There’s Always the Promise of Morning—
Ruth H. Funk, President of the Young Women of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

by Jeane Woolfenden

Editorial Associate

Sunday dinner was over in the Salt Lake avenue home. The fast had been prayerfully broken, and Ruth was in the kitchen with her mother. Washing dishes for the family was a daily task for her since her three brothers weren’t old enough to be of any real help. Besides, she really enjoyed that private time with her mother. But tonight was special. Brother Tracy Y. Cannon, one of the Church’s most outstanding musicians, had come to dinner. He and her father, T. Fred Hardy, were in the living room—discussing Ruth.

It was about her possible career in music. By the time she was 12, she had already demonstrated an unusual talent and desire to be a musician. She would often get up at 4:00 A.M. and sit for hours at the piano. Her difficulty was stopping, not starting, her practicing. She disliked scales but knew they were vital to her skill, so she invented a way to add interest to her practice: she would pick a book she wanted to read and set it where the piano music should have rested. While reading, she would run through all her exercises with proficiency.

Brother Cannon knew of Ruth’s skill and promise, and of course, her family was aware of the potential in their daughter. But it wasn’t until Leopold Godowsky (one of the world’s greatest pianists) heard her play and strongly recommended that she be sent to the best schools to pursue a career in music that any real consideration was given to special training for Ruth.

The final decision was her father’s. Her mother had offered the prayer as the purposeful fast was ended. Ruth had been consulted and talked with in depth, and Brother Cannon had been asked to share his concern and deep experience. Ruth very trustingly and willingly submitted to her father’s decision: No—the life of devotion to music was not the Lord’s plan for her.

From then on, music took a new focus in her life—it was never lost, only redirected. And the experience she had with her kind and caring father proved to be a foreshadow of many events to be guided by the hand of the Lord and directed through the priesthood bearers in her life.

Today Sister Ruth Hardy Funk is the President of the Young Women of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with nearly 225,000 young women between the ages of 12 and 18 throughout the world influenced by her leadership.

President Funk was called to her position by President Harold B. Lee in November of 1972. Her husband had received a phone call in his dentist office from President Lee’s secretary, and he immediately called Ruth, who was teaching music at East High School (Salt Lake City) at the time.

“Are you sitting down?” he asked. She did sit down, and her husband told her that President Lee had requested that he bring his wife to 47 East South Temple—the office of the president of the Church. Later she remembered feeling weak and then just crying.

Sitting across the huge wooden desk from the president of the Church was a thrilling experience for Brother and Sister Marcus Funk. She sat there as once again the priesthood bearers in her life discussed the Lord’s will concerning her. President Lee and Brother Funk conversed back and forth about her abilities, her love for and persuasiveness with youth, her tenacity for work, her limitless energy, and her deep devotion to the gospel and the Lord. Again she very trustingly and openly accepted their decision: She accepted the call to be the president of the then 103-year-old organization.

Sister Funk’s life has been filled with preparatory experiences—step-by-step, some happy, some very difficult. But she is blessed with remarkable resilience and optimism and greets every morning—no matter what the evening before saw or what the dawn brings—with an invigorated and renewed spirit. “There’s always the promise of morning,” she says.

When she was 21, she married Marcus in the Salt Lake Temple. Soon after their marriage they traveled east to Chicago where he entered school to become a dentist. He was in school during the Great Depression, and in order to help him achieve his goal, Ruth decided to find a job. There was a typing job open, but she couldn’t type.

She could, however, make her fingers fly over those piano keys, and she felt she could make her fingers learn anything. So for two solid weeks she riveted her fingertips to the keyboard of a manual typewriter and taught herself to type. Out of the 81 applicants for the job, she was selected!

Then World War II began and Marc was sent to sea. Ruth decided to wait in her parents’ home, and it proved to be a long, frightening vigil. But Marc was preserved to see his and Ruth’s family expand to three daughters and a son. And as Nancy, Allyson, Judd, and Jennie Jo each entered the Funk home and the family began sinking deeper roots in Salt Lake City, Ruth was given responsible callings in addition to being a good mother and supportive wife.

Sister Lucy Grant Cannon, general president of the Young Women’s Mutual Improvement Association, called Ruth the “baby of the board”—after all, Ruth was barely 30 when called to serve as a general board member. Those years are bright in her memory because she was able to serve with her mother, Polly Reynolds Hardy, who was in her own right a scriptural scholar and a talented editor.

Ruth’s family is important to her—every member, including her widowed mother-in-law. She recalls many learning experiences at the hands of the elderly Mother Funk, even a lesson in more earnest prayer. Her mother-in-law, who was hard of hearing, would often speak in loud tones, almost as if no one could hear her any better than she could hear them. Ruth would visit her frequently to check on her welfare, for Mother Funk was aging and alone.

“Many were the times,” Ruth remembers, “when I found her on her knees in her bedroom in supplication—rather loud supplication—to the Lord. She never heard me come in, so I would wait patiently and quietly, learning anew how to truly pray. That grand lady would speak to the Lord with such a fervent soul and real intent—it was beautiful.”

In July of 1962, Sister Funk was released from her MIA work and called to the General Church Correlation Committee. There she worked on both the adult and youth correlation committees as well as the curriculum development committee until her call to the presidency of the YWMIA on November 9, 1972.

During her work on both the YWMIA general board and the correlation committees, Sister Funk came to know Sister Hortense H. Child, now her first counselor. Sister Child tells the story of the time she needed to give an important report on short notice. Before coming to the office that day she had forgotten to change from an old pair of gardening shoes. She just traded shoes with Ruth and carried on with her usual poise. But Ruth got even: she was asked in one meeting by the president of the Church to play the piano for an opening song, but she had forgotten her glasses. She just got up from her seat in the audience, and when she passed Sister Child, who was sitting on the aisle, she took off Hortense’s glasses as she swished by, put them on, and read the music without a flaw.

Through all these years of growing and preparing, Ruth has been directed and comforted by the priesthood leader presiding in her home. He has been supportive in every call that has come. And her sensitivity to him as her leader is always present. At her suggestion there is even a special chair in the living room that the family refers to as the “priesthood chair.” In that chair Marc sits during the family home evening, and in that chair Ruth and her children have each received special blessings at Marc’s hands for comfort and aid in times of special need.

Ruth’s home is filled with memorabilia from travels and assignments in the Church, but more especially it is filled with signs of her eight grandchildren, her love for learning and music, and her gracious ability to welcome company and entertain guests.

Ruth has a love for children that she gained in part from her own youth. Many of Ruth’s childhood summers were spent in Springville, Utah, with her Aunt Millie Reynolds Martain. Aunt Millie was the midwife for that area, and like the old horse-and-buggy country doctor, many nights—good weather or bad—she would go out to help some new child into the world.

When Ruth was visiting her, Millie would take her along. Ruth would wait outside until the baby had come and then be called in to help give the newborn his first bath.

It was a beautiful tradition that helped teach her reverence for life; she has carried it on with each of her grandchildren. Wherever it happens, when they come into the world, Grandmother Funk is there to welcome them. Her careful attention and investment of time and love has developed into a close relationship with each of her grandchildren.

In August of 1976 tragedy struck the family when one of those precious little souls died. Grandmother Funk flew immediately to England to be with her daughter and son-in-law through this trial. On her return home she remarked to friends, “My heart’s never been so heavy. But I believe I’ve learned something exquisite from the experience—I believe I’ve felt in some small measure the suffering the Lord himself feels when he sees his children suffer.”

Sister Ruth’s office on the 16th floor of the new Church Office Building reflects much about her. On one of the lamp tables sits a blue porcelain statue of a woman with a child in her arms. It was given Ruth by Sister Ardeth G. Kapp, her second counselor, on Ruth’s birthday as a remembrance of her tender care and stewardship for the daughters and future mothers of Zion.

On Sister Funk’s desk are piles of neatly organized papers and folders. A typical day for President Funk begins early in the morning before anyone else arises. She sits at her desk and methodically proceeds through the minutia of details requiring her immediate attention. When even the earliest arrivals at the office come, Ruth is well into her work day, and they have to start running to catch up with her. Her day is usually filled with appointments and meetings and administrative creativity.

Throughout the year she travels to all parts of the world, spreading her encouragement and vision of the Young Women program, gathering information about what girls are really like in places like Johannesburg, Tokyo, Templeview, and Peoa, and learning what they really need to help them become perfected daughters of God.

The youth program has seen many refinements during the time Sister Ruth has served as the president of Young Women. Just a few short months after her calling, the YWMIA and the YMMIA were shifted closer to direct priesthood lines of authority and became the Aaronic Priesthood MIA. Soon after that, further clarification of the roles and direction of the youth programs came, and the Young Women became an independent yet correlated program with the young men’s.

That was in June 1974. One year later there was another change of a historic nature. It was announced that Churchwide June Conferences held in Salt Lake City would be discontinued. One of Ruth’s most memorable experiences came during the last June Conference session held in the Salt Lake Tabernacle. Traditionally, every year the leaders of the MIA sang “Firm as the Mountains Around Us” during the opening session. It was the last time that Ruth May Fox’s hymn for youth would be sung in such a setting. The song was announced, and then the conductor arose. But instead of raising his arms to lead the singing, he called for President Funk to come forward. “Because of her great love for youth and her dedication to them, we feel it only fitting that she conduct this song at this special time.” Surprised but willing, she was assisted by the Brethren nearby to climb onto the conductor’s stand. With exuberance she led the thousands of leaders packed into the Tabernacle in singing: “O youth of the noble birthright, Carry on, carry on, carry on!”

Through all the travel and meetings, the work and management, the struggles and decisions, President Ruth Hardy Funk shines through with unconquerable faith and energy. Her ability to bounce back at any discouragement has carried not only herself but all who work with her through the uneasy parts of administering a new program. She is devoted to the gospel and loyal to her priesthood leaders. Her prayer for the coming generations of women in the Church is that each will find the Lord’s will as her guiding light, that each will marry a strong and worthy priesthood leader, and that each will realize there’s always the promise of morning.

Illustrated by Dale Kilbourn