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David O. Mckay's Worldwide Travels

Lavina Fielding Anderson

In the fall of 1920, David O. McKay, 47 years old and an apostle since age 32, was sent on an extraordinary mission by LDS Church president Heber J. Grant. He was accompanied by Hugh J. Cannon, the indefatigable and cheerful president of Liberty Stake in Salt Lake City. Their odyssey spanned 12 months, more than 61,000 miles, and 15 missions; they met with more than 300 missionaries and uncounted members, friends, and public officials. According to Hugh J. Cannon's summary, they had traveled 23,777 miles on land and 37,869 by water, on 24 separate oceangoing vessels.

This year-long voyage by the young apostle was unquestionably influential in two ways: first, 40 years before the Church was ready for extensive international growth, it gave McKay an international outlook and a keen sense of the need for representing members of the Church far from its center core; and second, it confirmed his already strong passion for face-to-face contact in collecting information, working out problems, and dealing with the press about the image of the Church.

McKay had been the first apostle to visit most of the countries on his itinerary. Over the next 34 years, he continued to travel widely, as an apostle, as a member of the First Presidency, and, after 1951, as president of the Church. His international travels had begun with his mission to Scotland (1897-1899). From 1922 to 1924, he served as president of the European Mission, conducting a conference nearly every weekend and traveling repeatedly to virtually every city of any size in Great Britain, Wales, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. He and his wife also accompanied Mae Booth to visit her missionary husband, Joseph Booth, in Aleppo, Syria. After his return to the United States, he maintained a heavy schedule of stake conferences, including, most years, an extensive mission tour that took him away from home for weeks at a time: the Eastern States Mission (1925); the Southern States Mission (1926); Alberta, Canada (1927); the Central States Mission (1927); Eastern Canada (1929); Idaho (1930, 1931); Washington, D.C. (1930); and Montana (1931), until he became a member of the First Presidency in 1935.

His first major presidential tour took him to Europe in 1952, where in 64 days his party visited nine countries, some of them more than once, selected temple sites in England and Switzerland, and held at least 49 public meetings. This itinerary included Scotland, England, Switzerland, the Netherlands, DenMark, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Switzerland (again), France, Wales, England (again), and Scotland (again). In 1953, he returned to Europe to dedicate the London Temple site, combining it with mission tours that covered 16,600 miles in 21 days. The groundbreaking services for the London Temple (1955), the dedication of the Swiss Temple and the Tabernacle Choir tour of Europe (1955), and the dedication of the London Temple (1958) all furnished reasons to return. In 1954, he became the first president of the Church to visit South Africa, South America, and Central America, an ambitious 35,000-mile undertaking that began in London.