Happy 80th Birthday Sandra Tanner Part 1

Viewpoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a biblical perspective. Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry. Since 1979, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's Viewpoint on Mormonism. Welcome to this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism.

I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. But today, we have not only a special person to be with us, that would be Sandra Tanner, good friend for many years, but it's a special day for her because it's her 80th birthday. Happy birthday, Sandra. Happy birthday, Sandra. So we wanted to just talk to her about her life, and if you know anything about Sandra Tanner, you know that she and her husband Gerald founded the Utah Lighthouse Ministry, and originally called Modern Microfilm. Welcome to the show anyway, I should say that first.

Yeah, Modern Microfilm. We've had you on the show before, and I want to say it again, because if anybody knows anything about Mormonism, you and Gerald probably had something to do with some of the things they know, because you two were instrumental pioneers, you might say, in doing a lot of the heavy leg work in research and bringing out a lot of information regarding the past of Mormonism that I don't think years ago, without the internet, most of us would have had the time or even the knowledge to even know where to look. And I have often told people that I credit you and Gerald for a lot of my interest in Mormonism many years ago.

And I again, just want to thank you publicly for all that you have done and wish you again a happy birthday, a happy 80th birthday. And we wanted to start off by just introducing you again to our listeners and tell us a little bit about your background, because you are related to Brigham Young, the second prophet, seer and revelator of the Mormon Church. And I've heard you explain this before and saying that you're not just related to Brigham Young by some distant plural wife, but you are related to Brigham Young Jr., the son of Brigham Young, the second president of the LDS Church.

Yes. Well, to start with, my great, great grandfather's Brigham Young, and I descend from his legal wife, Marianne Angel. Marianne was evidently a real nice mother, but she got dragged into polygamy, which I don't think she was happy with. But anyways, Brigham goes on to have 55 plural wives.

But she was the first one. And he and Marianne Angel had a son, Brigham Young Jr., who is my great grandpa. And I descend from his third wife, Abby Stevens, who was a nice old lady. And Abby Stevens was 17 when she married Brigham Jr., who was also an apostle. And he was 51 and she was 17. And they got married in 1887. So because she was so young when she married him, she was still alive when I was a young girl. And she was alive here in Salt Lake City until into the 50s. So I grew up knowing my great grandma, Abby, last living plural wife from apostle Brigham Young Jr. And so they had a son, Walter, who was my grandpa. So my mom's maiden name was Young.

So now tell me, since she was alive when you were young, do you recall any conversations that you had with her? Oh, yeah, she used to have great stories about how God protects the polygamists from being arrested, because they were so faithful to live the law of God, God would help them escape the law. And at the time, it didn't dawn on me that, wait a minute, you guys were breaking the law.

Right. So yeah, people at Rob Banks get arrested too, you know, but I didn't put that together as a child. I just saw this as, you know, persecution against the true followers of Christ. Abby was a really nice lady.

I mean, I make jokes about all this, but she really was a nice person. The reason I wonder about that statement is because I've seen photographs of men, leaders in the church, such as George Q. Cannon, sitting and posing in prison garb. So what happened with the old George?

How did he escape that protection? I wonder, yeah, because several of them were arrested. My great grandma had a story about how she protected Brigham Jr. from being arrested. She said they got advanced word one day that the federal officers were coming looking for him. And so she told him to quit, get in her bed clothes and get in her bed and act like he was feverish and sick and stuff and put her bed cap on him. So when the federal officer came to the door, wanted to search the house for Brigham Jr., my great grandma says, oh, sure, you come in and search the house.

But my mother is very sick and ill. So just don't disturb her. But you can search the whole house. And so they search the house. They leave the sick old mother, supposedly, alone and go on their way.

They didn't find him. And so this was the big joke in the family. Isn't that wonderful how God tricked the evil sheriff so that he couldn't find grandpa? Well, my parents came from good Mormon homes and were married in Salt Lake Temple. My mother's first child was stillborn. Then there was my sister who's three years older than me. And then me, then another child that died, and then my brother. So my brother's eight years younger than me because the child in between us died. So I got a sister and brother. Sister and a brother.

Okay. What's the earliest childhood memory that you have? Well, my earliest memory is a sad one that my mother, having already lost a child her first pregnancy, it wasn't easy for her to get pregnant and have children. Well, so when she was pregnant with a child when I was four, and at the time that she went to deliver in Southern California, this would be in the forties in Southern California, the law was that you couldn't deliver a baby in a hospital without a doctor being present.

And because she started to deliver the baby and the doctor hadn't got there yet, the nurse held the baby in the birth canal till the doctor arrived and it killed the babies. So my earliest memory is my dad sobbing, kneeling at the couch in the front room with my sister and I as we prayed and asked God for strength during this great sorrow and to be with my mom as she dealt with this loss of this child that needlessly died. I've heard different people talk about what's your earliest memory?

Well, mine is a sad one and I don't know how much that marked my life but it certainly was a traumatic first memory. Now how did your Mormonism handle that situation? Because I know many Latter-day Saints in a trial such as that, a tragedy certainly that is, but they always have this hope of being together in the next life and such, but while at the same time the requirements for being together as a family are pretty high, and if you were to ask a Latter-day Saint point blank, do you have the assurance that you were going to be with your family in the next life, many of them are not that sure. Where were you at that time with your Mormonism?

Can you remember how you thought about that? What was going on in your, and I know that's a while back, but I'm just kind of curious what your thoughts were at this time, certainly seeing your father grieving as he was. Well, as a Mormon of course we had the assurance that we would be together as a family because my parents had been married in the temple, but the curious thing about all that is that where my mother's first pregnancy was a stillbirth, because the baby boy who was full term had not taken a breath, the church did not view him as having had his turn on earth, and his spirit would go back to Heavenly Father to be reassigned to somebody else later that was going to be born, and so he wasn't named on the church rolls as being one of the family as a child on the genealogical records, and there was no funeral, but when Lorna, the girl that died, she was put on the records because she took a breath, and so we had a funeral for her, and I went to, I have pictures of me at the funeral sitting by the casket with my sister. So we had, in that sense, we had the Mormon comfort that we would be with Lorna, but I'm sure it had to grieve my mother laying there realizing, but she's not going to have the little boy that she first had. Now I think Mormonism has changed that. Now I think now Mormons can have the stillborn child listed on their temple records, but back in the 40s, if they didn't take a breath, they weren't listed.

If they took a breath, they were, and so Lorna was seen as going to be part of our family. Now you've had 80 birthdays. Do you have a favorite one?

This one. I am so happy to be 80, and I never dreamed of being 80. I mean, when you're a kid, you never think, I mean, 80.

I mean, really, you know. I mean, when I was a kid, I thought 27 was ancient. It is kind of strange that way, isn't it, as we get older. It seems like old, quote unquote, keeps going further and further back. Well, it's anyone that's 10 years older than you.

Right, right. 90-year-olds, they're old. Well, you'll be there in 10 years.

But Sander, let me ask you this question. 80, you have your faculty still, you have a mind that's very sharp still, so I think when we say 80, it sounds old, but for you, I think you've aged very well. So I think that's a blessing that God has allowed you to keep that memory going.

Oh, yeah, it certainly is. Who ever thought, you know, it's like, was it George Burns used to say, but I don't know if I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of me. Well, I think it would probably also be safe to say that you have probably forgotten more than all of us put together have ever known.

And I often comment to people, if you want to know Mormon history, Sander Tanner's the one to talk to. And Sander, was there ever a favorite present that you received for your birthday? When I was about 40, I think it was, my kids, my teenagers and my husband decided to surprise me and give me a bird, a parakeet for my birthday. Well, I don't remember ever asking for a bird. So anyways, here's this pretty little parakeet. Well, it turned out to be really Gerald's bird.

It sat in its cage by him where he worked every day. And he taught that stupid parakeet to say, I mean, dozens of different words and phrases, stupid things. I would think, you know, if you're going to talk to your bird all day, why not teach it something that sounds half intelligent, you know? But this bird learned to say, purple parrots prefer pink pickles. Because someone had told him that it was easier for parrots to say words that started with P. So he had put together all these stupid phrases for this bird.

It turned out to be his bird, not mine. We've been talking to Sander Tanner. Sander and her husband Gerald were the founders of Utah Lighthouse Ministry. If you want to check out their website, it's u-t-l-m dot org. Once again, Sander, we want to wish you a very happy 80th birthday and we want to continue this conversation in tomorrow's show. Okay. Thank you for listening. If you would like more information regarding Mormonism Research Ministry, we encourage you to visit our website at www.mrm.org, where you can request our free newsletter, Mormonism Researched. We hope you will join us again as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism.