Brian Steed, executive director of Utah s Department of Natural Resources, has been named the Janet Quinney Lawson Institute for Land, Water, and Air s first executive director.
How an accidental historian won over critics and shed light on two of Mormonismâs darkest hours
(Leah Hogsten | Tribune file photo) Richard Turley holds one of Joseph Smith s personal documents during a news conference to announce a release in the Joseph Smith Papers project in 2013. Turley recently retired. | Updated: March 4, 2021, 3:33 p.m.
It was 1986, a dark time for Mormon historians.
Just months earlier, infamous document collector Mark Hofmann had forged his way into the market for historical pieces relating to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints â even fooling church President Spencer W. Kimball and future President Gordon B. Hinckley, with his supposedly fabulous finds â and then killing two innocent members to cover his double-dealing and deceit.
of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
As fast as the blood flows into the right atrium of President Spencer W. Kimball’s stopped heart, a tube pumps it out of his body and into a machine next to the operating table.
Dr. Russell M. Nelson peers down into the chest cavity. The room smells of cauterized blood vessels and arteries. Not long ago, this was unthinkable. Operating on a live heart was a medical sin when he entered medical school.
The blood streaming into the machine had been returning to President Kimball’s heart after a trip through his body. The machine takes over for the heart and lungs. An oxygenator strips out carbon dioxide and delivers oxygen. Then the heart-lung machine returns the blood to the aorta, which sends it coursing to his brain, fingers and toes.