Lagoon fetes its oldest alumnus

FARMINGTON — Lagoon amusement park built its first-ever concrete swimming pool back in 1927, the same year Milton J. Hess started working there as a "key boy."

"There was a self-locking door," Hess recalled of the pool's dressing rooms, "and I would let patrons inside."

The dressing room compartments didn't have locks on them. Hess earned about $1 a day and said Lagoon actually had two pools in those days.

Hess started working at Lagoon at age 12 because his father (also named Milton Hess) was a manager and caretaker there. The Hess family lived inside a house in the amusement park next to the original Dodg'em cars.

Hess, now 94 and still living in Farmington, is believed to be the oldest living Lagoon alumnus.

"We wanted to find the oldest," Dick Andrew, Lagoon spokesman, said. "And we think we have … You're an inspiration to us all."

Tracking down the oldest living former employee was part of Lagoon's first Employee Alumni Days celebration to show appreciation for past and present workers. Andrew said it will be an annual event.

A few years after his dressing room job, Hess said he advanced to be a lifeguard at the pool and eventually operated the park's iconic wooden roller coaster that still runs today.

"I think we lost one (passenger)," Hess recalled of someone who fell out of a coaster car. "I don't think it hurt them too bad."

What was his favorite ride of the dozen or so Lagoon had when he was a teen?

"I got tired of all of them," he said.

Hess recalled that his father helped build the rolling barrels in the Fun House at the park. "He had much to do with that building," he said.

The highlight of his days at Lagoon had nothing to do with his work, but lasted a lifetime. In those days, he said, most everyone he knew worked at the park, which held regular dances.

"I married one of the workers here (in 1939)," he said of his late wife, Fern.

Hess went on to become the Davis County attorney and then opened his own law practice in Farmington. He was also a U.S. Navy chaplain in the Aleutian Islands.

He also served as an LDS stake president in Farmington, as a mission president in western Australia and then as the first temple president in that nation. He has six children, 38 grandchildren and about three dozen great-grandchildren.

So, what does he think of Lagoon today?

"It's an asset to the county," he said.

e-mail: lynn@desnews.com