In Memoriam: T. Edgar Lyon (1903-1978)
Davis BittonT. Edgar Lyon, well known to a generation of students at the University of Utah Institute of Religion, died on September 20, 1978, at the age of 75. Born and reared in Salt Lake City,…
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Volume 11, No. 4
Winter 1978
The Winter 1978 Issue honors the life and legacy of T. Edgar Lyon, with reflections from Mary Lythgoe Bradford, Davis Bitton, and Lowell L. Bennion, as well as Lyon's own reflections on his experiences with Church historians. David J. Whittaker presents a detailed look at historian Leonard James Arrington, alongside a bibliography of his works. Edward L. Kimball provides an interview highlighting a personal view of prophetic leadership. Richard C. Poulsen examines the mythic portrayal of Joseph Smith's persecutors, while Dennis L. Lythgoe explores the unique relationship between J. Bracken Lee and the Mormon Church. Fiction by Levi S. Peterson and a Memorial Day poem by Ronald Wilcox round out the issue with creative and reflective perspectives on Mormon life and history.
Contents
Articles/Essays
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Reflections on T. Edgar Lyon
Lowell BennionT. Edgar Lyon, a healthy and rugged man who had hardly known a sick day, died at age seventy-five after a short, losing battle with cancer. In his death, his wife, six sons, and thirty-two grandchildren lost a gentle, loving husband and father, and the Church a great historian and teacher.
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Church Historians I Have Known
T. Edgar LyonThis talk is necessarily going to be “oral history.” As such it is suspect, as most oral history must be. Time plays tricks on our memories. It beclouds our judgment, confuses people, bends our interpretations,…
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Leonard James Arrington: His Life and Work
David J. WhittakerThe appearance of Leonard J. Arrington’s Great Basin Kingdom in October 1958 was an important event in Mormon historiography. Reviewers hailed it as “one of the most important books ever produced about the Mormons and…
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Bibliography of Leonard James Arrington
David J. WhittakerAbbreviations AH Agricultural History AHR American Historical Review AW Arizona and the West BYU Studies Brigham Young University Studies BHR Business History Review Dialogue Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought EHR Economic History Review Ensign…
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“I Sustain Him as a Prophet, I Love Him as an Affectionate Father”: An Interview with Edward L. Kimball
Edward L. KimballIn October 1978, Dialogue interviewed Edward L. Kimball, youngest son of President Spencer W. Kimball and co-author of the popular biography Spencer W. Kimball. Dr. Kimball is a law professor at Brigham Young University. Dialogue:…
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Fate and the Persecutors of Joseph Smith: Transmutations of an American Myth
Richard C. PoulsenDialogue 11.4 (1977): 63-70
In the 1950s there was a book published call Fate of the Persecutors of Joseph Smith, which contains stories that have been part of folklore that have been passed down discussing what happened to the people who helped kill Joseph Smith.
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A Special Relationship: J. Bracken Lee and the Mormon Church
Dennis L. LythgoeJ. Bracken Lee, a non-Mormon in an overwhelmingly Mormon state, became its most colorful and controversial politician with probably a greater impact on his state and the nation than any Utah figure since Brigham Young.…
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Selected Newspapers Articles on Mormons and Mormonism Published During 1977
Stephen W. Stathis and Linda ThatcherToday there are more than 1,700 daily newspapers in the United States, many of which have circulations of several hundred thousand. Yet once a particular day’s news is superseded by the next, what remains is…
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Editor's Note
Editor’s Note
Mary Lythgoe BradfordEarlier this year David Whittaker informed Dialogue that his long-awaited bibliography of Leonard Arrington’s works was ready—and that it would coincide with the 20th anniversary of Arrington’s trailblazing Great Basin Kingdom. We agreed that the winter…
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Fiction
Road to Damascus
Levi S. PetersonAt evening Paul contemplated two trees on a distant ridge. They were both firs, one tall, straight, conical; the other curiously warped midtrunk into a great bent bush of a tree. The crippled tree troubled…
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Letters to the Editor
Notes
Poetry
Memorial Day, 1978
Ronald WilcoxMorning
My father’s body sounds,
those noises keeping him alive,
I hold dear and dumb, my own:
his son’s heart pounds
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Reviews
An Enduring History | Charles S. Peterson, Utah: A Bicentennial History
Dean L. MayThe States and the Nation Series is a set of histories of each state and the District of Columbia “designed to assist the American people in a serious look at the ideals they have espoused…
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Robert Leroy Parker on Family History | Lulu Parker Betenson, Butch Cassidy, My Brother, and Larry Pointer, In Search of Butch Cassidy
William G. HartleyWhat interest can two books about an outlaw have for Dialogue readers? An obvious answer is that Robert Leroy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy, was a Mormon boy who went bad, but another is that these…
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Fruitless Wait | Elisabeth Macdonald, Watch for the Morning
Jill Mulvay DerrKate and Mary Ann Hamilton, mother and daughter, are nineteenth-century Mormon women whose romantic dreams are serially shattered during the forty years spanned in this novel, a story, hopes its author, that “has something to…
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The Hinckley Institution | Robert H. Hinckley and JoAnn Jacobsen Wells, “I’d Rather Be Born Lucky Than Rich”: The Autobiography of Robert H. Hinckley
John SillitoRobert Hinckley is clearly one of Utah’s most distinguished sons. In a career spanning over a half century, both in Utah and on the national level, he has worn a number of different hats—politician, government…
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Spitting Mad | Ben F. Mortensen, If You’re Mad, Spit! And Other Aids to Coping
W. Corbet CurfmanDr. Mortensen’s book is readable; it has a flowing style and is brief. The author is entertaining, effectively using case vignettes to illustrate his points. Perhaps because of the brevity and ease of reading I…
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