50 years ago today - Sep 12, 1975-Friday

[Leonard Arrington]

Tuesday afternoon Jack Adamson died at his home of a heart attack. ...

When Jack went to the University of Idaho in the fall of 1936 he joined a fraternity and partook of the life of fraternity boys which included occasional smoking, drinking, and partying. After two years he went on a mission [to Scotland] and was a good missionary from all reports. After he returned, World War II had commenced and he volunteered for service, as I recall in the Air Corps. This was probably the period when he resumed occasional smoking, drinking, coffee, etc. After the war he returned to the University of Utah and then completed his Ph.D. in literature at Harvard University [in 1956]. He then became the outstanding professor that so many students came to love and admire.

Despite all the above, let it be recorded that he never regarded himself as outside the church. He taught Sunday School for many years and was a great teacher. He permitted exploration of unorthodox ideas and this caused church authorities (I think Apostle Harold B. Lee) to advise the bishop that he be released. I heard him myself make a public statement in response to a question that he did not believe in a personal God and he did not regard himself as an orthodox Mormon. I think he did not believe in a future life. Nevertheless, he never became bitter or rebellious and did not like people who did. He was proud to call himself a Mormon in a cultural and social sense-in every sense except orthodox in theology. He thought Mormonism to be a superior religion and having desirable values which should be perpetuated. Even the temple [ceremony] he regarded as providing desirable ritual and celebration which would influence people for good-or it had the potential of
influencing people for good....

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