George Albert Smith died on his eighty-first birthday at his Yale Avenue home in Salt Lake City of lupuserythematosus disseminatus, a disease of the connective tissue which may have contributed to his mental collapse. Buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery.
As church president, he also was president of many church-controlled corporations: Beneficial Life Insurance Company, Utah Hotel Company, Utah Home Fire Insurance Company, Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, Utah First National Bank, Zion's Savings Bank and Trust, ZCMI, and Zions Securities Corporation. He was president of the Church Board of Education, which controlled LDS educational institutions, and was also editor of the church's official magazines. He expedited welfare shipments to Latter-day Saints in Europe at the end of World War II, supervised the reconciliation of 1,200 Latter-day Saints in Mexico who had formed a schismatic group, and expanded programs to help American Indians. A person of compassion, he worked especially in the interests of the youth of the church, the troubled, the poor, and the underprivileged.
[Van Wagoner, Richard and Walker, Steven C., A Book of Mormons, http://amzn.to/newmormonstudies;Utah History Encyclopedia: George Albert Smith, http://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/]
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