The address given by President Dallin H. Oaks at Friday's "Be One" celebration of the 40th anniversary of the priesthood revelation at the Conference Center, provided by Mormon Newsroom_._
My dear brothers and sisters, there are some events that persist in almost everyone’s memory. If you were living at the time of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, you remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard that terrible news. The same is true of the shocking attacks on what we call 9/11. For Latter-day Saints who were adults at that time, the 1978 revelation on the priesthood was an event of such magnitude that it is also etched in memory.
The news reached me on a telephone that seldom rang. My two sons and I were working in the yard of a mountain home we built as a place of retreat from my heavy responsibilities as president of Brigham Young University. These sons were between missions. The oldest had returned three weeks earlier, and the youngest was preparing to leave a year later. The earth was caving onto our driveway from a steep slope, and we were trying to stabilize the hillside. We were in the midst of this project, shovels in hand, when the phone rang inside the house. I knew it must be important. Only a small number of people had that telephone number, and all of them had agreed not to call me about anything that could possibly wait.