My General Board Experience by BCE

My General Board Experience

By Beatrice Cannon Evans

Forest Dale where I grew up was under the Salt Lake County school system where there were eight years of schooling plus a year of “beginners” thus making it a year longer than the Salt Lake City School System of just eight years before graduation from the eighth grade.  So I was a year later entering L.D.S. high school than my prospective city-raised husband. 

So I was 19 the year when I remained out of school because of being needed to help at home.

In October my mother’s tenth child, Clarence (Clix) was due and my grandmother, Mary T.  Bennion, who lived with us was bed ridden until her death the following January.  Mother’s cousin and adopted sister, Effie Cooper (later Russell) was living with us but was not strong and was wearing a cast on her back.

So it was the Summer following  the birth of mother’s  tenth child, Clarence , at the ripe age of 19 that I received a letter from Box  B, well known as the Church Headquarters,  calling me to the Primary General Board.

Father was delighted at the honor.  I recognized it as such but had mixed feelings.  In the first place I couldn’t account for it.  I had never taught in primary.  I was not fond of it as a child, preferring “religion class” initiated in our ward by William A. Moreton, a witty Irishman in our neighborhood.  Incidentally, before long this class was discontinued but, I understand, developed into the Church Seminary System.

Also at that age the peer group feeling is strong and to some extent I felt myself drawn rather out of it.

It was not until somewhat later that I recalled that in a patriarchal blessing given to me when a child it says “you shall early be called into council among your sex.” 

At any rate it was a great experience while it lasted though a break in my health,  which in retrospect seems could have “partly at least” been avoided [ended the service].

 One of life’s great temptations is in keeping one’s mind focused on futile regrets instead of following the motto of alcoholics anonymous.  ‘God give me the serenity to “accept that which cannot change and the courage to change what I can.”

My General Board Experience

It was a great experience to know and work under Louie B.  Felt, the first general president of the Primary Association of the Church.  She was a majestic, beautiful woman, childless herself but which circumstances flowered into a boundless love for all children.

Her counselor, May Anderson, was a stimulating, interesting person to know.  She edited the Children’s Friend magazine and succeeded Sister Felt as the president.

At the time I was active on the Board, the Primary and Relief Society General Board members traveled throughout the various stakes of the church with a general authority, usually an Apostle, or with one of the Seven

Presidents of the Seventies, of which there were only seven at the time [when we] held a stake conference or a Relief Society and Primary convention.

On my first assignment I was accompanied by an experienced board member, Mrs. Francis Kingsbury Thomas who was a sister of President Kingsbury of the University of Utah.  We went to the stake near Burley, Idaho where Jack _____was stake president.  It was a particularly interesting trip to me as President Jack took us over to see the nearby Shoshone Falls.

My memory is that Pres. Jack, who knew my Father, was a former president of the Southern States Mission.  He knew my father, John M. Cannon, as did a surprising number of people I met and who always spoke so highly of him.

From then on, I was sent alone to hold the Primary Convention along with the Relief Society Convention in conjunction with the Stake Convention.  We always stayed in the homes of the people.   At one place (Mt. Pleasant) I recall “runnnnning” into bedbugs also known as the Utah Pest.  This stayed in my memory as one appeared out of my sleeve onto my hand as I was speaking.

 At that time a member of the Relief Society and one of the Primary General Board traveled with them and held Relief Society and Primary conventions.. 

But the most memorable trip I took occupied two weeks in the company with the then Apostle, Joseph Fielding Smith whose motherly kindness and thoughtfulness I will never forget. Charles Hart of the First Council of the Seventies, a fine gentleman, was with us also until he left us at Panguitch.   He left us on account of the illness of his first wife who died soon after.

It was before the time of airplane travel, and automobiles were somewhat rare and not too dependable.

We took the railroad train down through about the center of the state to Marysvale, the end of the line.  Sister Alice Merrill Horne was the Relief Society representative and it was an education to travel with her.

She had been a member of the Utah Legislature at the time.  Father had helped her formulate her bill for Utah Art.  She was also in the process of writing her book on Utah art and her discussion of it to me was educational.

Our first convention was farther on to Panquitch. .  An automobile was waiting to transport us.  It had to cross a small stream over which there was no bridge.  The engine was so filled with water it took some time to get it going.

We held the conference in Panguitch with no great adventures..  However Sister Horne decided to return home from there, as I recall, for her son’s graduation.  She commissioned the Stake Relief Society President, a fine woman, to go on to Kanab in her place and repeat the lessons she had first heard.

President W. W. Seegmiller, who incidentally was considered to run for governor, was a dynamic speaker.

I recalled him saying to the Primary President from Panguitch a saying once current, ” If I were a lawyer, a doctor or an earl, by jingo, I’d marry Bishop Bunker’s other girl.”  Excepting what a good woman she was and that she must have been a Bunker, I don’t recall her married name.

I am informed [that] visiting church officials now sometimes stay at hotels or other public accommodations but not so then.  I stayed every night with the Relief Society President from Panguitch, the only objection being that she did not miss a beat in snoring every night.

As transportation was so slow and difficult, we did not return to Salt Lake for two weeks but took in two conferences with public meetings at nearby small towns nightly during the interval.

Evening meetings were held nightly in each of the little towns we passed through and Brother Joseph Fielding Smith and I were the speakers the town folks came out to hear.

As I recall, our first little town for a public meeting was at Hatch, after which the good bishop drove us up the valley to a reservoir with a dirt dam on top of which the road ran.

On his returning trip down the valley to his farm, he crossed over the dirt road on the top of the dam just as it started to wash out at its base to flood his farm in the valley below. 

There was no radio at the time, the telephone works were down to transmit any message below the dam.

Officials in Salt Lake were almost panicked to know what had happened to us.

President W. W. Seegmiller in his wide-seated “white top” drawn by a team of horses met us and drove us over the sandy road he termed 22 miles long and 22 miles deep.  The sand flowed off the wheels in a spray as we pulled labouringly along.

But the unfortunate thing for me was ahead.  My prepared talk on lesson preparation got by fairly well at the conferences as the subject at the time had not been employed as it is now.  Apostle Joseph fielding Smith gave mightily his sermon on genealogy in which he was the noted pioneer at the time.

But the poor little inexperienced me.  Who was I to preach to anticipating congregations?  I once felt somewhat guilty for borrowing a children’s story I’ve heard an experience and board member tell. 

At least I did not arouse resentment by saying, as one young board member was reputed to have done,  she did wish parents would take an interest in their children.

Joseph Fielding Smith and I were alone on our laborious return home. At places the old road was washed out and we carried our suit cases short distances to when a new team and carriage met us.

President Joseph Fielding Smith always recalled this trip whenever I met him as I frequently did in his late years.  He was the kindest man despite how stern he sounded sometimes from the pulpit as he shook his finger at his audience and cried repentance which doubtless was his mission.

Another Board assignment I made in Emery County emphasizes how wide I was from my “peers” though I was received graciously by my elders.

Dr. Seymour B. Young, father of Dr. Levi Edgar Young and my life time dear friend, Hortense Young Hammond.

I never can forget the immaculate, stately appearance of Brother Young of the Seven Presidents as he stepped onto the stand.  And I cannot forget Aunt Julina (so called by everyone) Smith, wife of Pres. Joseph F. Smith, who represented the Relief Society General Board , and her motherly interest in me.  I was not ill but had roughness in my throat and voice.

She prescribed Menthelatim internally in my throat, and while I did not relish it, it worked.

In later years when I was married and had little boys of my own and had long since been released from the Primary Board, I met May Anderson on the street.  She inquired what I was doing, I replied I was teaching a group of young boys in my ward primary.  She wanted to know how I liked the prescribed lessons in the manual.  I hesitatingly replied that I was not using it.  I explained I had been suddenly called to substitute for an absent teacher with no time for preparation.  The theme of the course was “Faith, Repentance and Baptism.  I was familiar with the life of Jacob Hamblin in the old ”Faith Promoting Series”.  I caught the attention of the boy’s  with an episode from it illustrating faith.  Each lesson I followed up with Jacob Hamblin, the great missionary of faith. Each week they were eager for more and my class grew.  Sister Anderson said, go right on doing what you are doing!  One boy of a family not in the Church was finally baptized.

Do not imply that I do not approve of planned lessons by the General Board.  I knew of teachers who were just reading to their classes just material which was easiest to pick up but without a gospel message.

Years later, my ward bishop asked me what I had enjoyed most in my church work.  I replied it was teaching young boys in Primary.  I continued doing this for a number of years.  I could always get it.  No one else seemed to want it.    END

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