LDS Scene

President Ezra Taft Benson of the Council of the Twelve turned eighty-five on August 4, celebrating with his wife, Flora, and members of their family. Activities included a family reunion attended by many of his seventy-one descendants, who heard President Benson’s counsel to his posterity. He is the fourth oldest of the General Authorities, after Elder Joseph Anderson, an emeritus member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, 94; President Spencer W. Kimball, 89; and President Marion G. Romney, First Counselor in the First Presidency, 87.

Wendell M. Smoot, Jr., has been appointed president of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. He succeeds Oakley S. Evans, who served in the position for nine years. Brother Smoot had been serving as the choir’s vice-president.

Several Church publications won awards for typographical excellence in a competition sponsored by the National Composition Association, a division of the Printing Industries of America. The awards were presented at the association’s annual convention in Chicago this spring. An activities planning calendar prepared for the Activities Committee won a first-place award, and the September 1983 issue of the New Era won a second place. Issues of the Ensign, New Era, and Friend won honorable mentions along with the Family Home Evening Resource Manual, an Old Testament study guide for seminary students, and the annual report of the Church-administered Thrasher Research Fund, a fund established by a private donor to promote the health of children in developing countries.

KRIC, Idaho’s only public educational radio station, went on the air May 7 with broadcasts originating from the Ricks College campus in Rexburg, Idaho. The station broadcasts with a power of 75,000 watts on an FM frequency of 100.5 megahertz. It offers what Kenneth R. Howell, the school’s director of Public Relations, calls a “broad-based” classical music format, along with “programming via satellite transmission from both National Public Radio and American Public Radio.”

Paul A. Yost, Jr., a member of the Manhattan Third Ward, New York City Stake, has been promoted to the three-star rank of vice-admiral and appointed commander of the Atlantic area of the U.S. Coast Guard. Brother Yost had been serving as chief of staff of the Coast Guard since 1981. With the new appointment, he assumed command of U.S. Coast Guard forces in the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean, and Europe.

An LDS sociologist has been honored for his work in helping to establish educational sociology in the post-secondary educational system of the Canadian province of Alberta, and in founding the Western Association of Sociology and Anthropology. Dr. Brigham Young Card, a grandson of the founder of Cardston, Alberta, was awarded the Sir Frederick Haultain Prize for his efforts.