Although President Heber J. Grant's father died just eight days after his birth, the impact he had on his son was immeasurable.
Forty-year-old Jedediah Morgan Grant, a counselor to President Brigham Young, Salt Lake City's first mayor, and a general of the Territory's Nauvoo Legion, was an incredible man. "Not since the double deaths of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum," Ronald W. Walker wrote in The Presidents of the Church, "had the Saints mourned so openly. Salt Lake City's doors and windows were draped in black. The Territory's flags stood at a respectful half-mast, their bottoms striped with a swaths of black crepe. City councilmen placed somber bands on their left arm."During the eulogy offered by President Young, he called his counselor "a great man, a giant, a lion." But the Church leader prophesied about even greater leaders for the future. There are "young whelps . . . growing up here who will roar louder than ever he dare[d]."
Rachel Ridgeway Ivins Grant often reminded her only child of his great heritage and encouraged him to behave himself and live worthy and willing of whatever responsibilities the Lord would have for him.
President Grant would later say: "I live today as one whose mother was all to me. She set an example of love and of honor second to none. Her life was a sermon that rings through my soul to this day. One of the main reasons I am president of the Church today is that I have followed the advice and counsel and the burning testimony of the divinity of God, which came to me from my mother."
*****
(ADDITIONAL INFORMATION)
Articles on this page may be used in conjunction with the gospel doctrine course of study.
Information compiled by Kellene Ricks.
Sources: Profiles of the Presidents, by Emerson R. West; The Presidents of the Church, by Preston Nibley; Essentials in Church History, by Joseph Fielding Smith; and The Presidents of the Church, Biographical Essays, edited by Leonard J. Arrington.