Biography of President Thomas S. Monson

4 February 2008

President Thomas S. Monson was named as the 16^th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on February 4, 2008. He had served as a Counselor in the First Presidency of the Church since November 10, 1985. Most recently, on March 12, 1995, he was set apart as First Counselor to President Gordon B. Hinckley. Prior to that, on June 5, 1994, he was called as Second Counselor to President Howard W. Hunter, and on November 10, 1985, as Second Counselor to President Ezra Taft Benson. He was ordained an Apostle and called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on October 4, 1963, at the age of 36.

President Monson served as president of the Church’s Canadian Mission, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, from 1959 to 1962. Prior to that time he served in the presidency of the Temple View Stake in Salt Lake City, Utah, and as a bishop of the Sixth-Seventh Ward in that stake.

Born in Salt Lake City, on August 21, 1927, President Monson is the son of G. Spencer and Gladys Condie Monson. He attended Salt Lake City public schools and graduated cum laude from the University of Utah in 1948, receiving a degree in business management. He did graduate work and served as a member of the College of Business faculty at the University of Utah. He later received his MBA degree from Brigham Young University. In April 1981, Brigham Young University conferred upon President Monson the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. He was given the honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, by Salt Lake Community College in June 1996. He received the Honorary Doctor of Business from the University of Utah in May 2007. He is a member of Alpha Kappa Psi, an honorary business fraternity.

President Monson served in the United States Navy near the close of World War II. He married Frances Beverly Johnson on October 7, 1948, in the Salt Lake Temple. They are the parents of three children.

Professionally, President Monson has had a distinguished career in publishing and printing. He became associated with the Deseret News in 1948, where he served as an executive in the advertising division of that newspaper and the Newspaper Agency Corporation. Later he was named sales manager of the Deseret News Press, one of the West’s largest commercial printing firms, rising to the position of general manager, which position he held at the time of his appointment to the Quorum of the Twelve in 1963. He served for many years as chairman of the board of Deseret News Publishing Co. President Monson is a past president of Printing Industry of Utah and a former member of the board of directors of Printing Industry of America.

With his broad business background, President Monson served for many years as a board member of several prominent businesses and industries. He currently serves as a trustee of Brigham Young University and the Church Board of Education.

Since 1969 President Monson has served as a member of the National Executive Board of Boy Scouts of America.

President Monson has held membership in the Utah Association of Sales Executives, the Salt Lake Advertising Club, and the Salt Lake Exchange Club.

For many years, President Monson served as a member of the Utah State Board of Regents, the body which governs higher education in the State of Utah. He also served as an officer in the Alumni Association of the University of Utah.

In December 1981, President Monson was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to serve on the President’s Task Force for Private Sector Initiatives. He served in this capacity until December 1982, when the work of the task force was completed.

President Monson was awarded the University of Utah’s Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1966. He is also the recipient of the Boy Scouts of America’s Silver Beaver Award (1971), its prestigious Silver Buffalo Award (1978), and international Scouting’s highest award, the Bronze Wolf (1993). In 1997 he received the Minuteman Award from the Utah National Guard, as well as Brigham Young University’s Exemplary Manhood Award. In 1998 he and Sister Monson were each given the Continuum of Caring Humanitarian Award by the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph Villa.

President Thomas S. Monson: On the Lord’s Errand

On any given day at a handful of nursing homes in Salt Lake City a buoyant yet distinguished gentleman can be seen talking, laughing and listening to the residents. Despite his heavy load of religious assignments, Thomas S. Monson, the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is the self-appointed chaplain for these facilities.

Fellow Church leader President Boyd K. Packer said, “He visits them anytime his busy schedule permits, and sometimes even when it doesn’t permit.”

President Monson’s love for the elderly can be traced to his earliest positions in the Church. He was assigned to be a bishop in Salt Lake City when he was just 22 years old. His lay ministry included responsibilities for over 1,000 members — 85 of them widows — and the largest welfare load in the Church.

President Monson remembers one particular year when a drought caused a severe shortage of food for the needy, especially fresh fruit. He offered a sacred prayer one night late at the meetinghouse asking the Lord for help. “I pleaded that these widows were the finest women I knew, that their needs were simple and conservative and that they had no resources on which they might rely.”

The next morning, President Monson said, he received a call from a man in the congregation who owned a large wholesale produce company. “Bishop,” he said, “I’d like to send a semi-trailer filled with oranges, grapefruits and bananas to the Church for those who would otherwise go without. Could you make arrangements?”

President Monson not only provided physically for the needy in his congregation, but he also forged lasting friendships. He took a week of his personal vacation time each Christmas season to visit every single one of the widows in his congregation. For the first several years he took them a dressed chicken from his own poultry coops as a gift.

These visits continued decades after President Monson was given other Church assignments for as long as each of the 85 widows lived. Fellow Church leader Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said, “Perhaps no one in the present leadership of the Church has spoken at so many funerals — he once had three in one day — and always very personal remarks are given for the sometimes ordinary and otherwise unknown souls that he has met and loved during his ministry.”

President Monson also has a gift for reaching out to the youth in the Church and has served for nearly three decades on the National Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America. Former Chief Scout Executive Jere Ratcliffe said, “I don’t know any person about whom I could say more good things than I can say about Tom Monson. For me Tom personifies ‘enthusiasm’ in its original meaning, ‘God within’ or literally ‘inspired,’ He lights up every meeting he is in. The LDS Church is blessed to have such a leader of youth.”

Perhaps President Monson’s example of how to minister to others came from his childhood. He was born on 21 August1927 in Salt Lake City to G. Spencer and Gladys Condie Monson, who were of hardy Swedish, English and Scottish ancestry.

He describes his childhood as idyllic with hours spent fishing and exploring the surrounding valleys. “Ours was a close-knit family,” President Monson said. “We gained a sense of appreciation and love for our relatives, because all of us lived together on one corner on Salt Lake’s west side.”

President Monson vividly recalls riding in his family’s 1928 Oldsmobile many Sundays with his father to the home of his father’s Uncle Elias.“I would wait in the car while Dad went inside. Soon he would emerge from the house, carrying his crippled uncle in his arms like a china doll. I would open the door and watch how tenderly my father would place Uncle Elias in the front seat and wrap a blanket around his legs. Then we would take him for a ride around the city. Dad never wanted any thanks for this service, but his lesson was not lost on me.”

In fact, this was a lesson that was soon replicated. During the Depression years, the Monson family lived frugally with few if any luxuries. When young Tom learned a family of one of his friends planned to eat cereal moistened with hot water for Christmas dinner, he invited his friend to his backyard. He then took his two pet rabbits out of their hutch and gave them to his friend for Christmas dinner for his family.

After graduating from high school, President Monson enrolled as a freshman at the University of Utah but soon shipped out for basic training in San Diego as a member of the United States Navy Reserve. When the war ended in 1946, he returned home, graduating two years later with honors from the University of Utah with a degree in business.

It was at a university dance that he first saw the young lady who would later become his wife — Frances Johnson. At the end of their courtship, President Monson said he had planned a special evening to propose to Frances, but his youngest brother, Scott, spoiled the surprise by blurting out, “Tommy has a ring for you, Frances!” the moment she entered the door. Despite the unusual proposal, Tom and Frances were married in the Salt Lake Temple on 7 October 1948.

“From the first day of our marriage, Tom has served in leadership positions. Some have asked how a new bride adjusts to that, but it has never been a sacrifice to see my husband doing the Lord’s work,” Frances said. “It has blessed me, and it has blessed our children. He always knew that if it was for the Church, I expected him to do what he had to do.”

Her shared commitment to serving in the Church is something President Monson values. “In 59 years of marriage I have never known Frances to complain once of my Church responsibilities. In those 59 years I have been gone many days and many nights, and I have rarely been able to sit with her in the congregation. But there is no one like her — absolutely no one. She is in every way supportive and is a woman of quiet and profoundly powerful faith.”

This mutual commitment to Church service was tested again and again as President Monson was called to numerous lay leadership positions and asked to take a leave of absence from his executive position at the Deseret News to move his family to Toronto, Canada, where he served as the president of the Canadian Mission for three years.

Upon returning home, President Monson participated in a variety of Church committees but was unprepared when Church President David O. McKay asked him to be one of 12 modern-day apostles who help govern The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

After sharing the news with Frances, President Monson recalls, “that night neither of us slept very well. My feet were like ice.” In what he would later describe as one of the most dramatic days of his life, President Monson was ordained an apostle on 4 October 1963. He was 36 years old.

Twenty-two years later he would find himself serving in the First Presidency, the highest governing body of the Church. He served in the First Presidency for over two decades as a counselor to three Church presidents.

Although President Monson had heavy responsibilities and demands on his time, Frances said he considered his highest priority to be that of husband and father. In fact, he often shared his spiritual experiences with his children. Daughter Ann said some of her fondest memories came from “hearing him tell of the special inspiration he had in calling a patriarch or of the faith-promoting experiences he had interviewing missionaries.”

His son Thomas said, “Every night before I went to bed, I would go upstairs to his office, and whatever he was doing, he would put aside, and he would play me a game of checkers. That is one of the sweetest memories I have of my father.”

Clark Monson also recalls teaching moments with his father. “Dad and I were out fishing on a boat, and he asked me to reel in my line for a moment. When our lines were in and the rods set aside, Dad said, ‘In about five minutes your brother Tom will be sitting down to take the bar exam. He’s worked hard through three years of law school for this and he’s probably a little apprehensive. Let’s just kneel here in the boat. I’ll offer a prayer for him, and then you offer one.’ That was one of the greatest experiences of my life.”

In the midst of visits with widows, playing checkers with his son or attending to worldwide needs of members of the Church, President Monson has always been “on the Lord’s errand” (Doctrine and Covenants 64:29).

President Thomas S. Monson:
Abbreviated Biographical Information

• Thomas Spencer Monson was born on August 21, 1927 at St. Marks Hospital in Salt Lake City. His parents, G. Spencer and Gladys Condie Monson were of Swedish, English and Scottish ancestry. He has two brothers and three sisters.
• At President Monson’s birth, there were just over 600,000 Latter-day Saints, most of them living in the American West. Heber J. Grant was president of the Church.
• Monson grew up on Salt Lake City’s west side in close proximity to much of his extended family including grandparents, aunts and uncles.
• At age 12, Monson began working part-time with his father at Western Hotel Register Company, a printing firm. This first job would be forerunner to his professional career in the printing industry.
• As a boy, Monson and his family would spend the summer in a cabin at Vivian Park in Provo Canyon. It was there that Monson developed his life-long love of fishing.
• Monson was a student at West High School, where he excelled in English and History and became president of the Spanish Club and a sergeant in the ROTC.
• In the fall of 1944, Monson enrolled as a freshman at the University of Utah.
• On October 6, 1945, Monson left Salt Lake City to pursue basic training in San Diego with the United States Naval Reserve.
• In 1946, after the end of the war, Monson returned home and continued his education. He graduated with Honors two years later from the University of Utah with a degree in business. Following graduation, Monson began working for the Deseret news as the Assistant Classified Advertising Manager.
• On October 7, 1948, Monson and Frances Beverly Johnson were married in the Salt Lake Temple.
• On Sunday, May 7, 1950, at the age of 22, Monson became Bishop of his boyhood ward. With about 1,060 members, the Sixth-Seventh ward was comprised of many elderly people including about 85 widows and the largest welfare load of the Church. Of the ward members, Monson said, “these were good people who never had a great deal of financial means but who loved the Lord and kept His commandments.
• While serving as bishop, Monson’s wife Frances gave birth to their son Tom in 1951 and daughter Ann in 1954. Later, Frances delivered their third child Clark in 1959 while Monson was serving as a mission president with his family in Canada.
• On June 16, 1955, Monson was called to serve as counselor in a Stake Presidency. Monson was not aware of the calling prior to it being announced over the pulpit.
• In 1953, Monson was named assistant general manager of the Deseret News Press. He served as president of the printing industry in Utah and took an active role in national printing conventions.
• On February 21, 1959, Monson was called to serve as president of the Canadian Mission and was asked to prepare to leave with his family in just three weeks.
• Upon completing his mission presidency, Monson returned to Salt Lake City and was named the General Manager of the Deseret Press making him responsible for the largest printing plant west of the Mississippi. During this time, Monson served on many Church committees including the Adult Correlation Committee where he helped pioneer the Home Teaching program of the Church.
• On October 3, 1963, Monson was called to be a member of the Council of the Twelve Apostles by President David O. McKay.
• In his first General Conference address as a member of the Council of the Twelve, Monson said, “I know that God lives. There is no question in my mind. I know that this is His work, and I know that the sweetest experience in all this life is to feel His promptings as He directs us in the furtherance of His work.” Following spiritual promptings has held particular importance for Monson as he works to serve others.
• Beginning in 1965, Monson was assigned to supervise the missions of the South Pacific where he developed a unique love and admiration of the faith of the saints in the region.
• President Monson was instrumental in the construction of a temple in Freiberg, Germany, behind the Iron Curtain, at a time when such a thing was considered impossible.
• During his years as a member of the Council of the Twelve, Monson served as chairman of the Scriptures Publications Committee. For many years, Monson supervised the process which eventually resulted in new editions of all four Standard Works of the Church.
• Monson values community service and has spent nearly three decades on the National Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America. He received Scouting’s Silver Beaver and Silver Buffalo awards. He is a recipient of the International Scouting’s highest award, the Bronze Wolf.
• On November 10, 1985, after twenty-two years of service in the Council of the Twelve Apostles, Monson was called by President Ezra Taft Benson to serve as Second Counselor in the First Presidency. In 1994, he was called as Second Counselor to President Howard W Hunter and in 1995, was called as First Counselor to President Gordon B. Hinckley.