“Fountains of Light and Hope,” chapter 14 of Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Volume 3, Boldly, Nobly, and Independent, 1893–1955 (2022)
Chapter 14: “Fountains of Light and Hope”
Chapter 14
Fountains of Light and Hope
After leaving Joseph F. Smith’s bedside, Heber J. Grant returned home. He could not sleep, so he read and reread President Smith’s most recent conference talk, weeping as he thought of the dying prophet. As a boy, he had thrilled whenever Joseph F. Smith, then a young apostle, spoke to his ward. Even now, Heber was in awe of the president’s preaching. He believed his own sermons paled in comparison.
Heber fell asleep just after six thirty the next morning. When he awoke, he learned that President Smith had died of pneumonia.1
Family and friends of the prophet gathered at the cemetery a few days later. With influenza spreading throughout Utah, the state board of health had banned all public gatherings, so the mourners held a private graveside service.2 Heber honored his friend with a short tribute. “He was the kind of man I’d like to be,” he said. “No man that ever lived had a more powerful testimony of the living God and of our Redeemer.”3
On November 23, 1918, the day after the funeral, the apostles and presiding patriarch set Heber apart as Church president, with Anthon Lund and Charles Penrose as his counselors.4 While his friends expressed confidence in his leadership, Heber had reservations about following in President Smith’s footsteps. Although he had served in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles since the age of twenty-five, Heber had never served in the First Presidency. President Smith, on the other hand, had served as a counselor for decades prior to his calling as Church president.5
Joseph F. Smith’s presidency had also been full of successes. Church membership nearly doubled during his administration and was now approaching five hundred thousand. He started a general reform of priesthood quorums, clarifying the duties of Aaronic Priesthood offices and standardizing meetings and lessons for Church quorums and organizations.6 He had also helped people see the Church in a better light by giving interviews to the press and addressing controversies over past practices and teachings of the Church. And in 1915, he started “home evenings,” asking families to set aside one evening each month for prayer, singing, gospel instruction, and games.7
Overwhelmed by this legacy, Heber lost more and more sleep. To ease the burden of his new calling, he and his counselors delegated some of President Smith’s many leadership responsibilities to others. Heber served as president of the General Church Board of Education, as President Smith had, but he called apostle David O. McKay to be general superintendent of the Sunday School. He also appointed apostle Anthony Ivins to lead the Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association.8 But since Heber had years of experience as a businessman in banking and insurance, he chose to oversee Church-managed companies himself.9
Still, he remained anxious. At the insistence of friends and fellow Church leaders, he and his wife, Augusta, took a vacation to the California coast. There Heber was able to sleep well for the first time since President Smith’s death. When he and Augusta returned to Salt Lake City a few weeks later, he was rested and ready to get back to work.10
During the early months of 1919, the influenza pandemic kept Heber from addressing the Saints as often as he would have liked. More than a thousand Church members had already perished from the flu, and Heber and his counselors decided to postpone general conference to the first week in June out of concern for public health. They could also take comfort in knowing that President Smith had introduced inspired practices that would protect the Saints’ health once they began holding regular sacrament meetings again.
Throughout most of the Church’s history, for instance, the Saints had drunk from a common cup when partaking of the sacrament. But in the early 1910s, as information about germs became better known, President Smith had recommended individual sacrament cups made of glass or metal. Heber could see the health benefits of such an innovation in fighting infectious diseases.11
In November, after the pandemic had eased its grip on the world, Heber traveled to Hawaii to dedicate the temple in Laie. Once again, he could not help comparing himself to President Smith, who had spoken the people’s language and understood their customs.12
The temple was filled to overflowing for the dedication. For many people, the day’s events were the culmination of years of earnest prayers and faithful service. Saints who had moved to the Hawaiian colony at Iosepa, Utah, to be closer to the Salt Lake Temple had now left the settlement and returned to their homeland to worship and serve in the new temple.
Like his predecessors, Heber had prepared the dedicatory prayer beforehand. As he dictated the prayer to his secretary, he had felt the inspiration of the Spirit. “It is so far above any of my usual prayers,” he told Augusta, “that I do thank the Lord with all my heart for His aid to me in preparing it.”13
Standing in the celestial room, he spoke gratefully of Joseph F. Smith, George Q. Cannon, Jonathan Napela, and others who had established the Church in Hawaii. He asked the Lord to bless Church members in the Pacific Islands with the power to secure their genealogies and perform saving ordinances for their dead.14
Afterward, Heber wrote his daughters about the experience. “I had considerable anxiety and fear that there might be a falling off in the inspiration in our meetings in comparison to what would have been the case had President Smith been present with us,” he admitted. “I feel now, however, that there was no occasion for my anxiety.”15
While Heber J. Grant was in Hawaii, Relief Society general secretary Amy Brown Lyman returned from speaking at a conference of professional social workers. Over the last three years, she had attended similar conferences to learn the latest methods for helping the poor and needy. She believed new approaches could help improve the charitable work done by the Relief Society, which had lately relied more and more on outside organizations, like the Red Cross, to assist struggling Saints.16
Amy had become interested in social work years earlier when her husband, Richard Lyman, was studying engineering in Chicago. At the time, many reform-minded citizens in the United States championed scientific remedies for poverty, immorality, political corruption, and other social problems. Amy worked with several charity groups while in Chicago, and they inspired her to do similar work in Utah.17
The Relief Society general board had since appointed Amy to lead the Church’s newly formed Social Service Department to oversee aid to needy Saints, train Relief Society members in modern relief methods, and coordinate with other charitable organizations. This appointment overlapped with Amy’s service on the Church’s Social Advisory Committee, which was made up of members of the Twelve and representatives from each Church organization and which sought to improve the morals and temporal well-being of Church members.18
After returning from the conference on social work, Amy tried to practice what she had learned. But not everyone on the Relief Society general board was so enthusiastic. Since some social workers were paid, Susa Gates believed that it commercialized something that should be voluntary. She also worried that social work would replace the Church’s revealed pattern for carrying out charitable service, with bishops having stewardship over collecting and dispensing aid to the needy. But what concerned her most was that social work seemed to focus on temporal welfare rather than on the spiritual growth of God’s children, a cornerstone of the Relief Society’s message.19
The board considered the views of both Susa and Amy and ultimately agreed on a compromise proposal. They did not think organizations like the Red Cross should take the lead in caring for needy Saints when it was the Relief Society’s sacred duty to do so. Yet they approved of training ward Relief Societies in modern social work methods, employing a limited number of paid social workers, and reviewing each request for assistance to ensure that aid was being distributed appropriately. Bishops were still ultimately responsible for deciding where fast offerings went, but they would coordinate their efforts with Relief Society presidents and social workers.20
Beginning in 1920, Relief Society members studied a monthly course on social work. The Social Advisory Committee also organized a six-week summer institute at Brigham Young University to train new social workers. Nearly seventy representatives from sixty-five stake Relief Societies attended the institute. They learned how to assess the needs of an individual or family and determine the best way to help. Amy oversaw the institute’s classes on health, family welfare, and related topics. The institute also recruited an authority on social work from New York City to give lectures.
When the course ended in July 1920, the women were able to receive six hours of college credit for completing it. To Amy’s satisfaction, they could now return to their local Relief Societies and share what they learned, improving the organization’s work among the Saints.21
Three months after the summer institute, President Grant announced that apostle David O. McKay would be traveling throughout Asia and the Pacific to learn more about the needs of the Saints in those areas. “He will make a general survey of the missions, study conditions there, gather data concerning them, and in short, obtain general information,” President Grant told the Deseret News. Hugh Cannon, a stake president in Salt Lake City, would serve as Elder McKay’s companion on the journey.22
The two men left Salt Lake City on December 4, 1920, and stopped first in Japan, home to about 130 Saints. They then toured the Korean Peninsula and visited China, where Elder McKay dedicated the land for future missionary work. From there they visited the Saints in Hawaii and observed a flag-raising ceremony performed by Hawaiian, American, Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino children from the Laie Mission School, one of dozens of small Church-owned schools Elder McKay planned to observe during his travels.23
The ceremony inspired the apostle, who had a special interest in Church schools.24 President Grant had recently called him to be commissioner of Church education, a new position that complemented his work as Sunday School superintendent. As commissioner, Elder McKay managed the Church’s educational system, which was undergoing many changes.
For more than thirty years, the Church had operated stake-run academies in Mexico, Canada, and the United States as well as mission-run schools in the Pacific. Within the last decade, however, young Saints in and around Utah had begun attending free public high schools in great numbers. Since these schools did not provide religious instruction, many stakes had set up a “seminary” near a local high school to continue providing religious education to Latter-day Saint students.
The success of the seminary program prompted Elder McKay to begin closing the stake academies. Yet he still believed the Laie school and other international mission schools, including the Juárez Stake Academy in Mexico, were doing essential work and should continue to receive Church support.25
From Hawaii, they traveled to Tahiti and then to New Zealand’s north island, Te Ika-a-Māui. There they caught a train to the town of Huntly, not far from a large pasture where Māori Saints were holding their annual Church conference and festival. No apostle had ever visited New Zealand before, and the Saints turned out by the hundreds to hear Elder McKay speak. Two large tents and several smaller tents had been set up in the pasture to accommodate everyone.
When Elder McKay and President Cannon arrived at the conference, Sid Christy, a grandson of Hirini and Mere Whaanga, ran out to meet them. Sid had grown up in Utah and only recently moved back to New Zealand. He led both men toward the tents. As he did so, they heard welcoming cries of “Haere Mai! Haere Mai!”26
The following day, Elder McKay addressed the Saints in one of the large tents. While many Māori Saints spoke English, he worried that some people in the congregation would not understand him, and he expressed regret that he could not speak to them in their own language. “I am going to pray that while I speak in my own tongue, you may have the gift of interpretation and discernment,” he said. “The Spirit of the Lord will bear witness to you of the words that I give you under the inspiration of the Lord.”27
As the apostle spoke about unity in the Church, he noted that many Saints were listening attentively. He saw tears in their eyes, and he knew that some of them had been inspired to understand the meaning of his words. When he finished, his interpreter, a Māori named Stuart Meha, rehearsed the main points of the sermon for the Saints who did not understand it.28
A few days later, Elder McKay spoke again at the conference. He preached on vicarious work for the dead. Now that a temple had been built in Hawaii, the New Zealand Saints had better access to temple ordinances. But Hawaii was still thousands of miles away and could not be visited without great sacrifice.
“I have no doubt in my heart but what you will get a temple,” he told them. He wanted the Saints to prepare themselves for that day. “You must be ready for it.”29
In early 1921, forty-nine-year-old John Widtsoe was nearing the end of his fifth year as president of the University of Utah. After being ousted from the Agricultural College of Utah in 1905 and teaching briefly at Brigham Young University, he had returned to the Agricultural College as its new president. He was then appointed president of the University of Utah in 1916, so he and Leah moved with their three children to Salt Lake City.
When they first came to the city, John’s mother, Anna, his aunt Petroline, and his brother, Osborne, lived near one another. Osborne, who was married with two children, was the head of the English Department at the university.30
But their time together was short-lived. Anna became sick in the spring of 1919. When her condition worsened in the summer, she called John and Osborne together. “The restored gospel has been the great joy of my life,” she told her sons. “Please bear that witness for me to all who will listen.”
She died a few weeks later with her sister, children, and grandchildren at her side. Heber J. Grant, who had served as European Mission president during Anna’s mission to Norway, spoke at the funeral. As John thought about his mother’s life, his heart swelled with gratitude for her.
“She was self-sacrificing beyond expression in behalf of her own and those who needed help,” he recorded in his journal. “Her devotion to the cause of truth was almost sublime.”31
Just eight months later, Osborne suffered a sudden cerebral hemorrhage. He passed away the next day. “My only brother died,” John grieved. “I am left very much alone.”32
On March 17, 1921, one year to the day after Osborne’s funeral, John learned that apostle Richard Lyman had been trying to reach him all morning. John immediately called him on the telephone. “Come to my office without delay,” Richard said urgently.33
John left at once and met Richard at the Church’s new administration building.34 They then crossed the street to the Salt Lake Temple, where the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles were in a meeting. John sat down with them, unsure why he was there. As a member of the YMMIA general board, he often met with members of the Church’s highest councils. But this was the regular Thursday meeting of the First Presidency and the Twelve, and he was not usually invited to it.
President Grant, who led the meeting, discussed a few items of Church business. He then turned to John and called him to fill a vacancy in the Twelve left by the recent death of Anthon Lund. “Are you willing to accept the call?” President Grant asked.
Time suddenly seemed to stop for John. Thoughts of the future flashed through his mind. If he accepted the call, he knew, his life would be the Lord’s. His academic career would fall by the wayside, despite the years he had dedicated to it. And what about his personal limitations? Was he even worthy of the call?
Still, he knew the gospel had claim on his life. Without further hesitation, he said, “Yes.”35
President Grant ordained him immediately, promising him more strength and power in God. He blessed John for listening to his mother’s counsel and always being humble and able to discern between worldly wisdom and the truths of the gospel. And he spoke of the work John would do as an apostle. “When you travel in the different stakes or in the nations of the world,” the prophet promised, “you shall have the love and confidence of the Latter-day Saints and the respect of those not of our faith with whom you may come in contact.”36
John left the temple, ready to start a new phase in his life. It would not be easy. He and Leah still had debts, his oldest children were ready to serve missions, and he would be trading his university salary for the modest living stipend general authorities received for their full-time service. But he was determined to give all he had to the Lord.37
Leah too was willing. “My life will be quite different, I realize, and I could, if I would let myself, dread the many necessary separations,” she told President Grant a short time later, “but I hail with delight the chance to work not only for my people as I have done in the past, but more directly with them.”
“There is no regret in my heart,” she added, “for any change of finances, or of public work, or of daily duties that may come to me as the wife of a man who has been called to this great service.”38
Susa Gates was ecstatic when she learned about her son-in-law’s call to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Her early fears that John would place his career over his family and Church were long gone, replaced by a deep and abiding love for him and his devotion to Leah, their children, and the restored gospel.
Full of advice, she wrote John a long letter, expressing her hopes for his new ministry. She was still worried about changes happening in the Relief Society and other Church organizations. “The world is in a spiritually starving condition today,” she told John. She believed more and more people in the Church were seeing salvation as a matter of intellectual and ethical development rather than spiritual progress.
She urged her son-in-law to awaken spiritually dormant men and women, who already had the “seed of eternal life” planted in them. “It is for you to cultivate it, master agriculturist that you are,” she wrote. “For after all, there lies in each of these souls a tiny, deep pool of truth and love of God which needs only a little clearing away of the underbrush of mental inactivity to well up into fountains of light and hope.”39
John’s call came at a time when Susa felt her own influence in the Church slipping away, especially as Amy Lyman and others continued to lead the Relief Society in new directions. Hoping to breathe new life into the organization, some members of the Relief Society board had even quietly urged Heber J. Grant to release Emmeline Wells as Relief Society general president.
Now ninety-three years old, Emmeline was the only Church officer still living who had known the prophet Joseph Smith. Physically frail and in poor health, she was often bedridden, many times leaving Clarissa Williams, her first counselor, to conduct Relief Society business at board meetings.
Heber’s counselors and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles likewise believed that the Relief Society needed new leadership. Yet Heber was reluctant to release Emmeline, and he pleaded for patience. All Relief Society general presidents since Eliza R. Snow had served until death. And he loved and admired Emmeline. When his mother was president of the Salt Lake City Thirteenth Ward Relief Society—a position she held for thirty years—Emmeline had been her secretary. Heber’s wife Emily, who had died over a decade earlier, was a member of the Wells family, and Heber felt a deep connection with them. How could he think of releasing Emmeline?40
After counseling further with members of the general board, however, the First Presidency and the Twelve decided it was in the Relief Society’s best interest to release Emmeline. Heber personally extended the release to Emmeline at her home. She received the news calmly, but it hurt her deeply.41 The next day, at the Relief Society’s spring 1921 conference, Clarissa Williams was sustained as the new Relief Society general president. Most of the members of the general board were also released and new members were called in their stead.42
Susa was one of the women who remained on the general board after the reorganization. She believed President Grant had been right to release Emmeline, yet she was wary about what would come next. On April 14, 1921, at the first meeting of the new board, Clarissa announced several changes to the organization. The most significant was Amy Lyman’s appointment as managing director of the activities of the Relief Society, giving her charge over all activities within its departments, including the Relief Society Magazine. Susa retained her place as editor of the periodical, but at Clarissa’s direction, the position became an annual appointment. Susa’s future with the magazine was no longer guaranteed.
Troubled by the changes, Susa wondered if they had anything to do with her inability to see eye-to-eye with Amy on social services.43
Six days later, Susa visited Emmeline, who was now spending more time in bed and often wept over her release. Her daughters Annie and Belle remained at her side constantly, trying to comfort her. Susa did her best to cheer her old friend. “Aunt Em,” she said, “everybody loves you.”
“I hope they do,” Emmeline replied. “If they don’t, I can’t help it.”44
She died peacefully on April 25, and Susa wrote a glowing tribute for the Improvement Era. She praised Emmeline’s many years as a poet, an editor of the Woman’s Exponent, and a staunch advocate for women’s suffrage, which had recently been written into law in the United States Constitution. But Susa saved her greatest praise for Emmeline’s work in grain storage, an assignment Emmeline first received from Brigham Young in 1876. Relief Society grain, Susa noted, had aided suffering people around the world.
“The dominant characteristic of Mrs. Wells’s life was her supreme will,” she wrote. “Her ambitions were high, her purposes lofty; but in and through them all ran the thread of truth to her testimony, which preserved her, and which made of her a light set upon a hill.”45