The Leadership of Marion D. Hanks | An Interview with Richard Hanks - Leading Saints Podcast

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Hey. In this episode of Leading Saints, we
step into the Leading Saints studio,
not this one, but the the other one
I use with Rich Hanks, who is the
author of
to be a friend of Christ, the life
of Marian d Hanks. Now

(01:47):
if you're older than 50, you probably know
who Marian d Hanks is. I vaguely remember
my, you know, parents talking about him, but
he you could say was like the Elder
Holland of general conference before Elder Holland. Like,
everybody
enjoyed
and looked forward to his conference talks. He
spoke in conference

(02:07):
50 times,
a remarkable life, a remarkable disciple, so many
leadership principles,
so many behind the scenes stories
that are worth listening to. Rich is actually
the son of elder Marion d Hanks. They
called him Duff Hanks in his day to
day life. All his friends and family knew
him as Duff. And we just get into
some fun stories and and draw out some

(02:28):
leadership principles going to London, England
to be the mission president in his thirties
as a young general authority
and getting some culture back on on track
here. There were some really unhealthy practices of
how baptisms were being handled, and elder Hank
stepped into that and shifted the culture. He
was the mission president to elder Holland and
elder Cook, so his influence continues to go

(02:50):
on. The the reason we have the symbol
of the Christus as our church symbol really
is tied into Elder Hanks and some early
work he did at Temple Square. So so
many fun, insightful
stories and leadership principles, and Rich does a
remarkable job sharing the life of his father,
which we all got to enjoy, at least
the church did in general,

(03:11):
for almost 40 years of him being a
general authority seventy. And, it's a remarkable
remarkable book. I highly recommend it. I read
every word and really enjoyed I really enjoyed
my time in that. So one of those
you read the book and you're kinda sad
it's over. But let's get into the interview.
Here's my interview with Rich Hanks as he
talks about the leadership
of elder Marion d Hanks.

(03:42):
Hanks. Rich Hanks, welcome to the Leading Saints
podcast. Thanks for having me, Kurt. Now we're
old friends. Right? Can we say that? We
used to be in the same ward. I
was your ministering brother. I'll go with that.
So we're gonna count this for this month
too. Come? I come to your house several
times. Come on. Don't don't indict me here.
But, now we have so much to talk
about because we're not talking about you as
much as we're talking about your father. So
when people ask, who was your dad? What

(04:03):
do you say?
He was my dad. No. I I I
say,
he was a general authority for 40 years,
just about a little bit under. You know,
there's not a lot of people that can
remember back that far. It's been a while.
He was made Emeritus in 92. So it's
that 32 years ago. That's hard to believe,
but for his time

(04:24):
and age, he was
sort of the person that the young people
all looked up to. And,
general conference would come on and those few
kids who said, yay
would want to listen to dad. And then
most of the kids would go, oh,
no, I'm sure everyone doesn't do that. There's
nobody that does that. But he spoke 50
times. 50 general conference times. He spoke in
5th yeah. And the last few years, they're
only speaking every 2 or 3 years. Right?

(04:46):
So at the beginning, it was, you know,
every general conference.
40 years. Yeah. What else is interesting?
He was the youngest general authority, I think,
called since Oliver Cowdery. Wow. Pretty sure. 31
years old. Right? Yeah. People who don't don't
know what things were like back then, I
sometimes say, look. Let me just put this
in perspective. Gordon b Hinkley had was a
paid secretary

(05:06):
in the missionary department
for 5 years while my dad was a
general authority. Wow. Just to put the time
just the timing in place.
One of his first state conferences
as a general as a new newly called
general authority was to Howard w Hunter's stake
in Pasadena.
So, I mean,
basically this is a man who was called

(05:26):
very young
and then served the Lord really until, until
he went emeritus. Yeah. And when he was
called, there was no emeritus. There was, was,
this is what I'm doing for the rest
of my life at 31 years old. Right?
It's kind of a soapbox of mine, not
just for dad, obviously for our family,
but also for the current brethren.
I don't think people really understand. There's 2

(05:47):
things that most people don't really understand about
the general authorities in the, in the
logistics,
part of their lives.
I would suggest that most of us look
forward to a weekend. If I ask you,
you know, what do you do on Friday
at 4? You know, you're thinking
weekend. And then usually
I'm now approaching, you know, 65
And people are thinking about retirement. So those

(06:08):
2 words, weekend and retirement, they're gone. Uh-huh.
I mean because they're getting on a plane.
You look at Elder Holland and and these
these,
apostles now. And and back in in my
dad's day, it was all of them. There
was no Emeritus.
And their weekends are getting on a plane
Friday,
getting off a plane Sunday night after having
been in Poughkeepsie or Orlando or Boston at

(06:29):
a state conference.
And then and as with today's 15
apostles,
and your retirement is
when you die. Mhmm.
Which then changed. Right? I mean, my dad
had been in for
39 years and all of a sudden this
emeritus thing. And now
he gets to, you know, spend the last
years of his life with my mother, which

(06:50):
was And and he was a big proponent
of the Emeritus status, sort of pushing for
it. Yeah. I'd I'd try not to talk
to him. I think he actually
wrote the paper that caused it. Yeah. I
know that was 1976,
I believe. I mean, I put in the
book that it's he was
it had been knocked around for a while.
I think the forties.
I think Hugh Brown talked about it for
a while. And and then, eventually,

(07:12):
president Kimball
made the decision. And,
yay. We got our dad back. Yep. Yeah.
So because you were born you was a
general authority when you were born. Right? I
was. Some of them are All your your
developmental years were Yeah. Yeah. And I we
try not there were a lot of positives.
Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we try not
to be I don't think I have 4
sisters, and we try our best not to
be negative out about a wonderful thing that

(07:34):
happened to us. But having said that, I
never went on a campout with my dad.
I never had fathers and sons. And Mhmm.
I always was there with the ward, but,
you know and there are a lot of
people that are in that same position. In
this particular case, it was caused by him
being at a state conference somewhere in the
world. Yeah. But like I said, the positives,
we were given blessings we didn't deserve and

(07:56):
hadn't earned, and we were probably bullied by
people,
you know, that we hadn't earned or didn't
deserve. Yeah. And, I mean, growing up, like,
you know, the kids whose whose dad's a
firefighter, they think every kid's dad's a firefighter.
Did you feel like every dad dad was
a speaker and general authority? Or Well, I
get no. Because
that's an interesting question, Kurt. I don't think

(08:18):
anybody's ever asked me that.
So dad would take I was the only
son. And so we would go, he would
take me to priesthood session of conference even
when I was 9 and 10. Oh, nice.
And I'd sit in my mom's seat because
she wasn't there because it was a priesthood
session.
So those
folks who are the sons and daughters of
other general authorities, I knew them, but we

(08:40):
all kind of knew that this is not
the normal. In fact, I saw one of
my friends, Shane Clark, who was Richard
Clark,
his son. He was at one of the
book signings I did last week, and it
we were reminiscing a little bit about
those days. But, yeah, I never took it
as anything but a positive. There's no doubt
from reading the book, he was a a
very positive influence on your life. And though

(09:01):
maybe there was unorthodox, some of the father
son interactions you had, nonetheless, he was he
was definitely there for you and and really
saw a strong mentorship there. No.
We didn't do the normal things, but we
had some abnormal no. We had some abnormal
things that were interest I mean, he was
a letter writer. Mhmm. I don't know if
everybody was back then, but he would write
us all letters from wherever he was.

(09:22):
And, when I was on my mission, I
had a companion, Tony, who said, this is
or elder, Caputo, who said, this isn't fair.
When you read your dad's letters, that counts
as scripture study.
And he said, you're all dirty. Right. I
thought it was funny, but you know, I
have these beautiful letters in his handwriting and
they were personal and they were, they were

(09:42):
just terrific. The other kind of
interesting thing is he'd take us with him.
He'd say, rich, why don't you come with
me? And we'll, you can come to the
state conference in Parowan,
you know, or wherever Ida Boise. And so
if we could drive, we would drive. I
learned how to drive a clutch
in the, I guess, the Perrawan steak
Saturday afternoon sessions while he was interviewing

(10:04):
people, I guess, before conferences started. And I'm
out there burning up his clutch
and he came out and said, well, that's
a, that's a great smell, Rich.
Did you figure it out?
So,
Yeah. There were unusual, like I said, you're
not gonna get any complaining out of us,
but it was, there were compensatory
things, but there were also,
you know, you didn't have him around. Yeah.

(10:26):
So the fascinating thing when I think of
Marion d Hanks that he was like, especially
what my father tells me. I mean, so
many of us get excited when Elder Holland
speaks or, you know, some of these they're
like they just had a had a way
with words at the lectern.
But just the the the nuances, the the
little steps he took throughout his ministry that
really still influence us today. For example, early

(10:48):
morning seminary was some something that he sort
of put together. Yeah. In fact, I think
one of the most fascinating things that I
learned in researching this book
was that and this is kind of almost
unbelievable or hard to believe. The church had
no
formal
teaching of the Book of Mormon when he
was a seminary teacher. They just had the

(11:08):
book? They just didn't go through it? No.
They would teach the Old Testament, the New
Testament, church history.
And, there was this book called the Book
of Mormon, but there was no official there
was there were no materials.
When I say no, I'm sure someone somewhere
is going to say, wow, we had some,
but just in general, for the whole church,
it's on the church website. You can go
read all about it. And some of it
had to do with, I think there were

(11:29):
problems, church versus state
and some other things particularly here. And so,
yeah, I mean, he, he would start on
1st Nephi 1 and he would just teach.
And it was, it just drew
the kids to him. And,
they even sent, the church education system sent
in guys to check on him,

(11:49):
to find out what this crazy Hanks is
doing
and said to his face, the kids will
never come. If you do it this way,
you need to be teaching the way we've
always taught. And he said, well, they're coming.
Not only are they coming, but I now
have a lot of kids that want them
come at 6 o'clock in the morning, which
is unheard of, right.
Which is early morning seminary. And he created

(12:11):
all of that. Then they, it went so
well. They asked him to go to California
and he said, no, I can't do that.
So he taught early morning seminary. And, and
like you said, a lot of, a lot
of what he did and what he was
is kind of similar to, elder Holland
or others who have an appeal
based upon just relatability. And and that's what

(12:33):
he was. He had stories and he had
scriptures and he would mold them together.
Yeah. And then, a few years ago, president
Nelson introduced the the church symbol. I think
he called it the Christus and the arch.
And what was the influence your father had
on that? Wow. So
dad goes on a mission. And then at
the end of his mission, he's he's seeing
his friends going to war, to World War

(12:54):
2, and he's wanting to go do that.
And his mission president convinces him to stay
through the end, comes home, goes to
war, comes home,
meets my mom in Honolulu, where she was
from on a little R and R. They
they brought the ship into Pearl Harbor to
be outfitted.
They met. And that's another story if we
if we have time. Comes home, goes to

(13:15):
law school, graduates law school. By then, he
is the assistant director of Temple Square. And
was that like a church calling? It was,
it was, both. I think it was a
church calling first and then it became, I
think, a paid calling. Okay. And so there
was a presidency of Temple Square. Richard l
Evans
was a general authority and was the president
of the Temple Square of Temple Square. And

(13:37):
dad and, Bob McKay
were the counselors, and dad had been a
guide for a long time on Temple Square.
So
interestingly enough, they remained in that capacity
after they were called as general authorities. So
I'll come back to that.
So, dad and and, and brother McKay and,
and elder Evans

(13:58):
were this were dealing all day every day
with the thousands and thousands of people coming
to see the Mormons Mhmm. On Temple Square.
And did they have, like, missionaries like they
do today? They had guides. There were no
missionaries. These are all generally older men and
women, mostly men,
and who are just doing it. And Russ
Nelson,
president Nelson now was one of dad's guides

(14:20):
as was, Neil Maxwell
and
Truman Madsen.
And we could go on.
Dad had been pitching hard to,
to elder Evans and to the first presidency
that we needed some sort of way for
people to know we were Christians.
Because the number one question is, are Mormons
Christians? Mhmm. Probably still the number one question,

(14:41):
I guess.
So anyway,
the first presidency was David O. McKay, J.
Reuben Clark, and Steven L. Richards. And J.
Reuben Clark was not a fan of iconography.
Did I get that right? It's a word
like iconography.
And so dad would pitch and they he'd
say no.
And then he'd go back, I guess, a
year or 2 later and he'd say no.
So in June of 1957,

(15:02):
the 3 of them went in for the
big push.
Dad convinced Richard L. Evans. We need to
pitch hard
for the CHRISTUS
to our Valson's CHRISTUS
to get us a copy
and put it here. Now they just designed
with the architects of the church, these 2
new visitor centers, which by the way, didn't
come to fruition for, I guess, 7 or

(15:23):
8 years.
But the theory was let's get this CHRISTUS
people who are nowhere Christians.
They went in the 3 of them.
Now, just as they're walking into the council
room, Richard L Evans turns the dad and
says, how'd you like to go down in
history
as the man who messed up temple square?
And with that encouragement,

(15:45):
they went and they sat down and they
presented the visitor centers and then dad presented
the CHRISTUS idea.
And he wrote, it's in the book. He
wrote before
president Clark J Reuben Clark could give his,
we don't believe in icons speech again,
president McKay slapped his knee and said, why
not?

(16:06):
And then he turned to Steven L Richards
and said, don't you have a friend that
has, that can get us a Christmas?
So they clearly had been thinking about it,
but, but it just hadn't come to fruition.
So I, I think it's, for rest of
my life, we all knew dad got the
CHRISTUS or at least made the pitch. Yeah.
Yeah. The actual obtaining of the CHRISTUS is
too long a story for here, but it

(16:28):
finally came about. And now we have them
in visitor centers all over the world, and
now it is the symbol of the church.
Yeah. That's really cool. So That's really cool.
I was excited. And then just the
the the continued influence that he was a
mentor to 2 of our current living apostles.
They he was their mission president,
Elder Holland and Elder Cook. Yeah. And that's,
that's a a sweet story. They elder Holland

(16:50):
and elder Cook were were missionaries in England,
and I don't know if you wanna cover
England as well. Well, part of my question,
you you can fit this in. I'm curious
because he was called there to be a
mission president. He was a general authority. He
was called there
because it's commonly known as the baseball baptisms
where inappropriate
things are happening with, getting too many numbers
in baptisms. Right? So he was there to

(17:11):
to clean it up. Is that accurate? Yeah.
So
it's the end of 1961.
Dad's been a general authority for 8
years, flying all over
the world and doing what they do.
And he got called down to president McKay's
office and president McKay said, I need you
to go clean up the mess in England.
That's a direct quote. We need to fix

(17:31):
what's happened there.
There were, certain apostles
and general authorities who didn't believe it was
a problem.
And so dad said, well, yes.
And it was asked, when can you go?
And he said, right now.
So my sweet mother
took these,
little family of 7 of us. I was,
how old are you? I was 18 months.

(17:51):
And
we, we moved to London
and his experience there. It was not pleasant.
He got called into Prince Phillips
buddy who was working across the street from
10 Downingtown, who just beat him up to
the point where dad, I put this in
the book. He just said, look, I just
got here and he looked him right in
the eye and said,
I can promise you this will not happen

(18:13):
again.
And Because he was frustrated that
there's Well, I I grabbed a whole bunch
of newspaper clippings and put them on one
page in the book, but there are 100
and 100. Yes. These are not positive. The
church had a bad name for Yeah. These
are not. There are In fact, he hit
one of his quotes. They were gonna kick
us out of the country. Wow. And essentially,
missionaries were just saying whatever it took to

(18:34):
young people to Yeah. Yeah. I I try
not to talk about the negatives of
I don't mean to push that away. But
basically, it was a it was a really
blight. It was a big blight, and it's
happened in a few other missions over the
years. Mhmm. And it's usually an overzealous mission
president who
becomes focused on numbers, and that's clearly what
happened in England in the early sixties.

(18:55):
The numbers
were more important than the people. Mhmm. And
no one would say that. They but that's
how it that's how it became Right. That
was the culture of it. Yeah. In that
context,
he spent
a lot of time
fixing each of the major issues. And I
that's what I was trying to find. I
wrote down what I thought was kind of
interesting.

(19:16):
I spent a lot of my career doing
things on change management Mhmm. Which is, I
think applicable.
I don't know that there was change management
back in those days, and I don't know
that he'd thought about it being this
sort of, precise and, structured in his approach.
But I did write down all the things
I I could take out of what he
did. So the first thing he did is
he he talked to every missionary. He interviewed

(19:38):
every missionary, communicated with them and said, the
new program is this.
By the way, it's the Lord's program.
And so we're gonna do that going forward.
We're gonna focus on conversion and activation and
not on on baptisms.
He met with each of the stakeholders, the
missionaries, the mission leaders, the
the stake leaders,
the government.

(19:59):
And he promised each of them that a
change was happening so that they could see
there was a sort of a new way
of approaching everything. He changed the definitions in
England.
It's interesting to read all this, but the
previous mission president had defined a family as
2 people in a household,
which could be 2 children.
Mhmm. And he made that so that one

(20:20):
of the 2 had to be a parent.
He got personally involved. He said, I'm going
to go to every baptism for the next
6 months. Wow. And that's what he did.
And then he gave them something to replace
the old and in his mind, that was
the book of Mormon. He had every missionary
read the book of Mormon 3 times. I
love this approach. And so, consequently,

(20:41):
I've got all these letters from these missionaries
who say
things like you saved our life. You brought
integrity into a bad situation.
So And going back to the book of
Mormon thing, they they would read it 3
times, like, in 6 weeks. Right? Yes. They're
supposed to read it. I think well, the
first two were supposed to be within 6
weeks, I believe. And then the third one
was things that apply to you. So that

(21:02):
would be your whole life. Yeah. Anyway,
that's how he found
this love of all these
wonderful elders and sisters.
And, you know, elder Holland and elder Cook
were leaders from the beginning,
And,
I talk about each of them. They would
of course get the lion's share of the
attention because they're both apostles now. Yeah. But

(21:25):
he had tens of, you know, I don't
even know how many stake presidents and religious
society presidents,
bishops, and,
and, he'd be the first to say
that their contribution was
no less important.
He would often talk about, Moroni, who was,
you know, this awesome,
guy in the book of Mormon. It says

(21:45):
it's a whole host. All of the people
were like Moroni, the world would, or the
Satan would tremble in his boots. And then
right after that, it says the other people,
the other leaders were no less serviceable.
So in his mind, yes. How great is
it that 2 of them became apostles? I'm
not, It's just wonderful. I mean, it's a
great thing, legacy for him, but so were

(22:06):
so many others.
And I think that comes from,
well, his just get along nature and his
desire to be a part of their lives
even after they came home. Yeah. Yeah. That's
awesome. And then
the interesting just being a general authority for
so long,
a prominent one, an influential one, but never
becoming an apostle and that you shared moments
in the book where people would come to

(22:27):
him and say, well, obviously, you're the next
one or whatever. Because either from
when president Monson was called, I mean, it
would have shocked anyone if, you know, elder
Hanks was called at that point either, you
know, up until even president Nelson was called.
Right? So but I think that's an interesting
leadership dynamic of just this feeling of, well,
I'm doing this. Obviously, maybe the next step

(22:47):
is there. Not that he thought that way,
but the culture thought that way. Like, when
is elder Hank's gonna be the apostle? You
know what? I just said this straight on.
I mean, I could not I I could
have left a chapter out on that, but
it's just so such an obvious thing. Yeah.
And as a little boy, I remember walking
down the street and people, some,
apostle had just died and they would just
come up and they'd say you you're next.

(23:10):
I just know it.
And that went on and on for 40
years. And how did he handle that generally?
I mean Well, what did he say? Tell
you what he said externally, my favorite one.
The 1st year he said,
1st years, he would be very serious, and
he would say, one serves where one is
called. Mhmm. In the last years, he was
a little more cynical and then people would
say, well, why are you not an apostle?
And he'd

(23:31):
say, because God knows me and loves me.
And there's a humor in that, but it's
it's actually pretty apropos. He
he was not a,
he expressed his views openly.
He wasn't in rebellion,
my opinion. But he also
felt it important to tell why he believed

(23:51):
certain things. And I can explain that.
Yeah. Let me finish this train of thought
first.
When he was a temple president of the
Salt Lake Temple, he had one of this
is a great explanation.
1 of his
counselors got called as a temple president somewhere
else. So he needed a new temple president.
And the day he announced
that one of the people who thought he

(24:12):
would be his new counselor came in and
was not happy.
And dad wrote, well, I don't,
I'm not sure why he would be upset.
I've been passed over more than the children
of Israel,
and I have trained singularly
more apostles than any living person on the
earth. And he had. Yeah. And I don't
know. You know, I he never I never
heard him complain, but Yeah. It wasn't an

(24:34):
ego thing. No. People come in here.
Richard Scott. Richard G. Scott is driving around.
He's the executive secretary of the Washington DC
stake. Fast forward 15 years, he's an apostle
and dad's
still in the 70. I
mean, he just didn't, Dan, the titles didn't
matter. In fact, he acted as if he
were an apostle in most cases.

(24:54):
And it didn't.
And I should also add that this concept
of apostles,
although it's been around forever, it was different
back in the forties, fifties sixties.
There were 33 general authorities, and they were
all treated equally.
Today,
things like,
yeah. Well, today, there's 100 and 100. And
now we just say these 12 are the

(25:15):
sort of the
the, focus, but it wasn't like that back
then. Yeah. And so, yeah, I think that
he just chose
to be a leader and and follow what
the Lord was telling him in his mind.
And and if you want, I can tell
you why that was that story.
So he comes home from England. He's just
had this brutal experience
changing.

(25:36):
And there were more things I didn't really
share earlier, but
let's just say that, even though president McKay
handpicked him to go
and fix this problem in England, there were
others in the first presidency and in the
quorum of the 12 specifically
who didn't like the declining numbers because the
numbers
went skyrocketing
and then over 3, and then back down,

(25:57):
he had the missionaries baptizing families
and holding on and getting priesthood leadership and
all the things that, that you would hope
that didn't sit well with some of the
brethren who had been pushing the numbers.
So he has this problem where he is
sent to England by the prophet and then
basically second guessed or
taken shots at by others of the general

(26:19):
authorities.
Brutal
and hard. He comes home after two and
a half years, president McKay
unilaterally invites him down to his office and
gives him a blessing without duffer that dad
requesting it.
And what he said in the blessing was
let your voice be heard,
even if it's in opposition to the status
quo

(26:39):
or what others think should be happening.
And those were almost the identical words of
his patriarchal blessing.
So he took that to heart, and that's
how he acted. Yep.
And sometimes
diplomatically and sometimes not diplomatically.
Yeah. Right. And that was intriguing me throughout
the book is
this and, again, I'd love to get into

(27:01):
this. And, of course, we respect all former
current general authorities. We love them. They these
we know their men and doing their best.
And but it's so intriguing because on the
local church level,
leaders deal with this too when maybe in
the council saying there's some tension there. I
don't I don't wanna embarrass this person, but
I wanna make sure I push back on
this or that idea.
And so there were some figures like him

(27:21):
and Bruce Harmonic Conkey. Were they called the
seventies the same day? No. Bruce Harmonic Conkey
had been a seventy for I can't remember.
Maybe 5 or 6 years. And then they
were together for 17, 18 years. Yeah. But
good friends. Very good.
Oftentimes on different sides of maybe an argument
or orthodoxy, would you say? How how would
you articulate some of those You know, I
don't know how to I've been thinking about

(27:42):
this. I'm not exactly sure how to apply
that to a a bishop's council or a
state presidency or a mission presidency council. And
because in this particular case,
you had someone who
who I guess, I don't wanna put words
in his mouth, but must have believed that
he had some authority to do what he
did.

(28:02):
And that Your your father? No. No. Or
this is Chris McConkie. Gotcha. Okay. He would
make, forceful pronouncements
that I mean, forceful, tough words. He gave
a talk at BYU called the 7 day
deadly heresies that I can't remember the word,
but he said, anybody who believes these seven
things is, I think, an idiot or I
don't want to get in trouble with the
exact wording, but it wasn't pleasant. Mhmm. I

(28:23):
was on my mission when that talk came
out and,
communicated with my father and said, well, I
believe 3 of the 7, am I going
to hell?
And he said, no, I believe those same
3 rich. And I just came from
Spencer Kimball's office, the Prophet's office, where we
discussed it
following. I am me having
talking, spoken with Bruce.
Yeah. You know, I was a kid during

(28:44):
most of that, but the real truth of
the matter is, is that elder McConkie somehow
didn't read doctrine covenants 28, which is really
clear. There's one prophet on the earth. It's
Joseph Smith. And when he's finished, there'll be
another prophet to take his place.
It, you know, the 15 brother and the
15 men are prophets, seers, and revelators, but
they don't act. That's in abeyance.

(29:04):
There's only one who speaks for the church
and that's the prophet.
So you can see my dad coming out
of me here now, as I've researched this
book all these years.
So when, his dear friend, he actually, when
he sat with me for his funeral planning,
this is years before he died. He said,
I want Bruce to speak.
They were dear friends.
They respected each other. They were both really

(29:25):
smart.
They were both very well versed in the
scriptures, scriptures
inside and out.
Somehow elder McConkie felt that he could, whoops,
sorry, that he could say
these things definitively
when in fact the church has still never
said if there was evolution or not. The
church has still never said if there's progression
between kingdoms after this life.

(29:46):
He even went down, I think, a couple
of months or a year later to BYU
gave a talk on why we don't worship
Christ.
And dad just said, this is silly. The
book of Mormon is full of times we
worship Christ. And Bruce, your own song
says, we'll worship him with all
I mean,
so, you know, I, I can't talk about

(30:08):
that. It's not none of my business, but
I can tell what dad did. And that
was
dogmatic assertions do not take the place of
revelation.
And that was by Charles Penrose, who was
a leader.
So, you know, Mormon doctrine,
they finally stopped
publishing that.
And I guess, somehow, elder McConkie and others

(30:29):
have felt that they could
deliver
revelation for the church in contrary to doctrine
and covenants
28, which is very clear. So dad took
it upon himself, I guess, to let his
voice be heard.
And
I'm not exactly sure how you would apply
that in a Well, I think stake setting.
I think it's helpful just to see, you

(30:50):
know, the the church and most people maybe
aren't familiar with how the correlation department works,
but you can kinda see the importance of
that that, you know, seventies aren't allowed to
just go write a book like they could
back then. You know,
Elder McConkie, you know, writes Mormon doctrine just
sort of there and suddenly they're retracting and,
you know, and then some of these talks,
right, of let's come together. Let's maybe check,

(31:11):
make sure we're on the same page. Yeah.
The certain,
leaders in the church and even maybe even
today like to make a big deal about
the unanimity of the quorum of the 12.
Well, that's just silly. Mhmm. If they're unanimous
all the time going into a meeting Right.
That makes me worried. Right. I mean, these
are 12 men from 12 different walks of
life. I hope they come into the meetings
and, you know, have great disagreements or different

(31:34):
now when they come out of the meeting,
different story.
I mean, I'll be there right there
with my stake president. If I'm on the
high council and he, I will be right
there, but going in, I mean, the question
is, are you asking, or are you telling,
if you're telling me to go on my
way to Missouri
right now, if the prophet says, you're not

(31:54):
going to see me, I'm going to be
walking to Missouri, Missouri. But if you're asking,
yeah, this isn't a good time for us
to go to Missouri right now. I mean,
do you know what I mean?
Somehow we confuse,
obedience
and belief systems
that makes us so we're not allowed to
speak the truth or at least speak our
minds. And I can't remember who it was
that said all is necessary for evil to

(32:16):
triumph
is for enough good men to to do
nothing
to sit around. And boy, that was not
him. Right.
Again, I don't think he looked for, I
think he was trying to be, you know,
cohesive with his brethren, but and he could
be disagreeable.
He could, but he would prefer I think
he would prefer to to disagree without being
disagreeable. And and that's one thing, like, as

(32:38):
far as leadership principles go that I took
from
observing his life through the book is that
it's not like he was some renegade that
was pushing against the orthodoxy
and demanding change or but he would be
willing, like, you know, going back to that
blessing. His voice should be heard, and there's
that's completely appropriate
for the calling he held, the authority he
had to Well, and, plus, it's human nature.

(33:00):
This is the 5th or 6th podcast I've
done on this subject, and it's just human
nature
to move in and focus in on the
things that are different.
When he was letting his voice be heard,
I think 95%
of the time it was to testify of
Jesus.
It was to
pitch a new program. It was to
forcefully, I guess, in some some ways present

(33:22):
his opinion about what he thought was right,
but it wasn't always negative. Now there were
some areas where
his
desire
to let his voice be heard, I think
probably became a broken record to a few
of the prophets over the time. For example,
he just did not believe
that Matthew 28 was more important than Matthew

(33:43):
25.
So to refresh anybody's memory, Matthew 28 is
go ye into all the world, baptizing and
teaching them to observe whatsoever I've commanded.
Matthew 25
is the goats and the sheep.
And, you don't go to the hospitals and
the prisons and the poor, and you're not
getting into heaven. That's a paraphrase.

(34:04):
And so the church, just by definition, pushes
hard on Matthew 28, proselyting.
Mhmm. Right. Baptizing.
But he didn't see any reason that that
should be more important than Matthew 25,
service.
And now,
60 years later,
we're doing all those things. We have the
church has humanitarian
departments, and none of that was happening.

(34:26):
It was all just sending missionaries out to
Yeah. And I don't mean to he was
never alone. I I well, in some things,
he was.
But he was always
pushing hard for the church.
Let's be humanitarian,
the institutional
humanitarianism
of the church.
And he'd used tough examples in meetings.
He got sent to become the area president

(34:46):
in Hong Kong for all of Southeast Asia.
And the, one of the first things he
did was
handpick sisters out of each mission, put them
all together and then put them into refugee
camps in the Philippines and Thailand and Hong
Kong. The church had had zero activity in,
in anything like that. In fact, he was
walking along

(35:06):
the road with the high, the United nations
high commissioner
for refugees.
And this guy says, we're not letting Mormons
in here. You people are self absorbed. You
don't do anything for anybody.
So he had to promise him. He said,
look, you look at me, I will give
you my home number. I will fly here
in a moment's notice from Hong Kong. I

(35:27):
will promise you there will be no pros
lighting.
We will do what Jesus
taught us to do now. That's all well
and good. Now he goes back to salt
lake and pitches
pitches for the money. I mean, you have
to have money to do anything.
And one of the brethren who will remain
unnamed said, how many baptisms is this going
to cost us now? Just put that in
perspective.
How do you answer that question?

(35:48):
What would you say? I'm not trying to
put you on the spot. I mean, you
know what he said? What's that? All of
them.
So he's sitting with the committee of his
peers or in some cases,
maybe his, his one of his bosses on
the committee.
And he says, all of them, we're going
to do this because this is what Jesus
said to do in Matthew 25,
no baptisms. We are not gonna We'll wear

(36:10):
our name tags. The sisters will wear our
name tag, but we're not gonna do it.
Now, he pushed that every year
and,
over and over and over again. And I,
you know, in a church that at that
time was just, and to this day is
still pushing baptisms, baptisms. He
compromised. They compromised to S to have the

(36:31):
missionaries do 6 hours a week. And then
it moved up to 10 hours a week.
If he'd had his way, it would have
been a 100 hours a week. It would
have been.
Well, let me give you an example. I
put this in the book. I think if
you ask a 100 people,
what's a Mormon, let's say we go to
times square, Manhattan, and we say what's a
Mormon. And what do you think you'd get?

(36:52):
Either a polygamist or now they've seen the
Book of Mormon musical. So yeah. Polygamy, Book
of Mormon musical. One of these horrible HBO
specials on Sister Wives or whatever. I don't
know. Guys in white shirts,
you know, knocking on my door.
Whatever. Yeah. Donny Osmond. I don't know. Wouldn't
it be great if in 30 years, if
you got a 100 people in the street
in times square and they said Mormons,

(37:14):
oh, LDS church of Jesus Christ letters. Those
are the people that helped me rake my
leaves and empty my
out. My U Haul
donated blood.
I mean, what if
we were the church of Jesus Christ that
did
not only what Jesus Christ said,
but what Jesus
Christ did,

(37:35):
which is easily seen in Matthew 25 and
many other places.
Yeah. Everybody, I say that to nods their
head. That'd be awesome.
And then I ask
which of those two methods would result
in the most baptisms
over a 50 year period?
Because clearly the baptisms will fall. Yeah. Right?
But over time For a while They would
explode. One might argue Yeah. That the demonstration

(37:59):
of Christ like attributes
in our lives with 70 or 80,000 missionaries
would physically result in more baptism. Can't prove
it. Have no way of knowing.
All I know is that he did experiment
after experiment in different parts of the world
where he was in charge.
And to him, they were all successful. I
believe they're all successful. I don't have the

(38:20):
numbers that prove that. But
even if there are no numbers, isn't that
what Jesus taught? That's huge. And that's really
made me think as I was reading those
chapters, just thinking
about my own experience, you know, in in
Utah and running wards and church leaders that
we sometimes
become insular. Right? We want to we take
the meals to the the people having babies

(38:41):
in our ward or we help the people
in our ward move, but sometimes they don't
take those few extra steps to look more
at the community. You know? What does the
community need or the our general
area
if service and helping the homeless or these
things we kind of see, well, that's that's
the government's issue or, you know, we're we're
just focusing on maybe doing the church thing,

(39:01):
making sure everybody's got callings and we're teaching
the gospel, but just maybe be more self
reflective of how can I
be more intentional there? You look I told
you on the phone, you're gonna get a
little bit of starry eyed sun here. I
let's hear it. I do my best to
be objective, but this was another one of
his deals.
I mean,
we didn't know what to put on his
tombstone,
his grave. A man who gave 50 general

(39:23):
conference talks and 100 of thousands of So
what do you put? Well, we didn't put
a picture of the temple. We put a
picture of the scriptures.
Nothing wrong with the temple. It's just
and, these words serve others,
whatever their faith, wherever they are.
That is the anti insular.
Yeah. So a couple of fun story interesting
stories. He's a brand new general authorities.

(39:44):
I don't know how old he was. He's
probably 33,
34.
And he's on on the board of directors
of the Salvation Army,
the,
YMCA,
the community chest. He ends up 30 years
later, 25 years later being on his way
to being president of the of Rotary International.

(40:04):
He was the non insular general authority.
And this was at a time when no
one else was.
So it's not like the church said, Hey,
will you go do that? He just, no.
In fact, he got a little bit beat
up for it. And it's not like they
took away some of his state conferences. I
mean, he'd have to get on red eyes
to get back to some of these meetings.
He was on, the president's council of physical

(40:26):
fitness and sports for
5 US presidents.
So it's a lot of trips to Washington
DC. There was no Zoom. Right? So you're
getting on airplanes.
So here's a couple of fun stories. It's
the middle of
the decade of the fifties. He goes into
the 1st presidency, and he says, can I
have $25,000?
A lot of money back then to help

(40:46):
with Salvation Army. I'm on the board of
Salvation Army. And J Reuben Clark says,
isn't that another church?
And
my dad says,
no, president Clark. I'm a member of your
church. We're the Yeah. But we need the
money because they're taking care of the homeless
in our city.
This is salt lake city and the Mormons
are doing

(41:07):
so. President Clark says, well,
let them take care of their own.
And my dad said, president Clark, they are
our own.
This is our city.
Fast forward. Dad is the chairman of the
desert gym.
For those of you who don't know what
the desert gym was,
before there was a conference center, the church
would build gyms. We had a big, beautiful

(41:28):
gym there called the Desert Gym for all
the athletics
and weight lifting and racquetball and so forth.
And he he became the chairman because he
was quite an athlete, which I talked about
elsewhere and in the book. Mhmm. So on
Saturdays, once in a while, he'd be home
on a Saturday, almost never. But once in
a while, he'd say, hey, Rich, let's go
play squash. And so here's the chairman of
the desert gym and we're playing squash. Where
do we go to the YMCA?

(41:51):
And I'd say, dad, what are we doing
here? I like the spittoons. But other than
that, why are we here? And he'd say,
because these are my friends and I want
them to know
it shouldn't be Mormons at Desert Gym, non
Mormons
at YMCA.
He did it on purpose while he's the
chairman.
And I got, I don't even know, 50
stories
that are similar to that. Here's another great

(42:13):
one. He's he's in the rotary club and
he and the top Jew
in the rotary clubs. You got one of
the top Mormon in the rotary club and
the top Jew, and they're standing outside of
ZCMI,
which is a downtown mall that doesn't
exist anymore. In 3 hours of ringing the
salvation army bell, they raised more money than
all the rest of the bells in the

(42:33):
entire month of December, all over Utah. And
that's because these top business man who happened
to be a Jew and this top religious
leader who happened to be a Mormon would
just say, Hey, Bob, a 100, Tom,
a 100.
And they just, they just raised all this
money. That's cool. I don't think another general
authority rang the bell again. I told you

(42:53):
a little story. I'd hear a son, but
he was so unique. Yeah. Such a great
example. He was really unique and it didn't
matter.
It wasn't
Mormons in and everybody else out. That's a
whole another question, Bill. Mhmm. I'll wait and
see if he asks that one. So I'm
curious just from your experience being a mission
president. That was
5, 6, or 7 years ago that you're

(43:15):
a mission? I've been home we've been home
8 years. How did like, as you found
yourself in in these similar roles as being
a leader,
what parts of him came out through your
leadership?
So,
I called with my wife to be the
the mission president in Alabama. And, of course,
I immediately thought, what would dad do here?
And I had been saving materials

(43:35):
from his mission presidency
and from all the years of going and
doing mission tours
and and speaking at all of the hundreds
of seems like thousands of of meetings on
missionary work. And so I thought about that.
I I wrote down a few
that I wanted to do, and I I
hope I did them well. I I I
think Liz and I did them well, but

(43:55):
that will time will tell. Right. Yep. We
focused on the missionaries,
not on the baptisms.
I bet if you ask 50 random members
of the church
who's in charge of baptisms,
they'd get it wrong. It's actually the stake
presidents. Mhmm. Mission presidents are supposed to be
in charge of missionaries,
interestingly.
Yeah. Unless that's changed in the last 8

(44:16):
years. I think you're still accurate.
So I did that. I focused on the
missionaries,
not at the expense of baptisms. That's why
we were we were there, but I wanted
the missionaries to know that I love them.
Dad was not never a catcher.
And so I determined right up front, I'm
not going to be a catcher. I'm not
going to try and catch my missionaries doing
something wrong.

(44:37):
I'm not going to try and catch them
in,
in, into late or into early, or
I'm not going to try and catch them
listening to the wrong music. I decided I'd
do what he did, which is I'm going
to treat these young people as if they
are adults because they are adults.
I've been to missions that had 23
pages of rules,

(44:58):
but we had one rule in my mission
other than the white handbook and the, and
preach my gospel, the ones that are standard,
we had one rule and it was, there
will be no U turns in my mission.
And that's because I almost lost the sister.
So U-turn, like a literal U-turn literally in
their car, a U-turn. That was it. That's
my only
extra rule.

(45:18):
And you've got, you've literally got some missions
that literally have 100 of, you know, or
I don't know, 100, but tens of rules.
I decided that on the 1st night they
arrived, I was going to tell them that
I was going to treat them like adults
and that I wasn't going to try and
catch them. I'm not going to send the
assistance in to catch you.
You're an adult. You're on a mission. Behave
like one. We pushed hard on service

(45:40):
in our mission. I just talked about a
minute ago. I wanted the missionaries
to not just be knocking on doors all
day, but to serve people.
I would tell the sisters
and their first night in the mission home,
they're all exhausted. They've come from the MTC.
And I would say those are beautiful dresses
and all those hymns are going to be
ruined.
And the reason they're going to be ruined
is because you're going to rake leaves

(46:02):
and ride bikes
and rake leaves and ride bikes and rake
leaves and elders. Your pant legs are going
to become dirty because you're going to empty
you halls
and you're going to serve, your fellow, your
fellow beings. We also emphasized work
all of our missionaries every day, we would
have them recite a DNC chapter or DNC

(46:23):
section 4. And then we would also have
them recite a poem, which is the same
poem
that elder cook and elder Holland, I think
both recited
in their various talks over the years.
And that poem is by, Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
There is no chance, no destiny, no fate
can circumvent or hinder or control the firm

(46:45):
resolve
of a determined soul.
And, you know, missionaries are in a tough
spot. This is a brutal thing. Those of
you haven't been on missions, it's it's not
easy.
And I wanted them to know that if
they resolved to follow the Lord Jesus Christ,
that they could do it. We stay in
touch with our missionaries.
They don't run from each other. They see
somebody across campus.

(47:06):
They run towards them. I hope that's what
I've been told. They don't run away from
them. And that's, I think what dad would
have done. So I tried to follow those,
those same things. That's really inspiring. Anything else
come to mind as for your time as
the mission or, does that sum it up?
Yeah. Some things have never changed. I was
told by a general authority visiting that, my

(47:26):
missionaries were doing too much service
and in a
fit of cynicism and stupidity, I responded, really?
Did you want me to quote you on
that? Can you really do too much service
on this planet?
Pretty sure that's what the savior.
Yeah. And that was stupid of me. Bad.
But
how do you handle that? Cause that's the

(47:47):
I don't know because I that's just, I
just don't get it. How can you do
too much service?
I'm proud of, of my wife and I,
I think she was phenomenal. And we went
out when the surge happened.
She and I did, and we're not here
to talk about me, but it was amazing.
You know, I had 12 mission, 12 sisters
on my mission in Scotland as a young

(48:08):
man.
We had 150
at one time. I had 300 missionaries and
half were sisters. Wow. So, we were equally
yoked, my wife and I, in serving these
young people
and tried to follow the same things I
think that dad would have done. Yep. On
that note, like, I wanna talk about
your dad's wife, your mother, Maxine. Yeah. Sure.

(48:29):
So I'm just curious, like, if we were
to bring her here in the eternal, scope
of things and she was to address, like,
the wives of leaders, like, what advice would
she have for bishops' wives or mission present
wives or elders quorum wives?
Oh, that's a good one.
Service.
I think she would follow dad, and they
were equally yoked in that

(48:49):
support.
She was no shrinking violet. I mean, she
was a force.
And, you know, she taught school and she
could have been all kinds of different things.
She chose to be a wife and a
mother, and she chose to support my dad.
I mean, she was totally supportive. I mean,
you think about this. She's taken him to
the airport every Friday, picking him up on
Sunday,
taking his suit off and hanging it up

(49:10):
outside to air off all the cigarette smoke
that he's been sucking in for 5 hours
on his flight from wherever. Such a different
thing. She's got all these little people. If
5 of us, little kids, no no father
helping her or no husband helping her out.
Even during the week, he was counseling other
people.
She was graceful and determined, and she was

(49:31):
supportive.
And she was
really just unbelievable. He would say, I put
this in the book. She raised the kids.
Just think about, I just tell him a
quick story. This will just maybe help some
people see what this was like.
He spoke at the general conference opening session.
There were 3 sessions, 3 days back then,
Friday opening session.

(49:52):
And he gave a prayer
and he was 31 years old and the
assistant director at Temple Square. And he was
working for Richard L. Evans,
who was a general authority in the seventy.
Dad was not gets a call from David
O'Mackay
on Sunday morning at 7 am.
So 3 hours before conference is going to
start.
President McKay says, this is David O'Mackay. I'd

(50:14):
like you to come down to my office
right now.
My dad's like, who is this really?
True story.
Goes down. President McKay says the Lord has
spoken.
You are to be a general authority
and take Richard L. Evans place in this
council, first council of the seventy. He's going
to be an apostle.
Wow. There's a whole story there.

(50:36):
Dad knew it was going to happen.
It had a spiritual prompting. He didn't believe
it.
He's 31. How could this happen to me?
Yeah. Here's the point with my mom. He
goes to the hotel, Utah. He calls up
and he says, Maxine, I need you to
come down here for the 10 o'clock session.
I'm taking Richard L Evans place.
And then he had to hang up and

(50:56):
go on. She's scratching her head saying, okay,
so
Richard Evans, isn't going to be the director
of temple square anymore. So Duff's going to
be the director of temple square. Yeah. Can
you imagine when she shows up at the
Tabernacle
and she's
27,
2 little girls,
and her whole life
was put on hold. Every dream, hope

(51:16):
that involved what they were going to be
and do
Now it's put on hold and your husband's
going to be a general authority till he
dies and you're never going to see him
on weekends and so forth.
And so I pay homage to my mom.
I mean,
she didn't bulk. She just dug in and
she was a terrific mom. She was, she
didn't like necessarily all the fancy party

(51:38):
type things. It wasn't her way, but she
lived the life that she could in support
of him
and her testimony of Jesus Christ. I love
it. Love it.
As we wrap up here, like, I wanna
make sure some broader topics, like, just his
approach to teaching or speaking that we haven't
mentioned, like, to to speak that many times.

(51:59):
What did you or others learn about how
to give a a talk? Yeah. He was
constantly,
constantly reading.
I mean, more than anyone I ever knew
and marking.
Going through his materials, you know, so he
died, and and I've been
researching for the book and finding
100 and 100 thousands
of his own talks that he then marked

(52:19):
up
as if he was just reading it. I
think he was going like, oh, I could
oh, I should have done this better. Yeah.
Yeah. And marking it. Every year, he would
read I don't wanna make this sound like
an annual thing because it wasn't necessarily 12
months. Might have been 9 months. Might have
been he would read the book of Mormon,
and he would mark the daylights out of
that thing. I mean, he his book of
Mormon,

(52:40):
all colors and lines and circles and notes
to himself. And then he finish and give
it away and start over again. Wow. People
come up to me, when I haven't lately,
but for years years and say, I have
your dad's book of Mormon. I'd say, no.
You have one of my dad's book of
Mormon. And they'd say, would you like it
back? And I'd say, no. You can keep
it. I've got several. Yeah.
He just was

(53:01):
a voracious reader and marker, and he would
thresh and digest, he would say. When he
spoke, he was always over prepared.
Mhmm. Always. I mean,
he would stand up at BYU and say,
well, I got enough material here for a
couple of days. Anybody want?
And sometimes he throw it all away and
and and do a completely different talk.

(53:22):
But he had so much stuff.
One of my favorite quotes is, the holy
ghost will never elicit thoughts out of an
empty head.
His brain was full
all the time. Poetry
made for some pretty long car rides when
we were kids. He would be helping us
memorize.
I mean, you just choose something. We look
at something beautiful. And what comes into my

(53:44):
mind is enraptured by this glorious scene.
I gaze in meditation, like one lost in
some sweet dream,
amazed at God's creation.
Well, I only know that poem because he
had us memorize that poem, looking at the
grand canyon or wherever,
and that's what he did. So his preparation
involved, pleading with the Lord for help

(54:06):
and then doing the necessary work. And then
he just had a way of presenting. He
was humorous.
I put a whole chapter on humor. I
think my publisher wanted me to take it
out. And I thought, no,
no, I'm leaving in his best jokes. Yeah.
He also rarely,
I always feel a little bit ashamed by
this. He rarely ever did something twice
once in a while, but he had stories

(54:27):
he would tell, but he would always prepare
from scratch. There was none of this. Oh,
I gave a talk once
every talk was from scratch. Again, it might
repeat a story, but yeah, I'd like to
address one thing that he loved to do
when he when he taught. He loved 1st
Nephi 1922.
It talks about why we should read scripture.

(54:48):
And the three reasons given are to know
of what happened to other people,
to increase our belief in the redeemer. And
then the most important one, well, not most
important one. The one for my conversation here
is to learn things that would apply
to me.
Mhmm. I try to do that as I
am teaching my gospel doctrine class here. I
was trying to think of, well, how would

(55:09):
dad teach this? Let me give you a
perfect example. Mhmm. 1st Nephi one one. You
don't happen to know what that is, dude?
Sure. Yeah. I, Nephi,
having been born of goodly parents, therefore, I
was taught somewhat.
Well, if if I'm teaching that I and
the way most people, that would be
a a presentation of information. Mhmm. Nephi was

(55:29):
born of goodly parents.
You know, we just go through the different
things. It's not how he ever taught that.
He taught that. What if you weren't born
with goodly parents? What if your parents were
horrible?
How does that scripture apply to you?
I, Kurt,
who will someday be a goodly parent.
See, that changes the whole thing. Yeah. And

(55:49):
so that's how he taught. That's how he
spoke.
How will this be beneficial?
Not in the abstract,
but in the specific
goodly parents.
Another quick one.
Lehi starts to complain.
They break the, Nephi breaks his bow. Lehi's
complaining. We don't have any food. Where are
we going to go? And even Lehi starts

(56:10):
to murmur.
And it says, Nephi went and asked his
father, where there shall we go to obtain
food? Well, how do we apply that? Well,
we apply that in
sometimes
old men and women, our mentors
need to feel
some
encouragement,
some support.
And so this young prophet, Nephi, the old

(56:32):
guy's washed up. Lehi's washed up. Right? Goes
and gives his father back dignity.
Didn't need to ask him where to go
to. I'm sure God had told me if
I where to go to get food. I
don't know if these are resonating with you,
but these were the kinds of things
that he wanted to teach. This is what
he taught his missionaries. This is what he
taught for 40 years.
How can we apply the savior

(56:54):
and what the savior has taught us and
what the scriptures teach us to our lives.
How can we change our daily life? Yeah.
What about just the concept of the leaders
deal with of repentance? You know, helping somebody
through repentance and Yeah. That's a
you asked in the preparation for this if
I had a favorite
general conference talk, which is impossible because there

(57:16):
were 50 and another 150 at BYU and
another 10,000.
But
what I wrote down, I wrote down 6
because I couldn't think of 1, but one
of them is my specialty is mercy.
He gave a great talk on that. And
the reason I love that is because that
was him.
He just didn't understand the concept of punishment

(57:36):
as being a part of repentance. Yeah. And
he would say, okay. Lost coin, lost sheep,
prodigal son,
woman taken in adultery. I mean, the woman
taken in adultery was taken in adultery
and she's right there and he's bent over,
you know, riding in the sand, the savior
is. And he doesn't say, don't take the
sacrament for 3 weeks. And I'm going to

(57:57):
excommunicate you for a couple of years. He
says, go thy way and sin no more.
That's what dad believed
now.
If there were
bad experiences, maybe in some visible things,
but in general, his approach was go thy
way and sin no more.
He, he just believed
that God, as it says in the doctrine

(58:18):
and covenants,
he'd forgive and forget.
Yeah. And I tell
you what, that's a wonderful
way to approach life as opposed to, but
I shouldn't do this, but I'm going to,
we had a sweet man that was in
our ward. I'm a deacon.
And I remember he was a Bishop long
before I knew about any of these kinds
of things. He'd been a Bishop. He'd counseled

(58:39):
a woman and gotten involved and gotten excommunicated.
And he sat on our back row of
our ward for years
years. And I know cause I was a
deacon and we all knew to pass pass
it to him and he passed it to
his family.
And he was kept out of the church
because of a problem he made. And dad
wrote I think I wrote us in the
book. It was you know, we made Alma

(59:00):
the president of the whole true church.
Alma.
Mhmm. Paul.
Mhmm. On and on and on.
And yet we're keeping people out, and we're
we're making them suffer because suffering is somehow
part of repentance. He just didn't believe in
it. That also applied to the way he
approached. So you think about the 1,000, I
don't know what the number is, but must
be probably 1,000, maybe a 100 of state

(59:23):
conferences.
What's his goal? Here comes the general authority
to visit your stake. You're the stake presidency.
You're a little concerned. This guy's coming from
salt lake. What's he going to find?
I'm fast forward. Now I'm a Bishop in
my ward. I'm at a funeral,
the funeral home guy, the fellow that takes
the casket in and out says, Bishop Hanks,

(59:43):
may I speak with you in your office?
I said, sure. And he comes in, he
sits down and he says, you don't know
me. He's he looks like he's in his
mid sixties. I was a stake president in
the Midwest. I want to tell you a
story about your dad. And I'm like, well,
there's a, and,
he said, just wait. We have time.
And he said, we had, an apostle come
to our stake and

(01:00:04):
look at all the numbers and look at
what we were doing and just beat us
senseless.
We went home dejected with our head between
our, hanging down.
Our countenance was down everything. We all felt
like what in the world and said, frankly,
I went home and told my wife, I
need a bath.
I need a shower.
Said your dad came. He was the next
visitor to our stake. And the short version

(01:00:26):
of it is he left us uplifted,
encouraged with hope and gratitude for our willingness
to be in a state presidency. He said
when the previous
general authority visited, we all felt like we
needed a shower. When your dad left, we
all felt like we had one.
And that's,
it's a pretty poignant story.

(01:00:46):
I've tried to be like that as best
I can. I'm sure I've failed, but what
he did was he, he wanted to uplift
the individual
and he,
he didn't feel the need to beat up.
People already know where their weaknesses are. Right.
They don't need help. I already know what
my sins and weaknesses are. I don't need
help on that. And so he chose to

(01:01:07):
follow the savior's way, which is this lifting
lift me up
is is how he talked. Yeah. Love it.
Any other point principle that we wanna squeeze
in here? I think part of dad's uniqueness
in addition to the things we've talked about
service
and was his willingness to walk the talk
on things.

(01:01:28):
And, you know, here he is able to
speak and is speaking all over the world
and large congregations,
not just church, but also secular ones. You
know, he was slated to be the president
of the boy scout of boy Scouts of
America when he was sent to Hong Kong.
At the same time, he was slated to
be president of the rotary club, which is
massive. People don't know how massive the rotary

(01:01:50):
club is. So here he is speaking all
over.
And then
the thing I wanted to point out is
then he walked to the top when no
one could see.
And I'm going to give you some examples
are going to blow your mind. Cause they're
just so simple.
He made me take his garbage over to
his house. He'd say, take the garbage out,
will you, Rich, on on Tuesday? And I'd
say, sure, dad. And he'd say, make sure

(01:02:10):
you put it all the way down the
street. We lived on this cul de sac
with 6 homes. And I said, why is
that? And I said, so the other people
don't have to walk so far.
We're walking down the street. I'm a little
boy I'm walking behind and there's 2 elderly
ladies that crosswalk.
They look like they're in their eighties, maybe
nineties, puts his hands through both of their
arms and says,
ladies,
I'm feeling kind of shaky on my feet

(01:02:32):
today.
Would you help me across the street?
He'd get home from general or from state
conference. He'd be exhausted.
There'd be a big snow in Salt Lake
and we'd get out the Bronx. He'd say,
Rich, fire up the Bronco.
We'd go and we'd get in the Bronco
and go out and drag people out with
chains
who are stuck in snow drifts. Yeah. I
mean, I literally could go on and on

(01:02:54):
and on. He just,
it was just his way to
do
to walk the talk. One of my absolute
favorite stories is he's flying from Honolulu
to Salt Lake
stopover in Oakland, gets on the, or gets
at the airport and meets a young Marine
with his wife. His wife's pregnant with a
little child, a little child and pregnant.

(01:03:16):
She's flying home to salt lake from Honolulu.
Having seen her husband.
The plane is late and gets in Oakland
after or with, I guess, just a few
minutes before the connecting flight to salt lake.
They're both on the plane. They're nowhere near
each other. He's probably sitting
in the front of the plane and she's
probably sitting in the middle of the plane
with a child

(01:03:36):
and, and is pregnant.
They get off,
she gets off and she starts to run
with, with all her bags and the child.
And here comes my dad flying down
the other way. And he,
he had gotten off the plane and took
off running
and walked. You can do this today, walked
onto the Delta flight to the cockpit and

(01:03:57):
said, gentlemen,
there is a pregnant woman
with a child
who needs to get to salt lake. Will
you hold this plane? I'll be right back.
And then he ran all the way down
to her,
took the child and some of the baggage
and they went together and made the plane.
That's it seems like a simple little thing,
but not to me. Yeah. That's huge.
Cause that's what he did. And he did

(01:04:18):
it all the time. And then, you know,
the next day he'd be up on stage
in front of 5,000 people
talking about what Jesus taught us.
And then I would think, well,
I just saw that yesterday,
but he never made a big deal about
it. He didn't really talk to anybody about
it. Yeah. Well, in those days that it's
tough to be like Jesus, we can at

(01:04:39):
least try and be like Duff Hanks. Well,
I don't know. Thank you.
And the the again, here's the book. To
be a Friend of Christ, the Life of
Mary d Hanks. And where would you send
people to, check it out? Just say there
are a few, local LDS bookstores where you
can always get it on Amazon. It's a
Yeah. And I read every word and, loved
it. You. That's,

(01:04:59):
you know, everybody loves the early church history
years, but my favorite part of church history
is the the years that he he lived
because it was inspiring just to see how
the church, function in those modern days with
great leaders who weren't perfect, but tried to
to make a difference in the kingdom. So
Can I finish with one last quick thing?
Yeah. The opening line of the book. So
think about that. What are you gonna put?
You're writing a book about your dad, right?

(01:05:21):
What are you going to put as the
opening line and the closing line?
And we've talked about,
his life and some of the things he
focused in on. And I chose to write
Marian Duff Hanks was a believer.
Yeah. And that's, I didn't put it as
the last sentence, but it's the second of
the last sentence. I think Marian Duff Hanks
was a believer

(01:05:42):
and I I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful
that I was able, our, my sisters and
I were able to be born to believing
parents
didn't make it easy and it didn't make
it, without its difficulties, but we always knew
that Jesus was at the center of his
life.

(01:06:06):
Hey. You made it to the end of
the episode.
Wasn't that so good? You know, I tend
to pinch myself that this is what I
get to do. I get to sit down
with some remarkable people across the world, experts,
everyday leaders,
PhDs, therapists, whatever it be, and have such
an impactful conversation. I hope you'll share it,
drop it into text message and email, and
share it to someone who maybe came to

(01:06:27):
mind during this episode. And if you go
to the show notes and scroll to the
bottom, there's actually a list of some of
our most popular episodes. So don't stop with
this episode. I mean, you're not done with
the dishes or mowing the lawn or working
out. So you might as well keep it
going at the bottom of those show notes
and, make sure you listen to each one
maybe a couple of times on a few
of them. Remember, up your teaching game by

(01:06:49):
listening to the David Farnsworth presentation by visiting
leading saints.org/14.
It came as a result of the position
of leadership, which was imposed upon us

(01:07:09):
by the God of heaven who brought
forth a restoration
of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And when the declaration
was made concerning the only and only true
and living church upon the face of the
earth,
We were immediately put in a position of
loneliness,
the loneliness of leadership

(01:07:30):
from which we cannot shrink nor run away,
and to which we must face up with
boldness and courage
and ability.

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The Leadership of Marion D. Hanks | An Interview with Richard Hanks

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Leadership of Marion D. Hanks | An Interview with Richard Hanks