Delivering the Deseret News on horseback in the snow in rural Idaho, 10-year-old John L. Hart had his first professional experience with the publication to which he eventually would devote the bulk of his career.
Reaching down to place a newspaper in a subscriber's box, the intrepid young carrier saw the LDS Church News section fall out of the paper on the snowy ground. For 20 minutes he stared at it, trying to figure a way out of the dilemma. He knew the man who lived there relied on the Church News for guidance in his ecclesiastical duties. But the bag of newspapers was too heavy to allow young Hart to remount the horse without help were he to get down and retrieve the Church News.Finally, he continued on his route. Later, his parents came back and placed the Church News in the man's box.
Today, with the same degree of conscientiousness, Hart writes for the Church News instead of delivering it.
"My journalistic career actually began with a desire to do creative writing," he reflected.
A psychology major at Weber State College in the late 1960s, he was offered the position of assistant editor for the college literary magazine. The publication folded by midyear, but Hart drew the attention of the editor of the student newspaper, the Signpost, who decided to try him out covering a student government meeting.
With his best Tolstoy emulation, he wrote up the story, then submitted it to the editor, who was far from impressed.
"He wrote an obscenity across the top - an unrepeatable obscenity," Hart remembered. "When I saw that, it made me absolutely furious. I thought, `I'll show that so-and-so.' So I went back and covered the next meeting in a journalistic style, just to show him I could do it. He came up to me with a certain degree of humility and said, `Hart, this is good!' "
From then on he covered student government for the Signpost until graduation, serving as student government editor under Marilyn Larsen (Karras), who is now an editorial writer at the Deseret News. "She's a good friend," he said. "She's been a good friend to me ever since."
Dabbling in journalism during the turbulent, activist '60s, Hart developed an appetite for it. After graduation, he loaded his camera, typewriter and a few clothes into his 1962 Volkswagen and went off to Los Angeles in search of adventure.
He found it with the Copley newspaper chain. A six-week training program culminated in a job with with the San Pedro News-Pilot. He abandoned his original intent to work for a year and then pursue a graduate psychology degree. For the next seven years, he found excitement covering the police beat, antiwar activism and the waterfront.
He boarded one of the first Soviet ships to dock at Los Angeles and became acquainted with the crew. One dark night, a couple of crew members made overtures to him. "I didn't know if they were going to ask me for Levi's or state secrets or what," he said. "All of a sudden, someone shouted in Russian and everybody disappeared. I went to see where they were. Someone in the state room had gotten the Keystone Cops on TV."
He joked that the Keystone Cops saved him from an espionage connection.
During the Copley years, Hart did some growing up, he confessed. "I had some spiritual experiences that kind of changed the direction in which I was going," experiences that included his marriage.
"Doing the kind of work I was doing makes such a deep impression on your personal life. I didn't like the person I was becoming. I was around death so much I felt like a mortician."
Making the rounds to various newspapers, he made a swing through Utah and applied at the Deseret News. There he was offered a job on the spot as a Church News staff writer.
"It was a blend of the best of two possible worlds," he said. "It gave me the direction I wanted to go with an opportunity for the kinds of adventures I was seeking, more in a spiritual vein."
The job has taken him to some 25 countries on several continents for coverage of events ranging from temple dedications to earthquakes. In the process he has acquired a fluency in Spanish and has honed his photography and writing skills.
"This may sound cliche, but the people I've met, along with the church leaders, just really have a sense of family," he said. "You get very close to people very quickly. They are the kind of people who, if they ever came to town, I would want them to come home with me and meet my family."
Since hiring on in 1977, Hart has remained, he said, partly because the newspaper has been willing to give him challenging responsibilities.
"I like to do things that take every ounce of effort I have."
A clear example is the Deseret News Church Almanac published biannually. As coordinating editor, he shoulders the bulk of the burden of compiling myriad facts and statistics about LDS Church administration and history, in consultation with the LDS Historical Department.
"It's been very satisfying to work for the Deseret News," he said. "I have a very high regard for the newspaper and its management."