The first address to be given from the pulpit of the LDS Church's new Conference Center Saturday ended with a story about the pulpit itself.
Standing in contrast to the sea of Pennsylvania cherry wood around it, the centerpiece pulpit has the dark, distinctive grain of walnut, which was taken from a tree that used to stand outside the home of President Gordon B. Hinckley, world leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."If I get a little personal and even a little sentimental, I hope you will forgive me," President Hinckley said as he began to describe the origin of the pulpit.
President Hinckley said he spent his boyhood summers on the family's fruit farm and has always loved trees. "Every year at this season we planted trees," he said. "Well, some 36 years ago I planted a black walnut. It was in a crowded area where it grew straight and tall to get the sunlight. A year ago, for some reason, it died."
President Hinckley knew of the wood's value, so he invited a church general authority, Elder Ben Banks of the quorums of the Seventy, to his home. Elder Banks had been in the hardwood lumber business before being called to a full-time church assignment. The family business, Intermountain Wood Products, is now run by Banks' sons, who attended that back-yard meeting at President Hinckley's home.
"Ben Jr. had the idea" to use the tree to build the Conference Center pulpit, said his brother, Bradley Banks. "We were right there, standing, looking at the dead tree when he suggested it. The prophet's eyes lit up. He obviously thought that would be swell if it worked out," Banks said.
"The idea excited me," President Hinckley said from the pulpit. "From all they could tell it was solid, good and beautiful wood.
Banks, the owner, vice president and operations manager of Intermountain Wood Products, said the process that followed was truly unique. "We usually buy processed lumber, so being part of the harvest and then observing the finished product, particularly of this nature, was a once-in-a-lifetime experience."
Professionals brought the tree down. "Then we negotiated the tree out of the yard and into a truck so we wouldn't damage (President Hinckley's) yard. We did it all by hand, using levers and rollers. President Hinckley was there and participated."
The tree was then rough-cut and underwent a months-long curing process.
Paul Fetzer, vice president of design of Fetzers' Incorporated, designed the organ facade in the Conference Center and had completed design drawings for the pulpit when he was told about President Hinckley's walnut tree.
"The first time I saw the wood was when Brad had the log in the back of his pickup truck," Fetzer said. "We went out and measured it to see what board footage yield there would be, to see if it was going to be enough to cover the pulpit."
Each board was carefully marked and cataloged so the grain could be matched when the boards were joined side-by-side, but measurements of the 1-inch-thick boards came up short of the amount needed to cover the pulpit.
"We resorted to resawing the boards," Fetzer said. "They were 1-inch thick. We split the boards in half so we had two 1/2-inch thick boards that were then planed down to a quarter of an inch." The walnut was then added as a veneer to plywood, creating enough material to cover the pulpit.
Unique grain structure from the section of the tree where the main trunk split into branches was fashioned into the dashboard across the top of the pulpit. "As a person stands facing the audience, what he sees is a beautiful feather figure" in the grain of the wood, Fetzer said.
Beehive figures made of cherry wood were added around the outside of the pulpit to blend the walnut with the rest of the woodwork.
The beehive is a historic symbol of industry used both by the church and state government. "The beehives on the front of the pulpit were put there at the special request of President Hinckley. The beehive motif doesn't occur anywhere else in the building except on the pulpit," Fetzer said. "We also scanned a piece of honeycomb on our computer and use an automatic router to carve out the honeycomb as the background motif for the beehives."
Besides the unique origins of the wood, the pulpit has a number of other features that are not readily noticeable without close examination.
White leather on the top surface of the pulpit softens and reflects the harsh lights trained on the speaker to eliminate shadows under speakers' eyes. A built-in air conditioning system blows cool air on the speaker to counter the heat from the lights. A clock marks the speaker's exact time (since so many sermons have to fit a broadcast schedule), and audio speakers help balance the sound coming from speakers many yards away from the pulpit.
The pulpit is also designed to disappear completely into the floor to move it out of the way during symphonic productions in the Conference Center. The readings of the height and voice of each person scheduled to speak at the pulpit are also programmed into a computer. The computer then presets the microphone to the person's voice and moves the pulpit up or down to match the speaker's height.
The pulpit in the historic Tabernacle across the street has a twin in its basement where speakers can rehearse, or where special recordings can be made. The Conference Center pulpit does not yet have a twin, "But it will," Fetzer said.