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Joseph Fielding Smith and Harold B. Lee

The brief administrations of Joseph Fielding Smith and Harold B. Lee as Presidents of the Church during the early 1970s represented in each case the capstone of long and significant service to the Church. Each set a record for presiding for a shorter period than any of his predecessors-Joseph Fielding Smith serving as President of the Church for two and a half years, and Harold B. Lee occupying the position for only a year and a half. They are considered together in this chapter, not just because their administrations were so brief, but because most of the significant developments of this period cannot be confined to the leadership of either of these men alone. These years saw not only continued key developments of earlier decades, but also witnessed the defining of policies and new patterns of activity that would become increasingly important in later years.

Two Latter-Day Prophets

Joseph Fielding Smith

Joseph Fielding Smith was born in Salt Lake City in 1876, just one year before the death of President Brigham Young. While other boys occupied their time with hunting, fishing, or playing ball, young Joseph Fielding was more interested in reading. He had read the Book of Mormon twice before he reached ten years of age. He often carried a pocket edition of the New Testament which he could read in every available spare minute, and he began early to commit favorite scriptural passages to memory. Many years later he concluded that he had "received more pleasure and greater satisfaction out of the study of the scriptures, and reading of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and the work that has been accomplished for the salvation of men, than from anything else in all the world." 1 Joseph Fielding Smith inherited these interests from his father, after whom he was named. (To avoid confusion, the father is generally known as Joseph F. Smith and the son as Joseph Fielding Smith.) Only four years after Joseph Fielding was born, his father was called as a counselor to President John Taylor. Joseph F. Smith had personally experienced the exodus from Nauvoo following his own father's martyrdom and had participated in the colonization of the Great Basin; he passed on to his son a keen interest in the history of the Church. Joseph F. Smith was also a clear and powerful expounder of gospel doctrines, a quality for which his son would also be known. Young Joseph Fielding Smith found in his father's library many of the volumes from which he learned so much.