Throughout her life, Mickey Herrin has had a knack for picking up skills by observing others. While her older brother practiced the piano, six-year-old Herrin watched from behind the couch until he left. Then she tried tinkling the keys herself. Impressed, her parents put her in lessons, and she excelled, later winning a multischool piano competition in junior high.
Herrin also watched her mother type on a manual typewriter, amazed at her speed and accuracy. Her mother was often recognized at work for completing projects much more quickly than other employees. “She was extremely fast and productive,” Herrin says. “I watched her fingers fly over the keys, and I just wanted to be like her.”
So when Herrin was awarded a grant and enrolled at BYU, she chose to follow in her mother’s footsteps. She graduated with an associate’s degree in secretarial technology in 1970. “It was a good decision for me,” says Herrin. “My schooling at BYU prepared me for the most technically advanced secretarial positions offered at the time.”
Before graduating, Herrin met her future husband, David, at a dance. While trying to get through a crowded exit, Herrin and David ran into each other—literally. “He pushed me,” she recalls, laughing. “Three weeks later, we were engaged.”
Herrin worked as a receptionist at Heritage Halls, as a research typist in BYU’s engineering department, and as a marketing secretary at a firm in Salt Lake City. Her typing was as fast as her mother’s. On an electric typewriter, Herrin could type seventy to eighty words per minute; when computers came out, she could do one hundred. Her hard work was rewarded. One time she was asked to step across the street and take shorthand minutes at another company’s meeting. “I was there fifteen minutes and received a hundred dollars,” Herrin says. “I was happy.”
But secretarial work wasn’t always lucrative, so when she saw that the US Postal Service was hiring, Herrin took the postal service exam, earned a perfect score, and went on to work in every department in the post office. She first worked for the USPS in St. George, Utah, before transferring to an office near Salem, Oregon.
In line with her affinity for watching and then learning, Herrin saw her first clogging dance performance as an adult and was mesmerized. She took classes and later organized several competition and performance clogging teams, including a family team.
Herrin and David raised six children. David passed away in 2016. In her retirement, Herrin enjoys arranging music, teaching piano, directing the ward choir, and spending time with her twenty grandchildren. She remembers her time at BYU fondly. “I learned how to be patient and how to keep going when life hands you unexpected problems,” Herrin says. “My schooling at BYU was a lifelong blessing.”
