an accounting degree that they could train in programming. They made me an offer that I could not refuse. This started me down the path of computer systems accounting instead of counting beans.
Over the next few years I worked at building payroll systems for school districts. In time we sold our system to many large school districts and one of the school districts was running payrolls for 10,000 employees every two weeks on software I was responsible for designing and building.
I worked with this company for all of the eighties. My family continued to grow with a son being added in 1981, another son in 1984, and a daughter in 1986. Our family continued to grow in the early 90's with the addition of another daughter in 1990 and our last child added in 1993 another daughter. Our final total was six children. Two boys and four girls.
In 1991 I decided to seek different employment. The entrepreneur in me wanted to get out on my own so this I did. I started a consulting career which I followed for the next 5 years. During these next 5 years Sally had the opportunity to join my dad on a trip to Israel for 3 weeks. She invited her parents to join her and they all had a wonderful time. She came back a different person. Even her friends could see and recognize the change radiating from countenance. I got to watch the kids as we still had some young ones at the time. I was blessed later with the opportunity to go back to Israel with dad in November of 1996. It was so wonderful to go back and have refreshed in my mind the wonderful memories from years before. I was amazed had how close the surface the memories were.
My return to employee status occurred in 1997 as I was offered a directors position with a local consulting firm. This became a wonderful opportunity for me as I met some of the people I would later start a company with. I was working with many college kids. Young, energized, and ready to go at it. In 1998 the company was sold and after a few months with the new group I again pushed the entrepreneurial button and started a small consulting company. Over time I had several employees join me from my previous employer and we were off in a new direction. After a couple of years working the consulting business we discover a way to develop applications for the internet. We were actual ahead of the industry with our technology and so in the summer of 2001 we decided to go from a service based company to a product based company. This type of transition requires money. Something I was not flush with. We decided to try our hands at obtaining venture capital for our transition. The first appointment we had set up to present our business plan as a precursor to asking for money was September 13. When the events of 9/11 unfolded the financial markets were set on their ears. The market became very uncertain and venture capitalists love certainty, at least in the world around them. Even with this uncertainty we were able to get our first round of funding in November of 2001.
I continued to grow my company for the rest of 2001 and through out 2002. In November of 2002 an event occurred that changed our lives forever. On a very normal Friday I went off to work. I had a meeting in the morning with my venture capital firm. I was able to secure a final commitment on the next round of funding. That afternoon my life was set to change. My wife's plans for the day called for her to visit her great aunt in Layton, UT with some of the members of her family. On her way home she was involved in a terrible accident that took her life and the life of her father and another great aunt in the car with them. My mother in law and sister in law were the only survivors. At the time I had 5 children still at home and I was not the best at the domestic tasks. I am currently down to 2 children at home. One is 14 and the other is soon to be 17. I have some very wonderful kids and parents and they have all been an awesome support to me in learning how to be a single dad. BTW I am still not the greatest at the domestic stuff.
This one event has had an overriding influence in our lives since. It was a tragic event. That cannot be overstated. That being said. There have been some wonderful things that have happened to us as a family since. We are a stronger family unit now. We express our love in ways we did not do before. Our faith in God has grown and we now know more surely that he has a plan for us is to return to his presence. We desire to make this plan effective in our lives and it is the utmost goal in our minds as we want to be with our wife and mother again.
To return to my story. In June of 2003 I sold my company after months of negotiation and at the same time I moved to a new house. Selling my company afforded me the ability to take a couple of months off before returning to the work force to spend some quality time with my family. I now work for a company that is competing against the software we wrote in the 80's. It has been interesting to come back and work with school districts again.
From a current family perspective, I have one daughter married with two daughters and one more on the way. I guess this makes me a granddad. I have had two sons serve missions. One in Italy from 2000 to 2002 and the other in Argentina from 2003 to 2005. One daughter is at Utah State and majoring in interior design. One son is at Snow College and will graduate with an associates degree this spring. He is wanting to work in recording industry, primarily music production and the like. The other son is working back east and pursuing a career as a singer / writer.
One other thing I could recap is some of my callings in the church. I have been pleased to have been gainfully employed in church most of my married life. I have served as clerk in ward and stakes. Worked as a priest instructor. Been ward and stake executive secretary. Served in a stake young men's presidency and while serving here had another of life's great opportunities of going on a handcart trek with our youth in the Martins Cove area of Wyoming. Currently I serve as the elders quorum president and work in the Jordan River temple as a veil worker. Of all my callings I think my current temple assignment has been the best. Takes me to the temple at least weekly and gives me time to reflect and ponder life.
My life has been good. A part of that life is an experience I had years ago in Israel. Much like my wife, I came back a changed person. I think it took me longer to realize what the experience meant to me but it still had a profound effect on my life. Each of those that joined me became a part of my experience there and I am so grateful to have been there with each and every one of you.
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