World War II vet's resort helped cure nightmares

COTTONWOOD HEIGHTS — The resort doesn't exist anymore, other than in RKay Mower's mind.

Which is where it began in the first place.

The year was 1946. RKay had just returned from World War II. He'd fought in the Battle of the Bulge in western Europe. He came away with a Bronze Star for valor and horrible nightmares from all the pain and dying.

He was 21 years old and had already seen too much when he moved back home with his crippled mother at their homestead off Spring Lane on the eastern flank of the Salt Lake Valley.

Figuring out what to do next, he walked out in the yard one day, past the spring house and the lake, leaned on his shovel and stared up at Mount Olympus.

He had it.

"I went back to the house and I said, 'Mom, I want to build a resort,'" he recalls as if it were last Monday.

"And Mom said, 'You just do whatever you want.'"

The next thing he knew he was spending his service pay on 60 tons of concrete for a 1,200-square-foot, five-cornered dance floor and a small building with an open front that sat adjacent to the natural spring-fed lake. He brought in three rowboats, a jukebox, a bar, and he made a sign out of black willow sticks that he nailed to a pine tree out front. Then he rigged up a light that lit up the sign at night.

SHADY LAKE.

"Oh man," says RKay, "you can't believe how pretty it was."

He opened Shady Lake to the public for three years, attracting "the university crowd," and then, after he took a job as a car salesman for Capital Chevrolet Co. in downtown Salt Lake, the resort became available for hire to private parties.

For the next 20 years he hosted corporations, weddings, family reunions, fraternity parties, you name it.

He charged $100 for the night, and he supplied the corn. He also cooked the steaks, but the people had to supply those.

"It was my night job, my fun job," says RKay, "I didn't make much money at it, but it made people so happy."

Including him.

"I loved the jukebox, I loved the moonlit nights," he says. "I purposely played 'Moonlight Over Vermont' when people were dancing. Oh, it was a setting. I know people fell in love with Shady Lake."