Monson poised _ and ready _ to lead Mormons

c. 2008 Salt Lake Tribune SALT LAKE CITY _ Long before he became a counselor to Gordon B. Hinckley, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who died on Sunday (Jan. 27), Thomas S. Monson was well-schooled in the way of Mormon prophets and well-known to the Mormon faithful. Monson has […]

c. 2008 Salt Lake Tribune

SALT LAKE CITY _ Long before he became a counselor to Gordon B. Hinckley, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who died on Sunday (Jan. 27), Thomas S. Monson was well-schooled in the way of Mormon prophets and well-known to the Mormon faithful.

Monson has spent his entire career in the service of the LDS Church, working alongside every Mormon president since 1963 when he was named one of the 12 apostles at the age of 36.


By unfailing tradition, Monson, as the longest-serving apostle, will succeed Hinckley as the 16th Mormon president, but that election won’t take place until after Hinckley’s funeral on Saturday (Feb. 2).

The 80-year-old Monson is a folksy orator known for his compassion, fondness for modern-day parables of struggle and spiritual triumph, and willingness to enlist non-Mormons in humanitarian causes. He repeatedly talks of being spirituality prompted to help the disadvantaged and outcast, a lesson he learned during the waning years of the Great Depression.

“I remember that time and time again those who were riding the rails came to our home. I think they had it marked,” Monson said in a 1998 interview. “I can see (a hobo) now, holding his cap in his hand. He asks, `Is there something I can do to earn a sandwich?’ My mother would say, `You come right in and sit down; wash your hands over there in the sink.’ And then she’d make a sandwich.”

A tall man with a big grin, Monson is “a robust, buoyant, whirlwind of a man who might have been a superb basketball player in his youth had it not been required of him … (to) forgo the pleasure of extracurricular school activities in order to work at his father’s side in the printing business,” fellow apostle Jeffrey R. Holland wrote in a biographical essay.

It didn’t take long for LDS leaders to recognize Monson’s leadership skills.

He was called as bishop, or lay leader, of Salt Lake City’s Sixth-Seventh Ward at 22 and became noted for making it a point to visit elderly widows. It is a practice that has never left him.

Five years after being named a bishop, Monson became a counselor in the three-man presidency of a stake (similar to a diocese) in Salt Lake City. Five years later, he was named president of the church’s Canadian Mission, a post he held from 1959 to 1962.

Just one year later, in 1963, he was called to fill a vacancy in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, making him one of the youngest men in the 20th century to be called to the church’s highest decision-making body.


In the decades since, Monson has worked in every area of the church’s vast bureaucracy, from missionary work to welfare services, education to genealogy. He represented the church on the civic and business boards, including the Boy Scouts of America and President Ronald Reagan’s Task Force for Private Sector Initiatives.

Monson was a envoy for the church, dealing with governments wary of the Mormons’ presence in their nations and the legal issues involved. His two decades of quiet efforts in Eastern Europe culminated in the announcement of a Mormon temple in Freiberg, Germany, behind the Iron Curtain.

In November 1985, Monson joined the church’s governing First Presidency as second counselor to then-President Ezra Taft Benson. In 1995, Hinckley named Monson his first counselor, essentially the church’s No. 2 position.

In that capacity, Monson took on ecumenical and welfare issues. Under Monson’s direction, the LDS Church joined with other Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups in causes such as homeless shelters, food banks, nursing homes and disaster relief efforts in the United States and abroad.

“We don’t ever meet on doctrinal ecumenism; it’s strictly on the social side of the fabric of the community,” Monson explained. “But I’m a great believer that by working together we eliminate the weakness of one standing alone and substitute the strength of many standing together.”

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Born on Aug. 21, 1927 in Salt Lake City, he served with the U.S. Navy toward the end of World War II. Back in Utah, Monson graduated in 1948 from the University of Utah with a business management degree.


That same year, on Oct. 7, he married Frances Beverly Johnson in the Salt Lake Temple. They have three children and eight grandchildren.

Before his call as a church leader, Monson was involved in the publishing and printing business.

Monson joined the church-owned Deseret News in 1948, where he worked as an advertising executive. Later he became general manager of the Deseret News Press, a commercial printing firm, before being called as an apostle.

He continued his association with the newspaper until 1996, when he retired as board chairman after 19 years.

“His life seems something of a sacred manuscript upon which the Holy Ghost has written _ and is still writing,” Holland wrote, “one remarkable message after another.”

(Peggy Fletcher Stack and Bob Mims write for The Salt Lake Tribune in Salt Lake City.)


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