Chapter 23
All That Is Necessary
On February 6, 1935, fifteen-year-old Connie Taylor and other members of the Cincinnati Branch waited at their meetinghouse to receive a patriarchal blessing from James H. Wallis.
For much of the last century, patriarchal blessings had been given only to adult Saints, who often received blessings from more than one patriarch in their lifetime. In recent years, however, Church leaders had begun encouraging teenagers like Connie to receive their blessing as a way to strengthen their faith and receive direction for their lives. Church leaders also clarified that Saints should receive only one patriarchal blessing.1
Brother Wallis, a convert from Great Britain, had been called by the First Presidency to give patriarchal blessings to Saints in outlying branches of the Church. He had recently completed a two-year mission to Europe, where he gave more than fourteen hundred blessings, and he was now on assignment to bless the Saints in the eastern United States and Canada. Since it was a rare opportunity for anyone in Cincinnati to receive a patriarchal blessing, he had been working long hours to ensure that every eligible branch member got the chance.2
When Connie’s turn for a blessing came, she took a seat in the Relief Society room. Brother Wallis then placed his hands on her head and called her by her full name: Cornelia Belle Taylor. As he spoke the blessing, he assured her that the Lord knew and watched over her. He promised her guidance through life as she sought the Lord in prayer, shunned evil, and obeyed the Word of Wisdom. He urged her to take a greater interest in the activities of the Church, using her talents and intelligence to become a willing worker in the kingdom of God. And he promised that she would go to the temple one day and be sealed to her parents.
“Doubt not this promise,” the patriarch told her. “In due time of the Lord, His Holy Spirit will touch the heart of thy father, and through its influence he will see the light of truth and will share in thy blessings.”3
As comforting as those words were, they required great faith. Connie’s father, a cigar maker named George Taylor, was a loving, kindhearted man, but the family he came from hated Latter-day Saints. When Connie’s mother, Adeline, first expressed interest in the Church, he had refused to let her join.
But one day, when Connie was around six years old, a car struck her father while he was crossing the street. As he lay in the hospital, recuperating from a broken leg, Adeline once again prodded him to let her join the Church, and this time he agreed. His feelings continued to soften, and he had recently let Connie and her brothers be baptized. But he himself had shown no interest in joining the Church or attending meetings with his family.4
Not long after her patriarchal blessing, Connie began participating regularly in the branch’s efforts to share the gospel with their neighbors.5 To make up for the decline in missionaries during the Depression, Saints across the world were often called into part-time service close to home. In 1932, Cincinnati Branch president Charles Anderson organized a tracting society to keep the work moving forward in the city.6 Since Sunday School was in the morning and sacrament meeting was in the evening, Connie and other youth usually spent an hour or so in the afternoon knocking on doors and talking to people about the restored gospel.7
One of her companions in the tracting society was Judy Bang. Lately, Judy had begun going on dates with Connie’s older brother, Milton. He and Judy did not have much in common, aside from their Church membership, but they had fun together. Connie herself had recently gone on her first date—with Judy’s older brother Henry. But she did not like Henry as much as she liked his handsome younger brother Paul, who was her same age.8
In March, Judy told Connie that Paul wanted to ask her to go with him to an MIA roller-skating party. Connie waited all that evening for Paul to ask her, but he never did. The next day, a few hours before the party, Henry asked Milton to ask Connie if she would go skating with Paul. It was a roundabout way to ask her on a date, but she agreed.
Connie and Paul enjoyed skating together. Afterward, some of the youth piled into Henry’s car and drove to a nearby restaurant for a bowl of chili. “I had a grand time with Paul,” Connie wrote that night in her journal. “Better than I expected.”9
Later that spring, Connie received a written copy of her patriarchal blessing, reminding her once again of the promises she had received. “This blessing, dear sister, will be a guide to thy feet,” it read. “It will show thee the way to walk so that thou wilt not stumble in the dark but be enabled to fix thine eyes upon eternal life.”10
With so much happening in her life, Connie needed the Lord’s direction. When she joined the Church, she made up her mind to always do right. She believed the gospel was a shield. If she went to God and asked Him for his help, He would bless and protect her throughout her life.11
Meanwhile, in Salt Lake City, stake president Harold B. Lee was sitting in the office of the First Presidency. He saw himself as a rather inexperienced farm boy from a small town in Idaho. Yet here he was, face-to-face with Heber J. Grant as the prophet asked his opinions on providing for the poor.
“I want to take a leaf out of the Pioneer Stake’s book,” President Grant announced.12
He and his counselors, J. Reuben Clark and David O. McKay, had been watching Harold’s work closely.13 Almost three years had passed since the start of the Pioneer Stake’s ambitious relief program. During that time, the stake had created multiple jobs for the unemployed. Saints had picked peas, made and mended clothes, canned fruits and vegetables, and constructed a new stake gymnasium.14 The stake’s storehouse served as the hub of activity, with Jesse Drury overseeing the complex operation.15
At the same time, the First Presidency had become deeply concerned about the number of Church members relying on public funds. They were not opposed to Saints accepting government relief when they had no money for food or rent. Nor were they opposed to Church members receiving help through federal public works projects.16 But as Utah became one of the states most dependent on government aid, the presidency worried that some Church members were accepting funds they did not need.17 They also questioned how long the government could keep funding its relief programs.18
President Clark urged President Grant to provide the Saints with an alternative to federal assistance. Believing that some government relief programs led to idleness and despondency, he called for Church members to take responsibility for one another’s care, as the Doctrine and Covenants instructed, and work for the assistance they received when possible.19
President Grant had additional concerns. Since the start of the Depression, he had received letter after letter from good, hardworking Latter-day Saints who had lost their jobs and farms. He often felt powerless to help them. Having grown up poor himself, he knew what deprivation was like. He had also spent decades of his life deep in debt, so he was sympathetic to others in similar straits. In fact, he was now using his own money to help widows, family members, and complete strangers pay their mortgages, remain on missions, or meet other obligations.20
But he knew that his efforts, as well as the efforts of well-meaning government programs, were not enough. He believed the Church had a duty to take care of its poor and unemployed, and he wanted Harold to draw on his experience with the Pioneer Stake to devise a new program—one that would enable the Saints to work together for the relief of those in need.
“There is nothing more important for the Church to do than to take care of its needy people,” President Grant said.21
Harold was stunned. The thought of organizing and developing a program for the entire Church was overwhelming. After the meeting, he steered his car through a nearby canyon park, his mind reeling as he drove deeper into the hills above Salt Lake City.
“How can I do it?” he wondered.
When the road ended at the edge of the park, he shut off the engine and wandered through the trees until he found a secluded spot. He knelt and prayed for guidance. “For the safety and blessing of Thy people,” he told the Lord, “I must have Thy direction.”22
In the silence, a powerful impression came to him. “There is no new organization necessary to take care of the needs of this people,” Harold realized. “All that is necessary is to put the priesthood of God to work.”23
In the days that followed, Harold sought the advice of many experienced, well-informed people, including apostle and former senator Reed Smoot. He then spent several weeks creating a preliminary proposal, complete with detailed reports and charts outlining his vision for a possible Church relief program.24
When Harold presented his plan to the First Presidency, President McKay thought it was feasible. Yet President Grant hesitated, unsure if the Saints were prepared to carry out a program of such magnitude. After the meeting, he sought guidance from the Lord in prayer, but he received no direction.
“I am not going to move,” he told his secretary, “until I feel certain of what the Lord wants.”25
While President Grant waited for the Lord’s guidance on a relief program, he traveled to Hawaii to organize a stake on the island of Oahu.26 Fifteen years had passed since he had dedicated the temple there, and much had changed. The temple grounds had once been barren and scrubby. Now they were vibrant with bougainvillea trees in full bloom and cascading pools framed by gently waving palm trees.27
The Church in Hawaii was likewise flourishing. In the eighty-five years since the first Latter-day Saint missionaries docked at Honolulu, Church membership on the islands had grown to more than thirteen thousand Saints, half of whom lived on Oahu. Attendance at Church meetings had never been higher, and the Saints were eager to be part of a stake. The Oahu Stake would be the Church’s 113th stake and the first organized outside North America. For the first time, Saints in Hawaii would have bishops, stake leaders, and a patriarch.28
After visiting with the Saints, Heber called Ralph Woolley, the man who had supervised the construction of the Hawaii Temple, as the stake president.29 Arthur Kapewaokeao Waipa Parker, a native Hawaiian, would serve as one of his counselors.30 Men and women with Polynesian and Asian ancestry were also called to the stake high council, Relief Society presidency, and other leadership positions.31
The diversity of Hawaii’s Church members impressed the prophet.32 Previous missionary efforts had focused on native Hawaiians, but the gospel net was widening. In the 1930s, people of Japanese descent made up more than a third of Hawaii’s population. Many other people in Hawaii had Samoan, Māori, Filipino, and Chinese ancestry.33
The prophet established the new stake on June 30, 1935. A few days later, he attended a dinner with Japanese Church members. The small group had been meeting weekly to study in a Japanese-language Sunday School class.34 During dinner, Heber listened as the Saints performed music on traditional Japanese instruments. He also heard the testimonies of Tomizo Katsunuma, who had joined the Church as a student at the Agricultural College in Utah, and Tsune Nachie, a seventy-nine-year-old Saint who had been baptized in Japan and later emigrated to Hawaii in the 1920s so she could work in the temple.35
The food, music, and testimonies took Heber back three decades to when he had served as the first president of the Japanese Mission. He had always been disappointed with his work in Japan. Despite his wholehearted efforts, he had never succeeded in learning the language, and the mission saw only a few converts. Later mission presidents had also struggled, and Heber closed the mission a few years after becoming Church president, still wondering what else he might have done to make the mission a success.36
“To the end of my life,” he once observed, “I may feel that I have not done what the Lord expected of me, and what I was sent there to do.”37
As Heber met the Japanese Saints and learned more about their Sunday School, he realized that Hawaii might be key to launching a new mission to Japan. While in Honolulu, he’d had the opportunity to confirm two newly baptized Japanese members. One of these Saints, Kichitaro Ikegami, had been teaching the Sunday School for two years before his baptism. The impressive young man was a devoted father and an influential businessman on Oahu.38
It struck Heber that he had now confirmed more Japanese Saints in Hawaii than he had during his entire mission to Japan.39 Perhaps, when the time was right, these Saints could be called on missions to Japan and help the Church take root in that land.40
Everyday life continued to change around Helga Meiszus. Early in 1935, Adolf Hitler had publicly announced that Germany was strengthening its military power, violating the treaty it had signed at the end of the world war. The nations of Europe did little to curtail his power. With the help of his minister of propaganda, Hitler was bending Germany to his will. Enormous rallies showcasing Nazi strength attracted hundreds of thousands of people. Pro-Hitler radio programs, nationalistic music, and the Nazi swastika were everywhere.41
Changes were occurring in the Church as well. While the Bee-Hive Girls continued to meet, the government had disbanded the Church’s Boy Scout program in Germany to encourage more young men to join the Nazi Party’s youth groups. Nazi hatred for Jews had also led the government to forbid churches from using words associated with Judaism. Articles of Faith was banned for containing the words “Israel” and “Zion.” Other Church literature, including a tract called Divine Authority, was outlawed for seeming to challenge Nazi power.42
Church leaders in Germany had resisted some of these efforts, but they ultimately encouraged the Saints to adapt to the new government and refrain from saying or doing anything that would put the Church and its members in danger.43 With the Gestapo seemingly everywhere, the Saints in Tilsit knew that any hint of rebellion or resistance could find its way back to the secret police. Most German Saints stayed out of politics, but there was always the fear that someone in the branch was associated with the Nazis.
The safest thing to do, many members of the branch believed, was to act the part of loyal, obedient Germans. A single instance of disloyalty from a branch member could put everyone at risk of Nazi retaliation.44
Helga found comfort, safety, and friendship among the other youth at church, including her brother Siegfried and cousin Kurt Brahtz. The branch often put on programs with acting and music or hosted lively parties with tables full of potato salad, German sausages, and streuselkuchen, a tasty crumb cake.45 The youth usually spent the entire Sabbath day together. After attending Sunday School in the morning, they would go to the home of a Church member, like Helga’s aunt or grandmother. If there was a piano, somebody would sit down and play while everyone sang from the Church’s German hymnbook.
Later, after sacrament meeting, they would find their way to the house of Heinz Schulzke, the teenage son of branch president Otto Schulzke, to talk, laugh, and enjoy each other’s company. President Schulzke had become like a second father to Helga and the other youth. He had high expectations for them, often exhorting them to repent and keep the commandments. But he also told many stories and had a wry sense of humor. Whenever someone came into church late and everyone turned around to see who it was, he would say, “I will tell you when a lion is coming in—you don’t have to turn around.”46
Helga also looked to her grandmother for comfort and guidance. Johanne Wachsmuth could be stern, like Otto Schulzke, and she was not quick to spoil her grandchildren. She was a deeply religious woman who knew how to speak with her Father in Heaven. Whenever Helga stayed at her grandparents’ house, Johanne expected her to kneel in prayer beside her.
One night, Helga was mad at her grandmother and refused to pray. Rather than leaving Helga alone, Johanne insisted that they pray together.
Helga relented, and as she knelt on the hard floor, her bitterness melted away. Her grandmother was her friend, the one who had taught her how to talk with God. Afterward, Helga was grateful for the experience. It felt good to know that she had not let anger take hold of her heart.47
In February 1936, ten months after his initial meeting with the First Presidency, Harold B. Lee once again found himself in their office. President Grant was ready to move forward on a relief plan for needy Saints. A recent survey of wards and stakes, conducted by the Presiding Bishopric, revealed that nearly one in five Saints was receiving some form of financial assistance. Few of them were turning to the Church for help, however, partly because the federal government had dramatically increased the amount of aid given to states in recent years. The Presiding Bishopric believed the Church could assist all needy members if every Latter-day Saint did his or her part to care for the poor.48
President Grant and his counselors asked Harold to revise his earlier proposal. They recruited Campbell Brown Jr., the director of the welfare program for a local copper mine, to assist him.49
Over the next few weeks, Harold worked night and day, analyzing the statistics, counseling with Campbell, and reconsidering the previous plan. Then, on March 18, they took the revised proposal to President McKay and walked him through every detail.50 According to the new plan, the stakes of the Church would be organized into geographical regions, and each region would have its own central storehouse stocked with food and clothing. These items would be procured with fast offering or tithing funds, or generated by work projects, or received through “in-kind” tithing donations. If one region had a surplus of a particular item, it could trade with another region for items that it needed.
Regional councils of stake presidents would manage the program, but much of the responsibility for maintaining it would fall on the bishoprics, ward Relief Society presidencies, and newly created ward employment committees. Members of the employment committee would maintain a record of all ward members’ employment status, to be updated weekly. They would also organize work projects and assist members with other forms of relief.51
The plan called for the Saints to receive assistance in exchange for labor, just as the Pioneer Stake had done. Participants in work projects would meet with their bishop to discuss their need for food, clothing, fuel, or other necessities, and then a representative from the Relief Society would visit the home, assess the family’s circumstances, and fill out an order form to be presented at the stake storehouse. Saints would receive aid according to their individual circumstances, meaning that two people might work the same amount of time in one day but receive a different amount of food or supplies, depending on family size or other factors.52
When Harold and Campbell finished their explanation, they could see that President McKay was pleased.
“Brethren, now we have a program to present to the Church,” he exclaimed, slapping the table with his hand. “The Lord has inspired you in your work.”53