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Over the past two weeks, I’ve been struck by the parallels and differences between 1969 and 2020.
In both years, BYU football and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made national news, but in 1969, the football team was mediocre and both it and the church were the objects of protests. In 2020, the Provo-based football team is celebrated and undefeated and church members have flooded the internet with messages of hope, joy and faith after President Russell M. Nelson called on people to use social media as their gratitude journals this week.
Most of those messages are accompanied by President Nelson’s suggested written hashtag, #GiveThanks, but at the end of an appearance Tuesday night on national television, BYU football coach Kalani Sitake fashioned a gesture into a physical hashtag of sorts. As the interview ended, he clapped his hands together in a universal gesture of prayer and said, “Give thanks.”
“Amen to that,” ESPN host Rece Davis said.
The thread between 1969 and 2020 is a man named John Griffin and the other members of the Black 14, a group of Wyoming football players kicked off their team on the eve of a game with BYU by their coach because they were considering a protest of a race-based church policy that was changed in 1978.
Last week, BYU and the 11 living players, with the help of the church, applied a healing balm to that wound. Latter-day Saint Charities delivered 180 tons of food by truckload to nine food pantries in eight states near the homes of members of the Black 14.
Griffin has long helped mentor children and worked to help the hungry. The partnership with the church, though, greatly expanded the reach of his efforts and those of his former teammates.
“That makes me feel good, that people, families will be able to eat,” Griffin told me during a telephone interview from his home in Denver, Colorado. “Little kids will have food in their bellies. And that’s the most important thing to me. I get a little emotional.”
Read my story about what happened to the Black 14 and why, and the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that led to reconciliation between those players, BYU and the church.
This week, that story felt like a prelude to President Nelson’s message on gratitude. In fact, Elder S. Gifford Nielsen neatly tied them together in a comment that didn’t make it in my original story. A General Authority Seventy who played quarterback for BYU after the Black 14 incident and helped coordinate the church’s response with those players and the food pantries, Elder Nielsen said, “I can’t think of a better Thanksgiving story than this. As we think about how we pray ... and then how we need to show gratitude for the blessings that we have, even with crazy stuff going on in our world right now, the blessings of peace, joy and happiness are there for those who are really seeking them. This is a story of joy. This is a story of happiness. This is a story of gratitude. And this is an answer to prayer.”
Griffin is a practicing Catholic. Several of the Black 14 are men of faith. I thought about them again Tuesday when I spoke about gratitude with Mark Maddix, dean of the School of Theology and Christian Ministry at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego.
“I think Christ-followers, because of their commitment to their faith and their willingness and ability to serve others, practice gratitude through their service,” Maddix told me. “While they may not always express it verbally or give thanks to God and to other people as much as we should, I do think they show their gratitude through the ways in which they live their lives through compassion, what we would call in our tradition acts of mercy and compassion toward other people.”
Maddix, another theologian and several scientists contributed to my latest story, which will be published online tonight and in the print edition of the Deseret News on Thanksgiving, about how both science and faith affirm the healing power of gratitude.
Godspeed to you and your loved ones this Thanksgiving. #GiveThanks
My Recent Stories
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Legendary BYU marriage prep professor and researcher Brent Barlow published a funny letter to the editor in the Deseret News this week.
Terry Mattingly published a thought-provoking look at how America is growing both more secular and more religious.
ESPN’s Sam Miller published a piece that went deep on how hard it is to catch a foul ball at a baseball game, even when the stands are mostly empty.
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A Latter-day Saint quarterback got his first start in the NFL. It was a success.
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A man whose mission in Australia in the 1950s included playing for what then was known as the “Mormon Yankees” basketball team, has died.
Ken Jennings, who is a Latter-day Saint, will serve as an interim host on “Jeopardy!” after the death of Alex Trebek.