Harold B. Lee

Harold Bingham Lee (March 28, 1899 – December 26, 1973) was an American religious leader and educator who served as the 11th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) from July 1972 until his death in December 1973.

Harold B. Lee
11th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
July 7, 1972 (1972-07-07) – December 26, 1973 (1973-12-26T1899)
Predecessor	Joseph Fielding Smith
Successor	Spencer W. Kimball
President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (with Spencer W. Kimball as Acting President)
January 23, 1970 (1970-01-23) – July 7, 1972 (1972-07-07)
Predecessor	Joseph Fielding Smith
Successor	Spencer W. Kimball
End reason	Became President of the Church
First Counselor in the First Presidency
January 23, 1970 (1970-01-23) – July 2, 1972 (1972-07-02)
Called by	Joseph Fielding Smith
End reason	Dissolution of First Presidency on the death of Joseph Fielding Smith
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
April 10, 1941 (1941-04-10) – January 23, 1970 (1970-01-23)
Called by	Heber J. Grant
End reason	Called as First Counselor in the First Presidency
LDS Church Apostle
April 10, 1941 (1941-04-10) – December 26, 1973 (1973-12-26T1899)
Called by	Heber J. Grant
Reason	Death of Reed Smoot
Reorganization at end of term	L. Tom Perry ordained
Personal details
Born	Harold Bingham Lee (1899-03-28)March 28, 1899 Clifton, Idaho, U.S.
Died	December 26, 1973(1973-12-26) (aged 74) Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.
Resting place	Salt Lake City Cemetery 40°46′37.92″N 111°51′28.8″W
Spouse(s)	Fern Lucinda Tanner (1923–1962) (her death) Freda Joan Jensen (1963–1973) (his death)
Children	2
Signature

Early life

Lee was born in Clifton, Idaho to Samuel Lee and Louisa Emeline Bingham and was the second of six children. The Lee family lived the rural life and Lee and his siblings spent most of their youth doing farm chores.[1] During his childhood, his mother saved him from several near-death experiences. When he was eight, he was sent to get a can of lye from the shelf and spilled the deadly product all over himself. His mother opened a vat of pickled beets and poured cup after cup of the red vinegar all over him, which neutralized the lye. When Harold was a teen, he punctured an artery on a broken bottle. His mother cleaned it, but it became badly infected. She burned a black stocking to ashes and rubbed it in the open wound and it soon healed.[2][3]

Lee was fortunate to receive a good education. He finished eighth grade at a grammar school in Clifton and his parents allowed him to continue his education at Oneida Stake Academy in Preston, Idaho. The first few years, Lee focused on music and played the alto, French, and baritone horns. Later, he played basketball and was a reporter for the school newspaper. He graduated in the spring of 1916.[2]

The summer following his graduation Lee worked to receive his teaching certificate from Albion State Normal School at Albion, Idaho. After two summers of study in 1916 and 1917, Lee passed the state's fifteen-subject test to receive his second- and third-class certificates. Lee held his first teaching position in the fall of 1916. He taught a class of 25 students, grades one to eight, in Weston, Idaho. His salary was $60 a month. When he was eighteen, he became principal of a school in Oxford, Idaho. In September 1920, then church president Heber J. Grant called Lee on a mission to the western states, with headquarters in Denver, Colorado. He was twenty-one and served until December 1922.[2]

Marriages

While on his mission, Lee met a sister missionary from Utah, Fern Lucinda Tanner. They renewed their acquaintance when they returned from their missions and were married on November 14, 1923 in the Salt Lake Temple. Fern died in 1962 and on June 17, 1963 Lee married Freda Joan Jensen, a former mission companion's girlfriend who had never married. She died on July 1, 1981.[2]

Civic and community leadership

In 1932, at the age of thirty-three, Lee became a community leader when he was appointed to fill a vacancy in the Salt Lake City Commission.[4] He was assigned to direct the Department of Streets and Public Improvements. A year later his political career was launched when he was elected to the same position.[4]

Service in the LDS Church

Lee in 1944

In 1930, Lee was called as president of the LDS Church's Pioneer Stake in Salt Lake City. He became the youngest stake president in the church, at that time, when he was set apart.[4] The 1929 Great Depression in the United States left more than half of its members without jobs. He established a welfare program to aid members in distress that became a model emulated by the entire LDS Church. As part of the program, he helped organize the Pioneer Stake bishop's storehouse in 1932. The storehouse provided members with basic food necessities. Bishop's storehouses remain part of the church's welfare program today. In 1936, Lee became managing director of the Church Welfare Program.[5] Although he also pursued a political career, he began full-time church service when he was called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1941.[2]

Lee served on a committee to streamline church organization and functions. For two decades Lee studied the subject and prepared proposals. Lee was the chairman of the Priesthood Correlation Committee under LDS Church president David O. McKay. The committee restructured church organization in the 1960s, including labeling the children's and women's organizations as auxiliary to the priesthood organization.[4]

According to some historians, Hugh B. Brown petitioned McKay to rescind the policy of excluding people of African ancestry from the priesthood.[6] However, McKay had not felt spiritual impressions that the time was right to do so. Historians observe that Brown continued to seek to reverse the ban "administratively", but Lee was among those who noted that it was a matter of God making his will known through revelation.[6] In December 1969, Lee initiated a release to church leaders, signed by Brown and N. Eldon Tanner, both serving as counselors in the First Presidency, a statement that supported equal opportunities for civil rights, and that indicated priesthood policy would not change until God revealed it through revelation.[6][7][8]

When McKay died in 1970, Joseph Fielding Smith became church president and Lee was called as First Counselor in the First Presidency. He continued to gain practical experience for what was expected to be a long presidency of his own, given the fact that he was twenty-four years younger than Smith. In 1972, Smith died and Lee became the church's president. Later that year, he organized the Jerusalem Branch and presided over the church's second area conference, held in Mexico.[9]

Death

Lee's presidency proved one of the briefest in the history of the church, lasting from July 7, 1972, to Lee's sudden death due to a fatal pulmonary hemorrhage on December 26, 1973 at age 74.[2] Lee was buried at Salt Lake City Cemetery.[10]

• 
  Grave marker of Harold B. Lee
• 
  Headstone of Harold B. Lee

Ancestry

8. Francis Lee

4. Samuel Marion Lee Sr.

9. Jane Vail Johnson

2. Samuel Marion Lee Jr.

10. Joseph McMurrin Jr.

5. Margaret McMurrin

11. Margaret Leaing

1. Harold Bingham Lee

12. Levi Perry Bingham

6. Perry Calvin Bingham

13. Sarah Anne Elizabeth Lusk

3. Louisa Emeline Bingham

14. Martin Henry Henderson Sr.

7. Rachel Elvira Henderson

15. Sarah Elizabeth Wheeler

[11]

Legacy

The main library at Brigham Young University was named in Lee's honor after his death.

After his death, a statue of Lee was dedicated at his birthplace. Brigham Young University also honored the former church president by renaming its library after him. The 665,000-square-foot (61,800 m²) Harold B. Lee Library is one of the largest libraries in the western United States and contains 98 miles (158 km) of shelving.

Lee's teachings as an apostle were the 2002 course of study in the LDS Church's Sunday Relief Society and Melchizedek priesthood classes.[12]

Works

• Lee, Harold B. (1945). Youth and the Church (retitled Decisions for Successful Living). Deseret News.
• —— (1974). Stand Ye in Holy Places: Selected Sermons and Writings of President Harold B. Lee. Deseret Book.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• —— (1974). Ye Are the Light of the World: Selected Sermons and Writings of President Harold B. Lee. Deseret Book.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• —— (1996). Clyde J. Williams (ed.). Teachings of Harold B. Lee, Eleventh President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Bookcraft.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
• —— (2000). Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Harold B. Lee. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) LDS Church publication number 35892.

References

1. Gibbons 1993, pp. 18; 13.
2. Church Educational System (2005). "Chapter 11: Harold B. Lee, Eleventh President of the Church". Presidents of the Church: Student Manual. LDS Church. Archived from the original on 22 October 2014.
3. Payne, Jaynann Morgan (February 1974). "Louisa Bingham Lee". Ensign.
4. "Utah History Encyclopedia". www.uen.org. Archived from the original on 2015-10-21. Retrieved 2016-04-12.
5. "The Ministry of Harold B. Lee". ChurchofJesusChrist.org. Retrieved 2019-05-09.
6. Prince, Gregory A.; Wright, William Robert (2005-01-01). David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism. University of Utah Press. ISBN 9780874808223.
7. Lengthen Your Stride: The Presidency of Spencer W. Kimball by Edward L. Kimball and Spencer W. Kimball, Deseret Book, 1 Jan 2005, p.204
8. Quinn, D. Michael (1994) The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books) p. 14
9. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
10. Bingham, Kelly. "Harold B. Lee's Grave - Graves of the LDS Church Prophets". Moroni's Latter-day Saints Page.
11. "Harold Bingham Lee family tree". FamilySearch. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
12. "Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Harold B. Lee". ChurchofJesusChrist.org. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Retrieved 19 December 2018.

Works Cited

• Gibbons, Francis M. (1993). Harold B. Lee: Man of Vision, Prophet of God. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book. ISBN 0875797164.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

External links

Media related to Harold B. Lee at Wikimedia Commons

• Grampa Bill's G.A. Pages: Harold B. Lee

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints titles
Preceded by Joseph Fielding Smith	President of the Church July 7, 1972 – December 26, 1973	Succeeded by Spencer W. Kimball
	President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles January 23, 1970 – July 7, 1972
Preceded by Hugh B. Brown	First Counselor in the First Presidency January 23, 1970 – July 2, 1972	Succeeded by N. Eldon Tanner
Preceded by Sylvester Q. Cannon	Quorum of the Twelve Apostles April 10, 1941 – July 7, 1972	Succeeded by Spencer W. Kimball