A Father’s Day Tribute to Orvil Terry

 

On this Father’s Day, my thoughts have turned, of course, to my father, and I thought it would be appropriate to share a couple of pieces from his funeral program. He died at age 97, on September 15, 2022, and the funeral was held on September 23 in his ward’s meetinghouse in North Ogden, even though I had brought him to an assisted living center in Provo after he fell and broke his hip in May 2020, so I could look after him. We wanted the funeral to be at his ward’s meetinghouse for two reasons: first, because it was completed when he was bishop, and, second, because he had so many dear friends in that ward, whom he had cared for in so many ways, and who loved him dearly and missed him. Because he had only two children, my sister, Jolene, and I were the main speakers, but I wanted his friends to learn a little something about his early life, so I abridged the first part of his personal history and had my oldest son read it. I also felt there was something for us today to learn from his growing up in the Great Depression and his years serving in World War II. What follows, then, is Dad’s description of his early life followed by my remarks.

Orvil Terry, Early Life Sketch

Because no one alive today remembers Orvil Terry’s early life, and because he tells it so well in his personal history, we decided to let Orvil tell his own story today. This account is excerpted from the personal history he wrote in 2014.

My mother, Eunetta Elliker, was born November 30, 1887, at Cedar City, Iron County, Utah. It was primarily from her that I learned to work hard. This she did throughout her life, partly of necessity. With a large family, and very little of the world’s goods, due mostly to losing everything during the Great Depression of the 1930s, she was forced to do many things just to help provide meager necessities for the family. During that time, dad could not find employment, except for a period with the WPA (Work Projects of America).

As a result, mother, in addition to caring for the family, which included scrubbing clothes by hand on a washboard, used to do such things as bake and sell donuts door to door, pick all kinds of fruit, berries, and vegetables, taking her pay and the children’s pay in kind to provide much of the food needs of the family. It was during those early years I learned, at her side, that work is a necessary part of life.

There were 10 of us born to my parents:

Eunetta May

Jennie Louella

Frances Pearl

Pheby Idella

Amos Franklin

Ivena Ann

Irene Vilate

Orvil Kay

Verda Louise

Louis Vee

My first memories of childhood start at age 5 when we lived in Lehi, Utah County. It was there that I have my first remembrance of Christmas. One of the older children must have received a sleigh, as my sister Vilate and I were taking turns going over a head gate in the creek across the street onto the ice about 3 feet below. On what turned out to be my last turn, the ice broke, and I ended up downstream a few feet under the ice. Vilate called for help and my brother Amos came and fished me out.

We then moved into an old frame house on the west edge of Santaquin. There I attended the 3^rd and 4^th grades. One day in the fall, dad made a wooden barrel full of sauerkraut, which he put behind the house. How delicious it tasted when we were permitted to dip out an icy hand full & eat straight from the barrel. Hard times and scarce food can make one learn to enjoy many things. That’s no doubt why, all my life, I have found almost every kind of food pleasant to the taste and have enjoyed trying new things.

From Santaquin, we packed up to move into a rental in Lehi, only to find when we got there that the owner had rented it to another party. There we were, all our goods on a vehicle and no place to live. Dad had to turn to his brother, Thomas, who lived in Payson. He let us move into part of his house, where we lived until the spring of 1937, when we moved into our home in Enterprise.

Shortly before leaving Payson, I acquired a medium-sized black dog, which became my constant companion during leisure hours over the next couple of years. One day, he jumped off the back of dad’s truck when another dog came out barking. He landed in front of the rear wheels, was run over and killed. For me, it was like losing a member of the family. I have not since become really attached to another animal.

By the time we moved to Enterprise, the Depression was ending. Since few people there had much, and I was only 12 years old, I never really felt the hardship or felt deprived, as I might have had I been a few years older during those difficult years. I do recall, however, the embarrassment of not being able, as a teenager, to afford a five-cent candy bar when my friends occasionally bought one. Sometimes, I pretended not to like candy, while at the same time wanting one so much I could hardly stand it. Usually, one of my friends would offer to buy me one, but mostly my pride would not let me accept. The few times I did accept their offer, I ate the bar so slowly, savoring each bite that they thought I didn’t care for candy.

My few years at Enterprise were so pleasant and carefree that I still think of it as home, though I have no desire to return there to live.

An exceptionally large crop of pine nuts in the fall of 1936 made it possible for us to purchase an old frame home on the west end of Main Street in Enterprise. Dad, mother, Frances, Amos, and a friend of Amos’s, went into the hills west and northwest of Enterprise where they camped for about two months, until the weather forced them to leave the hills. During that time the family members picked up about 4 tons of pine nuts, which dad spent the winter selling. They sold for 25 cents per pound roasted or 15 cents in bulk unroasted. That money made it possible to purchase the home on a half-acre lot and a 1934 Ford pickup.

Much of my leisure time, during those teenage years, was spent with a 22-caliber rifle and my dog, wandering the fields and washes hunting rabbits. The favorite swimming hole for us boys was a waist deep pool southeast of town in the irrigation canal. We swam in the nude. I doubt that any of us knew what a swimming suit was and couldn’t have afforded one had we known. One day, after stripping for a swim, I did a backward dive into the canal, only to find that someone had thrown big rocks into the bottom of the pool. I hit the top of my head on one and might have drowned, except that a friend pulled me out.

At 16, I bought my first car, a 1928 Chevrolet, which cost me $25.00. The radiator leaked so much that I had to carry considerable water to make a trip of 50 miles or so. About 5 miles was all the car would go without starting to boil. My friends and I had some good times in the old clunker, and the freedom it gave us.

In the middle of [the 11^th grade], I quit and went to Las Vegas, Nevada, to work. My uncle John Elliker, in one of his less rational moments, had suggested I come to Las Vegas where job opportunities were plentiful. Thus, I arrived, unexpected, on his doorstep one afternoon. It must have been a shock to him and his family, but he was kind enough to put me up, feed me, and help me find a job with a motel construction company. Then, I went to work at Henderson, Nevada, where a magnesium plant was being constructed. I worked first as a laborer on a landscape crew (the only job I was ever fired from), then in a sheet metal shop, from there to the lumber yard unloading lumber from freight cars. Work in the lumber yard was one of the most physically draining experiences of my life. Imagine, in the heat of a Las Vegas summer, breaking open a railroad car filled to within 2 feet of the roof with lumber, sliding in on your stomach, and starting to push the boards out, while someone on the ground stacked them. In a few minutes the person in the car would be soaked with sweat. We ate salt pills regularly to keep from being overcome by heat stroke.

After going home for a few weeks, I went back to Las Vegas and worked as a machinist draw filer in the machine shop at the same plant. I should have stayed with that job. It paid exceptionally well and the building was air conditioned. Oh, the foolishness of restless youth. It was the job in the machine shop that made it possible for me to pay off my parent’s debts and buy mother her first electric washing machine. 

I left Las Vegas about November of 1942 and went to Salt Lake City, where I worked for Nelson Ricks Creamery, which company supplied eggs, butter, cheese, and other products to the military bases in the Salt Lake and Ogden areas. In May of 1943, restless to return home, I quit my job. In doing so, the company threatened to turn me in to the draft board. To which I foolishly said go ahead. Since the company was considered necessary to the defense effort, I was exempt from the draft, and might have remained so for some time, perhaps even the remainder of the war. But being young and foolish, I quit and went home. In 2 weeks, I received my notice to report to Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City for induction into the military.

I reported on June 12, 1943, and was immediately sent to Camp Roberts, California, for basic training. In addition to the regular training designed to break one’s independent spirit and make a person completely subject to authority, I was trained on the 105 mm howitzer, learning to load and fire at targets out on the firing range. One of our regular activities was to run an obstacle course of 2 or 3 miles over rough terrain and along dry, sandy river bottoms. I saw the benefits of not smoking as week after week nonsmokers, mostly LDS fellows, consistently finished the course well ahead of those who smoked.

From Camp Roberts, I was sent to Fort Riley, Kansas, for what is known as line training. There I was assigned to the Flash Section of the 288^th Artillery Observation Battalion. I was also assigned to drive a Jeep to chauffeur one of the officers on our regular field exercises. This duty carried over to Europe, where I drove a Weapons Carrier pulling a trailer, during the remainder of the war.

My training at Fort Riley was to prepare me to be a Geodetic Computer. This skill was later used to compute, by triangulation, the location of enemy troops or other military targets. Observation posts were set up along the front lines, where each post would call in a reading on an enemy target. We would then compute the location and call down artillery fire on that area.

In September of 1944, we shipped to England. In November, we sailed to La Havre, France. On December 19, 1944, we drove through Belgium into Luxembourg toward the front at the German border. While moving up that night, with headlights on, our convoy was strafed by a German plane. Lights were immediately extinguished and we all scattered into nearby ditches. Fortunately, we suffered no casualties and lost only 2 trucks.

We hadn’t gone far into Luxembourg when we learned of the German breakthrough, which began the Battle of the Bulge. Our first official act of combat was to retreat into Belgium, where we remained until the Germans were pushed back into Germany. After a couple of weeks, we moved up through Luxembourg to the border overlooking opposing hills where the Germans had constructed pillboxes, tank traps, and other defenses to help protect against an enemy invasion.

After a few exciting times on the border, the artillery and air pounding of German defenses began, which lasted for three days. Then the ground war was launched into Germany. Being a highly mechanized outfit, with many jeeps and trucks for transporting personnel and equipment, we moved right behind the armored units and infantry. We were instructed to move toward southern Germany. We crossed the Danube River, went through Munich, and were a few miles south of there when Germany surrendered. From there we were sent to a bombed-out tank ordnance depot a few miles east of Nuremberg, where I spent the next 10 months on occupation duty.

In March of 1946, I was transferred from Germany to Fort Douglas, Utah, where I received my honorable release from the service. At the time I held the rank of Staff Sergeant.

During my time in the service, I came to realize just how lacking my education was and determined to return to school with the intent of becoming a little more educated. Having heard of the federal high school equivalency test, I signed up, passed, and was able to get my diploma from Dixie High in the spring of 1947. By then, I had enrolled in Dixie Junior College and completed 1 year of class work. I started out majoring in mathematics but graduated in the spring of 1948 with an Associate Degree in accounting. That fall I enrolled at the University of Utah, graduating in the fall of 1950 with a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting. As a result of my army service, I was able to get my education under the G. I. Bill. I also worked to help with the expense of living.

During my first year at Dixie, I made a decision which has had a serious effect on the rest of my life. I have wished many times that my decision had been different. But then, perhaps the entire course of my life might have been altered. Would I have met and married Arlene? Would I have had the same children and grandchildren? It is probably best to let the past stand and hope that what has happened was meant to be.

Anyway, I learned from a neighbor that the bishop in Enterprise was planning to call me on a mission. Having been away for nearly 3 years and having just begun my education, I had no desire to leave home for another 2 years. I had always been taught to never refuse a call to serve in the Church. So I reasoned, quite foolishly, that if I quit paying tithing and attending meetings I would not be called. My reasoning was accurate. I did not receive the call and spent 4 years of complete inactivity as a result. Because of this action, I have always felt lacking in my spiritual development and convictions. I believe the experience of a mission would have strengthened me in ways where I have since felt lacking and would have given me confidence in myself which I have always felt as a weakness. 

It was not until I started courting Arlene that I became active again. I knew that if I was to develop a lasting relationship with her, I had better change the direction of my life. Those first few Sundays of attendance were really difficult. I felt so out of place. I have since had a greater understanding of those who are inactive and who are investigating the church and are somewhat reluctant to commit to becoming active or to baptism.

On July 5, 1950, I went to work for Arlene’s dad, Karl S. Storey, CPA. My starting salary was   $185.00 per month for a 44- hour week. When I married Arlene the following June, he gave me a raise to $225.00 per month. (That sly old fox knew she was going to be high maintenance.)

Arlene no doubt has her own version of our courtship and marriage, but I believe mine is, if not more accurate, somewhat more entertaining. I contend that her father came down to the University of Utah seeking a prospective husband for his spinster daughter. After all, she was nearing 21 years of age with no real prospects of marriage, at least not in the near future.

Had I not been so innocent and naive, I would have been alerted by the nature of the job interview. No questions were asked relating to my accounting skills. He seemed only interested in my religion, my attitude toward temple marriage, and whether or not I was seriously involved with anyone.

I have often referred to ours as a “shotgun marriage,” because I had to sell my shotgun to afford our honeymoon trip to Washington and Oregon. This action would not have been needed had I not been deceived about Arlene’s financial situation. I was led to believe she had money, which turned out to be three $25.00 war bonds, which had some years yet to maturity, so they weren’t really worth $25.00. I feel it necessary to mention that the first night of our marriage was spent at a second-rate motel called the Shady Lane in Tremonton, Utah. We hadn’t made any arrangements ahead, and this was the only visible motel we saw that night. The next morning, however, as we left town, we spotted a very modern motel just a block off Main Street. Next time we get married, we’ll do more advance planning.

Now that I’ve had my fun, perhaps it’s time to get serious. My marriage to Arlene, our many years together and the children she bore for us have been the real joys and satisfaction of my life. Could I do it over, I would without hesitation make the same choices. Ours has been a very comfortable and satisfying relationship. I love Arlene dearly.

After our marriage on June 12, 1951, we lived in an apartment on 25^th Street in Ogden, across the street from Lester Park. In the fall, we moved to a small rental unit on Mt. Ogden Drive, about half a block north of Weber State College. While there, Jolene was born [in 1954]. What a joy she has been to us.

I took the summer of 1952 off work and returned to school at the University of Utah, in order to prepare myself better for the CPA exam scheduled for that fall. I sat for the CPA exam that fall and passed, getting my certificate the next spring. One hundred ten took the exam, with 2 of us passing on the first sitting. I must admit, however, that I barely scored enough on the accounting theory section to pass. I was then accepted as a 45% partner in my father-in-law’s firm. As it turned out, this promotion resulted in a reduction in my earnings.

My 4 plus years in public accounting turned out to be disappointing and not the type of experience I had anticipated while in college. In fact, over the approximately 40 years of my working life, I have wished many times that I had trained to work in some other field. The physical part of accounting was enjoyable. I found working the problems and applying them to business transactions both challenging and enjoyable, but having to deal with the conflicts of interest between management, government, and regulatory officials was mostly unpleasant.

After leaving public accounting, I spent a year with Coombs & Company, a penny stock brokerage business. The company went broke when the uranium stock market collapsed. I then went to work for Western Mortgage Loan Corporation, where I was employed for about 32 years. Most of that time was spent as Treasurer and manager of the Loan Servicing and Accounting Departments. 

Orvil’s personal history goes on for many pages and many years, but others will talk about the rest of his life.

 

Remarks by Roger Terry

First, I need to apologize to Dad’s neighbors for taking him away from them, but I really didn’t see any other option. I know you missed him, but many of you called and visited over the past two years and almost four months, and I want you to know he was well cared for. For the first six months, I couldn’t visit him because of Covid restrictions [except through a window, talking on cell phones], but after he fell in his room on Thanksgiving night 2020 and broke his second hip, he went into kidney failure, and they told me he had only a week or two to live. At that point, they let me start making end-of-life visits, and when his kidneys started working again and he recovered, I just kept on visiting, and I visited him every day for over 21 months with the exception of a couple of weeks when I was out of town. Those 21 months were both difficult and rewarding [he was bedridden the whole time], but we are happy that he has finally been able to rejoin Mom and other loved ones who have been patiently waiting for his body to wear out.

There’s a lot we can learn from Dad’s account of his early years.

1. Life was hard, but simple pleasures were to be relished, even ice-cold sauerkraut.

2. Work was a big part of his life. If my math is right, he started working full time at age 16.

3. He made some mistakes and rash decisions, but in the end, he was satisfied with the way his life turned out.

4. His parents didn’t provide for him very well, but he was a good son. I had heard the story before that he bought his mother a washing machine with his pay in Las Vegas, but I never knew until I read his personal history that he also paid off his parents’ debts. That tells you something about who he was. And he did this as a 17-year-old. Orvil Terry was not just a good son; he was a good father, a good grandfather, a good friend, and, most of all, a good husband. Since he fell in May 2020 and broke his hip, it has been my privilege to help take care of him and manage his affairs. My only desire was to follow his example and be a good son.

When I edited the life sketch, I left the part in about him wishing he’d studied something other than accounting. In spite of that, he worked for 32 years at Western Mortgage Loan for a boss he didn’t particularly care for. He commented on this decision: “Looking back over my years at Western Mortgage,” he wrote, “I think about things such as the pressure, my dislike for supervising people, being out of harmony with the business operating policies of the ownership, and looking forward to the day when I could leave and do something else. It raises such questions as: Why did I stay under these conditions? Was it the financial security? Was it family pressure to remain in the area? Fear of beginning over and not being able to find work with equal pay? Perhaps a bit of each of these questions was the reason. Regardless, I put in more than 30 years with the company. They treated me fairly and paid me what I was worth. Knowing what I know now, I would likely choose a different path could I travel life’s road again.”

Personally, I think he stayed those 32 years primarily because he remembered not having enough to eat as a child and didn’t want his family to experience that. Toward the end of his career, he took over his father-in-law’s cherry orchard, bought a piece of land next to it, and planted a peach orchard. Some of you might remember his orchards. They also provided a glimpse into who he was. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another orchard without a single weed. The trees were expertly pruned. It was a labor of love, but it was a lot of hard work. Imagine a senior citizen pruning hundreds of trees all through the winter every year. After eight years, he finally sold the orchards because, as he put it, this was way too much work for someone his age. He and Mom also wanted to do some traveling. And I suspect that all that orchard work may have been interfering with his golf.

My dad was, without question, the hardest worker I have ever known. Nobody else even comes close. If you wanted a job done and done well, you would ask Orvil Terry. I remember, when I was young, the evenings he would spend in the basement doing other people’s taxes, all this after working a full day at Western Mortgage. Later in my life, when we were raising the level of our backyard, I ordered a couple of dump truck loads of topsoil that needed to be moved by wheelbarrow from the street to backyard. I was going to get to this after work, but Dad came down to help, and by the time I got home, he had already moved half of it by himself, at age 75. When he was 81, we had a tree that was getting too big. Dad said he and Ray had all the equipment and they knew what they were doing, so they would take it down for us. Sheri and I were at a funeral that Saturday morning, and by the time I got home, the 81-year-old and his young 73-year-old sidekick had the whole tree down except for one branch that was reaching straight up to heaven. And there was Ray, legs wrapped around that last branch, hacking away with a handsaw. I’m sure those of you who were Orvil’s neighbors could tell many stories like this.

But Dad didn’t work all the time. He also knew how to enjoy himself. First and foremost, he loved golf. He played until he was 88. He once told me he wanted to sink a 50-foot putt and drop dead on the green. That would have been easier than the long, drawn-out demise he eventually suffered. I reminded him of that wish a few months after he broke his hip, and he told me that not even his hole-in-one worked. And it was a strange hole-in-one. No one saw it. His foursome was teeing off to an elevated green. He knew he’d hit it well, but when they reached the green, they couldn’t see his ball. So they looked in the hole, and there it was.

Dad also loved to travel and loved to drive through beautiful country. I remember long road trips to the national parks in Alberta, Canada; the Oregon coast; Vancouver Island; California; the Colorado Rockies; and the national parks of southern Utah. After Jolene and I left home, he and mom took many trips, including Hawaii and a memorable excursion to Alaska with Ray and Donna Coleman. They also had a timeshare, which took them to some interesting places, and they sometimes invited our family to join them. San Diego was one of their favorite destinations, and after they passed the timeshare along to us, it has become one of our favorites as well.

One of Dad’s best qualities was his generosity. He loved to give away vegetables from his garden, raspberries from the plants that he let grow among the oak trees, and fruit from his trees. He gave his physical labor to his friends and neighbors. And after Mom died, he lived for the little kids in the neighborhood. They would come and visit him, and he would give them ice cream treats and popsicles. After he broke his hip and had to move out of his house, I think this was the hardest thing for him. He felt he was useless. He couldn’t serve or give anymore. But the staff at the assisted living center where he stayed spoke about his kindness. He was one of the easy residents. He kept his sweet disposition to the very end, even when some days he couldn’t remember his own name.

One of the ironies of his life shows up in the first paragraphs of his personal history: “It seems a considerable part of my life has been spent in finding excuses for not writing a personal history, or getting involved in genealogical work. Neither has really appealed to me. And yet, with some very colorful ancestry, it would seem more natural to be excited to learn of and write about them. Perhaps my lack of interest in these activities stems from a rather independent spirit, coupled with a generally shallow interest in, and concern for, most people.

“General acceptance and a few friends have always been important to me, but I have not been one to seek recognition, or to cultivate many friends. I don’t particularly look at myself as a ‘loner,’ yet, for most of my life, I have done many things alone, where others would more often than not have sought companionship. I think this part of my character might denote a bit of selfishness—an unwillingness to commit the time and effort required to cultivate and maintain more than a very few close relationships.”

I find this rather humorous, because I know very few people with as many friends as he had. And I know they were very important to him. The drive-by birthday party the ward threw for him when he turned 95 a couple of years ago was a testament to that. [I’ll add here that because of Covid restrictions, they couldn’t throw him a regular party, so they decorated their cars, sat him in a chair in the front yard, and drove by slowly, waving and honking horns. There must have been at least 70 cars. My family and I and my sister were there that day and were amazed at how much his neighbors loved him. He had served them for years, and they wanted to thank him.]

In spite of what some of you may think, Orvil Terry was not perfect, as he well knew. One thing that Sue Oostyen and I talked about recently is that he was very good at serving others but not good at all at letting others serve him. And maybe this is the answer to the question of why such a good man had to waste away and linger for so long. Maybe it was so that he could learn to receive service and so that some people, like me, could try to balance the scales of our relationship with him. But he was imperfect in other ways as well. In a church that prizes dazzling teachers and gives accolades to men and women who hold one leadership position after another, my dad was never very comfortable teaching, and after serving as a bishop over fifty years ago, he was quite content to serve more than 30 years as finance clerk.

When I returned from my mission, young, immature, and star-struck by a mission president who was an overpowering speaker, I am ashamed to confess that I was a bit underwhelmed by my dad. But as the years passed and I matured a bit, I came to understand that Dad was the most Christlike man I knew. And he did it in all the quiet ways that really matter. Many of you know this much better than I do, because you were on the receiving end of his service.

As he lay in bed for the past 21 months, wondering when he could go be with Arlene again, I would sometimes tease him that the reason he was still here is that they probably couldn’t figure out what to do with him on the other side. Maybe they don’t have any trees to prune or leaves to rake. If all they do is sit in meetings and preach to each other, that wouldn’t be his idea of heaven anyway, and it isn’t mine either.

But I trust that the heaven he has gone to will be to his liking. Arlene will be there, and his granddaughter Karla [who died of cancer at age 8], and all his siblings, and many friends who have preceded him in death. I’m sure he is happy, and who knows? Maybe they’ll even find a few trees for him to prune.

Thanks, Dad, for the wonderful example you gave us, for your quiet love, your patience, and your generosity. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Catching Up on Some Reading (and Writing and Other Stuff)

 

A couple of months ago, I was having lunch with my old colleagues at BYU Studies, and one of them asked me what I was reading. When I told them, they suggested I might find something a little more uplifting. I generally read at least three books at a time (sometimes as many as eight), and one of them I often read only while shaving in the morning, so it takes me some time to get through that book. For the past many months, my shaving book has been Todd Compton’s In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. The two other main books I was reading at the time were Rick Turley and Barbara Jones Brown’s Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath and Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.

For some reason, in all the years I’d spent in Mormon studies, I had never read Compton’s masterful account of the lives of Joseph Smith’s plural wives, so I decided it was about time. I have a complicated personal relationship with polygamy. I am not a fan of it and have a hard time believing it was inspired, but I am also descended from two second wives, one on either side of my ancestry. So, I suppose, without polygamy, I wouldn’t even be here to write about it. I have read other books on plural marriage and have edited articles about it, so I know a fair bit about the Principle, but Compton’s book was eye-opening in some regards, mostly about how difficult polygamy was for many of those who lived it. Compton’s title is perfect. Most of Joseph’s wives, who ended up married for time to Brigham Young, Heber Kimball, or some other prominent Church leader, were often very lonely and lived difficult lives, often in poverty.

If you haven’t read In Sacred Loneliness, I highly recommend it. There is a good deal of tangential history in these accounts too, especially about the trek west to Utah and the early years of struggle in the Great Basin. It made me think often about my own pioneer ancestors and what they endured for their faith.

I am still in the middle of Vengeance Is Mine, and it is as depressing and disheartening as I expected. When Rick Turley and his two coauthors (Glen Leonard and Ron Walker) of the predecessor to this book approached BYU Studies with the request that we publish two sets of documents about the massacre that they had discovered in the Church’s archives, it was my lot to participate in the editing and publishing of those documents in a book titled Mountain Meadows Massacre: The Andrew Jenson and David H. Morris Collections. It was a sobering and depressing experience.

One set of documents came from interviews conducted by Church historian Andrew Jenson in the 1890s. In 1892, Jenson was invited by the Church president to travel to southern Utah and gather historical information about the Mountain Meadows Massacre before all the participants and witnesses had died. Jenson gathered an impressive amount of information, but it took a toll on him. He wrote upon returning to Salt Lake City, “It has been an unpleasant business. The information that I received made me suffer mentally and deprived me of my sleep at nights; and I felt tired and fatigued, both mentally and physically when I returned home.” I understand. Editing his accounts had a somewhat similar effect on me.

The other collection of documents came from David H. Morris, a St. George attorney and judge who had family ties to the massacre and who knew some who had a role in the killing. Some of these people swore affidavits before him when he was a notary public. He also asked “old-timers” privately about the massacre and took notes. When he died, his foster daughter, Helen, along with his other children, went through his papers, which, I should add, Juanita Brooks tried for years in vain to gain access to. After finding the massacre-related documents and seeking legal advice from Helen’s husband’s cousin, who was an attorney, the family decided to personally deliver them to the First Presidency, and so Helen dropped them off at Church headquarters. And there, like Andrew Jenson’s interview notes, the Morris collection vanished into the archives, until they were unearthed decades later by Turley and company.

The massacre was, of course, one of the ugliest episodes in Church history and is fully recounted in the first of Turley’s books. Vengeance Is Mine, on the other hand, is mostly about the aftermath, which I’m just getting to. All very uplifting material, but the Church is determined to air out this dirty laundry, and it is an important piece of history. I know Rick Turley and had some interaction with him regarding the documents book. I also used to work with his coauthor, Barbara, when we were editors at Church magazines. So, I have a personal interest in this volume.

The third book on my recent reading list is Flowers for Algernon, which I read when I was young and wanted to read again because I remembered how well written it was. It’s the story of Charlie Gordon, a mentally handicapped man (in the 1966 book, he is referred to as a “moron”) who undergoes experimental brain surgery to increases his intelligence. The surgery, which had been tested on mice—in particular, one named Algernon—is wildly successful, turning Charlie into a genius. But things start to go haywire when Algernon regresses and then dies. Charlie does some frantic research and figures out that a flaw in the process will have a similar effect on him. The story ends with him gradually returning to his original level of intelligence. It’s a tragic tale and was the inspiration for the 1968 movie Charly, for which Cliff Robertson won a Best Actor Oscar.

After I finished Flowers for Algernon, I needed something a little more upbeat, so I downloaded the ebook version of another book I had read as a youth but couldn’t remember much about except that I really liked it. This is Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, a fascinating look at a possible future (and tragic? destiny) of humanity. I had read a lot of Clarke’s work earlier in life when I was more a science fiction fan than I am now, and I had forgotten just how good a writer he was.

Now, however, I’m on to other books, including Jonathan Rauch’s Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy and John Grisham’s latest, The Widow, which is apparently his first who-dunnit. I’m also intermittently wading my way through DK’s The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained, a summary of the ideas of more than 100 of the greatest thinkers in philosophy. It’s surprisingly well written and is the most pain-free way I can think of to augment my very meager understanding of the field of philosophy.

My wife and I also recently attended the 2026 Mormon History Association conference in Las Vegas, and I came away from the sessions with at least two books I need to read. Then, last evening, as we were picking peas in the garden, we were listening to a Salt Lake Tribune “Mormonland” podcast in which they were interviewing Richard Hanks, son of Marion D. Hanks. Richard has written a biography of his father, who was several decades ahead of his time in many ways. So, another book to add to my growing list. I wish I were a faster reader, but I’m not. I’m actually a very fast editor, but I read very slowly. I don’t quite understand how that works. Maybe I just edit as I read. I’m also a very fast writer. Whatever.

My book reading often gets pushed aside by my attempts to keep up to date on what’s happening in the world. I’m a news junky, and I’ve often said (truthfully) that I will have a lot more free time once Trump exits the political scene. He is a major and dangerous distraction in our world. And he’s getting worse as his mental capacity noticeably declines and as his craving for power, wealth, and attention spins out of control.

My reading also gets backseated quite often by my writing habit, but that has actually been paying off. In addition to the ebook I just released titled Saving America from the Wealthy: Creating an Economy That Works for Everyone (see my last post) and the occasional op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune, I have also had five varied pieces accepted this year for publication. BYU Studies printed in its latest issue a poem I concocted (I’m not really a poet), and they are supposedly publishing an article early next year in which I tackle some problems with the accounts of a vision purportedly experienced in 1913 by a young BYU grad named Alfred Kelly. The vision was popularized in a talk by Jeffrey R. Holland when he was BYU president. Dialogue has also agreed to publish in its next few issues a piece of short fiction, a book review, and a personal essay. So, five different genres . . . or seven if you count the ebook and the op-eds. Variety is the spice of life, they say.

Well, that’s it. Retirement is turning out to be a lot busier than I had imagined. And I haven’t even mentioned morning basketball, yard work, grandkids’ sporting events, and cooking dinner (I promised my wife that after I retired I’d take over dinner prep). I sometimes wonder how I ever found time to work.

New eBook Release: Saving America from the Wealthy

 

Have you wondered why the stock market keeps hitting all-time highs but consumer confidence is at a record low? The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index (a national survey conducted since 1952) dropped to 44.8 in May. That is lower than during the recession in the early 1980s caused by stagflation and the OPEC oil crisis, or during the Great Recession of 2008–2009, or during the recent COVID pandemic. Maybe this seeming paradox has something to do with the fact that 93 percent of corporate stock is owned by the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans. The rich are doing fine, thank you, but the overall economy is not working very well for the other 90 percent of us. And the gap keeps widening.

Just over 30 years ago, Berrett-Koehler Publishers of San Francisco published my book Economic Insanity: How Growth-Driven Capitalism Is Devouring the American Dream. The book made a small splash in certain circles and was even used for several years as a textbook. I wrote that book after spending nine years on the faculty of BYU’s Marriott School of Management, where I became interested in both organizational values and broader economic questions. A few years later, I took a career turn that eventually landed me in the position of editorial director at BYU Studies, a scholarly Mormon studies journal published at BYU. Although I have continued writing about economic matters—on this blog, in periodicals, and in newspaper editorials—I have not published a follow-up to Economic Insanity. Until now.

I retired a couple of years ago, and seeing that the world had changed in many ways and yet was suffering from even worse economic problems than in 1995, I decided it was time to follow up my argument in Economic Insanity with a new book, titled Saving America from the Wealthy: Creating an Economy That Works for Everyone. I have learned a good deal in the past 30 years, and although I probably still agree with about 75 percent of what I wrote in my earlier book, Saving America from the Wealthy includes new and different insights into our unique economic mess.

Because I want this new book to reach as many concerned Americans as possible, I have decided to release it as an ebook. I would make it free if I could, but Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon) has set a minimum sales price of 99 cents, so that is where I have priced it. I obviously don’t care about royalties. All I care about is having as many readers as possible become informed about some crucial issues for our country and consider a different path for the American economy.

So, if you are interested, please forego a candy bar and download the ebook. It’s less harmful to your health than a Snickers bar and certainly more informative. And if you find the arguments at all compelling, please spread the word through your social media contacts. Thanks for your time and courtesy in reading this little piece of self-promotion.

Obamacare vs. Trumpdoesn’tcare, Blue vs. Red Death Rates, and Utah’s Measles Outbreak

 

Let me start with a letter to the editor I submitted to the Salt Lake Tribune that appeared in this morning’s edition (May 6, 2026):

“A New York Times article dated May 1, 2026, reports that millions of Americans are dropping their health insurance because the Republican Congress ended Obamacare subsidies that had been in place since 2021. Obviously, Democrats care about providing healthcare to American citizens. Their attempt to do that is called the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly called Obamacare.

“What is the Republican healthcare plan called? Well, nothing, because there isn’t one. So maybe we should call the Republican healthcare absence ‘Trumpdoesn’tcare,’ because Trump doesn’t care about your health care or mine. And neither do his sock puppets in Congress, including all six of Utah’s representatives. They were perfectly happy not just to let the subsidies lapse but also to cut Medicaid benefits for the poor and needy.

“Unfortunately, there are lots of other things Trump doesn’t care about. For instance: inflation, gas prices, pollution, global warming, the federal debt, the Constitution, rural hospitals, Ukraine, harmonious relationships with our former allies, fraud (look at his pardons), voting rights, his own supporters in blue states who are suffering from natural disasters, fair elections, and on and on and on.

“But what does Trump care about? First and foremost, his highly unpopular ballroom. Also, Putin’s approval; the obeisance of billionaires, getting away with murder on the high seas, gaudy gold trinkets received illegally from foreign countries, prosecuting his political ‘enemies,’ and the appearance of winning, even when he has no moral or legal way of getting us out of his ill-advised war on Iran. Oh yes, and he cares about the Epstein files. Not releasing them, of course, but burying them. We can’t help but wonder what they contain that is so threatening to him.

“Anyway, if you think Trump cares about you, think again.”

Paul Krugman, in today’s Substack post, which I receive as an email subscriber, addressed the widening divide between the life expectancy of blue vs. red counties in America and proposed some reasons for the discrepancy. First, some figures. If you live in one of the top 10 percent of counties with the reddest population (Republican), would be 2.71 times as likely to die from COVID (since May 1, 2021) as a person residing in one of the top 10 percent of blue counties (Democrat). Life expectancy follows a similar pattern. If you live in a red state, your life expectancy is significantly lower than if you live in a blue state. Alabama and West Virginia, for instance, have a life expectancy comparable to Kazakhstan. Why this correlation? Well, Krugman gives a few reasons.

“Part of the answer,” he says, “is that red states have weak social safety nets and are especially unwilling to provide healthcare to vulnerable populations. . . . Many red states refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, even though the federal government would have borne the bulk of the cost. Texas, which likes to boast about its economic success, leads the nation in the share of its children who lack health insurance.”

Also, right-wing politics has become generally hostile to science, especially medical science. Why? I suppose it has something to do with the conservative bias against education and experts. But there’s also a misguided devotion to individual liberty among conservatives, at the expense of the public good. So, during the pandemic, not only were Republicans more distrustful of vaccines, but they were also more unwilling to follow health guidelines that recommended the wearing of masks. In other words, they were more concerned about their own freedom to not mask or vaccinate than about the health and well-being of their neighbors or their communities, not to mention themselves. This is relevant to Utah’s current measles outbreak, which I’ll return to in a moment.

Krugman also points out that greed and willful ignorance play a big role in health disparities. “The best example of scientific disinformation promoted by corporate interests is the fossil-fuel-financed attack on climate science, but the template for this attack was the earlier campaign by the tobacco industry’s ‘merchants of doubt’ to discredit evidence that smoking is harmful to your health. The straight line from this campaign to the [recent] relaxation of rules on flavored vapes is obvious.”

He mentions that the role of greed in the anti-vaxx movement is less obvious, but we should recognize the outsize role of “quack medicine” in conservative media. “Right-wing radio and social media have long relied on peddlers of snake oil for a large part of their revenue. So much of the attack on medical science can be seen as financially motivated.” Think of Alex Jones or Mormonism’s own Glenn Beck.

Krugman warns not to “discount the role of willful ignorance driven by ideology. The modern U.S. right is, to a large extent, an alliance between oligarchs and white Christian nationalists—and the latter are deeply hostile to Enlightenment values, modern science very much included.” And this is where the Mormon measles outbreak comes into play.

You might think, since the Church is a strong supporter of vaccinations of all stripes, spending millions of dollars to make vaccines available to underserved populations, that Latter-day Saints would be among the most vaccinated people in America. But you would think wrong. I’ve argued in this forum before that a lot of my coreligionists are more Republican than they are Mormon, but it is unfortunately true. Many Mormons thumbed their noses at President Nelson’s urgent plea regarding masks and vaccines during the pandemic, and now they discount the Church’s strong statement in its Handbook supporting vaccination. Consequently, we are having a large outbreak of measles in certain highly-LDS counties in Utah, especially Washington County. This is inexcusable. It is willful ignorance. The overwhelming scientific consensus supporting the safety of vaccines is undeniable, but many Mormons, including some of my friends and neighbors, would rather get their information from unreliable sources. The result is sickness and, possibly, death. Measles is one of the most contagious viruses, and we had pretty well 86’d it, to use a popular metaphor. But it is back with a vengeance, because there is nothing more powerful in modern society than disinformation.

I can speak with a little authority on measles. I contracted the disease as a third-grader, and I can still remember a miserable Christmas school vacation, when I spent the whole two weeks lying on the couch, miserable. Fortunately, I had no serious complications, but many are not so lucky. Measles can kill and cause permanent impairment, but it can also reset your immune system, leaving you vulnerable to other diseases you were previously protected against. I’m old enough that the vaccine wasn’t used widely when I was young, so I now have natural immunity, as well as the additional immunity provided by several MMR inoculations. I also had chicken pox, mumps, and Rubella. So, I have pretty strong feelings about the benefits of vaccines.

I won’t offer here my advice to Church leaders, who have been almost completely silent on this issue, especially the current measles outbreak. Sam Brunson covered that angle very thoroughly in a recent By Common Consent post. Please read his commentary.

Anyway, here we are. Utah currently has the second worst measles outbreak in the U.S.; Americans have a life expectancy of 79 years, which is a full five years lower than citizens of Italy and Sweden; and if you live in a red state, it’s even lower. But guess what? Trump really doesn’t care.

California

 

We took a little vacation last week to San Diego. It was splendid. This is the view from our condo at sunset.

 

And this, unfortunately, is the receipt for filling the car once at a gas station that was 20 cents a gallon less than nearby competitors. Ouch. Thanks, Donald.

 

California certainly has its problems (what state doesn’t in Trump’s America?)—prices being a major issue—but I thought I’d list a couple of statistics to show the other side of California and how much the rest of the country relies on the Golden State.

First, according to recently released statistic from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, California’s nominal GDP reached $4.10 trillion in 2024. To put that in perspective, if California were its own country, it would now rank fourth in the world, behind only the United States as a whole ($29.18 trillion), China ($18.74 trillion), and Germany ($4.65 trillion). California just passed Japan ($4.02 trillion). Think about that for a minute. California now has a larger economy than Japan. If growth rates remain steady, it will soon pass Germany. California accounts for over 14 percent of the United States’ GDP.

Second, Republicans love to talk about makers and takers. They hate freeloaders, those who take more from the federal government than they give back. But if you look at maker and taker states, only 19 states in 2024 gave more to the federal government than they received (according to USAFacts, November 3, 2025, drawing on IRS and USASpending.gov data). The largest, by far, was California, which sent $276 billion more to the federal government than it received. Second was New York, at a paltry $76 billion. In case you were wondering, the majority of states that paid more than they received are left leaning, the exceptions being Texas, Ohio, Georgia, Nebraska, Florida, Tennessee, Utah, and Arkansas. And the majority of taker states are right leaning. Interestingly, though, the biggest taker state is Virginia, which leans slightly left, but that is likely because it is home to so many federal employees. To put California in another context, it almost pays for the deficits of the 19 conservative taker states (which collectively contribute $289 billion less than they receive from the federal government).

Third, Trump promised to revive the U.S. manufacturing sector and bring back manly manufacturing jobs. This, of course, is a losing proposition. Manufacturing jobs have been on the decline for decades, and in Trump’s first year of his second term, the U.S. shed 108,000 manufacturing jobs (figure published by the Joint Economic Committee on February 11, 2026). I assume that California is also losing manufacturing jobs, but it still has over 36,000 manufacturing firms employing over 1.1 million Californians (California state publication dated April 23, 2025).

Fourth, agriculture. California produces over one-third of the country’s vegetables and nearly three-quarters of its fruits and nuts. In terms of total U.S. agricultural production, California generates over 13 percent. It also supplies about 20 percent of the nation’s milk. If California were a country, it would rank as the world’s fifth-largest food supplier.

So, despite California’s troubles, just imagine what the United States would be without the Golden State. It’s also a great place to visit.

Oh, and the weather was splendid.

Dignity, Worth, and Fulfillment (or I Look Better on Paper Than in Person)

 

Fifty-two years ago this month, I received a letter in the mail from an organization that called itself Outstanding Teenagers of America, headquartered in Washington, DC. I suspect this organization was primarily in the business of selling books to the parents of high-achieving high school students, and the books were rather pricey. This organization would gather all these names from high schools across the country and list them in their book, which they then sold to the proud parents. But they also awarded a rather hefty trophy to one student in each state who was named the “Outstanding Teenager of (fill in the state).” The letter I received in March 1974 informed me that I had been selected as the Outstanding Teenager of Utah and that I would receive the award in person from “Governor Calvin L. Ramptom” (actually Rampton). The governor’s office would contact me to schedule a time.

On the appointed date, my parents and I trekked to the capitol building in Salt Lake City from our home in North Ogden and met with Governor Rampton. A local television station had even sent a reporter and a cameraman to film the event, so I ended up on the evening news. This was sort of the final straw in a long year of awards and honors. My friends were so sick of me winning everything under the sun that they mostly shunned me for the next little while. So, after winning this heavy trophy and meeting the governor, I hid the trophy away and tried to vanish from sight. And that trophy has been in a box on a high shelf in the basement until a couple of weeks ago, when I pulled it out and showed it to the grandkids, just to entertain them with a little ancient family history.

How this rather impressive high school career happened was all somewhat accidental. I didn’t go seeking all this attention. I was a painfully shy young man who was more interested in sports and girls (not necessarily in that order) than in being Utah’s Outstanding Teenager. There were a few problems with my reticence, though. First, I was a good student. I ended up being co-valedictorian at Weber High. Second, I was pretty good at basketball (and am still playing, if you can call it that) as I approach 70. Third, my high school counselor was really into promoting top students for regional, state, and national awards, and she was very good at it. Fourth, I also was senior class president, which happened sort of on a lark. My friend Bruce and I were starting guards on the high school basketball team, and one day we were talking and one of us (I don’t remember who) said, “Hey, we ought to run for senior class president and vice president.” We didn’t actually know what that would entail, but we decided to go for it. I would end up the valedictorian, but Bruce was the smart one. He talked me into running as president, which meant I had all the responsibility, and he was just along for the ride.

Anyway, all this meant that I looked darn good on paper. I had the grades. I was senior class president, starting point guard on a reasonably good basketball team, shortstop on the baseball team, the school’s Sterling Scholar in foreign language, a member of lots of school organizations, an Eagle Scout (thanks to Mom), an eventual National Merit Scholarship winner, and who knows what else. And my school counselor took one look at this list and decided to go into full marketing mode.

The Elks Club at that time sponsored a state and national youth leadership contest. The counselor and my mom helped me put together an impressive book of my accomplishments, which I happen to have sitting here next to me at the computer (I pulled that out of the closet today too). The counselor knew just which buttons to push, so my application won the local contest, placed first in the state (worth a $300 scholarship), and took third place in the nation (worth a $1,500 scholarship, and that was big money back then when my tuition at Utah State the next year was $117.50 per quarter).

By the end of my senior year, as I said, everyone was sick of me winning awards, including me. The awards assembly at the end of the school year was not good for a still shy kid who didn’t want to show up his friends. I was glad when high school was over and I could just forget about it all until fall, when I trundled off to Logan for college. That was another strange thing. I had two full-tuition scholarships to BYU (one from the university and the other a National Merit award), where my sister was attending, but I didn’t have any friends going to Provo, and I was pretty insecure. So, when USU offered me the same money as BYU, even though tuition in Logan was a notch lower than BYU’s, I jumped at it. I had three good friends (including my co-valedictorian) going to USU, so I joined them, and we had a fun year living together, except for the cold winter.

After our freshman year, we all went on missions. The other three returned to Utah State, but as I’ve recounted in an earlier post, one winter morning during the first year of my mission, we were tracting in a largely empty apartment building, and as I was walking between doors, a voice spoke to me, not audibly but in my mind, and it said these specific words, “Roger, you don’t want to go back to Utah State. Go to BYU.” I hadn’t even been thinking about college, but my reaction was, “You know, you’re right.” I had fallen in love with the Provo campus while in the LTM (Longest Two Months, I was told), so I had my mom transfer all my credits to BYU, and that was that. I ended up getting two degrees from BYU and working there three different times, for a total of about 31 years.

But what about the title to this post? Let me go back to my senior year in high school and revisit one of the most humiliating experiences I’ve ever had. Because I was senior class president, the school administration asked me to represent Weber High at a youth senate program at the state capitol building. I rummaged around in my old mementos today and, lo and behold, I found a booklet they gave us for this event. It is titled “The Human Quest: An Ideal to Be Achieved.” Beneath that, the cover states, “United States Senate Youth Program” and “State Capitol Building, October 25, 1973.” The program included a greeting by my future friend Calvin Rampton (a Democrat, by the way); messages by the president of the Utah State Senate, the chairman of the state board of education, and the superintendent of public instruction; a keynote address by Ted Wilson, future mayor of Salt Lake City and, at that time, assistant to Representative Wayne Owens (another Democrat from Utah); an orientation by the state school board specialist for social studies; discussion groups (they divided us up into smaller clusters); a luncheon; a second round of small group meetings; a film (Why Man Creates); the announcement of semifinalists; questions for the semifinalists; and the announcement of two winners and two alternates. I’m assuming the judges met during the film to decide on the winners and alternates.

I was not one of them. Not even close. Why? Because, as I said, I looked really good on paper, but not at all good in person. During the after-lunch small group meetings, we student delegates were assigned a topic, and they gave us about ten minutes to prepare “extemporaneous” talks. The topic was “Dignity, Worth, and Fulfillment.” I was extremely shy, and while I could hold my own in a student council meeting among friends and do great on homework assignments and ace tests and sparkle at times on the basketball court, I was not a public speaker or debater. I had never thought about concepts such as dignity, worth, or fulfillment. I started the ten minutes of prep time with an empty head and ended with the same empty head. When my turn rolled around to extemporaneously elaborate on these high-minded concepts, I extemporaneously confessed that I didn’t have anything to say. Of course, some of the more loquacious students from other high schools rambled on about these topics as if they had them for dessert every evening. This was utterly humiliating. But that’s who I was. Lucky, I suppose, that the good folks from Outstanding Teenagers of America and the Elks Club were not present.

Now, here’s an interesting coincidence that I just barely learned for the first time. On the next-to-last page of the little booklet they gave us for this student senate experience is a list of “Observer-Judges.” They were the ones judging our participation in the two breakout sessions where I said nary a word except to turn down the opportunity to speak. I was looking for a specific name on that list of observer-judges, and there it was—second on the list: Dick Peterson, State School Board. You see, Dick Peterson—ten years, nine months, and one day after this wonderful little humiliating experience—would become my father-in-law. I’ve known for at least 42 years that Dick was the science specialist on the state school board. But it never dawned on me until today that he just might have been present at that student senate fiasco. I suppose he never noticed me. I was very unnoticeable. And ten years passed before I met him officially at his home in Midvale. I’m sure he never made the connection. Thank goodness.

I look back at that experience, though, and the others I’ve recounted here, and marvel at how a young kid as clueless as I was could end up in a student senate program at the state capitol and then be named the outstanding teenager for the state of Utah. It’s pretty mind-boggling.

Of course, since that time, I’ve figured out (as no doubt you have too) that I actually have a lot to say about a lot of topics. I could probably carry on about dignity, worth, and fulfillment for quite a while. But that’s a topic for another day. Let me just in say in conclusion that every human being has a certain degree of dignity, although some of us have squandered it on the fleeting pleasures and distractions of mortality. As children of God, we all have infinite worth, even if we don’t live up to our heritage most of the time. And fulfillment, well, it’s something we all strive for every day, even if we don’t know where or how to find it. I have learned that I experience the greatest sense of fulfillment through family and friends and my meager efforts to make a difference for good in the world. Serving others, in whatever way, is the quickest path to fulfillment. I wish I could have said that in October of 1973, but it was far beyond my grasp at the time.

10 Observations about Donald’s 2026 SOTD Address

 

I suppose I’m a masochist, but just for the hell of it (literally) I decided to watch all of Donald Trump’s State of the Disunion address this week. It was bearable only because I had a basketball game playing on my iPad, so I did have some distraction from the endless self-congratulatory blather that was droning away on my TV. Anyway, here are 10 observations from my viewing experience.

1. From the get-go, I felt as if I had been transported to Anaheim and was stuck in Fantasyland. It is obvious that Donald inhabits an irreality that is totally divorced from the world of facts and veracity that most sensible humans recognize. Whether he actually believes all the nonsense that streams from his piehole is a good question. I’m sure that since he’s surrounded by sycophants who tell him only what he wants to hear, he may actually believe what he says, but some of it is just too otherworldly for even Donald to believe. The “golden age” he keeps referring to exists only in his own head, but that can still cause severe problems.

2. I was amused when he claimed he was going to go after fraud and that he was putting J. D. Vance in charge of this “war on fraud.” This is akin to the “late, great Hannibal Lecter” saying he was going to track down cannibals and bring them to justice. But J. D.’s job should be easy. If he wants to find fraud, he doesn’t have to look far. He can find it in the Oval Office and Mar-a-Lago and among the many criminals Trump has pardoned. I mean, seriously, Donald is the only president to have been convicted of fraud. And it’s only gotten worse since his second term began. Whether it’s crypto-scams or taking jumbo-jet-sized bribes from foreign governments or just the pedestrian stuff like Trump University or the Trump Foundation, if J. D. wants to go after fraud, he may as well investigate the king of fraud. A nice little side benefit is that it would lead to a new job title for himself.

3. Once again, Donald bragged about how much winning we are experiencing in America. So much that people are begging him to stop all the winning. And of course he promises even more. But winning in Donald’s dictionary is defined as how he plays golf. The ordinary Americans who are having trouble paying their rent and utilities, who can’t find decent health insurance for less than an arm and a leg, who have been laid off and can’t find a new job may beg to differ. The billionaires are certainly winning. Trump’s family is winning. But the rest of us? Not so much.

4. I was actually surprised at Donald’s audacity when awarding the Medal of Honor to some deserving individuals. He said he’s always wanted one for himself, but he supposed it wasn’t allowed for him to award a Medal of Honor to himself. Oh, really? A serial draft dodger can’t award himself a Medal of Honor? What’s wrong with this country? I’m sure he’ll figure out a way to get one. Maybe one of this week’s recipients will frame his and give it to Donald. Pathetic.

5. In Trumpworld, only undocumented aliens commit murder. Thus, when speaking about the savage attack that killed Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, Donald claimed the murderer was a criminal who “came in through open borders.” But according to the Charlotte Observer, the killer’s Facebook page said he was born in Charlotte and attended high school there. The newspaper also said it had interviewed his American mother. Most SOTU addresses are carefully previewed to prevent this sort of blatant falsehood, but untruth is the air Donald breathes, and no one in his circle of sycophants is going to tell him the truth. But the truth is that immigrants, and especially undocumented aliens, commit crimes at a far lower rate than we native-born citizens.

6. According to Donald, the economy is humming, but he inherited a nightmare from Biden, which is why he has presided over the greatest turnaround in American history. Yes, the economy is blundering along at about the same pace it was when he took office for the second time, but there are worrying signs, especially on the job-creation front. It would probably be doing much better, but his tariffs have created a drag on economic growth and a high degree of uncertainty for businesses and our foreign trade partners. The stock market is doing well, but that is because we have a K-shaped economy—great for the wealthy, a struggle for the middle class and the poor. But this was by design, and Donald sees only the upper half of the K.

7. Even though Donald’s own administration assured Americans that the 2020 election was the most secure ever, and the courts tossed out every lawsuit alleging fraud, Donald continues to claim that there was massive cheating in the last election. Of course this is false, but his insistent ranting about fraud creates a pretext for interfering in the upcoming 2026 and 2028 elections. Everything the Republicans are proposing (especially the SAVE Act) will not make elections more secure but will suppress voting, particularly among demographics that tend to vote Democratic.

8. The worst moment of the sordid SOTD circus was when Donald asked everyone to stand if they believed the primary task of government was to protect American citizens and not illegal aliens. This was a purely divisive ploy, aimed at accomplishing two goals: first, to paint the Democrats as unpatriotic and, second, to again vilify immigrants. And every Republican who stood knew exactly what Donald was doing, and they all bowed the knee while rising to their feet. But it is not the government’s responsibility to protect only American citizens. Government should protect every law-abiding person in this country, whether citizen, illegal immigrant, refugee, tourist, or visitor. Donald and his ilk, however, are trying to vilify hardworking people who have come to this country to escape horrific circumstances in their native lands or even to try to make a new start, just as his grandparents and his wife did. One might think he would have a special place in his heart for immigrants, but that is true only if they are white.

9. I wondered if Donald would be able to make it through his speech without taking the Supremes to task for killing his tariffs. Well, actually, I did not wonder. I knew he couldn’t. But he didn’t spend as much time on tariffs as I thought he might. But I need to clarify that his new “Section 122” tariffs are actually more illegal than the IEEPA tariffs the Supreme Court just declared unconstitutional. If you don’t believe me, here’s a quote from an article by Andrew McCarthy, a conservative legal commentator, that appeared in the National Review:

“These new tariffs are even more clearly illegal than Trump's IEEPA tariffs…..

“In Section 122, Congress endowed the president with narrow, temporary authority to impose tariffs ‘to deal with large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits’ (emphasis added). What Trump is complaining about—something he insists is a crisis but is not—is the balance of trade, not of payments. The United States does not have an overall balance of payments deficit, much less a large and serious one.

“A trade deficit between the U.S. and a foreign nation occurs, mainly in connection with goods (which is just one aspect of international commerce), when imports are greater than exports. This is not really a problem for a variety of reasons—e.g., a trade deficit results in an investment surplus, the U.S. is a major services economy and often runs exported services surpluses that mitigate the imports deficit in goods, etc.

“The balance of payments is a broader concept than the balance of trade. It accounts for all the economic transactions that take place between the United States and the rest of the world. Even without getting into every kind of transaction that entails, suffice it to say that foreign investment in the United States, coupled with the advantages our nation accrues because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, more than make up for the longstanding trade deficit in goods.

“Our overall payments are in balance. There is no crisis.

“It’s vital to understand why Section 122 was enacted. There was a financial crisis in the late 60s and early 70s under the Bretton Woods system, when the dollar was tied to gold. Foreign countries that held dollar reserves could exchange them for gold at a fixed rate. Meanwhile, our government was spending at a high clip due to the Vietnam War and Great Society programs. This and the obligation to pay out gold put enormous pressure on the dollar. . . .

“Now, over a half century later, these conditions no longer obtain. The dollar floats and the government does not concern itself with gold parity. The dollar is the global reserve currency, so demand for dollars by foreign nations is robust. We have strong capital inflows and our highly liquid financial markets are the envy of the world. Notwithstanding trade deficits, there is no balance of payments problem.

“Nor is it necessary, as Section 122 puts it, to impose temporary tariffs in order ‘to prevent an imminent and significant depreciation of the dollar in foreign exchange markets[.]’

“There is no rationale under Section 122 to impose tariffs. Because President Trump has no unilateral authority to order tariffs, he must meet the preconditions of Section 122 to justify levying them. He cannot. Not even close.”

10. Paul Krugman’s title for his post-SOTD email was “So Little Truth, So Much Time.” That is an apt description of the whole bloviating almost-two-hours of truth-torture. Donald is incapable of telling the truth, but he loves to hear the sound of his own voice. Which makes for unbearably long and rambling “speeches” that carry very little weight. Unfortunately, it is what it is. And the ratings proved it. This was the least-watched SOTU in a long time.

So, those are my 10 observations. I could go on and on, like Donald, but I’ve wasted enough time on this depressing topic. I suffered through the whole hour and three quarters of it, just to say I’d done it. Was it worth it? Of course not. And I probably won’t do it next year, if, by hook or crook, he is still president then. With his diet, his weight, and his temper, I’m truly surprised he hasn’t suffered a major heart attack or stroke already. But I’ll grant him this: he is stubborn.

Book of Mormon Questions #12 (Text and Translation)

To see the context for this and other questions in this series, please see the introduction, parts 1, 2, 3, and 4. 

What Should We Think about the King James Quotations?

 

Much of this post is taken from my recent article in BYU Studies about Royal Skousen’s Book of Mormon critical text project. Skousen devoted all of volume 3, part 5, to the quotations in the Book of Mormon from the King James Bible. Anyone who is acquainted with the Book of Mormon knows that it contains several long excerpts from the King James Bible, particularly the Sermon on the Mount and several chapters from Isaiah. But there is much more King James language in the Book of Mormon than these long quotations. In his analysis of this language, Skousen set parameters to determine what he considered a quotation. He somewhat arbitrarily determined that a passage in the Book of Mormon that was identical to the standard King James text and was sixteen words or longer could be considered a quotation. Because many of the long passages that come from the King James Bible include multiple word changes, Skousen found only thirty-six word-strings that he considered quotations.

There are more strings that are shorter than sixteen words. These Skousen classified as paraphrastic quotations. He lists eighty-three examples of paraphrastic quotations, including all strings that are between seven and fifteen words long and “a few cases of textual blending where the longest string of identical words can be as low as one or two.”¹

Skousen’s analysis of biblical language in the Book of Mormon yields some surprising findings. First, nearly every biblical quotation comes from the King James Bible, but not the original 1611 version, which one might expect given Skousen’s determination that the language of the Book of Mormon is closer to Early Modern English than to the vernacular of Joseph Smith’s day. Instead, the printing that is most likely quoted in the Book of Mormon was published between 1770 and 1820. Oddly, one particular quotation (“and upon all the ships of Tarshish,” Isa. 2:16, 2 Ne. 12:16) does not appear in the KJB at all but comes from the Masoretic Text, which is both unexpected and puzzling.

Second, “when the Book of Mormon biblical quotation differs from the King James reading, we often find that the original Book of Mormon form of the biblical quote is ungrammatical.”² This often occurs when italicized words in the KJB are either replaced or merely deleted. These words were italicized by the King James translators to indicate that there is no corresponding word in the original manuscripts, but that they were added so that sentences would make sense in English.

Third, there are three anachronistic problems involving biblical quotations: (1) Words appear in the Book of Mormon biblical quotations that the King James translators got wrong; there are also cultural translations that are historically incorrect. (2) The Book of Mormon includes text from the Textus Receptus (the text King James translators relied on) that does not appear in the earliest biblical manuscripts. (3) The Book of Mormon identifies text as being from Isaiah that biblical scholars associate with a “Second Isaiah,” who lived after the fall of Jerusalem, long after Lehi and his family departed. Skousen points out that there are ways to deal with the Second Isaiah problem, but “it isn’t necessary to do so.”³

These anachronisms, Skousen concludes, are problematic “only if we assume that the Book of Mormon translation literally represents what was on the plates.” But the evidence Skousen presents in parts 3 and 4 of volume 3 (The Nature of the Original Language) suggests that the Book of Mormon text is based on Early Modern English and that the themes in the book are more connected to the Protestant Reformation than to either Joseph Smith’s time or ancient America. “What this means is that the Book of Mormon is a creative and cultural translation of what was on the plates, not a literal one. Based on the linguistic evidence, the translation must have involved serious intervention from the English-language translator, who was not Joseph Smith.”⁴ This translation was then transmitted to Joseph Smith word for word, which he read to the scribes, who sometimes imperfectly recorded Joseph’s words in the original manuscript.

Skousen and his sometimes-coeditor Stan Carmack claim that the Book of Mormon’s vocabulary, usage, and syntax derive largely from Early Modern English, but this claim raises questions that a peer reviewer mentioned to us in his blind review of an article that Carmack submitted to BYU Studies: “This approach leaves a host of questions unasked, such as why God has a particular investment in early modern English. As an early modernist, I am anything but opposed to this proposition, but the language has no obvious connection either to Book of Mormon peoples or to the 19th century American frontier.” Also, referring to the article’s tendency to simply list a variety of examples where Book of Mormon vocabulary appears in Early Modern English texts, the reviewer commented, “Seeing William Caxton (1473) appear alongside Richard Baxter (1673) as evidence of the same language strikes me as odd. English underwent massive transformation during those two centuries: reading a Caxton incunabulum and a Baxter treatise are two very different experiences, both materially and linguistically. Which English are we really talking about?”⁵

Questions, questions, and more questions. It is obvious from Skousen and Carmack’s research that the text of the Book of Mormon is not in the vernacular of Joseph Smith. It does have many features (including vocabulary) from Early Modern English. But as our reviewer pointed out, Early Modern English is a moving target. Is the Book of Mormon more similar to 1400s EME or 1600s EME or perhaps somewhere in between? From examples given by Skousen and Carmack, it appears that the Book of Mormon translation draws from all versions of EME. And even if you could pinpoint a particular period of EME, why Early Modern English at all? And how does a King James edition from 1770 to 1820 fit into this puzzle? It is obvious that whoever composed the English text of the Book of Mormon had an open copy of the KJB sitting on his desk. According to all eyewitness accounts, Joseph Smith did not. But to imagine that Joseph had memorized long sections of the Bible, especially whole chapters of Isaiah, and regurgitated them to the scribe with significant word changes (often involving italicized words) is more than a bit of a stretch.

The three points Skousen raises about the King James quotations—that most of the quotes come from an edition published between 1770 and 1820 (with the exception of that unexpected phrase from the Masoretic Text), that someone introduced grammatical errors when recording the King James quotes, and that there are troubling anachronisms revealed in the quotations—all suggest that the text of the English Book of Mormon does not really represent what was on the plates, assuming there were plates at all containing an actual history of the Nephites and Jaredites. Skousen contends that the only explanation for these issues is that someone, sometime (perhaps in the 1500s or 1600s?), in translating the original record, added text and then managed the translation over time (including updating King James content from the 1611 translation to a more recent edition) so that the language in the book would be understandable to a reader in the nineteenth century. This managed text was then revealed by miraculous means to Joseph Smith, who read it on either the interpreters or a seer stone and then dictated it to a scribe.

But if the English Book of Mormon was given to Joseph through revelation, then there was a divine hand in it. If so, how do we explain all the human sloppiness? Why not give Joseph the translation of the record as it was originally written? Who decided that the original was unacceptable? Why add material from the King James Bible instead of a translation that would correspond more closely to the most ancient Bible manuscripts? Why introduce anachronisms? Why make the English archaic instead of in Joseph’s vernacular? Why change the King James quotations, including the removal of many italicized words, sometimes making the resulting text ungrammatical? Why is King James language scattered throughout the Book of Mormon, sometimes in innocuous short phrases? If the Nephite account has been embellished with all sorts of text that wasn’t in the original account, how are we to determine what is Nephite (or Jaredite) history and what is not? Given all this, how are we to view Moroni’s famous promise? When we ask if “these things” are “true,” what does “true” even mean, and what does “these” mean? Questions such as these are why I have prayed about the Book of Mormon’s veracity in very specific terms: Is it an accurate record of a real people? But in fifty years of praying, I have never received any sort of answer, except, as I mentioned in the introduction to this series, a peaceful feeling one evening about not having to believe the Book of Mormon is a factual record. But that still doesn’t answer the primary question behind this series: What exactly is the Book of Mormon?

________________

1. Royal Skousen, ed., The King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon, part 5, volume 3, The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, The Critical Text of the Book of Mormon (Provo, Utah: The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies and Brigham Young University Studies, 2019), 10.

2. Skousen, King James Quotations, 10.

3. Skousen, King James Quotations, 6.

4. Skousen, King James Quotations, 6.

5. Peer review of article submitted to BYU Studies, in my possession.