Royal Oscar Swenson was born on January 20, 1903, in Logan, Cache County, Utah. He married Tressa Bailey in Malad, Idaho, and together they homesteaded a 160-acre farm in Arbon Valley, a remote area of Power County, Idaho, roughly 40 miles from Malad and reached by dirt roads. They raised their five children — Robert Dean, Janiel, Twila, Royal Jay, and Doyle LeGrande — on the farm. The family later moved to Malad, where Royal worked as a police officer.

Norman Harker describes Royal visiting him and Marilyn in their Pocatello trailer, characterizing him as a loud and gregarious personality. Tressa Swenson’s diary, kept through the early 1960s, documents a family life centered on visits between Malad and Idaho Falls, where the Phillipses lived.

Royal Oscar Swenson died on May 1, 1974, at 2:30 p.m., at a hospital in Malad, Oneida County, Idaho. He was buried at Malad City Cemetery on May 4, 1974. His wife Tressa died later that same year.

Note: Marilyn Phillips Harker’s autobiography gives Royal’s death year as 1975; Tressa Swenson’s diary and the GEDCOM both confirm May 1, 1974. The 1974 date is used here. Norman did not identify “Royal Oscar” by full name in the oral history; the identification rests on corroboration from Marilyn’s autobiography and the GEDCOM.