Gordon the Seer: A Tribute to President Hinckley

As a boy he heard the stentorian testimony of Joseph F. Smith, who as a boy in his own turn had sat in the lap of the Prophet Joseph. His mission call was issued by Heber J. Grant during the first Roosevelt administration, and as a missionary in the British Isles he attended a solemn convocation in Parliament where the septuagenarian Rudyard Kipling read an original composition. His service in the Church spanned more than seven decades, and he personally worked with eight of the fourteen Church presidents who preceded him. He was a grand old warrior, a soldier of the Cross who bore his Master’s banner from his boyhood farm unto the ends of the earth. Unflagging, undaunted, unyielding, untiring; valiant and faithful and true. A poet and a prophet, a scholar and a saint. He was my greatest hero. I do not expect to see his like again.

Gordon Bitner Hinckley became a member of the First Presidency on July 23rd, 1981. I was born a few months later. I offer what follows as a personal memorial of this mighty prophet whose tenure in the First Presidency spanned my youth, adolescence, and early manhood. Julia is as old now as I was when President Kimball and Elder McConkie died (1985). I hope that what I write here, and what I tell her and her siblings and their children in years to come will help my posterity to know and love President Hinckley vicariously as well as I have come vicariously to know and love those among whom he labored before the onset of my living memory.

My earliest memories of President Hinckley are of him reading messages in the stead of the ailing President Benson. That was my introduction to hearing the words of a prophet in those strong, certain cadences. I was still a deacon when President Hunter passed away and President Hinckley became the fifteenth president of the Church in this dispensation. It was a new experience for me to see a President of the Church move and speak with such energy and vigor, with the humor and elegance of his sprightly eighty-four years. Not long after President Hinckley was sustained in a solemn assembly I was out home teaching with my companion, who at that time was Brother Doug Brenchley, known to all the mission-serving world as the booming baritone who directs the choir at the MTC. Brother Brenchley taught me about succession in the presidency, telling me about the time when President Joseph Fielding Smith replaced President David O. McKay. President Smith had seemed to some so stern and unbending before, he told me, and many were concerned about his theological conservatism and advanced age. And yet, Brother Brenchley continued, when he stood to address the saints in general conference for the first time, there was no question that the Lord had chosen His man, that the mantle had unmistakably fallen on the son of Joseph F. and the grandson of Hyrum Smith. I wasn’t worried about President Hinckley’s sternness or age or theological conservatism, but a warm feeling came over me as Brother Brenchley spoke that communicated in a feeling what I can now articulate in words—which is that the keys of the Kingdom are lodged with the Brethren, that the Lord knows whom He wants to lead His Church, and that we can follow the prophets and apostles with full and complete trust that the Almighty is at the helm.

Before I began high school I begrudged general conference as a biannual hardship that kept me from watching college football in October and the college basketball final four in April. As a freshman in high school I attended a seminary morningside where Brad Wilcox taught a ridiculous—and therefore unforgettable—mnemonic that helped us remember the names of the First Presidency and Council of the Twelve in order of apostolic seniority. I still remember it: One-thumb-Hinckley; thumbs up for President Hinckley. Two-shoe-Monson; one must be careful not to lose one’s shoe in a monsoon. Three-tree-Packer; it takes quite a packer to load a tree on his back. Four-door-Perry; one would very much like to open the door to Perry-dise . . . . And so on. Brother Wilcox then taught us a distinctive fact about each of them, most of which I also remember, such as Elder Scott’s background in nuclear physics and Elder Maxwell’s unpromising D in a high school English class. This was just before October 1996 general conference, which I watched eagerly, feeling in my teenaged bones that I was an insider—that I knew the Brethren and that they could, therefore, address me directly. I have loved conference ever since. The highlight of that conference, and of every conference since then, was, of course, hearing President Hinckley speak.

In October 1999, by which time my dreams of NBA stardom had been dashed forever and I began to live life in earnest, President Hinckley gave an epochal address entitled, “At the Summit of the Ages,” a talk that painted in broad strokes a providential portrait of all of human history, a portrait that swirled majestically around two epic foci that marked the earthly ministry of the Son of God and the latter-day Restoration in anticipation of the Messiah’s triumphant return. I was taking AP European History at the time and was duly impressed by President Hinckley’s passing allusion to the coronation of Charlemagne and his apposite citation of Boccaccio. I was even more impressed by his ringing testimony of the Savior and of his great latter day work.

Six months later, in April 2000, President Hinckley, speaking now in the new Conference Center from a pulpit carved from his own walnut tree, delivered what for me was a life-changing discourse. Styled simply, “My Testimony,” the talk began with a withering rebuke to those who try to halt the work of the Lord and proceeded to respond to a question President Hinckley had fielded from an elder at a missionary zone conference: “Give us your testimony,” the young missionary requested, “and tell us how you gained it.” The testimony was majestic and wonderful, and I can still quote my favorite line: “Unblemished and without fault of any kind, He is the Lamb of God before whom I bow and through whom I approach my Father in Heaven.” That gave me the image of my prophet on his knees, quietly imploring the Father in the name of the Son or shouting sweet hosannas to the Lion and the Lamb. I just wept as President Hinckley spoke. My dad, who was sitting next to me on the couch, put his arms around me and let me weep. After the talk I scribbled in my notes, “This was the best talk I have ever heard.” A common reaction of mine to a message from President Hinckley. Elsewhere in that message President Hinckley spoke of “so many, many hundreds of thousands of our young people who are faithful and true, who are straight as an arrow and as strong as a great wave of the sea in following the course they have mapped out for themselves. It is a course of righteousness and goodness, a course of accomplishment and achievement. They are making something of their lives, and the world will be so much the better for them.” I wanted very much to be one of those youthful thousands.

That same spring I spent a week at BYU (it was odd to stay in a hotel across town) interviewing to become a Hinckley Scholar. Before the interview week began I asked my dad to give me a blessing, not that I would win, but that I would in any case live worthy to earn a scholarship that carried the name of my prophet. I did win the scholarship, though I suppose I was unworthy, then and now, of the title. As congratulations for the scholarship BYU gave me a copy of Sheri Dew’s fine biography of President Hinckley, which I read with great relish.

In October 2000, I received a call to serve in the Italy Milan mission. The most striking feature of the call for me was that it bore President Hinckley’s signature. I was excited to tell the Italians that there was a prophet again in Israel. At the October general conference President Hinckley dedicated the Conference Center. It was a reverential thrill for me to see my prophet waving a white handkerchief as he led the saints in the Hosanna Shout. I had read about Wilford Woodruff doing the same thing a century earlier at the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple. The Spirit confirmed to me that one as great as Wilford was in our midst.

My most powerful and indelible memory of President Hinckley is, of course, a mission memory, and it came in conjunction with the dedication of the newly rebuilt Nauvoo Temple. I was, at that time in June 2002, a zone leader in Milano. We were thrilled that we would get to watch the Temple dedication via satellite, and I made sure those in my apartment were ready. Each morning during the week of the dedication we had a combined district study where we studied what the scriptures have to teach about temples. I suggested that we go to the dedication fasting, which we did. I even wore my jacket on the way to the chapel, braving the Lombardian humidity and heat.

The dedication was an experience never to be forgotten, but one I have a hard time writing about. The climactic moment for me was President Hinckley’s address, where he recounted the history of the craven Thomas Ford after his betrayal of the Prophet Joseph. When he had finished, President Hinckley raised his arms and in the full majesty of his prophetic stature he thundered, “You cannot turn your back on this work and prosper! I repeat: You cannot turn your back on this work and prosper!” That moment, for me, was electrifying. It was a moment of spiritual unity that brought together my two great prophets and heroes.

We were sitting in a small side room as a group of missionaries. I was in the back of the group. Afterward, an elder who sat in front of me said that when we sang, “The Spirit of God Like a Fire is Burning,” he heard my voice but also other voices coming from behind me. It was a powerful experience from beginning to end. As President Hinckley exited the Temple and the organist played “We Thank Thee, O God, For a Prophet,” in reverent benediction, I received a sacred confirmation that this is God’s work, and that Joseph and Gordon were His prophets.

Other experiences, too many to list, have followed. Every sermon was a miniature masterpiece. He was always so humble, so faithful, so loyal, so hardworking, and so true. When with a twinkle in his eye he waved his cane to the saints at conference, I always felt he was waving only at me. He was my prophet, as well as the world’s. I almost couldn’t bear the thought that my children would never really know him and almost certainly never remember him. Maybe I was feeling something of what the Book of Mormon prophets felt when they urged their families and their peoples to “remember, remember.”

I don’t know quite how to close. I certainly don’t have the literary gifts that would allow for an adequate tribute from any stylistic point of view. I suppose the best that can be said, for the benefit of posterity, about President Hinckley is to stress just how good he was, just how hard he worked, just how glorious was the authority of the prophetic mantle that descended upon this plain, humble, holy man. My final valediction over my fallen captain is not only that I knew he was a prophet, but that I couldn’t help knowing it—that when he spoke, in the sovereign majesty of the holy priesthood and the sacred statute of his office as the presiding high priest over the whole Church of God, I was, in the scriptural phrase, “constrained to acknowledge” that Gordon Hinckley was God’s prophet, and that the Latter-day Saints were His people.

I loved President Hinckley the way I think the Lord wants us to love one another.

“Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest”—to thy rest where thy beloved Marjorie awaits thee, along with thy noble father and saintly mother, as well as the fellowship and assembly of all the holy prophets who still await the hour of their resurrection. There you and they will continue your labors in preaching the gospel unto those who lie in bondage in the great world of the spirits of the dead, and your voice will continue to ring in testimony of the Master you have served so unspeakably well. God be thanked for the life and ministry and legacy of Gordon B. Hinckley. And God be thanked that I was sent to the earth in an hour when I could witness it, and tell it to posterity and to the world.