It was Joshua, the Old Testament prophet, camping at a place he called Gilgal in the east border of Jericho who inspired Salt Lake City's Thomas B. Child, the eminent mason and stonecutter. Beginning in the 1940s, Child planned and commissioned the erection of a modern Gilgal on the half acre of his back yard at 452 S. 800 East.
The celebrated, but now little-known, garden still stands, although the Child home now belongs to Grant Fetzer, formerly a neighbor who, as a young boy, helped Child develop the garden. The garden itself belongs to the H.P. and F.J. Fetzer Co. and is maintained by the family. Although it has fallen into disrepair, Grant Fetzer continues to show interested people and groups around the garden.Unfortunately, its future is in jeopardy. According to Fetzer, the family cannot afford to care for it and are discussing the possibility of building residential apartments in the garden and possibly removing some of the monuments.
Hortense Hogan Smith is the wife of LDS Patriarch Emeritus Eldred G. Smith. Formerly, she was Child's daughter-in-law and lived in the Child home with her first husband, Robert, for seven years. She was given care of Child's journals and books and was charged by him with the task of typing his numerous notes into readable form. Theprocess has made her the indisputable expert on Child, his philosophy and his garden.
In the notes in Smith's possession, Child clearly identified himself with Joshua's statement, "When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? Then ye shall let your children know . . . " (Joshua 4:21, 22).
Child said, "Maybe some day my children will ask, `What mean these stones?' When they do, I want you to tell them that they stand for the love that their grandfather had for them, and for those who came before - and for my testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ."
The word Gilgal, as used in the Old Testament, stands for a circle of sacred stones. The 12 stones represent the 12 tribes who were allowed to enter the promised land. According to the Old Testament, when the waters of the River Jordan were parted and the tribes walked through the dry river bed, a representative of each tribe was asked to pick up a stone. When they reached the other side, they placed the stones in a circle as a monument to God.
Above the circle of stones in Child's Gilgal, an inscription depicts Brigham Young, 1847, and David O. McKay, 1955, the year this monument was completed. Child depicted a warrior with an unhewn stone for a head. According to the monument, this warrior was not only watching over Joshua, but also the Mormon pioneers when they crossed the plains, and over the modern LDS Church under McKay's leadership.
On the patio, directly behind this monument, are large boulders to be used as seats. On the stepping stones, Child had sandblasted some of his favorite LDS hymns. On the bronze plaque is written a dedication to Child's ancestors, his wife's ancestors and the Watson brothers, who taught him his trade.
Those sitting on the patio are invited to sit on the orange, unhewn stone formed like a chair that Child himself used to reflect on his work.
According to Smith, the day after Child returned home with this rock "he looked like a kid with a piece of candy. It was old and wormy looking, and it had a seat in it. It was like a throne. He could sit in it and look at the list of his progenitors. This was his favorite spot, and as he grew older and ailing, he spent many hours on this unhewn stone, meditating."
Over a period of 18 years, until his death in 1963, at the age of 75, Child commissioned a series of stone monuments to "express the thoughts that came from within." With the help of his son-in-law, Bryant H. Higgs, he moved mammoth stones from the Utah mountains, and once they were in his back yard, carefully shaped them into works of sculpture.
Fetzer remembers that sometimes the stones were too big to bring back. "Sometimes, he had to give up. He'd find a stone that fit an idea in his mind, and we'd go to dig and it was an iceberg. The farther we got down, the more stone showed up. Some came from the local mountains, and he had to get permission from the Forest Service to get them. He'd say he needed the road blocked for two hours, and they wouldn't believe him until they saw the garden."
Higgs cut the rough shapes with an oxyacetylene torch, then Fetzer and Higgs' son, Tom, did long hours of preparatory work. "Tom would cut until he was tired, and then I would cut. We got paid in Snellies," remembers Fetzer.
Child stocked his freezer with the ice cream treats from Snelgrove's, the local ice cream giant. When Tom and Grant got older, Child remunerated them monetarily.
Finally, Maurice Brooks, a professional sculptor, completed the finish work, under contract to Child. Brooks was the first sculptor in the country to use an acetylene torch. He had to wear heavy gloves, a face mask and a respirator to carve in quartz, a rock seven times harder than granite.
Brooks was an award-winning sculptor, a rebel against modern art, known for his robust, realistic style. He also did acclaimed work for Utah State University, the University of Utah, Shriners Hospital and many places outside Utah.
Mary Ann Dresher, Higgs' daughter, grew up in the midst of all this furious and fascinating work. She remembers when they would lift the stones, "the chains would smoke and creak. My mother would drive the truck, and I saw her legs just quiver from holding the clutch and having to change the gears."
By the time Child started on the work that would consume the remainder of his life, he had already established himself as one of the best masons and masonry contractors in the Intermountain West. Among the numerous buildings for which he did the stone and brick work are LDS temples in Idaho Falls and Los Angeles, buildings on the University of Utah and Brigham Young University campuses, Ogden High School and Brigham City's Hospital.
From the American Institute of Architects, he received a prestigious award for excellence. Near the end of his life, he said, "There is hardly a block in Salt Lake City on which we have not built something."
Child also served a number of years in positions of LDS Church leadership, including 19 years as bishop of the 10th Ward in the Park Stake.
Child grew up committed to the importance of learning a trade, but according to Smith, he always regretted his failure to get a formal education.
"He had an insatiable appetite for learning. He used to study like you cannot believe. He willed me his library. You see the Harvard classics up there, as well as complete sets of George Bernard Shaw, Goethe, Elbert Hubbard, Nathaniel Hawthorne - and downstairs there must be 20 complete works of authors he devoured. He was a student of the Apostle Paul, John Ruskin, Henry Adams, William James, Jacques Rousseau, Alfred North Whitehead and Edgar Lee Masters."
When Child was released as a bishop, he decided to use the time formerly used in church work and express himself in stone. In his journal, he said, "I know that I'm not a writer. I do not intend this book for publication. I intend it only to record my thoughts and feelings as I work on this project."
It is not easy for the uninitiated person to stroll through the garden and connect all the monuments and quotations into a clear pattern. There are, after all, many monuments and a plethora of inscriptions.
Child, however, considered his message to be simple. According to Smith, he intended to express, first, his love for his wife and his family, and second, his love for his trade. He was especially proud to be a mason and a stonecutter. He said, "You want to know who's feeding the hungry and clothing the naked? The working man."
Third, he wanted to express his love for his church and its scriptural teachings. Fourth, he wanted to show his love of art and the right of self-expression.
To try to explain the foundation of his work, Child quoted John Ruskin, who said, "It is less the actual loveliness of the things produced, and the choice and convention concerned in the production which are to delight us. It is the love and thoughts of the workman more than his work. His work may always be imperfect, but his thoughts and affections must be true, indeed."
He also said, "If you want to be brought down to Earth in your thinking and studying, try to make your thoughts express themselves with your hands. Nothing is really ours until it is expressed. Build an altar, depict the 12th chapter of Ecclesiastes, the second chapter of Daniel or Isaiah 2, and see where it leads you. It leads me into thoughts and pleasures unspeakable."
Child's first project was the niche in his side yard, containing a cross. As a remembrance of Jesus' crucifixion, it symbolized Paul's admonition that "true rejoicing was to be with the Lord Jesus Christ."
On the keystone in the arch at the top of the niche is a silhouette of Child's two hands. To develop an understanding of arches, Child briefly studied the great cathedrals in Europe.
In this arch, he wanted to suggest that just as Jesus died for each person's sins, so will each one have to work for his or her own salvation. He believed the keystone suggested that "the key to what you get in this life is what you work for." The three large stones at the base of the cross represent "hope, joy and the crown of rejoicing."
Another sculpted figure in the garden is an altar under a large weeping willow tree. It suggests that along with sacrifice there must be sorrow. The altar meets all the requirements of the ancient sacrificial altars before Jesus was crucified. The boulders underneath came from the area around Point of the Mountain, and the slabs on top from the Wonderlands in southern Utah. A bowl on the base of the altar represents the scriptural "Lamp of Truth."
In ancient days, making a covenant in the light of the "Lamp of Truth" was as binding as a witness in a modern court today who swears on the Bible to tell the whole truth.
Perhaps the most impressive single monument in the garden is the Egyptian sphinx containing the face of the LDS Prophet Joseph Smith. Fetzer recalls that once a junior high teacher had asked in class where they could see a sphinx, and he responded, "In my neighbor's yard." The teacher didn't believe it until she came to the garden herself.
The rock used for the sphinx weighed 25 tons when it was brought into the garden. Hortense Smith says Child read the historian, Henry Adams, who asked the question, "Who am I, and what am I doing here?" She said, "Bishop Child believed he had the answer for Adams. It was the sphinx that stood for all the eternal questions. He said the Prophet Joseph Smith brought the answers."
Child also referred to Brigham Young's statement about Egyptian darkness. He quoted Young saying, "When I saw Joseph Smith, he took heaven figuratively speaking, and brought it down to Earth." Young thought Joseph Smith had "dispelled all spiritual darkness and ignorance."
Child also loved the words of Job: "Oh, that my words were now written. Oh, that they were printed in a book. That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever. For I know that my Redeemer liveth . . . " So Child used lead in an iron pen and put them in the rock "forever" (Job 19:23-25).
Child's employees sandblasted the words into the large stone commemorating Job, but they could not get the letters deep enough to fill with lead. So they used a small oxyacetylene torch and finished cutting the letters, then pounded in the soft lead. Unfortunately, in the ensuing years vandals have found a way to pry some of it out.
Child went up into the canyon by Willard, Utah, and found a great stone weighing 34 tons. He persuaded Salt Lake Transfer Company to haul it down to the garden. According to Smith, "They had to build a scaffold out of railroad ties as high as the mountain would be, and they lifted it with a crane onto this mountain he had prepared. That is the stone spoken of by Daniel that is cut out of the mountain without hands."
This represented to him the fulfilment of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, that the kingdoms of the world would be destroyed and a large stone would "break in pieces all other kingdoms" (Daniel 2:32-49). This is symbolic of the scriptural belief that God's kingdom will eventually supercede all other kingdoms.
In another part of the garden, Child had erected a full-length statue of himself - with feet and legs of brick to show he was a bricklayer - carrying copies of scripture He also would have a mixed quartet consisting of his daughters, Lucille and Joanne, his son, Robert, and his son-in-law, Bjok Cederlof, sing. Then Bishop Child would give tours of the garden and he was in his glory if he could get anyone to listen. but a lot of people would not listen, because it was over their heads."
Smith, Fetzer, Dresher and Child's only surviving daughter, Joanne Cederlof, all honor him as a thoughtful, self-taught, well-read man who expressed himself with clarity and power. They are offended that some people have thought him eccentric enough to call him "a crazy old man."
Fetzer maintains he was a sincere and fascinating person who "never put on the dog - and whatever he believed in, he believed in 100 percent."
Smith says that his dedication to his work necessarily took time away from his family. "His children loved him to death, but they were not close to him. Still, he enriched their lives - and my life - like you cannot believe."
It was his creativity that most notably impressed those who knew him. Gilgal stands as a fitting monument to Thomas B. Child's unique style of creative energy. under his right arm and blue prints under his left arm. To his right is etched an outline of the LDS 10th Ward, and to his left hang several tools of his trade.
For this, Child was inspired by his reading of Thomas Carlyle, who expressed honor for "the toilworn craftsman," but reserved his greatest respect for "Him who is toiling for the spiritual indispensable, not daily bread, but the bread of life."
Smith says his motto was,"When you are plum and level, you're on the square." She says, "This is not egotistical at all. He wanted to show the world that he was a craftsman and a spiritual leader, and those two things were uppermost in his life."
When Child died, the funeral cortege went to the Salt Lake City Cemetery to bury him. There, according to instruction from Child, his son, Robert got down and squared and leveled the casket before it was interred.
The monument to peace uses Isaiah's reference to changing people from savage to peaceful inclinations (Is. 2:1-4). On the trellis near a large mountain, every other spear is being turned into pruning hooks and the sword into a plough share.
In the large rock arch formation, Alpha and Omega were engraved in the keystone, symbolic of Jesus' words, "I am the beginning and the end." This keystone was intended to represent Jesus Christ as the center of all earthly activity. Next to the arch are four large books etched in rock, depicting the LDS standard works. Child had planned to place a massive, rotating stone on top of the books, to represent the world. Even the continents were to be carved in it.
But he died before it could be finished.
Finally, there is a small niche to the left of the stairs that is a monument to Child's wife, Bertha. In the marble under the bust, it reads, "He who would have fine guests, let him have a fine wife." This was appropriate, because Smith remembers frequent parties held in the garden.
"The whole ward would gather, and Mrs. Child would put on a meal for them.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Visitors welcome
Gilgal, 749 E. 500 South, Salt Lake City, is open to the public on Sundays and at other times by appointment.
Visitors are expected to respect the garden and stay on the paths, and children will not be allowed to climb on the rocks or destroy the flowers.
For more information, call 359-8813 or 364-3377.