The Church Administration Building – the smallish granite building on South Temple, not the Church Office tower on North Temple – opened in about 1917 (I thought it was 1918, but Wikipedia says 1917, and I’m too tired tonight to hunt up verification). It once held offices of many General Authorities and departments, with other departments scattered around downtown Salt Lake wherever office space could be found. Today it houses the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve, and a few others. For security reasons, I suppose, it is closed to the public today, but for decades it was open to anyone who cared to enter.
In about 1950 – the exact date has not been preserved – a family of tourists did just that. They entered, and looked around the foyer for someone to help them. A man crossing through the foyer stopped and asked what they needed.
“We’re from New York,” the wife and mother said; “Is there someone who can show us around your church?”
“I’d be happy to oblige,” said their guide. “Step over here and I’ll show you the President’s office. He isn’t at his desk this moment.”
One of the children said it was a nice office, but that was hardly enough to please them. “I’d like to go through your temple,” the woman said.
“And we’d be most happy to have you go through the temple,” was the response, “but you would have to make special preparations.” (He did go on to explain that “the temple was a sacred place in our religion where only members in good standing could go.”)
But in place of the temple, their guide offered the tourists an organ recital in the Tabernacle, and intrigued the children with the promise that someone would drop a pin at the front of the building, and they would be able to hear it drop all the way in the back. He gave them a great tour of the temple grounds, drawing attention to the monuments to the seagulls, the handcart pioneers, and to Joseph Smith. He told them what it meant to consider Joseph Smith a prophet, and gave them a brief, exciting history of the Church.
At the end of the tour, the family thanked their guide and asked his name. “It’s George Albert Smith,” he told them. They recognized his name from their earlier visit to the president’s office, and gasped. “You mean— I’m sure— you must be a terribly busy man.”
“Not too busy for what’s important,” President Smith said, as he shook their hands in farewell.
(Published as part of a collection of similar brief stories as “In the Footsteps of Leaders,” The Instructor, November 1964, p. 427, credited to “L.R.J.” I have rewritten the account, but have not done enough to take credit for it as an original piece.)
I love this! I’m currently swamped, to the point of nobody-better-ask-me-for-anything-or-there-will-be-tears, and I realizes I need to reprioritize badly. This was written for me today!
And, Ardis, thanks for providing uplifting stuff for me to read on breaks taken to forestall brain melting.
Thanks for taking the time to comment after reading, Deb. I’m glad you enjoy these things — I really enjoy knowing that.
This is delightful.
Well, now I’m wondering whether he introduced himself using all three names so that they’d make the connection, or whether he generally went by “George Albert Smith.” I had always assumed that the middle names or initials were a formality for print, but that most people then, like now, would have just used a first and last name for everyday use.
I see him referred to affectionately in letters by other people as “George Albert,” so maybe that’s the name he did generally go by. He was named for his grandfather George A. (who *was* known colloquially as “George A.”) and he named his own son George Albert Smith, so perhaps there was also an element of needing to distinguish between members of the same family, too.
In the era when he grew up, it does seem to have been a very Mormon thing for men to be called familiarly by names we would reserve for print. “John W.” and “Joseph A.” (sons of Brigham Young) were called just that, for instance.
Yes, in our freshman dorm at BYU (of course), we used to practice our General Authority names. We gave that up long ago, but I do note that my Family History Library ID has my name right as “Grant L. Vaughn.”
I would never have guessed that George A, without any need for disambiguation, would have actually gone by “George A.” Fascinating. (Also, now that I’ve said it to myself several times, “George Albert” sounds like something Queen Victoria would have named a child.)
And all the other people walking around Temple Square at the time were wondering what it would take to get THEIR family a tour of Temple Square led by the prophet!
When my grandmother was in high school (late 1930s), the seminary teacher took the whole class to Salt Lake, where they got a tour of the Church office building.
At the end of the tour, they were invited into the office of Heber J. Grant, who signed his name on a small for each of them. She treasured that memento the rest of her life.
It was a different Church back then, for sure. Today, I would think just about any area authority 70 oversees more members than the apostles did in the WWII era.
What a nice story. Reminds me of a similar story about some tourists who rang the doorbell at the Utah Governor’s Mansion and got a tour. At some point they asked the man leading them around what his role was at the mansion. “Governor.”
(I think the story was about Governor Bangerter, but I can’t swear to it.)
So much good had come from the growth of the church, but part of me years for the intimacy and access previous generations had with/to the church leaders.
Whoops, *has *yearns