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MLA: Parshall, Ardis E. "Improvement Era, June 1968." Keepapitchin.org, 07 Jun 2018, https://keepapitchinin.org/2018/06/07/improvement-era-june-1968/.
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7 thoughts on “Improvement Era, June 1968”
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They look delightful! Is that David O. and Emma Ray? I’m used to pictures of him with swoopier hair and no glasses, but I can’t think who else it would be.
Yes! That’s who they are. Your comment made me notice that I had cut off the bottom of the cover which not only identifies the McKays but also the magazine and its publication date. That’s fixed now.
Interesting that by 1968 the informal “talks” was considered acceptable for the cover of the IE. I assume that in the early church no one gave a talk in church but instead gave sermons or discourses. I wonder when they began to be referred to as talks?
That would be an interesting bit of trivia to find out, KLC.
As a preliminary test, I looked at the Conference Reports pamphlets from 1880, 1897-2011. 1880 refers to “Proceedings” on the cover, with “Discourses” used exclusively thereafter — but that could be the conservatism of a cover format. I also searched for the word “talks,” thinking that speakers might use that word colloquially within their talks, showing that the word was in use. That begins showing up in 1951, with more and more occurrences as the years pass.
I also searched the phrase “conference talks” in the Improvement Era. That phrase first appears in 1950, not in the headings of talk transcriptions, but in other articles and headlines, such as one in September 1950 referring to “excerpts from George F. Richards’ Conference Talks.” It becomes more and more common thereafter.
So it looks like it was a mid-century development, with “discourses” being retained for the most formal situations. Would have to do a much finer-grained search to find its first appearance on a cover, first appearance heading the section of the Era reproducing the talks, etc.
In June 1968 Pres. McKay would have been about three months shy of his 95th birthday–or about one year older than Pres. Nelson is right now. It was a lot farther from 14 to 95 than from 64 to 94! And Pres. McKay had had cataracts that required him to wear thick glasses, and some strokes that limited his public speaking–but Pres. Nelson seems a whole lot younger!
Hugh Garner of Salt Lake City, now deceased, was married to one of President McKay’s nieces. He used to tell me how interesting family Thanksgiving dinners were, especially those attended by another McKay niece, Fawn Brodie.