RUTH HARDY FUNK IN MEMORIAM

Ruth Hardy Funk died, and the Deseret News article displays a startling lack of historical knowledge -- even for a Deseret News article. Here is the article, followed by the rest of the story:

Former LDS Young Women president Ruth Funk dies at home

Deseret News
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705366067/Former-LDS-Young-Women-president-Ruth-Funk-dies-at-home.html
Wendy Leonard Deseret News
Published: Sunday, Feb. 6, 2011 11:14 p.m. MST

SALT LAKE CITY — Avid pianist, choir leader, high school music teacher and former LDS Young Women General President Ruth Hardy Funk, died at her home on Saturday, nearly a week before her 94th birthday.

Funk, who led the young women of the LDS Church from 1972 to 1978, was an esteemed pianist who taught lessons and accompanied many throughout her years. She also led hundreds in choirs and classes at East High School from 1969 to 1972.

She was born in Chicago and raised in Salt Lake City, her father often encouraging her to learn tough pieces to play on the piano. According to a 2010 interview with The Mormon Women Project, Funk said she mastered Mendelssohn's Rondo Capriccioso at age 14, and it became her "signature piece."

She later played in her home for esteemed guests like Helen Keller, and took lessons from Leopold Godowsky.

Funk served as a student-body officer at both East High School, when she was a student there, and at the University of Utah, where she graduated with a degree in music in 1938. After marrying Marcus C. Funk in the Salt Lake Temple that same year, the couple moved to Chicago where he attended dental school at Northwestern University.

Upon returning to Salt Lake City, then-LDS Church President Harold B. Lee asked Funk to head the general board of the young women's Mutual Improvement Association. It was under her direction that the organization became an auxiliary to the priesthood for a time and changed its name to the Young Women program of the Church.

Funk was also instrumental in rewriting many lesson manuals and developing the YW's Personal Progress program. She served with Hortense Hogan Child Smith as her first counselor and Ardeth Greene Kapp, as second counselor in the presidency.

In 2009, President Thomas S. Monson honored Funk for her service at a special Church luncheon. Mary N. Cook, first counselor in the Young Women general presidency, said this about Funk: "Always an optimist and with an incredible zest for living, she has shared that zeal with countless children and youth. She is known for her love of music and youth and those two loves were often combined during her service."

Funk was also a member of the Utah State Board of Education from 1985 to 1992, where she served as chairman for a year. She also served as the chairman of the Governor's Commission on the Status of Women in Utah and as a board member for Bonneville International Corporation.

Funk was preceded in death by her husband, parents, three brothers and a grandson, and is survived by her four children, 19 grandchildren and 39 great-grandchildren.

A funeral will be held Friday, Feb. 18, at 11 a.m., at the Parley's 3rd Ward, 2625 Stringham Ave. A viewing will be held Feb. 17, from 6 to 8 p.m., at Larkin Sunset Mortuary, 2350 E. 1300 South.

© 2011 Deseret News Publishing Company


Ruth Funk was and did a great deal more than this – as explained by these paragraphs from Robert Gottlieb and Peter Wiley’s 1984 LDS history book: America’s Saints (pp. 195-197)

[In the 1960s], “most church members missed Correlation’s fundamental ideological character, which centered on the role of woman, the family , and their relation to the overall leadership structures and politics of the church.

“That ideological character was understood at the outset by Harold B. Lee.

“Harold B Lee had this sense of social breakdown, declared Ruth Funk, one of Lee’s key female assistants in the Correlation movement and later president of the YMMIA-AP during the Lee presidency. “He saw the breakdown of the nuclear family. Television wa also coming into play, and he could see how that might undermine traditional family roles and the danger that television might take us away from the gospel. His premise from the start was that Correlation strengthens the family." . . .


{concerning the priesthood taking direct correlation oversight-leadership of female auxiliaries in the 1960s} -- drs

“For so many years,” Ruth Funk declared, “the auxiliaries had maintained this attitude of possessiveness. Funk recalled that even while program activities were being restructured, auxiliary leaders such as Relief Society president Belle Spafford, literally would say about Funk, the emissary of the Correlation Committee, ‘Who’s that little young punk telling me what to do.”
. . .


{Ruth Funk, Harold B Lee’s correlation emissary during the 1960s, president of the YMMIA / YM-AP in the 1970s, got caught in the mid-1970s in a growing interest in “consciousness-raising” that primarily centered around a minority group of educated professional women in the church.

After Harold B. Lee died, her position became suddenly insecure; here’s why} – drs

“An informal gathering of about 25 women, most connected in one way or another with the Young Women’s group, began meeting, initially to discuss the work of that organization. Those meetings soon became kind of consciousness-raising sessions.

[a member who belonged to a “prominent Mormon family” described it: ]

“Less than a third of the people there would have called themselves feminists. They had open and honest talks. There was some griping about the way some General Authorities treated women, and they also talked about the overall relations of men and women in the church.”

When word of the meetings drifted back to the General Authorities, the reaction was swift. The meetings were immediately terminated, and Funk’s position became less secure, despite the fact that she had always remained a loyal defender of the church line on women. Not too long after, Funk was released from her position, primarily for other reasons. Nevertheless, it was clear that even such tentative, informal, unofficial gatherings as those threatened the church authorities, compounding their fears about they perceived to be attacks on church authority and the priesthood.”