Tag Archives: Russia

biographical, Mormon history

Henry D. Styer: A Sense of Fair Play

11 Comments

Henry Delp Styer (1862-1944), scion of one of the first Czech families to settle in colonial Pennsylvania, was a member of the West Point class of 1884. His first military posts were in the west, including Utah, where he was assigned to Indian duty part of the time, and to service as the professor of military tactics at Utah Agricultural College in Logan for part of the time. He served in the Philippines during the Spanish American War, and again several years later. He commanded Fort Niagara for a time, and served on the Mexican border during the tense years of the Mexican Revolution. Other duty posts included Trenton, New Jersey, and Camp Lewis, near Tacoma, Washington.

Perhaps his most exotic assignment came in 1918, during the Russian Revolution. Continue reading Henry D. Styer: A Sense of Fair Play →

Guest Posts, Mormon history

An Apostle’s Testimony in Soviet Russia, 1959

26 Comments

An office memo from Grant Salisbury and Warren K. Leffler, the writer-photographer team for “U.S. News & World Report” that accompanied Secretary of Agriculture Ezra T. Benson to Russia.

The night we left Moscow to fly down to Kiev, Secretary Benson literally took us to church.

Many of the reporters laughed about it on the way, because Mr. Benson, who is a leading Mormon, had arranged for us earlier to attend a service at the Latter-Day Saints Church in West Berlin, but all the newsmen found one excuse or another for not going. In Moscow, we had no choice because the cars picked us up at the hotel and stopped at the church on the way to the airport. It was around 7:30 o’clock on the chilly, rainy evening of October 1.

As the cavalcade of cars arrived at the Central Baptist Church, on a narrow side street not far from Red Square, somebody wisecracked, “Well, boys, you’re going to get to church whether you like it or not.” Continue reading An Apostle’s Testimony in Soviet Russia, 1959 →