Having a famous father can be difficult for some sons. They may feel unable to measure up or perhaps forever overshadowed by the illustrious parent. They may seek obscurity or reject the parent's values.
But life was never like that for David Lawrence McKay, prominent Salt Lake attorney, who died at home this week at age 92. He was the eldest son of the late David O. McKay, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for 19 years and a church general authority for 64 years.The younger McKay always had a fund of stories about his father and eventually wrote a biography about him. But he was more than a devoted son and biographer. He was an educator, a successful lawyer, a long-time leader in the LDS Sunday School organization and a devoted father in his own right.
A man of considerable personal talent, the soft-spoken McKay studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and later taught French at the University of Utah and at a high school in Washington, D.C., while attending George Washington University Law School. An accomplished violinist, he served on the boards of several musical organizations, including the Utah Symphony.
Armed with a master's degree from Harvard Law School, McKay returned to Salt Lake City to practice law and founded the law firm of McKay, Burton and Thurman. He was legal counsel and a member of the board of a number leading Utah corporations.
Yet his family and his church always came first. He served an LDS mission to Switzerland as a young man and later as president of the Eastern States Mission. He was a temple worker, a member of the church Pacific Board of Education and the Polynesian Cultural Center board.
Sunday School service was a major center of his church life. He served as a member of the Sunday School General Board from 1944-49; as a counselor in of the general superintendency from 1949-1966, and as superintendent from 1966 to 1971, as well as holding a variety of positions in his ward.
All of this bespeaks a man who lived for others as much as for himself and who knew how to put first things first - a faithful son, husband, father and servant to others. There can be no better epitaph.