Trip to California

On Friday evening, June 27, Grandpa Lange, Claudia, and I took a Southwest flight from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles. Paul, Eliza, and Peter kindly drove us to the airport.

Our flight arrived nearly a half hour early in Los Angeles, which was fortunate because it took us as long to drive from the airport to our destination in La Crescenta as it had taken to drive from our home in Bountiful and then fly to California. We had to catch the airport shuttle to the Alamo car rental place, pick up a rental car (and then pick up a second one because the plates on the first one expired in May), and then find the right freeway (which happened to be south on I-405, east on I-105, north on I-110 through downtown Los Angeles, north on I-5, north on California 2, and finally west on I-210). At that late hour we did not expect traffic to be so heavy, but it was nearly a parking lot at times as we approached downtown and just beyond.

We were spending the night with Janice's parents, Wally and Ann Anderson, who generously offer their home for us to stay in whenever we come down to visit David and Janice. We arrived there at 11:30 p.m. California time (or 12:30 our time), and Ann was dutifully waiting up for us so she could lock up the house after we were safely in.

The purpose for our weekend trip was to celebrate Stuart's return after two years as a missionary in the Illinois Peoria Mission. He had arrived home on Thursday of the week before, the same day his younger sister Rachel graduated from high school. The next day David and Janice took Stuart through a session in the Los Angeles Temple and then David and Stuart went surfing.

We spent much of Saturday visiting first with Wally and Ann, who kindly fixed us breakfast, and then much of the rest of the day with David and Janice and their family. Tony and Jessica came up from San Diego, where they live with their two boys (Tanner and Ben) about two hours south of David and Janice. Adam and Joanna were there from Glendale, Arizona, a five-to-six-hour drive away, with their little two-year-old Kate. They are expecting their second child, a boy, sometime in August. Drew and Erica live nearby in La Crescenta, perhaps ten minutes away, and they are expecting their first child in early December. Stuart and Rachel will both be going to BYU this fall, and Heather, Brooke, and Annee are still at home.

On Sunday morning we attended church in the Verdugo Hills Ward and heard Stuart report his mission in sacrament meeting. He did a fine job. Just before he spoke, Jessica and Rachel sang "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing," one of my favorite hymns.

We spent the rest of Sunday, after the three-hour block of meetings, visiting with David, Janice, and their family. When David, Janice, Stuart, and Rachel left to go to another sacrament meeting, we drove back up to Ann and Wally's to take a nap but ended up helping them set up for the family dinner that was scheduled for four o'clock. It was a delightfully pleasant day, a little too warm if you had to be out in the sun for any period of time, just right if you were in the shade. It was good to see some of Janice's side of the family again.

In the evening the crowds faded away, and we visited some more with Wally and Ann and a little later with David and Janice, who came back over to the Andersons' house for some final visiting and farewells.

David is going through a tough time right now. He has been unemployed for the past five weeks and has now lived through the month's severance pay he received when he was let go. He has a lot of feelers out, and a couple of leads, but nothing concrete yet in the troubled times that the construction sector is now going through in California. Many days look bleak. In addition to looking for work, he plans to spend the coming months sprucing up his home in the event he needs to relocate. If he can actually sell it in a slow market, he thinks it is probably worth something approaching three-quarters of a million dollars. Incredible.

We went to bed a little earlier so we could wake up before four o'clock Monday morning to drive back to the airport, return the rental car, and catch our 6:30 flight home to Utah. When we got in the lengthy line of passengers trying to make their way through the security checks, we wondered if we would actually catch our plane, but we did. (Interestingly, my newly implanted heart monitor set off the machines in Salt Lake as we were leaving there Friday evening, but it did not cause any beeping this morning as I went through security in Los Angeles.)

Shauna and the three youngest of her six children (Andrew, Ethan, and Marta) picked us up at the airport after we arrived in Salt Lake. It had been a quick but delightful reunion with Claudia's side of the family.

And the verdict is . . .

I guess for the record I should mention what's been happening lately. Thursday morning, a little more than an hour after I arrived at work, I started feeling very sick, starting first with nausea, then feeling light-headed, weak, sweaty, disoriented. I had the thought that I might pass out, so I actually sat on the floor of my office so that when I toppled over I wouldn't have as far to go.

I had the presence of mind to activate the heart monitor that had been implanted in my chest two weeks earlier.

This is stupid, I thought, so I got up from off the floor and called in my assistant and told her I did not feel well. She could tell I did not. I was probably pale at the time and disoriented. She wanted to know if I wanted to go down to the nurse's station, but I said I didn't think I could make it. So she called down, and within seconds it seemed the nurse arrived with a wheelchair. I can remember getting in the wheelchair, being pushed to the elevator, and getting on the elevator, but not much after that.

The next thing I remember was lying on a cot in the nurse's station with paramedics working all around me, asking questions, taking blood pressure, poking, proding. I remember hearing the nurse tell them that I was unresponsive for a while although my eyes were open. So I do not know if that means I actually passed out or not.

The paramedics wheeled me out to an ambulance in front of the Church Office Building. I was amazed that in addition to the ambulance there were also two fire engines there. That seemed an extravagant bit of overkill. It was the first time in my life I had ever ridden in an ambulance, and as they took me up to LDS Hospital it seemed to be an awfully bumpy ride. They had me eat a glucose stick on the way up and inserted an IV line into my left hand. Once in the emergency room, I was asked a lot of questions again (just as I had been in the nurse's station back at work and in the ambulance on the way to the hospital), and was hooked up to various medical devices and had a chest X-ray taken and such procedures.

My work had kindly called Claudia and told her I was being transported up to LDS Hospital, so she arrived at some point. Eliza starting spreading the word to other family members.

At some point a man came from Medtronic (he said he had been up in Ogden when they called him) to interrogate my heart monitor (I had naively assumed that they just read it, but no, they interrogate it). Apparently it served its function because it showed no unusual heart activity during the whole episode. That is good news.

My blood sugar level, even after eating the glucose in the ambulance, was only 48 after I arrived at the hospital. The normal range for a non-diabetic, I discovered from subsequent research on the Internet, is between 70 and 120. I had had a severe case of hypoglycemia, which is apparently unusual for someone who is not also diabetic.

Also, my white blood cell count was extremely elevated, something like 21,000, which the ER doctor said could be caused by one of three things (although afterward Claudia and I could only remember two of them): a response to the trauma my body had just been through, a serious infection going on in my body, or something else. I told the doctor I had had a cold and sore throat for the past week, but he said that would not be sufficient to account for such a high level.

Talmage came from work to join us just moments before they were going to release me to go home, which was about five or six hours after the whole ordeal started. When we exited the ER, Rebecca, Louise, Meghan, and Mimi were also there in the waiting room. Louise, who had come with Rebecca from Layton, kindly drove Claudia and me home. Talmage came to our house to pick her up, but they stayed the rest of the afternoon visiting. Louise fixed us lunch and called my primary care doctor to make an appointment for Friday afternoon and was generally a great help.

I was feeling pretty worn out and tired and just rested much of the rest of the day. I was also having chills even though everyone else thought it was a warm day.

What I had just been through reminded me of how I felt on the second day of our North Dakota trip when I got so sick as we were driving across eastern Montana (see journal entry for Thursday, May 15). I must have been experiencing hypoglycemia that morning also. And in much milder forms several other times in the past couple of months when I have felt light-headed.

Friday morning I had a follow-up visit with my regular cardiologist that had already been scheduled for some time. He said that one of the heart medications I have been taking, Metoprolol tartrate, could cause my blood sugar level to be low and told me to discontinue it.

Friday afternoon I went to see my primary care doctor, but his receptionist had no record that I even had an appointment (even though they had told us just the day before to come at 1:40 Friday afternoon). We did talk her into having the doctor review the record from what happened at the hospital yesterday. He did and ordered a lab test, after which I had a shot of something, and then had to come back an hour later and have another blood test. My appointment with him will now be next Thursday afternoon.

In addition to the hypoglycemia episode, I have had a fever and chills and an unsettled stomach and continued to pretty much rest most of the day Friday. We were planning to go to Hyrum early this morning, up in Cache Valley, to watch Anna participate in a triathlon, but I called her this evening and said we had decided not to come. She thought that made sense. My boss had called me from work Friday morning and said not to worry about the mission presidents' seminar that begins Sunday morning, if I didn't feel up to coming. I'll play that one by ear still.

The day freedom died

This afternoon I finished reading of a disturbing chapter from our nation's troubled history following the Civil War in a well written, engaging book by Charles Lane entitled The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction. The summary on the inside leaves of the book's cover gives a fair summary of what the book was about (interspersed with my own comments prompted by that summary):

"America after the Civil War was a land of shattered promises and entrenched hatreds. In the explosive South, danger took many forms: white extremists loyal to a defeated world terrorized former slaves, while in the halls of government, bitter and byzantine political warfare raged between Republicans and Democrats."

Much has been said and written in our own time about the impasse between modern-day Republicans and Democrats, together with a resulting lack of any leadership in confronting the problems that beset us, because of the partisan nature of today's politics. Today's wrangling between the two parties seems mild when compared to the warfare that raged between them in the decade or so following the Civil War.

History thus provides a sense of perspective and balance in understanding and interpreting the events of our own day.

"In The Day Freedom Died, Charles Lane draws us vividly into this war-torn world with a true story whose larger dimensions have never been fully explored. Here is the epic tale of the Colfax Massacre, the mass murder of more than sixty black men on Easter Sunday 1873 that propelled a small Louisiana town into the center of the nation's consciousness. As the smoke cleared, the perpetrators created a falsified version of events to justify their crimes. But a tenacious northern-born lawyer rejected the lies. Convinced that the Colfax murderers must be punished lest the suffering of the Civil War be in vain, U.S. Attorney James Beckwith of New Orleans pursued the killers despite death threats and bureaucratic intrigue—until the final showdown at the Supreme Court of the United States. The ruling that decided the case influenced race relations in the United States for decades."

Like the author, I had never heard of the events of that long-ago Easter Sunday in Colfax, Louisiana, and the resulting constitutional issues and political fallout that concerned the country at that time, until I read this book. I would heartily recommend it to any serious student of American history.

"An electrifying piece of historical detective work, The Day Freedom Died brings to life a gallary of memorable characters in addition to Beckwith: Willey Calhoun, the iconoclastic Southerner who dreamed of building a bastion of equal rights on his Louisiana plantation; Christopher Columbus Nash, the white supremacist avenger who organized the Colfax Massacre; William Ward, the black Union Army veteran who took up arms against white terrorists; Ulysses S. Grant, the well-intentioned but beleaguered president; and Joseph P. Bradley, the brilliant justice of the Supreme Court whose political and legal calculations would shape the drama's troubling final act."

The pervasive fraud and rampant violence associated with elections in Louisiana (and indeed in much of the South) during this period makes our little hiccup with the 2000 George Bush election, ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court over irregularities in Florida, seem pale in comparison.

In many respects, we have come a long way since the difficult days of Reconstruction and its aftermath. We now have a black candidate of a major American political party—ironically the Democrats, which in that distant day was the party of white supremacists—running for the presidency of our country. I liked the concluding paragraph in Bret Schulte's editorial in this week's issue of U.S. News & World Report:

"As much as the Obama campaign trafficked in hope, the racial undercurrent is enough to make many Americans despair, regardless of political stripe. Still, most Americans are proud to live in a country that gave a self-proclaimed skinny kid with a funny name and few advantages the chance to be president. Whether or not Obama is the best candidate for the job is up to voters, who have plenty of issues to weigh. It's too bad that some voters have decided that race is one of them" (U.S. News & World Report, June 16, 2008, "One Week," 10).

I personally think there are a lot of issues against Senator Barak Obama's becoming our next president, but I do not think race should be one of them. By now we should have outgrown that.

A thirtieth anniversary

There are moments in life so infused with emotion—whether of shock or grief or fear on the one hand or of surprise or excitement or joy on the other hand—that forever enshrines the events and feelings of the day into our memories for the rest of our lives. The death of a loved one or the birth of a child can be such a moment for an individual or a family.

Sometimes such moments are spread across whole populations and cultures, such as the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated or the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded or the morning America was attacked on multiple fronts on 9-11. Each of these was a horrific event, and if you were alive at the time and were old enough to know what was going on, you can clearly remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard the news unfolding.

A particularly joyous event in the lives of Latter-day Saints across the world occurred exactly thirty years ago tomorrow when President Spencer W. Kimball (1895-1985), the twelfth president and prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, announced on June 8, 1978, that God had revealed that "the long-promised day has come when every faithful, worthy man in the Church may receive the holy priesthood, with power to exercise its divine authority, and enjoy with his loved ones every blessing that flows therefrom, including the blessings of the temple" and that "all worthy male members of the Church may be ordained to the priesthood without regard for race or color" (First Presidency letter dated June 8, 1978; now canonized as scripture in the Doctrine and Covenants as Official Declaration 2).

There were undoubtedly those who refused to accept the revelation as the mind and will of the Lord, just as had occurred eighty-eight years earlier when President Wilford Woodruff (1807-1898), the fourth president and prophet of the Church, had announced in 1890 that God had revealed that the Latter-day Saints were no longer required to live the law of plural marriage and were from that time forward specifically prohibited from entering into plural marriages (see Official Declaration 1 in the Doctrine and Covenants).

In both instances—with President Woodruff's announcement in 1890 and with President Kimball's announcement in 1978—the vast majority of devoted, faithful Latter-day Saints accepted these major shifts in practice as being the mind and voice and will of the Lord to His people.

My own experience on that June morning thirty years ago, captured in a joyous letter I wrote the following morning [Saturday, June 10, 1978] to my extended family and others, I think reflects the spirit in which most Latter-day Saints at the time greeted the announcement:

On Friday morning, June 9, 1978, all of the General Authorities of the Church who reside at Church headquarters were called to an early morning meeting in the Salt Lake Temple. They had been asked to come fasting and praying. In a manner most solemn and sacred, the statement of the First Presidency was read:

“To All General and Local Priesthood Officers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout the World

“Dear Brethren:

“As we have witnessed the expansion of the work of the Lord over the earth, we have been grateful that people of many nations have responded to the message of the restored gospel, and have joined the Church in ever-increasing numbers. This, in turn, has inspired us with a desire to extend to every worthy member of the Church all of the privileges and blessings which the gospel affords.

“Aware of the promises made by the prophets and presidents of the Church who have preceded us that at some time, in God’s eternal plan, all of our brethren who are worthy may receive the priesthood, and witnessing the faithfulness of those from whom the priesthood has been withheld, we have pleaded long and earnestly in behalf of these, our faithful brethren, spending many hours in the Upper Room of the Temple supplicating the Lord for divine guidance.

“He has heard our prayers, and by revelation has confirmed that the long-promised day has come when every faithful, worthy man in the Church may receive the holy priesthood, with power to exercise its divine authority, and enjoy with his loved ones every blessing that flows therefrom, including the blessings of the temple. Accordingly, all worthy male members of the Church may be ordained to the priesthood without regard for race or color. Priesthood leaders are instructed to follow the policy of carefully interviewing all candidates for ordination to either the Aaronic or the Melchizedek Priesthood to insure that they meet the established standards for worthiness.

“We declare with soberness that the Lord has now made known His will for the blessing of all His children throughout the earth who will hearken to the voice of His authorized servants, and prepare themselves to receive every blessing of the gospel.

“Sincerely yours,
“Spencer W. Kimball, N. Eldon Tanner, and Marion G. Romney”

President Kimball then responded, bearing his sweet and fervent testimony that the Lord had heard and answered by revelation his oft and fervent pleadings. Each General Authority present then had an opportunity to bear his testimony and share his feelings of joy and thanksgiving.

“Never have I felt the Spirit of the Lord more strongly,” commented one of the Brethren to me later that day, “than I did this morning in that temple meeting.”

Shortly after that historic meeting, Elder Carlos E. Asay and Rex D. Pinegar called together all of the staff of the Missionary Department, where I have the privilege of working, to make the announcement to us. As Elder Asay read the statement, my eyes filled with tears, my heart swelled with joy, and I felt like standing and shouting “Praise the Lord.” My reaction was not unique. The Spirit of the Lord was strongly present, and many in the room wept openly—as I was doing—and were thrilled beyond all description at this monumental step forward.

Both Elder Asay and Elder Pinegar bore their testimonies and let us know in no uncertain terms that this was indeed a revelation from Almighty God. The Spirit confirmed their witness and riveted it into our souls. This was truth; it was so right; the Lord had spoken; the heavens had been opened.

Elder Pinegar opened the meeting for others to respond, and three or four of us bore our testimonies. I had that sacred opportunity, and only once before in my life during the bearing of my own testimony have I cried.

I recounted how I had served my mission in northern Brazil, where a large part of the population had the Negro lineage. The last city I worked in had an estimated 70 to 90 percent of its population who were black. Oh, how I grew to love those dear, humble people. They were warm, eager, and receptive. But their day and season had not yet arrived.

In Brazil there are many fine black members in the Church, many of them strong and faithful despite the restrictions they may not have understood but nevertheless accepted, grateful for those blessings of the gospel they were able to enjoy, and hoping for the day that has now arrived when the blessings of the priesthood would be theirs.

I recall specifically one dear, humble family in Petrópolis, just out of Rio de Janeiro. They were poor even by Brazilian standards. They lived in a tiny house with a dirt floor and no electricity. But they were solid people, and they taught a young elder from North America what happiness was. The husband, who held the priesthood, was a counselor in the branch presidency. His wife and consequently the children were of Negro lineage. For eight or nine years the family had faithfully attended meetings before the elders would baptize them. And now to think that in only a few months when the São Paulo Temple is dedicated they will be able to go there and all be sealed together forever as a family.

Oh, how I wish I were in Brazil today!

Yesterday’s announcement was historic. In my mind it far surpasses in significance the Manifesto issued by President Wilford Woodruff in 1890. It perhaps even surpasses the revelation that came to Peter anciently when he was directed to begin taking the gospel to the gentiles (see Acts 10:1–11:18). This new revelation issued by President Kimball this week canceled what has been in effect through six long millennia since the days of Cain. It fulfills the promises and prophecies of various prophets that that day would come. We have witnessed prophecy fulfilled, and I would hope each of us would be wise enough to record the historic event in our journals and diaries.

Two things came across to me yesterday, among other things. First, President Kimball is a kind and loving man, filled with great concern for all of God’s children. He had struggled long and pled much with the Lord before this revelation came. The very tone of the First Presidency’s letter bears this out. Second, President Kimball is a courageous man. It is one thing to hear the voice of the Lord, but it is another to have the courage to carry it out.

This action did not come about, as some have already erroneously supposed, because of outside pressures brought to bear against the Church. It has come partly because we have a prophet who in the fulness of his near perfection is filled with charity, the pure love of Christ, and who paid the price to bring it about, prevailing upon the heavens with his giant Enoch-like faith. And it has come because in the economy of heaven and in the wisdom, justice, and mercy of an all-knowing and all-loving God the time was right for the full blessings of the gospel to be extended to all people everywhere “who will hearken to the voice of His authorized servants, and prepare them-selves to receive every blessing of the gospel.”

What the Lord said specifically of the Prophet Joseph Smith seems to apply so very well to President Spencer W. Kimball:

“Wherefore, meaning the church, thou shalt give heed unto all his words and commandments which he shall give unto you as he receiveth them, walking in all holiness before me;

“For his word ye shall receive, as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith . . . .

“For thus saith the Lord God: Him have I inspired to move the cause of Zion in mighty power for good, and his diligence I know, and his prayers I have heard” (D&C 21:4–5, 7).

How fully that fits President Kimball and how appropriate to what has just happened this week!

The First Presidency’s statement does not contain the phrase “thus saith the Lord,” but it says it. They did say, “He has heard our prayers, and by revelation has confirmed that the long-promised day has come.” They did say, “We declare with soberness that the Lord has now made known His will for the blessing of all His children.”

I add my own humble testimony. God lives—of that there is no doubt. He has restored His priesthood in our day—of that there is no doubt. We have a mighty prophet in modern Israel—of that there is no doubt. The Spirit has borne powerful witness to my soul that this move to extend the priesthood to those who were formerly restricted is in fact a revelation from God. It is true. I know it as I know anything, and I declare that to you in the name of Jesus Christ, whose priesthood it is. Amen.

A season of good-byes

This morning we learned that my Aunt Donna died yesterday. She was the last living child of my father's parents, and thus an era ends, and that generation of our family is now gone. Donna was my dad's youngest sister and was one of my favorite aunts. And she was, as Claudia put it, the keeper of the family stories. She will be missed.

And then this evening all our own family—all 32 of us—were together for a formal family picture. We gathered at our house afterward for pizza and ice cream and cookies and snow cones (Caleb bought his own snow cone machine with his birthday money and was making snow cones for any who wanted them).

It may be the last time we will all be together at one time in one place for a very long time. Chris, Camilla, and Sam leave early tomorrow morning for Washington state. They stayed their final night in Utah at Chris's parents' house, since Chris's mom and dad are driving up to Everett with them. So it was pretty tearful when they left our house. They will be back down in mid-August for Chris's sister's wedding, but by then Paul, Eliza, and Peter will have moved to Atlanta.

I told Camilla, as she was parting, I didn't look at it like I was losing a daughter but gaining an excuse for a road trip.

More on the journey of discovery

I survived yesterday's cardiac electrophysiology study at Salt Lake Regional Medical Center. Apparently there was not enough evidence to require a pacemaker be installed, but I did have an under-the-skin heart monitor installed that's good for two or three years or until some other intervention requires. I guess I will beep now when I go through airport security screenings.

The incision on my upper left chest, just a little below the collarbone, where they inserted the heart monitor, is very tender today.