Post­ed: 11 April 2015
Updat­ed: 9 May 15 (plus postscript)

Harold B. Lee

The recent Mor­mon Sto­ries Pod­cast inter­views of Kirk and Lind­say Van Allen by Gina Colvin and John Dehlin evoked my mem­o­ry of encoun­ter­ing Harold B. Lee in Sep­tem­ber 1965 regard­ing “The Prin­ci­ple”. When “Steven in Mil­creek” respond­ed to my com­ment about “HBL” on John’s Mor­mon Sto­ries pod­cast [Eugene, do you know if HBL took steps to remove (or amend/modify) D&C 132? If not, sug­gest rea­sons why or why not? Do you believe that he changed his view between 1965 (when he spoke to you) and 1972 (when he became Prophet/President)?] and I heard Gina whis­per to Kirk and Lind­say that “all Mor­mon men dream of mul­ti­ple wives” in her Thought­ful Faith pod­cast, I recalled my meet­ing with HBL and then tried to recon­struct when I first began won­der­ing about the truth of D&C 132.

My won­der­ing began in sum­mer 1959. I was then an engi­neer­ing under­grad at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley and my wife of 5 years had just surprised–nay–shocked me by lament­ing “I’m sor­ry the days of polygamy are over”. She went on to explain her dilem­ma in not being the wife she felt I need­ed. “You need oth­ers who can meet the needs that I can­not.” Her self-esteem was not high in those days.

“Wow!” I thought to myself. “What an unselfish atti­tude!” My affec­tion for her soared as I began to real­ize that I was not the kind of hus­band she need­ed or had want­ed, which was more like her blue-col­lar work­er dad. Fur­ther­more, I had a mil­i­tary secret that I could not (and nev­er did) reveal to her, but which had deeply changed me while over­seas late in the first year of our mar­riage and which dras­ti­cal­ly affect­ed my abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate with her as a mar­riage part­ner. Then I began to won­der about help­ing her find some­one for her­self more suit­able for her needs.

At this same sum­mer time 1959, because of a first transperson­al expe­ri­ence I’d had ear­li­er that spring, I was intro­duced by cor­re­spon­dence to a man whom I even­tu­al­ly learned was on inti­mate terms with Harold B Lee. My best LDS friend at Berke­ley, Bill Jenks, a grad stu­dent, thought this man could help me under­stand my unusu­al spring expe­ri­ence, since he had been Bil­l’s men­tor at Rick­’s Col­lege (even­tu­al­ly to become BYU Ida­ho). He was Howard E. Sal­is­bury (HES, now deceased), then chair­man of the Fine Arts Depart­ment. Bill told me that Sal­is­bury had a leg­endary rep­u­ta­tion for help­ing gift­ed stu­dents devel­op their tal­ents. Lat­er I was to learn that HBL was active­ly groom­ing HES to become a gen­er­al author­i­ty by hav­ing HES take charge of stake con­fer­ences when HBL came to the area. (It may have been embar­rass­ing to some brethren, if not also to HBL, that HES out­drew them in church atten­dance when it was learned HES would be speaking!)

Not long after these two sum­mer 1959 events (not sure how long after), I dis­cov­ered more about my true-believ­ing-Mor­mon (TBM) moth­er’s fam­i­ly back­ground. Her returned-mis­sion­ary father, my grand­fa­ther Lawrence Claw­son, had been mur­dered before she was in her teens over an ille­gal polygamy thing, some­thing she did­n’t learn about until years lat­er. Such fam­i­ly secrets and atti­tudes led me to think out­side the eccle­si­as­ti­cal box and begin to won­der what I real­ly believed.

Fast for­ward to late 1964. I had tak­en an engi­neer­ing sci­ence doc­tor­ate at the U of Utah and begun a posi­tion of research sci­en­tist at a pres­ti­gious nuclear facil­i­ty in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia. In that envi­ron­ment I was soon con­front­ed by new ideas beyond my pro­fes­sion­al train­ing and cul­tur­al upbring­ing. Dur­ing this time I also began con­scious­ly to remem­ber my dreams, one of which, on Joseph Smith’s birth date that year, was pro­found­ly puzzling.

This was fol­lowed by new expe­ri­ences and insights, dur­ing which I had anoth­er even more dis­tress­ing dream on May 1, 1965. This dream con­tained the angry “inner” voice of ‘Pres­i­dent’ Harold B. Lee, well before the “out­er” HBL actu­al­ly became church pres­i­dent. Here is a page describ­ing that pow­er­ful event in a draft man­u­script called “Prodi­gal Prophet”. The “writer friend” men­tioned in the man­u­script page below is HES.

A page from “Prodi­gal Prophet”

I wrote to Sal­is­bury imme­di­ate­ly about the dream to which he replied: “Let this be a warn­ing to you! Even the strongest must beware.”

This let­ter was fol­lowed by anoth­er a few days lat­er, writ­ten on May 5, a let­ter with sin­gu­lar impact on me (para­graph 2), which was to inspire my poem Nathan’s Cry, writ­ten the fol­low­ing Sep­tem­ber to Pres­i­dent David O. McK­ay: Must there be strife before the truth is known? That which came before would clear the eye for Light. But who believes? And who can share? Why can this one not speak? The song burns bright with­in my breast, but locked inside by blindness.

Let­ter from HES, dat­ed 5 May 1965

Then on 11 May came anoth­er dis­tress­ing dream, this time con­tain­ing my par­ents, one of which (my Ukraine-born dad) had died the pre­vi­ous year and with whom I’d had a life-chang­ing insight about his old world fam­i­ly in his pres­ence! a year before his death and a week before my release from a 2‑year U of Utah stake mis­sion. This new dream made me aware of deep uncon­scious resent­ments against my TBM moth­er, which would take me decades to under­stand, trans­form and for­give. Here is that dream, ini­tial­ly titled “Intru­sion”, but even­tu­al­ly re-titled “Round Table Fury”.

After pay­ing HES a vis­it to get bet­ter acquaint­ed in ear­ly June, he wrote a long let­ter, which con­tained a para­graph on dreams, a sub­ject I still did­n’t know much about, except I was now record­ing them in my jour­nal. (click on excerpts to enlarge)

A sec­ond page from “Prodi­gal Prophet”

Excerpt on “dreams” from let­ter of 14 June 1965