REMEMBERING HOWARD W HUNTER 20 YEARS LATER . . .

Howard W Hunter was born in 1907 in Idaho and raised in that state.  As an adult, he lived in Los Angeles County, a ranch in Arcadia to be exact.  He studied law at Southwestern University and plied the profession of a corporate attorney.  Among his many clients, his most interesting assignment was as the legal counsel to a trust that control the minerals rights of a huge and ancient Spanish land grant that found itself above oil in 20th Century Long Beach / South Los Angeles area.  

In the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he served as a bishop and a stake president.   He chaired a regional Welfare Department Committee and also chaired a local committee that helped construct the Los Angeles Temple.   In the one responsibility, he came to the attention of President J Reuben Clark.  In the other he came to the attention of President Stephen L Richards.   Both of them had careers in the law.  

Therefore, when President Richards died unexpectedly in 1959, and President David O McKay had to select a new first counselor and a new second counselor from members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles,  those in the know were not completely surprised that he selected Howard W Hunter as a new apostle.  McKay must have undoubtedly heard a lot of good things about him from his counselors.   In this period, new apostles typically came from direct Utah backgrounds or were already in responsible church positions in the Salt Lake City.  Thus Elder Hunter was something of a new apostolic entity, having roots in Idaho and in California.  

Elder Hunter came to the Quorum of the Twelve just a few months after airlines started using jet liners.  He and Gordon B. Hinckley, the next new apostle, became the first jet-age apostles.   Hunter’s notes on airlines, airports and jets became the basis of the quorum’s knowledge and procedures in dealing with jet age airports and airlines.  By the late 1970s and early 1980s, those knowledgeable about the workings of the Institutional Church and those who worked in it knew that one went to four particular apostles when one needed to get something done or changed or activated in the Church / the bureaucracy / or BYU:  Elders Hinckley, McConkie, Packer – and Hunter. 

When Ezra Taft Benson became president of the Church, the next senior apostle was Marion G. Romney, but age and health problems prevented him from taking up full duties as President of the Quorum of the Twelve.   Therefore, Hunter became acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve in 1985 and president in 1988, but he had done some defacto leadership of the Quorum earlier when Quorum President Ezra Taft Benson had health problems in the 1980s.  Starting late 1970s / early 1980s both Hunter and his first wife, Clara Jeffs Hunter, suffered major health problems.    She died in 1983.    As an old man with health problems, he married a second time in 1990.  Her name was Inis Egan   His health issues compounded in this period. 

In May 1994, President Ezra Taft Benson died.   His presidency covered November 1985 to May 1994, but his health and strength lasted only such that he functioned in the First Presidency to  late 1988 / early 1989.   Most of the Benson presidency was an extension of the Gordon B. Hinckley Administrative Years 1983-1985, 1989-1994, 1995-2008.   Hunter had poor health and had a frail condition when the apostles sustained him and ordain him the new president of the LDS Church in June 1994.  

It would be interesting to find out how much Howard Hunter knew in June 1994 of the facts of  his frail physical condition and the advanced prostate cancer that took his life 9 months later in early March 1995.   It would also be even interesting to know what he told the apostles, if anything, before the ordination.  

Back in January 1970, President Joseph Fielding Smith (age 93), replaced the late David O McKay as Church president   Both of them had been frail and vague for years.  The apostles accepted a proposal to ordain Smith president and ordain the senior apostle and the next Church president Harold B. Lee as Smith’s first counselor.  Smith then delegated his duties broadly to his counselors Lee and Nathan Eldon Tanner.   I suspect they and the apostles assumed that Smith would not last long and Lee would last long, so it was an acceptable short-term arrangement.  Had they know that Smith would last two and a half years and that Lee would not live to see 1974, the apostles might been of a mind to  take a different course.   Obviously, this sort of speculation is useless, because the apostles of 1970 did not have information that specific in their possession.    They set the precedent, none the less, definitely in 1970   Still, it seems cruel to have forced a dying old man to spent his last months in an arduous job.

President Kimball experienced incapacitating health problem from late 1981 to 1985; President Benson experience incapacitation from 1989 to 1994.  President Hunter, yet another Church President in poor health, posed something of a public image problem for the Church in 1994.  Early in the Hunter presidency someone at the Ensign magazine found an obscure quotation from an early apostle along the lines of Orson Hyde who got quoted as saying that a prophet cannot lead the Mormon people unless he knows their problems and their sicknesses.    After President Hunter died, President Hinckley – a man who was basically as strong as a horse even with his various health problems in his 90s –  was ordained the new president.  That particular quote never surfaced again. 

A few days after Hunter assumed the presidency, he called Elder Jeffrey R Holland to serve in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.  It was generally assumed . . . maybe it would be more accurate to say – your writer assumed early on Holland would someday become an apostle, but Hunter brought him to the quorum rather more early than I expected.   Holland had served for 9 years as BYU president and had worked closely with Hunter, a senior apostle and an attorney, in the creation of The Jerusalem Center Building.  It was, thanks in part to The Hunter Style, a major diplomatic coup amid the late 1980s Israel situation.   

When Elder Holland described his day of ordination, went to some length to show that Hunter was vital and in command, that Hunter was up and functioning at 7:00 a.m. to lead the meeting, to do the ordination, to give Holland his charge.   Holland to this day remains the most important of Hunter’s few appointments to church leadership. Elder Cecil Samuelsen, who eventually became BYU’s president, was called to the Seventy in the Hunter administration, as was Elder Andrew Wayne Peterson, who eventually suffered paralysis in a much-discussed controversial motorcycle accident; Hinckley released him a few years later.    As to Holland, he may eventually wind up being more important than any of Benson’s apostles.

In his six month active administration, Hunter encouraged and emphasized Christ-like living and temple attendance.   He dedicated two temples, the Orlando Florida Temple and the Bountiful Utah Temple.   His appearance in Bountiful was among his last if not his last public appearance. 

The LDS Church never has a minor president or minor prophet in its current terms.   President Hunter’s administration lasted a record-setting 6 month active service,  9 months all totaled.   It is the shortest administration in LDS history.   LDS public communications became somewhat sensitive about his lasting contribution and purpose.   Leaders later insisted that he was involved in if not central to the creation of the much touted The Proclamation on the Family.  His name does not appear on the document; the Church officially released it the October after his death.  Leaders also insisted that Hunter was crucial to the evolution of the Regional Representatives leadership group of the Church (created in 1967 – dissolved in 1995) into the Area Authorities.    President Hinckley announced them officially a month after Hunter’s death.   They eventually evolved into Area Seventies.

Hunter's real days of presiding influence were as a senior apostle.    As Church president his health and his short tenure length limited his influence.  

At Brigham Young University, Hunter’s minor status got immortalized in brick and mortar when the Law Library got expanded and named in honor of President Hunter.   The library was a wing of the law building, which was named for J Reuben Clark.  Clark served as first and second counselor to the First Presidency from 1933 to 1961; he became influential in the 1940s and 1950s as a de facto president of the Church during those periods when Presidents Grant and Smith were in frail condition.    Thus the building named for a Church President is an adjunct to a building named for a First Presidency Counselor.  



IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE: 
 
There is nothing wrong, there is no shame in being a minor President of the Church.   We Mormons are all the better for our association with Howard W Hunter, who served as an apostle in the LDS Church from 1959 to 1995.