40 years ago today - Mar 27, 1980-Thursday

[Leonard Arrington]

I had a long meeting with Elder [G. Homer] Durham this morning. The following items were mentioned by Elder Durham.

He said that the Twelve and First Presidency have authorized payment of the first $5000 to the authors of the sesquicentennial volumes as soon as they are approved by Elder Durham and submitted to the Quorum of the Twelve advisers. [This series was cancelled by Boyd K. Packer]. ...

Elder Durham asked about the Wilford Woodruff diaries. Our policy up to now has been to give copies of the diaries to any direct descendant, and he said there is now a new policy. We're not going to give copies of diaries to anybody. I said that seems to me foolish, because the anti-Mormon crowd already have copies of these and they are apt to publish them in the antiMormon context; and to deny them to the families is to omit the possibility of their being published in a favorable context. He said to go ahead with the Wilford Woodruff project but not try to rush it, just simply cooperate with the family to the minimum extent necessary. [[The Woodruff family had asked for a microfilm copy in anticipation of the eventual publication by Scott G. Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff's Journal, 1833-1898: A Typescript, 9 vols. (Midvale, Utah: Signature Books, 1983-85).]] ...

Elder Durham said that he was in a meeting with the First Presidency yesterday and they are very, very tired. Elder [Marion G.] Romney seemed the most alert of the three. Elder [N. Eldon] Tanner looks very tired. "He looks like he could stand a good rubdown and shower and go to bed." Elder [Gordon B.] Hinckley is extremely busy with many important assignmentsBonneville [International] and the media, the Sesquicentennial, public relations-many, many assignments. [[On July 23, 1981, Hinckley would be called as a third counselor in the First Presidency.]] ...

[Confessions of a Mormon historian : the diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, 1971-1997, Gary James Bergera, editor, Signature Books, 2018]

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