My Grandfather, the Mormon Apostle (February 1990 | Volume: 41, Issue: 1)

My Grandfather, the Mormon Apostle

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Authors: Roy Hoopes

Historic Era: Era 6: The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900)

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February 1990 | Volume 41, Issue 1

Emerson wrote that “there is properly no history; only biography,” so my brother and sister and I knew that the revered collection of diaries and papers that had once belonged to our grandfather, which, during most of our early lives, was in a closet in an upstairs bedroom, contained some serious stuff. Our mother was a professional journalist, and it was always assumed that she would write her father’s story. But she intended instead to write a novel based on his life. Her father—our grandfather Rudger Clawson—was president of the Council of the Twelve Apostles of the Mormon Church at the time of his death, in 1943.

As we were growing up, in Washington, D.C., it was a little puzzling to us that this elderly, mild gentleman, who dressed mostly in black and wore black bowlers, top hats, and homburgs and starched white Herbert Hoover-style collars, looking like a bookkeeper (in fact, he was a bookkeeper), should warrant a big, romantic historical novel of the kind my mother planned to write. Despite Grandfather’s exalted position, it was always Grandma who commanded the most attention. She, too, always wore black, and in her seventies she was still a beautiful woman with a striking presence. Grandfather had a puckish wit and would often enter a room with a dramatic gesture and a Shakespearean quote, but then he would seem to fade into the furniture. Grandma entered a room and dominated it.

However, as we grew up, we began to hear the stories about Grandfather that invariably prompted guests to say, “Oh, that would make a great novel.” In 1980, Mother died without having written that novel. In fact, in her later years she had become reconciled to not writing it and often talked with her children about her desire that one of us write her father’s biography.

She also made it clear she did not want his diaries and papers to go to the church, because once they were in its archives, only church-approved scholars would have access to them. Before she died, my brother, David, wrote a detailed proposal for a biography, but he was unable to interest a publisher. The papers were transferred from Mother’s closet to my basement, where they began to gather dust—and attract some queries from interested buyers of historical papers. Then we had an idea: Why not sell the papers and use the proceeds to write the biography?

He faced down the mob that murdered Joseph Standing—a bold act for anyone.

By this time, I had written two biographies (of the novelist James M. Cain and the journalist Ralph M. Ingersoll) and David had done graduate work in the American West at Harvard and considerable research on Rudger Clawson. We seemed to make a good team. The papers were sold to the University of Utah, a public institution. David and I split the proceeds and used the money to help