Chapter 25: Requiem

Gridlock is generally unheard of in the desolate community of Colorado City, Arizona, but on this particular September morning, the caravans arriving from all directions – Canada, Mexico, Texas, and California – manage to hold up traffic on Hildale Street all the way through town. The meetinghouse itself is cordoned off; those close enough to the deceased prophet are admitted, but the guest list is kept under tight scrutiny. The 5,000 available seats – several hundred of which are reserved for Rulon’s immediate family – fill quickly. The general public and the press are kept at bay by untrained security forces – generally teenage boys armed with walkie-talkies and cowboy hats. Non-believers and dissidents – whether they were cast out or whether they left the fold on their own – are quickly turned away. None but true followers of the prophet are welcome inside the sanctuary.

A fashionable family from Utah Valley – looking conspicuously out of place – approaches the dragnet. The bouncer puts his hand up and points to an overlooking area where they can view the procession from a safe distance.

“Rodger Hickson and family,” says the head of the household, “We have an invitation.”

The bouncer is skeptical, but protocol dictates he call his supervisor to check the master list. He has no doubt that he’ll be turning them away in a moment.

“I’ll be right there,” says the supervisor, his voice crackling over the radio.

The young man in the cowboy hat looks confused; his supervisor soon approaches and personally drops the rope for the Hicksons.

“Let me show you to your seats,” he says politely.

Rodger enters the meeting house with his first – and only – wife and their children. They are shown to their seats in the first row, reserved especially for their family. Behind them, occupying at least six more sets of pews, are Rulon’s wives and his other children, divided neatly into family groups.

Their gazes are fixed on the casket at the front of the meetinghouse, but many can be seen turning to each other, pointing toward the Hicksons and whispering jealously. Some are visibly upset that the Hicksons have even been granted access, not to mention having a place of honor at Rulon’s farewell service. Though he is considered a heretic and a blasphemer for his mainstream Mormonism, no one here can deny that Rodger has secured his place by right of birth. As such, rather than being cast out and shunned for following a false prophet, he is amazed to find himself respected and revered among his half-siblings and the presiding authorities.

As Rulon’s first-born son – had he chosen to follow in his father’s footsteps rather than severing those ties and siding with his mother – Rodger would have inherited this desert empire. As he looks around at the crowd behind him, he realizes that he could have had practically every soul in the audience – along with 10,000 more scattered around in compounds throughout the West – at his beck and call. Megalomaniacal thoughts might have crept into anyone else’s mind; but to Rodger, the prospect of ruling a sect is entirely unappealing. Throughout his life he has tried his best to dodge the spotlight or even the slightest glint of limelight. He is completely content at home fulfilling his duties as a grandfather and – just recently – as a new great-grandfather.

Rodger’s half-brother, Warren, who has already usurped their father’s position, preaches a lengthy sermon from the pulpit. After several additional sermons by high-ranking members of his flock, the choir sings O My Father. To Rodger, it is one of the few recognizable elements in a service in which Warren has preached unfamiliar tenets, debuted personally written songs, and even introduced new doctrines, including the notion that Uncle Rulon is still alive and present, attending the service himself and speaking through Warren in a semi-translated state in fulfillment of his earlier predictions of longevity.

Quite perplexed by the time the lengthy service concludes, Rodger stands at the open casket and is granted a private moment by the pallbearers standing guard. He stares at the frozen face. Who was this man? Rodger had been abandoned as a child for an alleged vision; he ought to be angry, hurt, and resentful. Try as he might, though, he can’t hold the decision against his father. Much as he questions the source of the vision, he never has been able to bring himself to question its reality nor his father’s unwavering commitment to follow it through.

Warren walks up to Rodger to shake his hand, interrupting the moment. They speak just a few terse words to each other and part ways with a pat on the shoulder that is meant to mark the moment with more significance than a handshake, but the gesture falls far short of a brotherly hug. Already consolidating power and having previously planned for every detail of any coup that might ensue, Warren smiles in relief. Though he had personally invited Rodger to the service, he secretly feared that his succession to the throne might be threatened or challenged in some manner by his presence. Their brief parting words, though, assure Warren that Rodger will not be competing for any authority.

Rodger looks back at his father’s lifeless body one last time as Warren seals the casket. He has a measure of respect for his father but is unsure whether Warren can be trusted with the same responsibility. He has even heard rumors of Warren’s plans to marry his father’s wives; Rodger would rather stay out of the matter than cast judgment, but the notion does not sit easy with him. He has a premonition that this chain of events will not end well for Warren or for his followers.

After attending the graveside service, the Hicksons climb into their minivan and leave the twin towns of Hildale and Colorado City in their rear-view mirror. It has been a strangely awkward gathering, and they aren’t sure where to begin a conversation to try to make sense of it. As they make their way back to the Interstate in silence, they pass an occasional state trooper targeting speeding motorists. None of the troopers give a second thought to the fundamentalist gathering that has just transpired a few miles down the road; the services had been handled entirely by local law enforcement in a strange marriage of church and state.

The FBI and other federal officials are fully engaged in the new war on terror and have likewise taken no notice of the day’s proceedings. The hunt for Bin Laden is in full gear half a world away, and no law enforcement agencies wish to concern themselves in the least about a group of polygamists in the desert. Just let them be is the prevailing attitude. Don’t ask, don’t tell…

The hands-off approach changes over the next few months, however, as allegations of teen marriage, child abuse and other charges begin to circulate in the wake of Rulon’s death. Warren claims these rumors are being propagated by his opponents in order to oust him from power; he promptly siezes control of Rulon’s former posse and appoints them as his new bodyguards. The detachment also includes a few expert forgers who prepare false identities for Warren and make other plans to put him into hiding if it becomes necessary.

As the charges materialize and Osama Bin Laden continues to elude every U.S.-led effort, a cop-killer is arrested in Mexico, leaving a vacancy on the FBI’s ten-most-wanted list. Much to the surprise of Warren and his followers, his mug shot is placed right next to the notorious terrorist on the infamous list, effectively bringing his days of publicly leading the fold to an end.

The $100,000 price on his head is far short of Bin Laden’s $50 million bounty, but Warren knows he has accumulated plenty of enemies who would turn him in for far less, so he steps up his evasive tactics. With a 95% capture rate for list members, he is fighting the FBI’s odds; the man he replaced had spent just two days on the list.

Despite the newfangled notoriety, Warren manages to elude law enforcement for almost four months. After an anonymous tip and an uneventful roadside arrest near Hoover Dam, the ex-fugitive is ultimately arrested and imprisoned. After the manhunt he seems to almost relish his arrest; like his father before him, in being imprisoned for his beliefs and facing the fiery furnace, he feels like he has joined the ranks of Shadrack’s trio and even Joseph Smith himself. As news reports around the country flash images of the apprehended leader in handcuffs and a blue jumpsuit, another cop-killer is immediately added to the FBI’s list; he is apprehended less than a day later.

~~~~~~~~

While Bin Laden continued to elude the authorities and taunt the West with his calls for jihad, I entered the newly constructed Conference Center in Salt Lake City – adorned with seasonal decorations – for a Christmas program that was about to be burned onto DVD and distributed to LDS wards, branches, and districts around the globe. My sister was in the orchestra, so I got to sit in the reserved seats at the very front of the auditorium. When President Hinckley entered the hall, the entire audience spontaneously stood up.

The massive auditorium was dead silent as 20,000 people stood in unison for their prophet. In that instant, I had an overwhelming sensation that this was a man to revere and respect. I would, perhaps, have to stop myself short of granting him my adulation – for fear of poisoning him – but I was distinctly impressed that I was in the presence of God’s cardinal instrument on this earth.

As this feeling in my heart transformed into a thought that sought to lodge itself in my brain, it was met by alarm bells signaling an ensuing, inner argument. Having stood on the parade grounds at Nuremberg and inside the gas chambers at Auschwitz, from a very early age I have been armed with a clear knowledge of the atrocities that have been committed by those who felt the calling to follow a leader absolutely. The recent publicity surrounding Warren’s crimes made this sort of adherence an even harder sell; although these hardwired warning signs triggered a measure of hesitation, I remained on my feet with the rest of the crowd.

President Hinckley seemed almost amused and perhaps even mildly annoyed by the gesture; after all, this was just a concert he wanted to enjoy, not some solemn assembly of the Church. He quickly raised his cane – the same one with which he had famously knighted Sir Henry Eyring – to motion everyone to sit again. The cane was merely a prop rather than a walking aid; his doctor had ordered him to carry it, so that’s just what he did: he carried it with him as he pushed Marjorie along the corridor in her wheelchair, smiling and occasionally stopping to shake a few hands on his way toward the stand. The audience members obediently but reluctantly took their seats, and the white noise of a thousand conversations resumed.

I let my thoughts wander as the orchestra tuned their instruments in preparation for the opening number. I have never been one to pump my fist and scream raucously with a crowd, but standing silently in unison really relays the same measure of acceptance. Am I simply a conformist? Non-Mormon friends have asked me how I can justify subjecting myself to the whim of a single person – in this case an old man who in their eyes might lose his mind or his physical abilities at any moment.

It is not a question I can easily respond to; I have to admit that I have more questions than answers when it comes to religion, and I am by no means confident in my ability to discern truth from deception. I am a skeptic by nature and a devil’s advocate by my father’s own training; and I fully acknowledge the inherent dangers that a feeling of unity can invoke upon those who stand at attention.

For better or worse, I recognize that truth and travesty can be bolstered by the same confidence and conveyed through the same conduit, and that the fine line between absolute faith, strict adherence, and blind obedience can muster every extreme end result – from saving grace to suicide bombs. The unity of the masses sparks emotions – whether in a rock concert, a political rally, or a large group meeting at the MTC – that can be harnessed for good or for evil…and certainly for profit.

I also realize that following a man whose word trumps the existing dogma of his adherents is especially dangerous, particularly when that man claims to speak for God. Warren Jeffs’ crimes – some of the most treacherous and sacrilegious acts ever committed under the banner of heaven – demonstrate the tragic turn that path can take. History’s cemeteries and today’s terrorist camps are full of countless warnings to avoid the pitfall of pledging unconditional allegiance. Wouldn’t any reasonable person shy away from such a preposterous trap?

These conflicted thoughts bounced around in my head while I took in the Tabernacle Choir’s numbers, interspersed with Christmas messages. At the concert’s conclusion, President Hinckley stood to exit the venue; the crowd spontaneously stood with him again. He passed directly in front of me on his way out – again pushing his wife in her wheelchair. He stopped for a moment and waved to the crowd. I thought about shouting out a quick introduction, but in the time it would have taken me to say, “Hi, I’m Hamp’s grandson,” I’m sure a few bodyguards would have quickly prompted him to keep walking. His celebrity status demonstrates how much the times have changed since the days when anyone could knock on Heber J. Grant’s office door and get an audience with him; yet here he was within an arm’s reach – a simple man who used to pal around with my grandpa back in high school.

As I stood with an army of fellow believers behind me, I was suddenly hit with an indescribable feeling of peace and surety that I have to believe is sent from above. Armed with that assurance, I felt no qualms about committing myself to sustain Gordon B. Hinckley as God’s agent and – illogical as it may seem – vowing my loyalty to any direction he may provide in the future. This was one of those few times in my life when I’ve experienced a sublime feeling that doesn’t necessarily answer my many questions, but merely makes them superfluously redundant. All is well, as they say.

I wish I could hang onto such moments for later recollection, but I tend to forget them just as quickly as they come; I’ve tried putting these sorts of experiences to paper, for example, and even later the same day I can’t seem to do them justice. When I’m asked how I can justify the apparently absurd pledge to follow a living prophet, I can’t possibly convey any sensible reason; if only there were some way to put that feeling into a jar and bottle it up…Open it for yourself, I’d say, and you’ll see why. That’s just how it is; I can offer no other words of explanation.

This sweet, elderly couple – with almost 70 years of marriage under their belts – exited the auditorium, having demonstrated in true practice a partnership that we thousands of well wishers would be wise to emulate. As I left the building myself and marched back out through the snow, my heart and my mind – at least for the moment – had managed to reach a unison voice.~~~~~~~~

A few weeks after the Christmas concert, Gordon and Marjorie made their way to Ghana for the dedication of the Accra Temple. Marjorie’s health was frail, and Gordon promised her this would be the last trip he would ask her to go on; unfortunately, that statement proved prophetic in a way he hadn’t imagined. She developed complications that were enhanced by her weakened state after the trip. She was hospitalized on her return, and Gordon soon came to realize that she would not recover. He was absolutely heartbroken and guilt-ridden; he realized that the trip had been too much for her, and he knew he had pushed her to accompany him – perhaps against her will and his better judgement. After so many years together, he was unprepared to face each day alone.

President Hinckley had spoken at literally thousands of functions over the previous decade; perhaps to distinguish the funeral service as a special, solemn occasion, or perhaps because he was grieving too deeply to speak, he refrained from addressing the large audience that had gathered to honor Marjorie. The only words he spoke at the funeral service were private words that he expressed directly to his wife while touching the flowers on her casket.

You might think that a man hailed as the mouthpiece of God on earth would simply accept death as a necessary ingredient in God’s great recipe for us; but although six months had passed, the look in his eyes during his General Conference tribute to Marjorie revealed his sincere sorrow; he was completely overwhelmed and expressed his deepest wish to be able to rewind time. The eternal perspective at his disposal did not quell his need to mourn nor make it any easier to accept God’s will in the matter.

During that General Conference, the Church Broadcasting System carried a special documentary about the Accra Temple dedication between sessions. Gordon and Marjorie looked happy and energetic as they shook hands and hugged the Church members who had gathered for the occasion. A regional choir, formed especially to commemorate the occasion, provided the music for the setting. As the cameras panned through the choir, I thought I recognized several Ghanan members of the Church who had been baptized in Germany many years before when I was a missionary. For years I had wondered what had become of them. I wrote to the mission president in Ghana and soon confirmed that many of them had indeed joined the Church in Germany.

I was able to re-establish contact with a few of them and learn about their struggles to establish the Church and keep their faith alive over the years. Although there had been no Church infrastructure, no existing organization, and no channel of communication to Salt Lake City when they initially returned from Germany to Ghana, they had formed their own branches and kept the fires burning until the Church began sending missionaries to their part of the world over a decade later. Some of the traditions that had crept in without central leadership had to be dropped or changed once the Church was officially organized, but these West African members of the Church had astonishingly formed the foundation for a temple to be constructed in their own country. It was no less a pioneering effort than the construction of a temple behind the iron curtain two decades before.

I thought back to my time in Germany and wondered again whether I might have done more. As a missionary I had thought I understood the purpose behind our counsel to refrain from specifically seeking out refugees and asylum seekers. I had deliberately avoided the foreign worker housing projects – particularly after getting my passport stolen – but after seeing these Church members in the temple choir, I questioned my own motives; had I missed potentially life-changing opportunities as a result of my own pride or through my unwillingness to stand up to the overworked German ward clerks? Whatever the case, a few souls that crossed our path had set out as pioneers, established a latter-day Church in their respective regions, and eventually received the chance to mingle with the prophet and his wife on her last earthly journey. All regrets aside, in these sorts of thought-provoking instances, life seems to make complete sense for a moment…as yet another circle closes on itself.

~~~~~~~~

President Hinckley was still actively at the helm of the Church when my Grandma Hosenose passed away two years later and I commenced my treasure hunt. His former classmates had long since passed away as well, but Gordon managed to cling stubbornly to that tree. He was still traveling the world and meeting young souls who would usher in the 22nd century; yet in his youth he knew people who had known Joseph Smith. To me he symbolized a connection to a whole other age – a living bridge between the church of today and the church known to James E. Talmage, Heber J. Grant, and other fellow icons of the day.

As I embarked on my research project and discovered Hamp’s connections to President Hinckley, I thought I might ask him a few questions before it was too late. I had kept notes on their previous correspondence and lined them up with the dates and events in President Hinckley’s published biographies. Finally – though I knew it was a long shot – I drafted a letter outlining a few questions about Hamp, L.D.S. High, his mission travels, and other topics that had been occupying my mind. I mailed the letter to the secretary to the First Presidency, Elder F. Michael Watson. In his reply to me, Elder Watson said that President Hinckley’s time and energy were limited, and that his strength was needed for weightier matters.

I thought it was just a standard smokescreen to deter star-struck curiosity seekers; after all, Elder Watson intercepts countless letters asking for prophetic wisdom in choosing a mate, explaining obscure doctrines, or predicting the future. But just a few days after receiving the reply about President Hinckley’s weakening state, the story was confirmed: news reports flashed the headline that the Mormon Prophet had passed away at the age of 97. The news came as a complete shock to me; for some reason, I had expected him to live to see the milestone of his 100th birthday and had hoped that I would someday have the chance to meet him in person – and possibly ask him some questions about the past. That chance had evaporated now that the last of the foursome was gone; I never even got to shake his hand.

~~~~~~~~

A few weeks later, I received a phone call with more somber news; Geoff Ledger, a friend of mine, had lost his brief battle with brain cancer, and his widowed wife had asked if I could arrange a specific musical number for the funeral service. I contacted a few friends, and we put together a quartet. The song she had requested was unfamiliar to me at first, but as I plunked out the tune on the piano to decipher the harmonies, I vaguely remembered having heard it during the broadcast of President Hinckley’s funeral service.

As we stood to sing at Geoff’s service, it was an excruciating challenge to force the words out. A single glance at his young children, who couldn’t imagine a life without him but were still too young to fathom the magnitude of the loss, stifled the words. I had to look away to keep my voice from cracking. I stared at the ceiling in the back of the chapel while trying to let the message of the lyrics sink in:

What is this thing that men call death,

this quiet passing in the night?

‘Tis not the end but genesis,

of better worlds and greater light.

Among his very last acts in mortality, and certainly as his last official act, President Hinckley had approved Janice Kapp Perry’s music to accompany the lyrics, effectively canonizing the song with the Church’s stamp of approval. The lyrics, written by Gordon B. Hinckley himself, attempt to convince us that the separation period forced upon us by the death of a loved one is a fleeting moment on an eternal time scale, and that death isn’t necessarily such a horrible thing. After all, we must have infinitely more friends, connections, and relationships in that world than in this one. Consoling as that message might be in the long run, during the funeral service – as was the case with Gordon at his wife’s funeral – that message seemed particularly difficult to absorb. The melody of the song stayed with me as Geoff’s fellow elders wheeled the casket out of the chapel. The audience rose to their feet in respect, and we moved to the graveside.

His children played obliviously in the grass as the casket was lowered into the ground. We sang “God Be with You Till We Meet Again,” but with a contrasting tone to the earlier mission reunion rendition. The gravity of it all seemed overwhelming. Just a few weeks earlier, our young daughters had been playing together while Geoff and I chased them around in the back of our elders quorum meeting. Now he’s in a casket and I’m singing his requiem…if the dice were to be rolled again, it might have been me in that box; or it might have been my son, my father, or anybody else in my circle of connections. Why Geoff? Why had he drawn the short straw this time around?

Geoff’s untimely death was certainly a reminder that anyone, anytime, could be among those forced – or blessed, depending on your perspective – to be an onlooker from the other side. While I get to kiss my children good night, he joins the throngs who have gone before. It does not seem fair, but I have to believe some of these souls are ministering angels, helping to guide our steps and initiate interactions that are surely more than coincidental. Will Geoff be able to help steer future generations of descendants along the paths of their destiny? I certainly don’t know the answer to questions that deep, but perhaps he will watch his children grow up with the same pride as a mortal father, sometimes cringing at their choices, and sometimes helping to bring things full circle so they can learn what they still need to learn before they join him. One thing is for sure: Life is short, and we will all join him soon enough.

~~~~~~~~

With President Hinckley’s passing, I lost the sense of urgency in compiling my research. As I boxed up my notes and folded up the accompanying maps and timelines, Jaedin came into my office to plunder the copier paper. I asked him what he was working on, and he showed me the latest comic book series he had drawn up in his sketch pad. This one was called Leo, the Shin-kicking Leprechaun. I laughed at his caricatures.

“You’re going to make a great author,” I told him.

“But I can’t always find the right words,” he countered.

“That’s what editors are for.”

“Can an editor fix my spelling too?”

“If you let me be your editor, I’ll run spell check for free,” I offered him.

“Deal!” he said.

He started out the door to dive back into his drawings.

“You know what?” I asked, trying to make a fatherly point while I still had the chance, “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.” I tried to think of another way to say it, but settled on the cliché: “You can be anything you want to be!”

“So what did you want to be when you were my age?” he asked me curiously.

“Funny enough,” I answered, “when my sixth-grade teacher asked me that same question, I told him I wanted to be an author.”

“So why are you an engineer?”

He had stumped me with that question.

With a child’s unwavering confidence and naïvety, he asked me again, “Well, why aren’t you an author?”

“Yes,” I answered quietly with a question of my own, “Why am I not an author?”

He ran out the door and I stared at my box. Why had I been doing the research anyway? Had it only been to fulfill my own curiosity – to connect somehow with my own grandfather? Or might there be another purpose? Who else would ever be crazy enough to sort through the endless journal entries, logbooks, and itineraries? My notes would be completely indecipherable to anyone else, and the only other thing I had to show for the effort was a massive computer spreadsheet with cross-referenced cells – who in tarnation would ever wish to scroll through that to get to know Hamp better? I wondered if perhaps writing a book might be a good way to sum it all up and share the experience with others.

Armed with Jaedin’s vote of confidence, I pulled my notes back out, opened my laptop, and wrote a book. Well actually, it took a few more months of commuting time on the train and a whole lot of interviews with old people; but eventually I put a draft together. And if you’re reading it right now – even if you’re the only one who ever picks up these pages or opens the computer file, I guess that makes me an author. Perhaps it’s in my blood; Hamp, after all, wrote a book, too. Unfortunately he tends to ramble, though, and reading his book feels like an endurance test; perhaps that’s in my blood, too.

In any case, thanks to the advice of my oldest son Jaedin – to whom Chick’s birthright would pass to if we adhered to the patriarchal order of things – I have now become an author. That’s right, published or not, I wrote a book! Never mind that I had to engineer a few things in the meantime to pay the bills; at least I can check that goal off my bucket list. If I ever run into my sixth-grade teacher again, and he asks me, “So, did you ever become an author?” I can now answer, “Yep, I sure did!”

In the process of compiling the book, I wanted to replace dry facts and dates with personal stories, connections, and conversations; I knew that I would need more than just journals and photo albums. Even though the leaves of the Class of 1928 had blown from the now-bare branches, I discovered, there were still plenty of personal, living connections to that age. I resolved to contact as many as I could. In the process I interviewed my great-aunt Margaret, who had picked up Hamp in New York and accompanied him home from his mission. I interrogated my adopted grandmother, Frau Geissinger, about her childhood in the forgotten German state of Silesia, where Hamp had spent much of his ministry. I sat down with my maternal grandmother, Muriel Krey, who had been Homer’s babysitter in the 1930’s, and asked her what he was like. Each of their stories took me away on entirely new tangents. What was intended to be at most a booklet ended up morphing into hundreds of pages as the stories came to life and I encountered fascinating characters – living treasures – along the way.

I found that one of these living legends, Eldred G. Smith – the fourth Nephite himself – was still going strong at 104 years of age. He walked the halls of L.D.S. High, sat in his graduation robes during the commencement ceremony, and felt the sting when they closed the school’s doors. Eight decades later, he drives his red Cadillac to church every Sunday, helps his wife out of the car, and goes about his daily life. Do we recognize the value in learning about history from eye witnesses such as Elder Smith? Or is he just another old guy we curse on the road? How many more like him are anonymously going about their daily lives, confined to the four walls of their care center’s room, with nothing but a few framed photographs reminding them of their ancestry, their posterity, and their heritage? Time may be short, but we have no excuse for ignoring the living legacies in our midst. They are still among us today.

2011 marks the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor; while it was a universal question not too long ago, now only the oldest senior citizens among us remember where they were on that infamous day. One of those is Louis Zamperini, whom I happened to run across in my search. Louis is an iconic American hero if there ever was one. You can look him up on Google, read his bestselling book, see pictures of him being personally congratulated by Adolf Hitler at the Berlin Olympics, or watch the original footage of his rescue from a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. You can stand idly by as Hollywood turns his life into a movie and then buy a ticket to watch his story on the big screen. Or – might I suggest – you can make a pilgrimage to Los Angeles and meet him yourself, look him in the eye, shake his hand, and ask him what it was like.

If you meet him in person, history will hit home in a whole new way. I can state this with confidence because I managed to contact him myself; when he told me what it was like to join Jesse Owens and cross the Atlantic on the Manhattan – the same ship that Homer and Gordon sailed on – it brought the missionaries’ stories to life for me. His answers to my many questions have fueled further curiosity for the past. He is still alert and keen and willing to share his life with those who wish to know more. How much longer will that chance exist?

We live our vanilla lives with the potential to – through our own naïvety – isolate ourselves from suffering; but we also have the ability to embed ourselves into the colorful world of the past not just through journals, films, and photographs, but by touching that world directly. After hearing from heroes like Louis, I long to connect with previous generations in real-time in order to lend a measure of reality to their history – to shed some color on those black and white photographs.

Louis endured things we can hardly imagine; hopefully we will only experience these sorts of things in proxy. If we allow it, though, we can enter his world as a visitor and imagine ourselves being deprived of freedom, tortured and starved, forced to fight for survival by enduring all the things that he and our other predecessors have had to face to get us here – without having to actually experience these trials in person. If we become fully engaged, we can learn the same lessons and become the better for it; or we can choose to shelter ourselves and get caught up in a daily routine of shopping and chit-chat and small talk that never will bring us to an understanding of the human condition on its own.

You can receive an inheritance and perhaps acquire a sum of money from your parents; but the lessons your forefathers have learned and the attributes they developed in overcoming unique challenges do not get passed along automatically – I’m convinced that they can only be acquired with expended effort. If we do not take the initiative upon ourselves, any lessons we might have otherwise learned from our ancestors will pass us by, and we’ll be forced to relearn them the hard way – by ourselves. Recording and sharing our stories from the past can effectively combat this fate.

The German poet, Goethe, who lived through an incredibly turbulent time of his own, told the next generation that they can only possess an inheritance that they have earned outright. Our forefathers have left us benefits such as constitutional freedoms, but we may forget that freedom has to be remade and re-earned by every passing generation. I’ve inherited a history, a heritage, a legacy. Though it has been dropped straight into my lap without much effort on my part, its benefits are far from free; but by right it is still mine to earn if I choose to dive into the task of letting it seep into my soul.

~~~~~~~~

Now that he’s gone and I’ve come to know him through the records that he left, I ask myself what I have learned from Hamp, the tall, tattooed stake patriarch, the lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force who doubled as the Berlin Peacemaker. What can we all learn from Homer, the expert organizer and historian, from Rulon, the conflicted accountant, or from Gordon, the hard-working and witty clergyman? What can be gathered from the intertwined lives of those who stood to face all that the world could throw at them? The Greatest Generation may be leaving us, but they can remain our teachers. Believers in continuing revelation are promised by the Lord, “Mine angels will bear you up.” Well who are these angels if not those who have gone before us? I, for one, believe that’s who they are – and that we’ll be better off if we get to know them personally.

The lessons that I have learned during this adventure are unique to me, but the underlying concepts are universal. We know full well that we are just simply people; but when our own descendants look at our journals – if they turn out to be anything like me, that is – they will somehow be astounded that we were just like them: no more righteous or evil, no more wise or foolish; we were all just people, everyone in this thing together, just the same.

The obvious fact we all share similar, conflicted thoughts shouldn’t be all that astonishing a revelation, but in the process of conducting personal interviews and reading intimate thoughts in the diaries of others, I have identified with specific examples that have helped drill that point into my head and into my heart. As a result I feel like I have begun to see things with more perspective – though perhaps with less clarity.

In my youth I saw the world in absolutes; now that I have reluctantly outgrown my youth, it seems much less so. I’m sure there is a place for young idealists who see everything in black and white, but unfortunately they are all too often taken advantage of; the front-line charges of unquestioning youths are typically directed behind the scenes by protected, middle-aged opportunists willing to delve into gray areas and capitalize on the young soldiers’ polarity to promote and protect their own purposes. Open any history book to a random page, and there is bound to be an example.

This journey into the past has helped me break down stereotypes and assumptions I’ve carried with me since childhood. I feel better able to recognize both the seeds and the fruits of indoctrination and bias, and I have come to realize that I tend to view the world through media-fed filters that polarize good and evil and every other human attribute. The personal accounts at our disposal can add perspective to those attributes, bringing us closer to seeing the world how God sees it. When we recognize the universal love of God – that you can’t just draw a line between His people and the rest – we realize that we’re all His people. We’re all in this thing together – every one of us equally in need of forgiveness and redemption, and all equally inept at comprehending the mysteries of God.

This pilgrimage has also prompted a look inside; in serving as a counselor at an annual camp for Jaedin and other children with heart defects, I have become painfully aware that the kids who complained the most about being teased and bullied in school often engaged in similar behavior toward their own camp-mates. We are no different as adults. As a Latter-day Saint, for example, I share in the complicit guilt for treating the members of the FLDS Church and other polygamist groups much in the same way that mainstream Christians tend to treat members of the LDS faith.

“Call us Christians!” we demand of the mainstream Christians, “After all, we are rooted in Christ.”

“You practice a different form of Christianity,” they say, “therefore you are not Christian like us.”

We call them ignorant or deviously bigoted when they refuse.

“Call us Mormons!” the FLDS demand of the LDS, “after all, we are rooted in Mormon’s Book and in its translator, Joseph Smith.”

“You practice a different form of Mormonism,” we say, “therefore you are not Mormon like us.”

We find it perfectly justifiable to refuse.

Armed with our own pioneer stories of persecution, we feel like the historical victims when we are surrounded by those of other faiths, but then we unwittingly direct the same criticism and ostracization toward non-conformists once we have gathered enough critical mass around them. Why is it, for example, that the personal accounts of Elder Gordon B. Hinckley in Liverpool and Parley P. Pratt in Arkansas echo the journals of Rulon Jeffs in Sandy and Msgr. Duane Hunt in Vernal? Shouldn’t it be otherwise – especially in Utah?

I have seen Jehovah’s Witnesses who tract the BYU campus get treated by returned LDS missionaries in much the same manner in which the missionaries had themselves been treated abroad – instead of how we wish we had been treated. I have seen content confidence in one’s faith quickly change to prideful arrogance in the face of an attack, breeding further resentment and retaliation that spirals into the depths, leaving charity and brotherly love gasping for breath.

I have seen countless apologist articles by Mormon authors ascribing evil intentions, underhanded slights, and one-sided tactics to anti-Mormon authors. Msgr. Hunt, for instance, was thrown into the same pool as truth-skewing apostates and antichrists in light of the rebuttals he wrote to Hamp – rebuttals that were primarily intended to retain his own congregation. He and other non-Mormon authors are condemned one and all for generalizing and stereotyping Mormons – while at the same time the condemnations are themselves often generalizations and stereotypes, as are my condemnations of the condemners…no wonder we all have trouble understanding each other!

Connecting with the past is a remedy that can allow us to think for ourselves and – as far as possible – to avoid mistakes that shouldn’t have to be relearned through personal experience. As we study our own history, we can become less judgmental, more tolerant, more understanding, more motivated, and more human. The world will come to life, and we will find ourselves better armed to fully appreciate each passing day.

Though a rhyme seems a bit out of place here, Hamp wrote a few poems himself – and shares a birthday with Dr. Seuss to boot – so I’ll give it a shot in honor of that fact. I hope there is some truth to be found in the following verse that sums up a recent epiphany about how this search has helped to widen my perspective:

With passing time, I start to find,

on each approaching day,

The world appears less black and white,

and more as scales of gray,

In coming to this point of view,

the gray-scale then gives way,

To vibrant colors, vividly,

adorning life’s array.

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We write our own history every day, choosing the legacy we’ll leave. When our own children and grandchildren look up the details of our lives long after we’re gone, they’ll imagine what it might have been like with the destiny of the 21st century yet unwritten. It will seem to them like anything would have been possible from where we now stand. We’ll stare back at them from some frame on the wall or the page of an album, offering them our lives as examples to learn from and to build upon.

The basic framework of our lives may be set for us by some random regime, but the picture that lies within that frame is entirely our creation; each pixel is a seemingly insignificant decision that, once cumulatively assembled, defines us. In looking through the window of the past, I’ve come to realize that every little thing we do makes a big difference, adding to or detracting from the quality of the image, for better or for worse. As Gordon B. Hinckley said:

Zoom in on your soul, and you’ll find its composite image to be nothing more than the sum total of your interconnected decisions, relationships, and experiences. In tracing endless paths through Hamp’s connections and following them around the world, for example, I have recognized myriad minute decisions on his part that ended up having a profound effect on his life – and by default upon every one of his descendants as well. The effects propagate through each of his connections to each of their descendants as well. It is an unending cascade of dominoes. If I may quote another Gordon out of context:

Every breath you take, every move you make,

Every bond you break, every step you take,

Every smile you fake, every claim you stake,

Every cake you bake, every leg you break…

Gordon Sumner’s lyrics recite seemingly insignificant doldrums that are, in fact, catalysts for our very existence if we care to trace the path back far enough. My father and I both found a broken leg, for instance, forming one link in the chain reaction that led us to our soul mates. Coincidentally? Perhaps… But no matter how insignificant our daily struggles and choices may seem, every little thing – from a fleeting glance to a broken leg – becomes eternally consequential to future generations. It is an intimidating thought as we face decisions that by all appearances are purely personal but in the end affect everyone who follows us on this earth.

After prying into the details of my late grandfather’s life, I fear that some future descendant of mine may be crazy enough to someday try to do the same with my life. It definitely makes me realize that I had better watch myself. Along those lines – while I’m quoting Gordons – I’ll round out the trio and let Gordon Gano sum it all up with his eighties admonition: “I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record!” We certainly write our own legacy in permanent ink every day, and we have a tremendous opportunity to make that record meaningful…or embarrassing, as the case may be.

I thought the permanent records I ran across were worth researching and that the stories they contained were worth writing down, even though the only so-called free time in my schedule came when I probably should have been asleep. Ultimately I guess it’s up to each reader to decide if these stories are worth the reading time. You could alternatively choose to spend your own precious free time tuned into an inane television program depicting the detailed life of some socialite with whom you share no connection; or you could – much more meaningfully – go find a scrap of paper in your grandmother’s diary and head out on your own treasure hunt. I would be willing to bet that in the latter case you would find your own reality show that is directly, personally connected to you in ways that no television program could ever touch. How many have wasted their time and effort with their hearts turned to Hollywood? As a more promising investment, turn your own heart to your fathers and mothers, and pass that gift along to your children. Now that’s a real reality show!

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Armed with lessons learned through generations of time, we have the opportunity to start where our ancestors left off, eternally progressing. The pricks against which our ancestors stubbed their toes can help us to avoid the same pitfalls, learning from their mistakes as well as from their successes, ideas and insights. Why else are Latter-Day Saints instructed by modern revalation to study the “perplexities of the nations.”

With the perspective gained from the personal histories of our forefathers, we ought to be better able to interpret and filter the daily propaganda that comes our way through so many different sources. By studying Hamp’s history, I have found it easier to recognize the vehicles of propaganda much more clearly – vehicles that remain essentially identical through the ages, whether the inherent message is positive or negative, or whether the source is religious or political. During the Cold War, for instance, we Westerners were fed an avulsion to communism just as the Soviets were fed an avulsion to our western ways. The game has been refined over the years from Vietnam to Abu Ghraib, but the Helter Skelter ride keeps right on repeating itself every day on the evening news.

Are we capable of extracting the bits of actual truth from within those messages? Perhaps much of today’s propaganda comes from multinational corporations rather than nationalistic interests, but the messages are no less blatantly biased. Do we recognize them for what they are? Do we swallow the messages whole, allowing media filters and political spin to interpret reality for us? Or do we apply our own filters and think things through for ourselves?

If you were to walk through the Leipzig Hauptbahnhof atrium today, you would find yourself in a glamorous shopping mall, surrounded by well-dressed consumers. The stores’ shelves are replete with the latest products; the station has undergone an unbelievable transformation since Hamp, Herbie, Homer and Gordon last walked its halls. The only signs of the violence that left it in its earlier state of ruin are the teenagers in the electronics shops test driving Mortal Kombat for the PS3, armed with their parents’ credit cards and oblivious to elements on their mobile devices that even the Hitler Youth would have banned.

Though the terror threat hasn’t been raised in years, closed circuit television cameras point toward every corner, and security agents in a buried bunker scan the images for suspicious packages or characters. Plasma-screen billboards throw Lady Gaga at passersby from every angle, while expensive perfumes and colognes entice the other senses from the department store displays. We hail the progress, but having stood through contrasting phases of imperialism, socialism, anarchism, fascism, communism, capitalism, terrorism, and consumerism, one might wonder how long the present state will continue and what “–ism” the great Bahnhof may face next.

Future generations may traverse the station’s platforms and shake their heads at how we were, once again, unwittingly duped by our own wants. It is easy to assume that the current system’s engines will keep right on running without seizing up or requiring an overhaul, just as a quarter century ago we thought the Cold War and the polarizing balance of superpowers were permanent facets of life. Under today’s corporate banners, we have inextricably linked every economy on this planet to promote profit and efficiency, but perhaps the house of cards has just become that much more susceptible to collapsing in the wake of a single, concentrated threat.

The Global Financial Crisis showed us that our international economy in its present state is vulnerable to isolated triggers, but who can tell whether the GFC was merely a tremor leading up to a larger, all-consuming crash? Drowning in debt, will we continue our drowsy drive right over the drop-off toward default, ultimately finding ourselves bankrupt and unable to repay our collective, unsettled obligations as we are enslaved by unforgiving creditors? Will rampant, run-amok consumerism force a whole new degree of militant environmentalism to save the planet? Will bird or swine flu, hoof-and-mouth, AIDS, malaria, or some other epidemic force large-scale lifestyle changes? Will terrorist threats hamper personal freedom to the point where every move is tracked by a Big Brother purporting to keep us safe? Will a rogue nation’s military take us all by surprise and go on the offensive? Will some other, unforeseen threat arise? Or will the status quo simply continue as we sit on the couch and gradually feed our obesity with mass media and empty calories, giving in to our gluttony with complacency and indifference?

Any one of these scenarios might fill the yet empty pages of our future history books, including the off chance that lambs and lions will forget their differences and that, in contrast to the pre-millennial plagues, an ever-increasing measure of charity and tolerance will lead humanity to a pot full of peace and prosperity at the end of that elusive rainbow. Regardless which ideology happens to headline on any particular day, however, the human connections are certain to continue through the ages; in the end, it is precisely those personal relationships that will keep us human – come what may. My search through Grandpa’s journals has made one thing clear: Whatever may come our way, we can be sure that we will experience the same joys and satisfactions – along with the same challenges, struggles, and fears – as our predecessors and as our posterity.

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