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Tad Talk
President Spencer W. Kimball and his wife, Camilla, both came down with double pneumonia during their trip to the Pacific islands in 1976. They were treated by Dr. Russell M. Nelson, who was on the trip with them both as the heart surgeon attending to the leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and as the church’s Sunday School general president.
As President Nelson recalled, President Kimball’s temperature spiked during a flight to Auckland, New Zealand. The fever finally broke about 30 minutes prior to landing. When he sat up, Sister Kimball said to him, “You need to comb your hair.” He replied, “Which one?”
Part of the role of covering President Russell M. Nelson’s striking impact thus far as a successor to President Kimball is trying to get a better grasp on the influences that shaped him. Just how critical a role President Kimball played became clearer to me over the past few weeks.
I was considering what I’d learned about President Nelson after hearing him speak in Samoa and Tonga on his Pacific Ministry Tour during a ride to the Papeete Tahiti Temple grounds with Church News Editor Sarah Jane Weaver and Deseret News Opinion Editor Boyd Matheson.
Sarah, with whom I first worked at Brigham Young University when we were journalism students in the early 1990s, was looking forward to our final interview of the Pacific tour with the president that evening. She reminded us that at the end of his ministry tour to South America in November, President Nelson had energized members when he said, “Eat your vitamin pills. Get your rest. It’s going to be exciting.”
Then in March, as he prepared to return home after dedicating the Rome Italy Temple, he told us it was “a hinge point in the history of the church. Things are going to move forward at an accelerated pace, of which this is a part.” He added, “The church is going to have an unprecedented future, unparalleled; we’re just building up to what’s ahead now.”
Eat your vitamins. Hinge point. Weaver wondered if President Nelson would unveil another pithy, energizing phrase that evening in Tahiti.
That’s when some of our combined coverage of him coalesced. In Samoa and Tonga and again that night in Tahiti, he had mentioned visiting the same islands in 1976 with President Kimball, who died in 1985 and is famous for his own powerfully concise phrases: “Do it” and “lengthen your stride” still resonate with church members old enough to remember him.
“Enough has been said. It is now time to ‘do it,’ ” President Kimball said in combining the two on a visit to Hawaii in 1978. “We urge you to quicken your pace, lengthen your stride, move forward in your local ecclesiastical work.”
President Nelson has not repeated his phrases the way President Kimball did, but I wondered about the patient’s influence on the doctor, the 12th church president’s impact on the man who would become the 17th. It was clear from the way he talked about the 1976 trip 43 years later that President Kimball had influenced President Nelson. But how much? Sarah and I decided to ask him.
“That was a very important time in his life and mine,” President Nelson said. “Next to my father, there’s no one else who would come close to shaping my life like Spencer W. Kimball.”
I’ll be thinking about that more in the coming months as the church leader nears his 95th birthday in September and continues to leave his own mark on the church, sometimes in a style that reminds many of us of his mentor.
— You can read how President Nelson’s pioneering operation on President Kimball’s heart saved his life before he became the church’s 12th president here.
Update: Last week, I mentioned that I was thinking about Maruia Teamo, the woman I met in Tahiti whose blood pressure was a harrowing 180/100 when she began the “Eat Healthy and Be Active” course designed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to address the rising diabetes problem in the South Pacific. The program calls for a second blood pressure reading at the six-week mark of the class. Maruia’s new score is in: 130/97. That took her out of the red areas on the program’s chart that indicate a high risk for diabetes. Her score now places her in the yellow section of her chart. A normal blood pressure is 120/80. |
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What I’m Reading ...
Hundreds of Muslims and Latter-day Saints broke Ramadan fast together in Singapore. This is another example of a growing pattern all around the world, with Latter-day Saints reaching out in interfaith groups large and small.
I appreciated this deep look at a Latter-day Saint pioneer and the controversy over whether her grave along the Mormon Trail should or should not be moved.
This is a true masterpiece of narrative journalism from one of my colleagues at the Deseret News. I suggest looking for stories by Gillian Friedman, who published the definitive piece about the heartbreaking story of a young University of Utah athlete duped and then killed by a known sex offender.
My 12-year-old daughter loves the JK! Studios “Freelancers” series by the former Brigham Young University student comedians who became well-known through BYUtv’s “Studio C.” NBC added JK! Studios to a competition show called “Bring the Funny.” If they really want to bring the funny, the “Loving Lyfe” series is absolutely hilarious. |
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