SALT LAKE CITY — There's a clock ticking in the downtown Salt lake City apartment as Nellie Leighton recounts the details of her life.
She is 96 years old, has some vision but is legally blind, and has become a mainstay at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Family History Library, where she mans the information and exit desks. It’s been nearly two decades since she first clipped on a missionary badge.
“It’s just wonderful to be able to be there and serve, and they respect me,” she said. “I guess I’m just a legend over there.”
Leighton's story is extraordinary not only in its breadth, but because it could so easily have ended in 1999, when a gunman entered the library and began shooting. She was 16 months into her mission, having come to Utah from California at age 78 to serve, ultimately in the Family History Library.
“I loved it from the start,” Leighton said. “I just loved being a missionary and we had so much fun. There were four of us that worked together all the time the first year I was missionary, and we had all kinds of fun. We had dinner at each others' houses and went shopping at Goodwill, just a lot of laughter. Sitting at home, you don’t have the opportunity to laugh very much, (but) you laugh and smile and it’s just a wonderful way to be serving.”
Leighton, then, was a young 80 years old and had just signed up for six more months on April 15, 1999, when a man quietly entered the library, approached the desk where she was sitting and pointed a .22-caliber semi-automatic handgun at her head.
“He just shot me point-blank in the face,” she said. “He didn’t utter a word, he just shot me.”
The shooting
For a moment, time stood still. It took Leighton a few seconds to even understand what had happened. She said her head was turned at the time, so she never saw the gun. She simply thought her brain had exploded.
“I didn’t pass out at all,” she said.
She immediately began to pray.
“'Heavenly Father, what’s happening to me, what’s happening to me? … I need help,'” she remembers thinking. “And when I heard him shoot the two ladies, there it was: ‘Oh my gosh, there’s someone in here with a gun.’ So I got down on my knees and continued praying as the blood rolled out.”
The gunman, later identified as 70-year-old Sergei Barbarin, shot two other women, a mother and daughter, before fatally wounding Patricia Frengs, a library patron from Pleasant Hill, California, and security guard Don Thomas, 62. Leighton said she remembered the police coming quickly and seeing the SWAT team outside the library doors before they would enter and kill Barbarin when he refused to hand over his gun.
After shooting the four women, Barbarin had entered an orientation room, where she said he eventually shot Thomas. But after that, Barbarin was unable to leave the room.
“The reason he couldn’t get out — and I usually cry here — when the people came back a lot of them said, ‘Who are all those men in white that were standing in there, keeping him from going out?’” she recalled. “So you know that there were angels there watching over us all the time.”
Her voice quivers as she recalls how several people, LDS or otherwise, asked about the men in white, heavenly help she counts as a blessing to her and others.
Otherwise, Leighton speaks about the shooting calmly, even managing to laugh as she recalls that she worried about her skirt riding up on the way to the ambulance, and how she was mortified that her dentures were shattered when she was shot.
“I didn’t want anyone to see me without teeth!”
The gun shot broke her sinus bone and jaw bone, cut her tongue nearly in half and made a hole in her palate "big enough for me to put a thumb in,” she has recounted to those who ask.
Richard E. Turley, assistant church historian and recorder, was serving as the managing director of the LDS Church's Family History Department at the time of the shooting and recalls racing to the library when word of the shooting came.
"It was a random, senseless, and terrible act of violence that took away some lives and altered others," he said. "We felt to follow the example of the Savior by forgiving and then continuing in the work we believe to be His. Sister Leighton is a model of doing exactly that."
Healing
She took time to heal in the hospital and took leave to visit her children, as her doctor recommended, and to wait for her new dentures. But within about two months, she returned to the Family History Library.
She worked first in an office out of the public eye until her new dentures came in and she returned to the welcome desk. Remarkably, she bears no noticeable scars — physical or otherwise.
“I never had any fear of going back or sitting there,” she said. “I never had any backlashes or any fear at all, which is really, I’ve been very blessed. … People say, ‘Oh, how could you possibly go back or sit there?’ but I’ve never had any fear going back into the library.
“I just wanted to be a missionary. I was a missionary and that was it. I had no desire of quitting or stopping."
Nothing has changed 16 years later, with the possible exception of her goal for service.
“I would love to be a 100-year-old missionary,” Leighton said. “Just to be a 100 years old … I want to still be a missionary and be a 100-year-old missionary, and I think this is where Heavenly Father wants me to be a good example to a lot of people.”
Gordon Kay Hinckley, Leighton's mission zone leader, said Leighton's reliability and kindness may well help her meet her goal.
"She’s still working hard and she’s amazing," Hinckley, said. "Most people after going through what she went through in the shooting wouldn’t come close to this place — too much trauma — but she’s put that past her and she comes in and she does her thing and welcomes guests into the library."
He said she finds purpose in service and is loved by those with whom she works.
"There’s not a sweeter person and I don’t think there’s a mean bone in her body," he said. "She’s led a wonderful life and is a wonderful example around here. "I shake her hand whenever she comes in here and say, 'You’re my good luck charm, maybe I'll live to be 96, too.' But everybody loves her and she does a great job."
Early years
She was born Nellie Allen in 1919, married in 1936 and remembers panning for gold with her husband, Paul, during the Great Depression to come up with grocery money. Her husband was drafted into World War II, but the war ended before he left the U.S. They eventually had five children.
The family lived mostly in Oakland, California, where Leighton spent years in the parent-teacher association and even longer finding significant success selling Tupperware. She also spent a great deal of time serving in the Oakland LDS Temple.
“I’ve always had a lot of energy I think, until lately, and I’ve always just enjoyed just being a part of whatever — church or scouting with the kids," she said. "We were always doing things together with Tupperware. We got together and had parties."
Leighton first came to love missionary work after her youngest son served the Native American people in Arizona and New Mexico. When she was 77 and widowed, Leighton first approached her bishop about serving a mission herself.
Turley said that while all missionaries are "critical," those who choose to serve later in life, like Leighton, offer something unique.
"Senior missionaries bring a lifetime of experience and maturity," Turley said. "The missionaries who serve in the Family and Church History Headquarters mission make possible work that would not otherwise be done."
After the shooting, Leighton’s daughter, Kathleen Bailey, said Leighton spent time speaking to various groups and congregations about the importance of missionary work and encouraging senior missionaries to serve.
“There’s always a place for someone if you have a desire,” Leighton said. "I think that being willing to serve and just serving wherever you can is one of the most important things we can do — that’s following Jesus. He gave service and that’s one of the main things, I don’t think of it as doing it like that, but I just enjoy being able to help."
Good friends
One of Leighton’s closest friends in Salt Lake City is 93-year-old Sandra Hopkins, who is serving as a missionary in the FamilySearch Center in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Hopkins and her husband had always been interested in genealogy and would visit cemeteries and family reunions of distant relatives when they went to her husband’s native Missouri.
“I don’t know,” Hopkins said. “I got the spirit of Elijah, and it turned my heart to the fathers.”
After her husband died in 1994, Hopkins went on a proselytizing mission for the LDS Church to Tacoma, Washington. She then spent about four years as an ordinance worker in the Portland Oregon Temple before a couple serving a mission on Temple Square passed on her name.
She first came to serve in Salt Lake City in 2000 and continues to work three days a week, totaling nearly 18 hours.
Hopkins said she was Leighton’s “wheels” for about seven years, driving her to hair appointments every Friday. The two became good friends and are part of a small group that gathers every Monday for Family Home Evening.
“Nellie wants to be the first 100-year-old missionary,” Hopkins said. “I tell Heavenly Father I’m ready to go whenever, but as long as he wants me as a missionary, that’s OK.”
Leighton said she’s not afraid of dying, but also not ready to go. It's not her time.
She’s got plans, should she still be here serving when Feb. 18, 2019, rolls around.
“We’re going to dance in the street and have a big celebration,” she said.
“Yep. We’ll have a big party,” Bailey said.”
Bailey said her mother is always the first to offer help and even though the family tries to discourage her from doing too much in the kitchen, Leighton always wants to take food to the sick.
“One man came up to the desk and said, ‘What do you think is helping with your longevity?’ and I said: ‘Service.’ Because when you’re giving service, you’re not thinking of yourself and that’s what we should be doing, is giving service all of our life," Leighton said.
She then summarizes in a single sentence her life.
“I just have the desire to be able to serve Heavenly Father in the best way I can.”
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