The Tragic Childhood That Forged A Prophet | Interview With Dallin H. Oaks Biographer

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Dallin H. Oaks was just called to be the 18th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And there are probably lots of people out there wondering who is the real Dallin H. Oaks. This man, who some may know, had a legal background. Maybe he was president of byu. But there is so much more to the life of Dallin H. Oaks than many probably realize. In order to better understand who is Dallin H. Oaks and what kind of a prophet he's going to be, we are joined here in studio with Rick Turley, who is the author of a biography that was published just a few years ago in the hands of the Lord, the Life of Dallin H. Oaks. Short of Dallin H. Oaks himself, Rick Turley is probably the best man for the job to ask these sorts of questions. How Dallin H. Oaks life was miraculously preserved, how he was prepared to become the prophet that he is now, and other great humanizing insights into the life of Dallin H. Oaks to learn who this man truly is. So, Rick Turley, thank you so much for joining us on Informed Saints. [00:00:59] Speaker B: Thank you for the invitation. [00:01:00] Speaker A: Okay, so before we get into it, let me introduce Rick here. I should say Richard E. Turley Jr. We call him Rick. His friends and colleagues affectionately call him Rick. But Rick here has had himself a great career. He's a historian. He got his English degree from BYU and then went on to get his JD from the J. Reuben Clark Law School at byu. So like Elder Oaks, like President Oaks, he has a law background. Many probably know Rick from his work on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. He's published two phenomenal books on. On that subject, which are available through Oxford University Press. He has also published probably the definitive work on the Mark Hoffman saga entitled Mark Hoffman and the LDS Church through University of Illinois Press. Right. Back in, back in the 90s. Another phenomenal book, and the one that we are looking forward to from Rick is his forthcoming biography of Joseph Smith, which the church has commissioned. It is titled Joseph the Prophet, and there's a lot of work going into that one. We are looking forward to when that will come out here. [00:01:58] Speaker C: And did you mention he was also a church historian as well? [00:02:00] Speaker A: I think so, yes. [00:02:01] Speaker C: Okay. [00:02:02] Speaker A: I should have. Assistant church historian, worked on the Joseph Smith papers, worked for the family history department as well as the Church Communications department. [00:02:11] Speaker B: Right. [00:02:11] Speaker A: And the public relations department. So Rick has had a storied career, both in the law, in history and in the church. And we are glad to have you with us here today, Rick. [00:02:20] Speaker B: Thank you very much. [00:02:20] Speaker C: So let's Do a brief life sketch. Who's President Oaks? [00:02:24] Speaker B: President Dallin H. Oaks began life as the child of two educated parents. His father was a medical doctor. There were a number of people in the medical field in his family. As he grew up, he experienced the tragic death of his father when he was just a young man. And then that led to a period of time in which his mother was saddled not only with the responsibility of caring for three children, but also experienced a mental health crash. And so there was a period of time in which she was being treated for that crash, and he was living with his grandparents. So his grandparents, his mother's parents, in effect, became his surrogate parents for a time. She then recovered from that and went on to get an education. And with that education, she moved the children around. They went to Vernal, and then they eventually moved to Provo. And to me, one of the great changes in his life that he made was a decision early on in his life to let work be the salve for tragedy and difficulty. His motto became work first, play later. And we see that in his early life. When he was 15 years old, his mother got a job that moved her from Vernal to Provo. He was in high school at the time, just getting ready to enter his junior year. And like most children who are in high school and get well established with their friends and their extracurricular activities, the move from Vernal to Provo could have been very challenging for him. But he decided that he was going to go to work and make this something that could be very much a benefit to him rather than a disaster. So he went ahead with the moving truck and the furniture. And by the time his mother and siblings got there, he had already found himself a job at a radio station. A job that he had for the remaining two years of high school and the four years of college that he experienced at Brigham Young University. So to me, it's a good example of how a young person can decide, do I sit and wallow in my self pity or do I exercise some faith and go out and try to do something? So that's just one example of many things that he did. And then he graduated. And I think his life beyond that point is better known. [00:04:47] Speaker A: Yeah, right. His legal career, his academic career as president of byu, and so forth. So when they announced the death of President Nelson the next day, my wife and I decided we wanted to read this in preparation for President Oaks being called. And I always thought that I knew who Dallin H. Oaks was. Right. Sort of in Broad strokes. But reading your biography, especially about his young life, his childhood, growing up. Right. That was where I learned a lot of really sort of amazing things about the man. You mentioned his work ethic as a young man, of course, the tragic passing of his father and how that really kind of saddled him with this responsibility to step up to the occasion for himself, for his family. He even mentioned this in his last general conference talk right before he was called. [00:05:34] Speaker C: I was walking my daughter the other day while I was reading this book. I was like, you know, stroller in one hand, Kindle in the other. Reading it and reading about the passing of his father, I just started breaking down crying. I wasn't expecting it, especially because we had just recently heard him kind of speak to that for the first time publicly in general conference. But I remember just being so moved and so touched by the grief of that tragedy and how it would have rocked that man. And so what. I don't know how formative was that moment in President Oaks life and how it shaped the rest of how he approached life. You mentioned work being one coping mechanism for grief, but what else might you have to say about that moment in his life? [00:06:17] Speaker B: It was, for him at the time, a moment of crisis. I think he felt as though his life had been severely rocked. His grandfather approached him when he was in his room feeling really bad, and his grandfather said, I will be a father to you. And there were many other people during the course of his life who stepped in and became father figures to him. But that initial effort on the part of his grandfather to fill in for the role of his father was important. That being said, he missed his father. He missed him a lot. They had been very close. And as he went through the rest of his childhood, he continued to feel his father's presence, in part because he had a wonderful mother who let the children know that their father was not forever gone. He was simply temporarily gone with death, but that they would be together again someday. So she kept the presence of the father in the home so that the children really never knew that their mother was a widow. In fact, there was one experience in which young Dallin was invited to take baskets to widows in the ward. And at the end, they handed one to him to take home to his mother. And his initial reaction was, why? Why, Mom? You know, we have a father. Yeah. So I think his. His wonderful mother, a strong, dynamic woman, kept the presence of her husband in the home. And so he grew up without a father, and yet feeling that he had a father. [00:07:42] Speaker C: Wow. And you mentioned that the grandfather was going to be a father to him. To what extent did he fulfill that? [00:07:49] Speaker B: He fulfilled it very well. While Dallin and his siblings were living with the grandparents, which they did for a couple of years once they moved elsewhere, of course, the grandfather wasn't as present as he had been previously, though they would go back and visit, and Dallin would spend time there during the summer as well. So he really did fulfill that as best he could. And I think that the young Dallin Oaks felt his grandfather was a surrogate father. [00:08:18] Speaker D: This is something I was wondering after that conference talk he gave, just his last conference, which is that conference talk actually was the impetus for me to go read the biography, because that was the first time I had heard him in a public discourse like that, tell such a personal story. Do you feel like that his experience growing up without his father in the home, how has that impacted and influenced his ministry and his emphasis on the family, do you think? [00:08:46] Speaker B: I think it's had a big impact. I think it's also had an impact on how he feels about women. He grew up with a very, very strong mother. She was educated. She was working. When Dallin Oaks became president, Oaks, president of Brigham Young University, one of the things that he did was review the pay scales for women. [00:09:06] Speaker C: Oh, really? [00:09:06] Speaker B: Because his mother had experienced life as a working woman. And so they went to work and they made certain that women who did the same work were paid the same as men. Wow. Yeah. And he's long felt that education is extremely important for women. When he was president of Brigham Young University, he said to women, you're not just here to earn your Mrs. Degree, which was the thing that many women were studying at BYU at the time. He said, you're here to get an education, and you never know what education. You never know when your education might benefit you. You might be thinking, I'm going to grow up, get married, not work, and I'm not going to need an education. He said, you don't know that. You don't know if you will get married. You don't know if you will lose your husband. You don't know if you're going to need to work even with a husband, so get a good education. [00:09:54] Speaker C: I mean, I was struck as reading his experience through law school. I was exhausted reading it, because it's clear how just rigorous it is, how many long hours he was working, how much sacrifice he had to make to do that. And yet it was almost just like kind of snuck in there that June was also pursuing her education at the time, at least during parts of it. And I'm like, wow. You know, just. That means that there was had to been sacrifice on both ends to allow both June and Dallin to make sure they were getting their education. [00:10:20] Speaker D: I was gonna say, I noticed, yeah, June was getting her education, and he would have to step in and do more in the home while she was doing that. And so there was definitely a balance. There was a give and take in their marriage. But I assume you're leading up to something there. [00:10:33] Speaker C: Sorry, I just thought that was interesting. [00:10:35] Speaker A: Well, maybe we can get to that in just a minute. His storied legal career. The one thing I wanted to point out. And maybe you could shed some light on this, Rick, for us before we jump to sort of the middle age of Dallin H. Oak, his legal career. He's kind of like a Wilford Woodruff figure in the sense that, like, he's had many, like, near brushes with death. It seems like the one that, like, really floored me was the story how as, like, a little toddler, he was thrown from a car in a car accident in Provo. Like, you know, I have a little son, and I can't imagine the horror of having your kid ejected from a car and then he's miraculously survives. Right. I can imagine. So that's probably the most dramatic example. Are there others that you kind of can highlight for us that shows that the Lord truly was protecting this boy because he knew what calling he had for him later in life? [00:11:24] Speaker B: Well, that's probably the most dramatic one. But as far as his life is concerned, I think one of the most dramatic was when he was in Chicago and he and June were taking another sister in the ward home from church, and he took her up to the door, only to be subsequently approached by a young man on the street who put a gun up to him and basically demanded his money. He took his wallet out and showed him he didn't have any money. Then he wanted to have him unlock the car and get to June, and he wanted to protect his wife. So he refused. And the young man basically threatened to kill him. And then Professor Oaks decided, I'm not going to go there. So he just. He was willing to sacrifice his life on behalf of his wife. And then the young man ultimately thought better of what he was doing and walked away after getting some gentle counseling from Professor Oakes. Wow. [00:12:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Like I said, just amazing. And there's so many little anecdotes like these in the book that, I mean, even that alone makes it worth the Price of admission, right? Just to learn these little things about him. [00:12:26] Speaker D: Even at birth, there was a moment where he wasn't breathing and they weren't sure, hey, is he gonna make it? Is there going to be long term impact on his cognitive abilities and things like that? [00:12:39] Speaker B: The method of delivering children was different in those days from what it is today. They often anesthetized the mother, and they did in this case. So when he came out, when the baby came out, he was not breathing. And they went through the usual routine in those days of trying to get him to breathe. And ultimately a relative who was there, a woman who had spent her own time in the medical profession, she got out a spray and sprayed him with something that made him extremely cold and that caused him to jump awake and that saved his life. Inspiration that came to this relative. [00:13:14] Speaker C: So one thing that, as I was reading, I read this book thinking, like, okay, what makes this man a prophet? Like, what is developing him spiritually? And I was a little surprised and somewhat reassured in my own life that it was, you know, a very ordinary spiritual upbringing. It's not like he was this protege of the gospel when he was a youth. In fact, he even struggled to keep the Sabbath day holy in his younger years. And it seemed very much like a line upon line, precept upon precept, just like growing more anchored in the gospel as he grew up. But there is one experience in his youth that I thought was just so striking, and that was the miracle of his cousin, toddler on the farm. Could you tell that story briefly? [00:13:49] Speaker B: Yes. When they were on the farm, his cousin Sterling toddled out and was walking around and then came up missing. And people realized when they walked over to the bridge that crossed the ditch, they'd fallen into the irrigation ditch. So they ran up and down the ditch looking for him, and ultimately they pulled out his body. And he watched his grandfather take this lifeless body and give it a priesthood blessing and command this child to live. And he watched the child begin breathing again. The man went on to live a good and full and active and accomplished life. And so he knew as a young man that he had witnessed a miracle. So that had a dramatic impact on him. There were other things that had a dramatic impact on him. He ended up with good teachers, including seminary teachers and scouting leaders and others. When he was in junior high and high school, because of his work at the radio station, which runs seven days a week, he often worked on Sundays and so forth. But when he left for law school, his mother gently reminded him that her husband his father had gone through medical school without ever working on the Sabbath. And so he decided that he would go through law school and spend the Sabbath day dedicated to the Lord. That had an impact on him. There was another occasion when he was in the National Guard, and he went to a camp for a while and was playing poker with everybody and doing really well. And everybody. When it was all over, he thought to himself, well, I didn't lose a lot of money. I didn't gamble away anything that was really significant. But was that really an appropriate behavior for someone who is a Latter Day Saint? And so he resolved that he would not do that again, and he didn't. So these little moments in his life when he just decided, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, that gave him incremental progress in life. He would tell me often that one of the most important things he did was choose well. When he married June, Dixon Oaks was a powerful influence in his life. From the moment he married her. And they were young. They were both 19 at the time. From the moment they married, she helped to make his life better. He became a better student. He became more spiritual. He became more calm in his demeanor. She served as a real strong anchor to him throughout the period that she lived. [00:16:13] Speaker C: And his grades got better, too. [00:16:14] Speaker B: They did. [00:16:15] Speaker A: She truly was a refining influence. [00:16:18] Speaker C: That was a really funny story, though, about how they first met and how he ended up with June instead of Jean. Can you maybe tell how that first date went? [00:16:26] Speaker B: Yes. He feels that that date had something happen on it that made the difference in his life because she was such a great influence. But he went on this date with these identical twins, and he wasn't sure which of the two he was dating. [00:16:41] Speaker A: Because it was the classic conundrum. [00:16:43] Speaker B: Right. And he so embarrassed that he figured that if he didn't learn her name, he would never ask her out again because he wouldn't know who to call. And as it turned out, near the end of the date, he hears someone use her name. And so he then grabbed that name, and he knew what it was. But had it not, he often reflected, had it not been for that moment of someone using her name, I would not have known which twin I was dating, and I would not have followed up. And I would have missed the opportunity to marry this wonderful. [00:17:08] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. Well, lots of great anecdotes from President Oaks childhood and early adolescent years. Like I said, that alone is worth the price of admission for the book. Maybe we could take a few minutes to talk about Sort of, we'll say part two, act two of the life of Dallin H. Oaks, which is sort of his. His legal career in Chicago and his time as president of byu. Do you want to give us a quick rundown of what that part of his life looks like? What are the highlights of that time of his life? And then we can ask a couple specific questions to help flesh out that period. Because again, when I think of Dallin H. Oaks, that's usually what pops to my mind. But BYU president and an Associate justice on the Utah Supreme Court, right? Oh, yeah, and he was in Chicago, I guess. But there's so much more to it than just that. So, Rick, do you want to walk us through that part of President Oaks life real quick? [00:17:56] Speaker B: The Chicago period of President Oaks life was quite important to his development. When he graduated from BYU and made the decision to go to the University of Chicago Law School, he was going as a young Utah graduate to one of the nation's finest law schools. And even though he knew he was a hard worker, and even though I think he had a general sense that he was intelligent, he worried that going into this competitive field might be very difficult for him. And so his initial feeling was, if I can come out at the end of the first semester or the first year in the middle of the pack so that I'm not really humiliating myself, I'll feel really good about my performance. As it turned out, he put that work ethic into play and he worked extremely hard. And with his native intelligence, he came out at the end of the first semester and the first year number one in his class. [00:18:50] Speaker A: Yeah, amazing. [00:18:52] Speaker B: And that caused him to recognize that he had ability in the legal field. And so he went on. Law school is a very interesting experience, having gone through, I was going to. [00:19:01] Speaker A: Say you could speak for this racer himself. [00:19:02] Speaker B: Yeah, basically, the first year of law school is the most rigorous and difficult for most students. Second year becomes easier and the third year is easier yet, unless you do really well. If you do really well, then the second year they put you on the law review. Now, a law review is a professional journal. It's the only professional journal of which I am aware. A law review in which the journal is completely edited by students. All other professional journals are edited by professors, but in this particular case they're done by students. So to be brought onto the law Review means that in addition to a very difficult academic load, you now have a full time job for which you are not paid. Right. So you then have to compete with students who don't have that extra burden on top of them. And if you do really well your second year, you get pulled onto the Board of Editors of the Law Review. Oh, boy. The most intense year yet. And he was named Editor in Chief of the Law Review for his third year. [00:20:04] Speaker A: And this is the Chicago Law Review, right? [00:20:06] Speaker B: University of Chicago Law Review. So very, very rigorous and well known Law Review. So his law Review experience was extremely intense. On top of that, he decided that he would engage in moot court competition. And then of course, he had his church responsibilities and his family responsibilities. So he learned how to balance all of that and came out doing very, very well in law school. In fact, he did so well that he was selected as a clerk for the Chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, which for many law students is considered to be the ultimate accomplishment, if you can be one of the few. [00:20:40] Speaker C: So to kind of give a context of how competitive that is, how many clerks of the U.S. supreme Court are there? [00:20:46] Speaker B: Well, there are typically, I think, two, although I'm not absolutely certain of that because I have not been one myself. But I think there are two or three for each Justice. If you have nine justices, you're talking about less than three. Doz. Wow. [00:20:58] Speaker C: And that's like the top honor coming out of law school for all the. [00:21:01] Speaker B: Law schools in the country. And generally they pick their. Their law clerks from the very finest students at the finest law schools. [00:21:08] Speaker C: Impressive. [00:21:09] Speaker D: And the Chief justice he. He clerked for, that was Earl Warren, if I'm remembering correctly. Who. For context, for people, he's the. He was the Chief justice over the Court for Brown versus Education, which one of the most significant decisions in the history of the Supreme Court. And also, if you've ever heard on like a cop procedural show them reading the Miranda rights, that is a direct outcome of Earl Warren's Court as well. A decision that they made about having to make sure when you're arresting someone, you're arresting a perpetrator or a suspect. A suspect. [00:21:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:46] Speaker D: That they know what their rights are. They have the right to remain silent, and anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. So that is. That's a result of. Now, those decisions weren't made while Dallin H. Oaks was clerking for him, but this is a pretty significant Supreme Court Justice. [00:22:01] Speaker B: It is indeed. And he did so well, although at the beginning he didn't know how well he was doing. Justice the Chief, as his clerks called him, the Chief didn't give a lot of feedback. So they were always left to Wonder, how did I do in drafting my brief? How did I do in fulfilling the assignment the chief gave us? And so he didn't really know until he got called in one day and the chief said, I really like what you're doing. And then at the end of his first year, the chief tried to talk him into staying for a second year and sort of being the lead clerk for all of this. At that point, because of his need to make money for his family and go back to the firm that he was interested in working for, he chose not to accept that. But it was a great honor to have the Chief justice of the US Supreme Court ask him to remain behind. [00:22:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I can imagine. [00:22:51] Speaker C: There was a moment that I thought was a little humorous, too, and I'm gonna botch it in my memory. But he talked about how the Supreme Court justice he was working for was more politically liberal than Dallin A. Jokes felt he was as well. But then he, like, went through this exercise where he tried to, like, tally how many times he actually agreed with the Justice's decision. And he's like, oh, I actually agreed with him more times than I thought. Maybe I'm a little more liberal than I thought I was. [00:23:14] Speaker B: That's a pretty accurate. [00:23:17] Speaker A: Maybe we could ask just one question on that point of balancing work with life, with family, with his ecclesiastical roles, because as you just went down, this review of what he was accomplishing at this time. Right. Clearly, Dallin H. Oaks is not a slouch, and he has so many responsibilities. This is probably a thing that many people today struggle with, even members of the church struggle with. How do I balance my church calling, with my professional life, with my family life? Are there any insights, perhaps, or any. I don't want to say tips, but any strategies, perhaps, that came out of the life of Dallin H. Oaks that he's talked about or that you learned from his life to help that balance between work, life, family, and your church calling, a responsibility. Is there anything that really kind of sunk in with him that helped him find that balance? [00:24:01] Speaker B: I think two things immediately come to mind. One is that he made that decision that he would keep the Sabbath holy. So that gave him a Sabbath with his family and fulfilling his church responsibilities. He also made the decision that when he came home in the evening, he would play with his children and have dinner with them. He might then study intently for hours thereafter. But he always had that time when his children knew he was there at home, and June knew that, too. So he's made that basically a habit throughout his Life. If you talk to his children, I spoke to all of them. They talked about the importance of dinner. And dinner for them was a time of equality. It didn't matter your age or your experience. You were expected to speak up and engage in the conversation, and your opinions were respected regardless of who you were. [00:24:49] Speaker A: Yeah, that's great. I mean, I love this well rounded portrait of Dallin H. Oaks, because again, we see him up there at the podium at your own conference. Right. And we think, oh, yes, President Oaks. But he's a family man. He has a family. He has children. He was playful with them, having family dinner with them, in addition to all of his legal work he's doing. It was a very humanizing portrait of President Oaks in this regard. [00:25:08] Speaker B: And it doesn't mean they didn't have difficulties. They did. They had the normal difficulties parents have. One of the stories that I tell in the book that I got from President Oaks was that when they were there in Chicago, they were living in housing that was modest. And as part of that modest housing, they had a barrel out front that had heating oil in it for their heater. And the daughters decided to go out there and they took a cup and they drank. Oh, no. And they got rushed to the hospital. Oh, no. And that led some of his classmates, who knew how strict he and June kept the word of wisdom, that led them to say, you know, Dallin and June don't drink anything, but their daughters drink anything. [00:25:50] Speaker A: That's great. Oh, that's really funny. [00:25:52] Speaker C: What a relatable parenting moment that nonetheless, like, makes me cringe. Like, oh, no, not the oil for the children. But at the same time, like, what parent hasn't had embarrassing moments like that. Yeah. Where they're just trying their best, but kids will do what kids are going to be. [00:26:04] Speaker A: Kids are going to be kids. Absolutely. So. So that's Donnie Chokes in Chicago. Professor Oaks. Right. He's teaching at the law school. He's involved with the Supreme Court. Right. And then, I don't know if there's anything else you want to cover. [00:26:15] Speaker B: There is. [00:26:15] Speaker A: Let me think. [00:26:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I've talked about his careers. But then, of course, after he. After he leaves the US Supreme Court clerkship, he joins a very prominent law firm in Chicago and is seen by the partners there as someone that they want to fast track. They want him to become a partner himself. They see his capabilities, and so they work him very, very hard. And throughout all of that, he begins to ponder whether he wants to spend his life doing that. He would have been fabulously Rich if he had done so. But his reason for going into law in the first place is that he wanted to help people. And he found much more satisfaction during his legal practice in helping the indigent than he did in making a slight difference in the stock price of a large corporation. [00:27:05] Speaker C: So he was doing corporate litigation then? [00:27:08] Speaker B: Yes, he was doing corporate work. And then at the same time, he did occasional pro bono work helping indigent people. [00:27:14] Speaker A: Some great stories in the biography about some of these defendants he had, some of these clients he had that he was doing pro bono work for. [00:27:20] Speaker B: Yes. So I think it was that distinction between serving large corporations for a slight difference in their stock price versus helping indigent people make huge differences in their own lives that caused him to accept a repeated offer to become a professor at his alma mater, University of Chicago, where he became a full professor at a very young age, became assistant dean and acting dean. And there were people who said, we will make you dean if you, you know, we will promote you as dean if that's something you want to do. And intriguingly, he never did like administrative work. [00:27:57] Speaker A: The great irony of the life of Dallin H O. [00:27:59] Speaker B: It is because, as one of his daughters said, what he really wanted to do is just be a writer and a scholar. And the job that he would later say he enjoyed more than any other was being a justice on the Utah Supreme Court, because that allowed him to be a scholar and a writer. But he did fabulously well at the University of Chicago Law School. He got offers to be deans of many prominent law schools around the country, and he felt that that might be his ultimate career. But ultimately, he accepted a responsibility as executive director of the American Bar foundation, which is the scholarly arm of the American Bar Association. That put him basically at the top of a very prominent organization doing the work he loved most, which was writing and researching at the same time. It gave him some administrative responsibilities that gave him experience that he would use later. And yet behind all of that, he had this feeling, this feeling that kept coming to him that all of these opportunities that he had been given in life were not for his personal aggrandizement. They were for him to perform some type of service. He just didn't know what until. Until he heard that President Ernest L. Wilkinson was no longer going to be the president of Brigham Young University, at which time he had an impression. I will be asked to do that. [00:29:21] Speaker A: Yeah. But these very powerful premonitions. He's getting impressions that also stood out to me. [00:29:27] Speaker D: You mentioned that he had a lot of opportunities while he was still really young. And so I think it's maybe appropriate here to interject that the moment he's having this impression and this is happening, he is 39. Correct. [00:29:39] Speaker B: 39 years old. [00:29:40] Speaker D: I got to that point in the book. I'm 38. Okay. [00:29:43] Speaker C: Right now. [00:29:44] Speaker A: Had you clerked for the Supreme Court? [00:29:46] Speaker D: No, to that point in the book. And I thought, this man has accomplished, like, an entire lifetime's worth of things here, and he's only my age, so. [00:29:56] Speaker B: When he was a member of the 12, I'll jump ahead just a little bit and then come back. [00:29:58] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. [00:29:59] Speaker B: When he was a member of the 12, a man wrote to him, and he said, I've reviewed your life and everything that you've accomplished, and I feel like such an underperformer. I feel essentially depressed that I haven't been able to accomplish what you do accomplished. And he wrote this young man back, and he said, don't compare yourself to other people. He said, I've had rare opportunities that were given to me that you have not had. So don't judge yourself by comparing yourself to me. Judge yourself by how you're doing with what you've been given. And I think that's some wisdom, Evergreen. [00:30:32] Speaker A: Wisdom, since that's something many people today have. Right. They. They go on social media and they see how great everything looks in somebody else's life, and they just. Yeah. So excellent wisdom of perspective there. [00:30:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:43] Speaker A: Let's take a few minutes, then, to talk about President Dallin H. Oaks, president of byu, who was, in fact, at one point, Cosmo the Cougar. Right. There's that great picture of him. I showed that picture to Jasmine. We'll put it up on the screen here. And it kind of blew your mind that at one point, he was Cosmo. [00:30:56] Speaker C: The first time I had ever heard of that. I had no clue that he's Cosmo Cougar. [00:30:59] Speaker A: That's my favorite fact. But there was more to President Oaks as president BYU than just being Cosmo the Cougar. So, Rick, could you tell us a little bit about his experience as president of byu? So he came after Ernest L. Wilkinson, and then his successor was, as I understand, Jeffrey R. Holland. Right. And so he's right there in the middle of these two other great men as administrators at BYU. So tell us. And this is from 1971 to. I want to 79 or nine years. Yeah, so nine years. So tell us about these nine years as him as president of BYU. [00:31:28] Speaker B: So, interestingly, during his tenure, one of the things that he focused on most was good academics. I think he had a feeling when he came aboard that some people had come to college to play and that this was not the right priority to have. If you're going to get an education, get an education. And as I mentioned earlier, he said to a lot of the co eds who had come and didn't want to work hard for an education because they felt like they were going to get married, he told them, you need an education. Take your education seriously. He provided equal pay for equal work for both female and male faculty members. He pushed hard to have the academic standards rise. And he set an example with his own work at the time. Imagine being president of the university and at the same time continuing your career in publishing. Oh, wow. [00:32:18] Speaker C: I don't think I knew that either. [00:32:20] Speaker A: This is when he published his. Probably one of his most famous works, Carthage Conspiracy. Right. With Marvin Hill was while he's president of byu. [00:32:28] Speaker B: And that volume on the martyrdom of the prophet Joseph Smith and the subsequent trial, if you want to call it that, it was kangaroo court. [00:32:36] Speaker A: That's very generous to call it a trial. [00:32:37] Speaker B: Yeah. That volume that he did with his friend Marvin Hill holds up very well to this day. And it's still in print, which is remarkable. A lot of historical works are sort of flash in the pan and then you don't see it again. But that book is still in place. Yeah. [00:32:56] Speaker A: Seems like he was the right man for the time to bring both his historical and legal and Latter day Saint perspective altogether for this book which has stood the test of time. [00:33:04] Speaker B: And he brought his family into it as well. They would vacation during the summertime. And so his family took a vacation to Hancock county and he did research there and found documents that had been unseen for a long time. [00:33:17] Speaker D: And if I remember you were saying in the book, you talked about how he loved to camp. And so they would go camping and they would do makeshift tents and things like that, and June did not like that. [00:33:29] Speaker B: So something a lot of people don't know about President Oaks is that he loves the outdoors. So he grew up riding horses and hunting and fishing and so forth. So when it came time. The other thing I need to say about him is having grown up in somewhat of a poor situation economically, he became very good at handling money. And so when he could, he tried to get by with spending the least money possible. So when they camped, and I got this from him and from his children when they camped, they'd park the car and get a tarp and spread the tarp from the car roof down to the ground. [00:34:05] Speaker A: Amazing. [00:34:05] Speaker B: That would be their tent. [00:34:06] Speaker C: Oh, my goodness. [00:34:07] Speaker A: Fantastic. [00:34:08] Speaker B: There's a wonderful letter in his correspondence in which he writes and says, we splurged and bought a tent so that June will want to camp. She doesn't really like it very much. [00:34:18] Speaker A: Oh, that's great. [00:34:19] Speaker C: That's fun. [00:34:20] Speaker A: Okay, so as President, byu, you mentioned academics is a top priority for him to really put BYU on the map academically. And this is when Spencer W. Kimball is president of the church. We just celebrated the. Both the sesquicentennial of BYU and also, I guess, the 50 year anniversary of sort of President Kimball having this charge for BYU to be a light to the world, to really raise the bar academically. What other aspects of his tenure as president of BYU do you think are worth highlighting? You mentioned earlier the role of women in academics and at byu. Right. That he raised pay for women. As I understand from your book and other sources, he really pushed to want to hire more women at byu. Could you tell us a little bit about that or other sort of tent marks or tent stakes of his administration as president of byu? [00:35:10] Speaker B: I think growing up with a single mother had a huge impact on him. He watched his mother struggle in the workplace. He watched his mother work and recognized that at the time, women experienced discrimination, particularly in the state of Utah and where working women were not necessarily appreciated very much. And so he worked very hard during his tenure as president of BYU to create equality and to encourage education, recognizing that his mother's example should be a light to many other people. Now, that being said, he and June tried to live a traditional lifestyle in which, for the most part, she stayed at home and took care of the children. But he recognized that it wasn't that simple in many people's lives, and it certainly wasn't in his mother's life. Another thing that he did while he was president of Brigham Young University is to advocate spirituality. So he wanted the students to balance a good academic education with the spirituality that's available at Brigham Young University, a church school. And then to preserve that opportunity to be spiritual, he got engaged in a number of legal matters to help preserve the uniqueness of the school. And he did that not only as the president of Brigham Young University, but representing private universities and colleges across the country. Interesting. He did not want BYU to fade into what he sort of saw as a common gray scale of university. He wanted it to be unique because of its status. And he wanted other universities to be able to maintain that unique status without micromanagement from Government officials. [00:36:50] Speaker A: Right. That also stands out is this pushback against sort of executive reach into BYU or attempts to do as such to really maintain its unique character as a private religious university. What do you think? Any other questions or thoughts on his time at byu? Again, there's so much to talk about just on this section, but I think it's worth highlighting. [00:37:12] Speaker D: One thing I think is interesting, I want to get clear, is June actually they have a kid while he's at byu, Is that right? [00:37:19] Speaker B: Yes. [00:37:20] Speaker D: And if I'm not mistaken, that was 1975. And so this is such a young president of BYU. They're having kids. [00:37:30] Speaker A: They're still growing their family. [00:37:31] Speaker D: But if I did the math right, that means did they still have kids at home when he was called as an apostle? [00:37:41] Speaker B: They still had their youngest child at home. [00:37:43] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:37:43] Speaker B: Wow. And she was born somewhat late. [00:37:48] Speaker D: Yeah, there was a. There was a gap. There was a gap between. [00:37:50] Speaker B: There's an anecdote in the book that when she's born and, you know, she goes on to become a very accomplished violinist, you all know her as Jenny. So she was the. She was the caboose. She came later than they expected and they welcomed her with joy into their home. But she told me that in many ways she grew up as a single child because her siblings were so far ahead of her. But at the time she was born, when he was president of Brigham Young University, many people assumed that because of his high responsibility as a university president, that they were younger than they actually were. Oh, wow. And so they introduced their daughter at a devotional. And President Oaks said that people had talked to June and thought she was older than she really was. And she had joked, yeah, maybe when the next one comes around, Medicare will pay for it. Showing her sense of humor in peace. And that sense of humor that they had is reflected in the life that they led overseeing the university. They had a Great Dane that they kept in the home and sort of became famous on campus. June would invite people in and cut their hair and do things that she thought were needed because she was sort of the mother to tens of thousands of students. He loved to do things that showed his sense of humor. He put on the Cosmo costume one time at a game. He did other things with students that made them feel like he was one of them instead of just some high official. [00:39:19] Speaker A: Well, and one thing that comes out in the book, and it feels like everybody, I have a Dallin H. Oaks personal anecdote with his sense of humor. He has a wonderful down to earth sense of Humor. And it's not contrived, it's not forced. It's natural. Right. You see that on the pages of the book. [00:39:33] Speaker C: It's. [00:39:33] Speaker A: You see that with reported personal interactions with him. Again, it's a very nice humanizing touch. I think President Oaks even says it himself that I kind of have a reputation for being very stern and serious, because when I get to the pulpit, this is very serious business here with the church. Right. But when you know him as a person. Right. Beyond just seeing him on the TV screen of the pulpit. Yeah. He's charming, friendly, humorous, down to earth. That comes out in the pages of the book as well. [00:39:57] Speaker B: It does. In the preface to the book, I say something that I think I wanted readers to understand. I say here at the end because of how seriously President Oaks takes his calling. He often appears in public to be stern, a point on which family members rib him frequently. In private, he is warm, jovial, caring, and kind, with a winning smile. Few people I have known tell humorous stories with greater skill and relish. I have worked to capture both sides of him in this book. [00:40:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:40:25] Speaker B: So I want readers to feel the whole person and not just the pulpit presence. [00:40:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:40:30] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:40:31] Speaker B: Great. [00:40:32] Speaker A: Well, let's jump ahead here. Just real quick. I know we have a little in between period of him being president of BYU when he's called to the 12. I know we want to get to him being called to the 12, but let's just take a couple minutes to discuss his time as a justice on the Utah Supreme Court, because when he leaves BYU seems like he has different options available to him. Right. As I understand, maybe I'm getting the timeline confused, but at one point there's discussion, does he go on the federal bench or does he go into sort of federal law? Right. But he decides to stay here in Utah and go on the Utah Supreme Court. Do you want to talk us through that a little bit? That part of his life? [00:41:08] Speaker B: Sure. When he leaves byu, he is still a very young and accomplished lawyer. And so he had the opportunity to be engaged in a lot of different legal activities, some of which would have made him a great deal of money. He spends a few months. They give him a little bit of time to do some legal work for the church. And so he has a few months to contemplate what his future moves are going to be. And during that time, June is beginning to wonder, how are we going to live? You know, you don't just assume that because you've had high position, you're going to have. I mean, he's way too young to retire. So they don't have. They don't have Social Security or something like that. So she's wondering, well, how are we going to live and where are we going to live? They lived in the president's house at byu, and now, of course, they're going to have to leave that. Right. So she approaches him once in a conversation, there's some other people around, and. And she says, so where are we going to live? And he says, well, just go out and find us a place. And she basically, it's economy. She basically says to him, well, when are you going to get a job? A little funny repartee that they had. But he had lots of options. And ultimately he decides to submit his name for an opening in the Utah Supreme Court. And he gets that. And as I have mentioned before to him, that was the most enjoyable job of his life. It was relatively relaxing. When you are an appellate court judge, what you're trying to decide is whether the people at the lower levels didn't make the right decision in the first place, but whether under the standard of review, they made a mistake. For people who watch college football, it's very similar to the review standard for plays. Once they call the play, the question isn't how would you have called it? But it's whether there is enough evidence to overturn it. And that's what an appellate court judge does. So he had the opportunity in what he called a bench that looked at a lot of different subjects. He had opportunities to study a lot of subjects and to learn about them and to make contributions as a justice that was far more appealing to him than, say, the federal bench, where he might be looking at only particular types of cases. And whenever he did have the opportunity to jump to the federal level, he didn't feel comfortable with the choice for his family and for his own enjoyment. So even though he had the opportunity and might have moved to the federal bench, he chose not to do so. [00:43:38] Speaker A: Yeah, he chooses to stay place in Utah. So he's about four years right in the Utah Supreme Court. So 1980 to 1984 is involved in some influential case law or some cases there. As a Supreme Court justice. We'll recommend people check out the book to learn more about that little brief but important period of President Oaks life. Because what we want to really get to, I think what most listeners want to know is Elder Oaks, the apostle, who was called in the same session of General Conference as President Nelson, Elder Nelson at the time. Right. And famously, there's the account of Spencer W. Kimball saying, call Russell M. Nelson and Dallin H. Oaks in that order. Right. Of seniority. And so he. He joins Russell Nel. Both they joined together. However, what I learned in the book is he did not immediately become an apostle, as it were, insofar as like assuming his responsibilities as an apostle. So as you tell in the book, right, and correct me if I'm misremembering, but he gets a phone call from Gordon B. Hinckley saying, we're going to call you as an apostle. And he's like, well, I can't really jump on right now. He accepts the call, but he's not ready right there at the minute to become an apostle. So he's. He sustained a general conference, but it takes him a couple weeks before he can actually assume the apostleship. Do I have that basically right, that account? [00:44:58] Speaker B: Let me go through it in a little bit more detail. So when he was serving on the Utah Supreme Court, he was still, again, relatively young. And so as he was thinking about his future and his career, he thought, well, I might have one more thing to do after this. In fact, he had an impression he had something else to do, and he wasn't quite sure what it was. [00:45:18] Speaker A: There it is another one of those premonitions. [00:45:20] Speaker B: When he had the opportunity to assume a role on the federal bench, he just didn't feel comfortable about it. He and June prayed, they went to the temple, didn't feel comfortable about it. So he continued to stay where he was all the time feeling that there was something was coming in his mind. I think he assumed that it was going to be probably legal or service in nature of some sort, but he wasn't quite sure what it was. During general conference, he had gone to Arizona to serve as a justice on a moot court competition at a law school. And after the moot court competition, he and the others who were part of that panel were taken to a Mexican restaurant. And he does. He described this to me in great detail, that he's. He's down there and there it's a Mexican restaurant and there's a mariacha band playing in the background. And somebody comes up to the table and says, you have a phone call. And he couldn't figure out who would be calling him and how they would know that he was there at a restaurant. So he goes over to the phone by the cashier and he picks it up and he. He answers it and it's President Gordon B. Hincke and of course, mariachi band. The mariachi band. Noisy and he says, you know, where are you? Because, you know, it's conference time. He says, oh, I'm sorry I'm down here doing this. He says, well, that's where you should be. And then he says, when you get back to your hotel, call me. So for the remainder of the night, Cliffhanger. He's wondering, you, what's this about? He'd done some legal work for the church. He wondered, you know, what could it be that. So he got back to his hotel and he called President Hinckley. And President Hinckley called him to be a member of the 12. And it stunned him, it truly stunned him to the point that he wondered, why didn't I feel that this was coming? Now, when you look back at his life, he knew something was coming, but he didn't know exactly what it was. [00:47:15] Speaker C: And today we tend to think of apostles as being those who have been like general area 70s before or served in other auxiliaries so that they have like church experience. And President Oaks didn't really have much of that. [00:47:28] Speaker D: In fact, could we maybe speak to, if I followed the story in the biography correctly, was he a gospel doctrine teacher at the time? [00:47:36] Speaker B: He was. Okay. He was. [00:47:37] Speaker A: Wow, there you go. [00:47:38] Speaker D: So he went from gospel doctrine teacher in terms of his status in the church. He went from gospel doctrine teacher to apostle. [00:47:43] Speaker B: That is correct. [00:47:44] Speaker D: I'm a gospel doctor teaching right now. [00:47:47] Speaker B: So he once told me, he said, rick, I've never been a bishop, never been a stake president. Oh my gosh, I've never been a 70. I didn't serve a full time mission because that was back during the Korean War when the quotas on how many missionaries could go out. Now, he later did serve as a stake missionary and as stake mission president and as a counselor in a stake presidency. But as he once said to me, I've never been president of anything but byu. So to be catapulted into the role of being an apostle was both stunning to him and also much more challenging than I think the average person knows. I try to describe in the book how it was a struggle for him at times. For example, he. And to get to your point about when he comes aboard, he doesn't come aboard immediately because he explains to President Hinckley, if I come aboard immediately, then people will think that that's tainting my decisions as a Supreme Court justice that I need to finish up. So he finished up the opinions he was writing, and only then did he go to church headquarters and receive his ordination as an apostle and become a member of the quorum of the 12. But shortly after he came aboard in May was the mission president seminar, what we call the mission Leaders Seminar today. And he would record that. This is the most difficult talk I have have to give because I've never served as a full time missionary and I've never served as a mission president. Now to go to this seminar and try to teach mission presidents about how to oversee missionaries was very, very challenging to him initially. Now, of course he's had decades of experience, he's got an area president, he's had experience that allows him to do that. But I think it's wrong for members of the church to think that when you're called to a high level position, the church, that everything's easy for you. It comes simply. It's not that way. In fact, I think one of the most important decisions he made, which I, I want to quote it, if I can find it here while you're finding. [00:49:47] Speaker C: That, I'll just say that's so relatable because I've never served a mission, but I just got called as my stakes mission prep teacher. And I'm like, what are they thinking? I don't know how to teach people how to serve a mission. And so to hear that like those similar feelings is very relatable. [00:50:01] Speaker B: It is very normal to feel like you're not able or ready or to have a calling. But he is a very good example of how a person can receive a calling and live up to it. When he was a young associate in the law firm, working incredible hours, incredible hours, hours that would make you exhausted. [00:50:24] Speaker A: As you said, when you were just reading about it. [00:50:28] Speaker B: He is called as a Stake missionary and is expected to put in a lot of time every week. And it seemed impossible to him. He couldn't possibly, he initially thought, fulfill his role as a young associate in a firm that demanded his every waking hour and accept a responsibility in his Stake to be a Stake missionary. But the man who was asking him, John K. Edmonds, was a man he really respected and was in many ways a father figure to him. And he thought, I cannot decline this call. So he accepted it on faith and very quickly learned that the Lord made up the difference. And as I explained in the book, things happened that made it possible for him to continue to perform exceedingly well in the law firm and yet not miss his opportunities as a Stake missionary. [00:51:15] Speaker C: That's cool. [00:51:16] Speaker B: So he accepted that same type of commitment when he became an apostle. And, and this is what he said. He'd been asking the question throughout the remainder of your life. Will you be a judge and lawyer who has been called to be an apostle, or will you be an apostle who used to be a lawyer and a judge? And he committed, I'm going to be the latter, even though in many ways that requires dropping down to the bottom and starting up again. So he has worked very hard to be an apostle first and foremost. And if legal matters come up, that he can aid with fine. But he normally sends those to the church's legal counsel to handle and doesn't handle them himself. Interesting. He is apostle first, and I think that's important for people to know. [00:52:05] Speaker D: And to that point, early on in his apostleship, he dedicated some time in his scripture study and whatnot to understand what it means to be an apostle. Yes, right. And he latched onto the expression. [00:52:20] Speaker B: That. [00:52:20] Speaker D: An apostle is a witness to the name of Jesus Christ. And he said, okay, what does that mean? And so he searched the Scriptures, right. And studied everything it says about the name of Christ and being a witness to that. And that was one of his first books as an apostle, if I'm not mistaken. [00:52:36] Speaker B: It was. He saw something there that had been missed by a lot of other people. And he is an extraordinary researcher. I mean, think about it. This is a man who was a young tenured professor at one of the best schools in the country. And he was a remarkable student. So it's not like he's coming to questions of research without the tools. He has the tools. And so when he wants to study something, he studies it intently. He knows what he's doing. And that was one of the topics he was most interested in because that was his new responsibility, to be a witness of the name of Christ in all the world. [00:53:08] Speaker C: Well, that is my next question. So besides showing up at general conference and preaching the gospel and just, just general sense of being busy, what does an apostle do on a daily basis, a weekly basis? [00:53:20] Speaker B: So most members of the church see apostles in only two settings. In a meeting setting where they're speaking, such as general conference or some type of large devotional. Occasionally you'll see an apostle at your stake conference or a regional conference, but other than that, you don't see them at all typically, but they have a full time job. When they're not preaching on the weekends, they're back in the church administration building, serving on important councils of the church and making important administrative responsibilities so that members of the first presidency don't have to. There was a period of time when the first presidency and the members of the quorum of the twelve took care of many of the important administrative responsibilities at the church headquarters. Because the church was small and the staff was small, the church has now grown to a point at which they have delegated authority downward in many directions. As many things as possible go to staff. If they have to go to general authorities, they go to 70s or the presiding bishopric. If they have to go to the apostles, then by the time they've risen to that level, they're very difficult. And if ultimately they have to go to the first presidency, they're the most difficult questions. So they spend their weekend days, often at meetings out in the field or traveling. Members of the quorum of the 12, as described in the Doctrine and Covenants, have the responsibility of opening the countries of the world to the gospel. And so each member of the quorum of the 12 has an assignment for a part of the world, and they visit that part of the world and are deeply engaged in making decisions about the administration of the church in that part, the of. [00:55:00] Speaker A: And in President Oaks case, famously, as an apostle, it was his time in the Philippines. [00:55:04] Speaker B: Yes. So he became an area president for a time in the Philippines. And that was a very formative experience for him because it allowed him to learn some things that he hadn't learned the way that many people learn coming up through the ranks to become general. [00:55:18] Speaker D: That's actually a fairly unique thing for him. And Elder Jeffrey R. Holland at the time, they were the first apostles who were asked to be area presidents and actually lived in their areas. President Oaks in the Philippines and President Holland in, I think. [00:55:36] Speaker B: Was it Chile? [00:55:36] Speaker D: Chile. Okay. They were the first ones as apostles who were asked to do that in something like 50 years. [00:55:43] Speaker B: It had been a long time. You know, we used to have an apostle resident in the British Isles because that was an area where we had a lot of converts. But this hadn't been done a very long time since we'd established area presidencies. And President Hinckley saw that in both Chile and the Philippines, we were having a lot of baptisms, but not of real growth. So he sent those two out to live resident in those countries to figure out what the problem was. [00:56:07] Speaker C: Wow. I had no idea that they actually lived there. I just assumed everyone's in headquarters, and then they just go visit real quick. [00:56:13] Speaker D: That's. That's one of the things that, as I was reading, kind of stood out to me and made me curious. Like, I wonder how that experience. Because that's a fairly unique experience he has. I wonder how that experience before Zoom. [00:56:24] Speaker C: Calls too to be able to touch base very easily. [00:56:27] Speaker D: And so I'm going to be very curious to see how that experience might. Might shape his presidency now that he's president of the church. You know, it's been a long time since we've had a president of the church who had experience doing that kind of thing. [00:56:38] Speaker B: Well, one of the important formative parts of that experience was seeing the church operating in another culture. You know, those of us who have served missions, I served in Japan, have seen that. But if you have not served outside of the United States, you may not be aware of some of the challenges that come in other areas or the differences, different cultural perspectives that might be brought to bear. He now has that ability to bring that additional cultural perspective to bear on questions. And I think in a global church, that's very important. [00:57:10] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:57:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:11] Speaker C: Interesting. [00:57:11] Speaker A: Well, I know there's so much we could talk about. Elder Oaks, the apostle. Right. And again, there's plenty of rich detail in your biography about those years. One thing we should mention before we conclude with a brief discussion of his time in the First Presidency is it was as an apostle that June Oakes passes away and he marries his second wife, Kristen Oaks, 2006. I think right around that time, maybe I got the year wrong, but that's Sister Oaks we know and love today, Kristin Oaks, who has been a wonderful influence in his life as well as much as June has. And reading about their relationship, I didn't realize this. I always, oh, yeah, Sister Oaks, you know, I see her there. [00:57:53] Speaker B: Right. [00:57:53] Speaker A: With President Oaks. [00:57:54] Speaker B: But. [00:57:54] Speaker A: But she hadn't been married until she married Dallin H. Oaks. Right. And this is much later in her life. And she has spoken at devotionals and stuff about understanding the pain and the trial that comes from being a single member of the church well into. I think it was in her 40s or 50s when they got married. It was her 50s. Right. So that was inspiring to me. And I think we want to give a shout out to Sister Oakes. Right. To Kristen Oakes for her story and her example. And now how she features in the life of President Oaks, as well as another supportive. I don't want to say she's not just a side character, not just a supporting character, but very much an important supporting influence in President Oaks life. [00:58:35] Speaker B: She is a remarkable figure in her own right. She has a good education. She was in a very important position of responsibility at the time. She felt inspired to come back to Utah because she wanted to get married. She wasn't sure exactly why this came about. She had A couple of older aunts who thought she was crazy for giving up her professional career at this time in her life. She is a descendant of Hyrum Smith, the brother of Joseph Smith, martyred with him in the Carthage jail. And so these aunts thought, well, we have a cousin in the Quorum of the twelve, Elder M. Russell Ballard, who I think has some responsibility for Deseret Book. Maybe he'd be able to get her a job in the book world, because that's the world she came from, the book world. So they went to him. And at the same time, President Oaks had had a period of time in which he felt June very close to him, helping to guide him through his grief, and then a period of time when those messages became less common, and then a period of time when he felt her saying, move on with your life. Before she passed away from cancer, June had told her daughters, your father's going to need a wife. So at the right time, you make sure he gets married. So this right time had approached, and he felt after this period of mourning, it was time to move on. And he approached his brethren in the quorum of the 12 and said, if you see any people who might be good candidates, let me know. That was right at the moment. Kristin McMahain had approached her aunts, who had approached Elder Ballard. And Elder Ballard lined them up. Yeah. [01:00:21] Speaker D: And Elder Ballard playing matchmaker. [01:00:23] Speaker B: In fact, I don't know if many people know this. I think it's in the book. But at the time that they had their little wedding reception for the members of the quorum of the 12, they gave D and Kristen gave to Elder Ballard a little chest with gold coins. You know, the gold wrapped chocolate as a finding fee. [01:00:46] Speaker A: That's great. [01:00:46] Speaker C: That's awesome. [01:00:47] Speaker A: Oh, that's really funny. [01:00:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:00:49] Speaker A: Great. [01:00:49] Speaker B: Well, she has been his wife for the majority of his apostleship. [01:00:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And my. My wife lived in downtown Salt Lake before we got married. And she knew Elder and Sister Oaks. Kristen Oaks especially was like a home teacher. [01:01:05] Speaker B: Right. [01:01:05] Speaker A: And so forth, or visiting teacher. And so she has great stories of just the warmth and love and friendship of the Oaks is living down there in downtown Salt Lake. Right. And so we could talk more about that maybe. Let's then just spend a few more minutes. Now we'll Fast forward to 2018. President Monson passes away. Russell M. Nelson becomes president of the church, and he selects as his counselors Dallin H. Oaks and Henry B. Eyring in the first presidency. So from 2018 until just about a month ago, right. We had President Dallin H. Oaks of the First Presidency. I imagine, as you were kind of describing that, the sorts of responsibilities that kind of rise with you as you rise in church leadership sort of take on a new dimension. So can you walk us through just a few examples of how President Oaks, as First counselor in the First Presidency with his longtime friend Russell M. Nelson, how that kind of changed his life, his role, his calling, and what he may have have learned from that experience. [01:02:03] Speaker B: For viewers who saw President Nelson's funeral and heard President Oaks talk, they got a little bit of a glimpse of this. But for those who did not let me rehearse what happened at the funeral, President Oaks got up and he said that having sat next to Russell M. Nelson throughout the period of his apostleship to this point, he expected that when they got into the First Presidency, they would be moving at a fairly deliberate kind of pace. And he said, I did not expect that he would move as rapidly as he did on things in the quorum of the 12. He was generally quiet. He would speak on occasion, and we would respect his opinion. He said, and this is President Oaks sense of humor coming up. He says people who had law backgrounds, and of course, he's including himself in that, he says, frequently spoke up and made decisions and so forth. And I felt like I was decisive and. And he was kind of deliberate until we got in the First Presidency. And then all of a sudden, he was making these very, very fast and quick and deliberate decisions. And he wondered, where did that come from? And then he thought, well, wait a minute. As lawyers, we can often refer something to a committee or go back and study it, but if you're a doctor in surgery, you can't refer something till later. You have to make a decision immediately. So he realized that President Nelson really was a deliberate decision maker and a fast decision maker. And the two of them, along with President Henry B. Eyring, then began to move very quickly in making a lot of changes throughout the period of President Nelson's presidency. [01:03:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I think all of us got a little bit of whiplash with President Nelson as president of the church. And so hearing that anecdote from President. [01:03:44] Speaker C: Oaks, well, everyone was surprised, not just us just knowing. [01:03:49] Speaker D: Yeah. Knowing that his counselors were feeling the same whiplash we were. [01:03:53] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's very insightful. Well, I think just to kind of wrap up here a little bit, we'd love to hear some of your perspective, Rick, as you've been working on this biography. Right. We'll just ask a couple Questions to sort of wrap this all together. Looking sort of at the long arc of the life of Donnie Chokes, Rick, how do you suppose or how do you think that his legal background and his academic background and these other factors in his life life have led him to where he is now? And maybe if we want to prognosticate a little bit, how do you suppose or think that they will affect his presidency going forward now that he is president of the Church? I think we can all kind of speculate certain ways, but you're probably in a best position to give some prognostication on. With everything coming now to where we are sitting today, how do you think this is going to lead us? Or where is it going to lead us? [01:04:46] Speaker B: I think in April of 1984, when President then Elder Russell M. Nelson was called to be an apostle and on the same day Elder Dallin H. Oaks was sustained as an apostle. I think what we saw at work was the way the Lord works through his living servants to see around corners. As Sherry Dew, you know, sometimes says, the calling of those two men at that time made it possible that, that Elder Russell M. Nelson became President Russell M. Nelson, the world famous surgeon at a time when the Church and the world at large was going through its biggest health crisis in a century. And I don't think that was coincidental. [01:05:30] Speaker A: No, not at all. [01:05:31] Speaker B: That the Lord chose them decades earlier so that he would be the President at a time when we were going through a health crisis. Nor do I think it's coincidental that President Dallin H. Oaks is President of the Church at a time when we are living in a very complex part of the world's history and particularly the history of the United States and the headquarters country for the church. As I have watched President Oaks studying his life and then seeing him in action for now almost 40 years, knowing him personally, what I have seen is a man who has learned a lot how to interact with people from various backgrounds and circumstances. He has given talks in which he talks about the importance of living in a pluralistic society. He has challenged the idea that we should all be working on a zero sum type of behavior that requires that everyone else fail so that we can succeed. He instead advocates peace and harmony and learning to live together in a diverse society. And I think that that is likely to be reflected in his presidency. [01:06:45] Speaker C: So as the historian and author putting all this together, what were some of the biggest challenges in compiling this life story? [01:06:53] Speaker B: I have written a lot of books and I have written as a historian, which means that this book may be unusual in that often the books that are written about church presence are written by people who have a background in journalism. And so they often do interviews, and they write the books from the interviews. I chose deliberately not to do that. I chose to do historical research first and then use the interviews only to fill in the gaps. And I did that deliberately because I know about memories. We all think that our memories are like hard drives. We experience something that reads onto our hard Drive, and 50 years later, we can pull it off exactly as it was. When in reality, our memories are like big pots of stew. And if we take out a little spoonful and put it on a glass slide and look underneath a microscope on the day we create it, and then go 50 years and take out another scoop while adding ingredients each day of our lives, what you see on the slide 50 years later is not the same you see on the slide. But you don't know that because that change in memory is almost imperceptible when seen on a daily basis. So I did the work in the original sources, first, used that to create the framework for the book, and then only filled in gaps when I could use that historical framework as a way to judge the interviews that I did. [01:08:15] Speaker A: Interesting. [01:08:16] Speaker B: That being said, as one who got into the sources, as I say in the preface to the book, President Dallin H. Oaks may be, with the possible exception of Russell M. Nelson, who's probably the same. He may be the most documented church leader in history because his parents were educated and literate and wrote lots of letters to each other. So there's a wealth of correspondence about his childhood. He became well known when he was basically 15, 16 years old because he was a radio personality. [01:08:52] Speaker C: Yeah, that was the coolest thing to learn from my perspective. I had no idea that he was, like, in broadcast media. And it makes sense why he was able to hone skills of articulating and orating. [01:09:02] Speaker B: So think about it. He's a celebrity in his teens, and then when he is at byu, he continues that celebrity status. He's calling byu, he's calling basketball games, high school basketball games and so forth during this time period. And then when he gets the scholarship to University of Chicago, that appears big in the newspaper. So he's relatively well known and documented throughout his life. Then when he was 39 years old, basically, and making that transition from lawyer to university president, he decided to write a personal history. And it's a very good personal history. So I had all of that early correspondence and literature, and I had his personal History. And then he took a class on basically family history and he heard the counsel of President Spencer W. Kimball to keep a journal. So he began keeping a journal, and he gave me access to that journal. And I was able to read through and have this sort of daily account of his life. [01:10:01] Speaker C: He's a brave man. [01:10:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:10:02] Speaker B: That wasn't second guessing or remembering things later on. You see it as it happens, as it's happening. So I really think in many ways this was a wonderful opportunity to write a book on a man who's so well documented. Yeah. [01:10:15] Speaker D: I mean, the challenge of telling the story of someone's life, though, even when it's. Well, I mean, when it's well documented, it's maybe even harder than when it's not, I suppose. But you wrote this biography of Dallin H. Oaks, who's now our current president. You're also currently working on a project to write the. Stephen mentioned it towards the beginning to write what will probably be the definitive biography of Joseph Smith. So what, as kind of the bookends of our church history in some ways. Right. What's that like trying to. Having written this biography now, trying to go back and tell the story of Joseph Smith. [01:10:53] Speaker B: Having spent roughly four decades as a historian and having traveled to many of the countries of the world and visited people from other cultures, I've come to realize that in virtually every culture, culture, the most important cultural information is passed from generation to generation through story, through narrative. And until something is reduced to a narrative, people may ignore it. If you read the book of Leviticus, and I'm sure you do every day, if you read the book of Leviticus, you will find the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. But who remembers that? And yet when the Savior began a parable with the words, and a man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves, as soon as we had the parable of the Good Samaritan, there was story that was brought to bear on that principle. And so in writing the life of Dallin H. Oaks and in writing the life of Joseph Smith, I am focusing on the story of their lives, the principles that can be learned through that story. There will be, for the Joseph Smith biography, a lot of analysis that is done. And that analysis will largely be done in other publications, in articles or other books, so that when the book itself comes out, it is a narrative that allows people to see Joseph Smith in a light they have never seen him before. Because the books have tended to be analytical. If you look at the documentary history of the church, it's a documentary history. It's a series of documents lined up up and that has value. And of course, I was involved with the Joseph Smith Papers. They were critical to laying a good foundation for the Joseph Smith biography to try to provide us information somewhat like what I had for President Oaks, who had such a richly documented life. So to me, it's fascinating to have written the biography of the current president and at the same time now to be looking back on the life of the prophet Joseph Smith myth. There are a lot of parallels between these men and among the various presidents of the church and there are distinct differences. [01:13:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, we will look forward to that biography when it comes out in due time. Certainly. In the meantime, we want to thank you, Rick, for coming on our show, Informed Saints and for sharing insights into the life of Della H. Oaks. This is the book which you can go get right now. It's from Deseret Book in the Hands of the Lord, the Life of Dallin H O Jokes. Take it from us here on the panel who have read it. It's a wonderful book and it's a great way to get to know this man who is now our prophet. We will look forward to his prophetic ministry. As they say in the Bible, may he live to be 110. May he have a long and healthy and wisdom filled ministry as our prophet. And we thank you again, Rick, for joining us on the show. [01:13:42] Speaker C: Thanks for having me. [01:13:43] Speaker B: Thanks again. Enjoyed being here. [01:13:47] Speaker C: Sam.