"If there is any one thing that will bring peace and contentment into the human heart, and into the family, it is to live within our means. And if there is any one thing that is grinding and discouraging and disheartening, it is to have debt and obligations that one cannot meet."
When I think of Heber J Grant. I think of how strong and faithful his mother was and how she was offered the world but chose the richness of the gospel. Rachel Ridgeway Ivins was brought up with Quaker upbringing. At age 16 she became a Baptist but still was left wanting from the sermons taught. About this same time she started to hear of peculiar "Mormons" preaching. She attended a few meetings and after reading the Book of Mormon she knew of its truth and she was baptized.
Heber Jeddy Grant was born on November 22, 1856 to Rachel and Jedediah Grant. Nine days later, Jedediah died. Rachel was offered all the comforts she could imagine if she would move back east and renounce her religion. With faith she gave up a life of luxury and she taught her son diligence, a willing to work, to always pay his tithing, devotion to the Lord, and love. Heber said this of his mother:
“Later, when poverty became her lot, if she actually had not known that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and that the gospel was true, all she needed to do was to return east and let her brothers take care of her. But rather than return to her wealthy relatives in the east where she would have been amply provided for, with no struggle for herself or her child, she preferred to make her way among those to whom she was more strongly attached than her kindred who were not believers in her faith.”
Heber was a persistent boy. When children teased him of his awkwardness at baseball-he practiced and spent hours throwing a baseball at the back of a barn. He later would become a player on a championship team. When fellow classmates poked fun at Heber and his handwriting, he knew it was all for a laugh but still it hurt and he would spend his spare time writing and writing and writing. Soon he would teach a handwriting class at what is now called the University of Utah. At 15, he wanted to help relieve his mother financially and so he became a bookkeeper at age 15. He became a very well known businessman and was well recognized in the Western part of the United States as a hard-working, honest, and persistent man.
He never asked anyone to do anything that he wouldn't do himself. A story is told by one of his daughters that illustrates this character trait of Heber. One day after Lucy had said a swear word, his father washed her mouth out with soap and said to her, ‘Now your mouth is clean. I don’t ever want you to make it dirty with such words again.’ The next day, Heber repeated a joke with the same word in it. She stopped her father and said that he washed her mouth out for saying such a word. After agreeing and stating that he shouldn't say them either, he asked Lucy if she would like to wash his mouth out. She jumped at the chance but said this of the experience...
“My father could have hedged. He could have said he wasn’t really swearing, which, of course, was true; but that wasn’t his way. A little child couldn’t tell the difference between a quotation and the real thing, and he realized it. From that moment I knew that my father would be absolutely fair in all his dealings with me, and I never found him otherwise. After that, I never heard him even quote profane things. He loved to tell a lively story and he would say, ‘John said, with emphasis,such and such,’ but he never said the words. He was a great believer in teaching by example and never asked us to do anything he wouldn’t do himself.”
He became a stake president at age 23 and gave a very short speech to a stake that didn't even know him. In 7 1/2 minutes the congregation learned a lot of who he was and that he just as he did to Lucy would never ask what he wouldn't do himself. 2 years later he was called to be an apostle. He spent 5 years in full time missions for the church in Japan, Britain, and different areas around Europe. Before he became the president of the church, President Joseph F Smith knew that he was called to become his successor, these were his last words to Heber,
“The Lord bless you, my boy, the Lord bless you; you have got a great responsibility. Always remember this is the Lord’s work and not man’s. The Lord is greater than any man. He knows whom He wants to lead His Church, and never makes any mistake. The Lord bless you.”27
November 23, 1918 he was ordained the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The following general conference was postponed due to an influenza outbreak in Utah. In June when they held conference, President Grant repeated the same feel of the sermon he gave for the Toole, Utah Stake 36 years earlier. During his presidency the church celebrated its 100 year anniversary since Joseph Smith's First Vision, 3 temples were built, and conference was broad casted over radio air ways (his first national address was given in 1922). He introduced the Church Welfare program (Church Security Program at the time). He also witnessed the aftermath of WWI, the Great Depression, and then WWII.
In 1940, President Heber J Grant suffered a stroke that left him enable to talk. He would write his sermons and have someone else read them from the pulpit. His last conference address was given April 6, 1945 and he bore his testimony of Joseph Smith and the beauties of the first vision, of temples, that Brigham Young was the rightful successor of Joseph, all those that followed Brigham had and possessed the keys to the priesthood. Heber died May 14, 1945. Although he was born in a time of oxcarts and horses driven wagons, stage mail, and when trips were numbered in months, the prophet Heber J Grant left this life in a time of technology, automobiles, the telephone, airmail and where trips were then numbered in hours. Heber J Grant served the second longest term as an apostle to the Lord, almost 27 years (longest was Brigham Young-30 years).
