It was winter in Salt Lake City.
Sleighing and cutter riding were excellent.
As the sleighs went by, one small adventuresome
six-year-old delighted in waiting in front of his house
to grab onto passing sleighs.
And then, after riding a block or two, jumping off and
running home.
This particular night he caught the sleigh belonging to
President Brigham Young, who had a fine team of horses and
liked to drive quite rapidly.
The boy soon found himself skimming along so fast in the
cold that he didn't dare jump off.
Finally, President Young caught sight
of his young passenger.
He stopped the sleigh and took the boy in, tucking the warm
robes around him.
Thus began a friendship between the prophet Brigham
Young and a boy named Heber Jeddy Grant,
future prophet of God.
Heber spent many happy hours in the home of Brigham Young,
since both a son and a grandson of the president were
his friends.
He says of Brigham Young, "I learned to love him with an
affection I imagine I would have felt for my own father."
His own father, Jedediah M. Grant, the first mayor of Salt
Lake City, had died of pneumonia just a few days
after Heber was born.
Heber's mother, Rachel Ivans Grant, required high standards
of conduct from her son, knowing that a great destiny
awaited him.
When he was a small child, Eliza R. Snow, sister of
Lorenzo Snow, had prophesied that he should one day become
a great man in the Church and an Apostle of
the Lord Jesus Christ.
Although Heber enjoyed the usual boyish pursuits, his
business sense began to develop early in life.
With the marbles he won, he hired his friends to do his
daily chores.
His enterprise also gained him admittance to performances at
the Salt Lake Theater.
Having no money to pay for tickets, he gained entrance by
carrying drinking water in a new five-gallon coal oil can
to people in the third balcony.
He said later he often wished the people had filled up on
water before they came to the theater.
Still he enjoyed many performances as he supplied
their need.
His personal credo, borrowed from Ralph Waldo Emerson, was
"That which we persist in doing becomes easy to do, not
that the nature of the thing has changed, but that our
power to do has increased." Many times during his life he
proved the truth of that philosophy.
Physically weak as a boy, he was unable to throw a baseball
from one base to another, and he lacked the
skill to bat well.
When his friends ridiculed him, he solemnly vowed that
someday he would play as a starter on the championship
team of the Territory of Utah.
He spent hours throwing a ball against the side of a
neighbor's barn, and spent many a sleepless night nursing
his aching arm.
His persistence finally earned him a place on the starting
team that won the championship in Utah, California, Colorado,
and Wyoming.
He aspired to the position of bookkeeper with Wells Fargo
Bank at a time when his main source of income was shining
boots for his mother's borders at $.05 a pair.
Accounts and records at that time were all written in pen,
and Heber's handwriting had been
described as hen scratches.
He toiled at improving his penmanship, later recalling,
"I learned to write so well that I often earn more after
office hours by writing cards and invitations and making
maps than the amount of my regular salary."
At 19, he reached his goal.
He was hired as bookkeeper for the Wells Fargo Bank and
eventually became the first president of the
State Bank of Utah.
His inability to carry a tune in his youth caused a singing
teacher to exclaim in despair that Heber would never in this
world learn to sing.
Years later, his friend Horace S. Ensign, a fine singer,
encouraged him by saying that anyone could learn to sing who
had a reasonably good voice, who possessed perseverance,
and who was willing to practice.
Heber's response was that he had an abundance of voice and
plenty of perseverance.
At the end of three months, he was able to sing three hymns.
He said, "I tried to sing in the big tabernacle as an
object lesson to young people.
I made a failure, getting off key in nearly every verse.
And instead of my efforts encouraging them, I fear it
tended to discourage them."
Eventually, with his strong, mellow voice, he became an
acceptable singer and performed at every
opportunity.
Another factor in his accomplishments was an
organized life.
He recalled, "As a boy of 17, I dreamed about my future
life, what I was going to do until I became 35, planned it,
and worked for it.
We do not accomplish things without having a plan.
No architect ever draws a building who has not had an
idea of what he is hoping to draw.
From the time I was 17 until I was 24, I accomplished every
one of the things I had planned to do and dreamed
about and worked for."
One of those things he planned to do was to be married at 21.
Lucy Stringham became his first wife just before his
21st birthday.
He wrote later, "I shall always be grateful to the day
of my death that I took the trouble to travel all the way
from Utah County to St. George to be married in the St.
George Temple.
My friends advised me not to go.
They told me to have the stake president marry us and then be
sealed in the Salt Lake Temple when it was completed.
Why did I not listen to them?
Because I wanted to be married for time and all eternity, and
I wanted to start life right.
Later, I had cause to rejoice greatly because of my
determination to be married in the temple, because my wife
died before the Salt Lake Temple was completed."
At the age of 24, his life plans were changed.
He moved to this home in the small town of Tooele, Utah,
leaving a promising business career in Salt Lake City,
because he had been called as president of Tooele Stake.
He says of his first address as stake president, "I
remember preaching and telling everything I could think of,
and some of it over twice, and ran out of ideas in seven and
a half minutes by the watch.
The next four Sundays were no better.
"Then I went to the little town of Vernon, took two
others with me to do the preaching, I got up to say a
few words and spoke for 45 minutes with perfect ease
under the inspiration of the Lord.
The next Sunday I was in Grantsville.
I told the Lord I would like to talk for 45 minutes.
I got up to speak and ran out of words in five minutes.
"After the meeting, I walked several miles away from the
Church out into the fields.
I got down behind a haystack and shed some more tears.
They were tears of humiliation.
I made a pledge with God then that never again would I stand
up with a feeling that all I needed to do was stand up and
talk, but that I would get up on all occasions with a desire
to say something that might be of benefit to the people, and
not with the spirit of pride, such as I had that day in
Grantsville."
Only two years later, not quite 26 years of age, Heber
J. Grant was ordained an Apostle and served in the
Council of the Twelve for many years.
"I could not help but feel," he said later, "that the
calling was far beyond my desires or any ability which I
possessed." He was riding through the Navajo Indian
Reservation several months later, still uncomfortable
about his ordination and feeling very blue and
depressed when he seemed to be witnessing a scene in heaven
concerning two vacancies in the Council of the Twelve,
which had existed for several months.
Many years later in general conference, he described his
experience:
"I seemed to hear the words which were spoken.
I listened to the discussion with a great deal of interest.
In this Council, the Savior was present.
My father was there, and the Prophet
Joseph Smith was there.
It was given to me that the Prophet Joseph Smith and my
father mentioned me and requested that I be called to
that position.
It was given to me that because of their faithful
labors that I was called, and not because of anything I had
done of myself or any great thing that I had accomplished.
It was also given to me that that was all these men, the
prophet and my father, could do for me.
From that day, it depended upon me and upon me alone as
to whether I made a success of my life or a failure."
The call to the apostleship changed the trend of his life
from business to spiritual matters, yet his only interest
in the accumulation of money had always been the good he
could do with it.
In his lifetime, he gave away literally thousands of dollars
of his own money.
He anonymously paid off mortgages from the homes of
widows, then helped their children find jobs, saw that
people who needed medical attention received it, and
helped others to become financially independent.
His concern for others was but a reflection of the devotion
he demonstrated throughout his life to his family, which
included 12 children.
His wife Augusta raised most of them after the death of his
first wife, Lucy, and his second wife, Emily.
In 1901 he was called to open and preside over
the Japanese Mission.
Three missionaries accompanied him to Japan--Elders Horace S.
Ensign, Alma O. Taylor, and Louis Kelsch.
They were present when he dedicated that land for the
reception of the gospel.
The mission did not immediately flourish partly
because of cultural differences and
communication barriers.
President Grant quipped that he learned the Japanese
language, but the people couldn't understand their own
language when he spoke it.
In spite of these difficulties, the Book of
Mormon was translated into Japanese and a few
converts were made.
The seeds of the gospel planted at that time in
adverse conditions remained almost dormant for 50 years,
and then began to bear abundant fruit.
In the meantime, Heber J. Grant had become President of
the Church, taking office within days of the 1918
Armistice ending World War I.
In 1922, he became the first Church President to give a
gospel message over the radio.
Two years later, general conference
was broadcast regularly.
And in 1929, weekly broadcasts of the
Tabernacle Choir were initiated.
Within 10 years, they had become the oldest continuing
program on radio.
The institute program began during his administration.
The first institute being established in Moscow, Idaho,
to provide weekday religious education to Church members of
college age.
In 1930, a pageant was presented in Salt Lake City
during the entire month of April to help celebrate the
100th anniversary of the organization of the Church.
President Grant dedicated many monuments to Church history.
He dedicated three temples--the Hawaiian Temple,
the Alberta Temple, and the Arizona Temple.
Frequent games of golf helped him keep fit and deal with
daily pressures.
"There is no question about it," he wrote, "golf does take
one's mind off everything else and refreshes the body and the
mind." He also exercised faithfully every morning.
His favorite theme for sermons was keep the commandments.
He also was noted for his talks on the Word of Wisdom
and tithing.
Some people, he observed, when they get 10 apples, they eat 9
of them and then cut the other apple in two and eat up half
of it, and then hold up the other half and ask the Lord to
take a bite.
Each year President Grant personally autographed
thousands of Christmas cards and booklets, which he sent
out to friends, acquaintances, and workers in the temple and
the Church offices.
His friendship with prominent and influential people of the
nation opened many doors to the Church after years of
hostility and persecution.
Joseph Anderson, his secretary for many years and later a
member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, said of him, "He
is truly the greatest ambassador of friendship and
goodwill to the professional and businessman that the
Church ever had.
No one can begin to estimate the amount of good he's done
for the Church in allaying prejudice in the minds of
influential people."
His business genius contributed to the financial
stability of the Church, particularly during the dark
days of the Great Depression, which followed the stock
market crash of 1929.
This led directly to the establishment of the Church
welfare program in 1936.
President Grant died near the end of World War II, after
presiding for 27 years, the length of his administration
second only to Brigham Young's.
As a true prophet, he bore fervent witness of the Savior
and the Restoration of His gospel:
"I know beyond a shadow of a doubt of the divinity of this
work in which we are engaged.
It is one of the joys of my life at home and abroad, in
private and in public, to testify that I know as well as
I know that I live that God lives, that He hears and
answers our prayers.
He's heard and answered mine from childhood until the
present day.
"He heard and answered the prayers of that
beloved mother of mine.
Under the inspiration of the living God, she planted in my
heart a love of truth, a love of God, a love
of the Prophet Joseph.
Her description of that man was that he was one of the
finest, one of the most wonderful men that she ever
laid eyes upon.
I pray God for you, one and all, to love this gospel, to
think of it as of more value than anything else in all the
world, and that's what it is.
I pray God to bless each and every one of us, and I ask it
in the name of our Redeemer, Jesus Christ, amen."