http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1054985,1055430#msg-1055430

I met him several times but I was 5 when he died. All of what I heard growing up was hero worshipping.

Meeting Hugh B. Brown was one of the signal spiritual experiences of my childhood. I was introduced to him in the foyer after a church meeting at which he presided and spoke. I knew he had come all the way from Salt Lake, but being a child I didn't know much else about him other than he was an important person in the church. I was very emotional for the rest of the day after meeting him, such was the impression he made.

I have since learned more about Hugh B. Brown, his stand on certain social and doctrinal issues of the time, and his great compassion for others. He has always been one of my heroes.

Whatever your views on the church for which he was a leader, I think you would be rightfully proud to claim Hugh B. Brown as your ancestor because of the kind of man he was.

My father, Leland Burr knew him back in Mr. Brown's years in southern Alberta. But I never heard Dad talk glowingly of the man.

Ron Burr

Well, down in Utah the hero worshipping of the man continued into the 21st Century. One of the last things of significance my great aunt Mary did was organize a stupid story time with Truman Madsen for my extended family to hear him retell stories of Brown.

My father sent me a CD of the audio. It was more than I could take to listen to it.

That was in the year my grandmother died I think (Brown's daughter whom was Mary's sister) and now Madsen and Mary are dead. Sad to hold onto things like that decades before you die. Like you are living in a past through another person you think was greater than yourself.

Hello,

I'm finding this exchange fascinating. I am writing a biography of Hugh B. Brown and I would like to glean more info about him from those of you who either had personal memories of him or can point me to friends and relatives who did. I'd like your memories of HBB, but I'm especially interested in getting documents in real time that discuss him. So, for example, if your relative met him in 1966 and recorded the experience in their journal, I'd love to see it. My biography will be published by a scholarly press, so that that's the approach that I'm taking with this work.

Thanks in advance for any material you can share. I want it all--the good, the bad, and the ugly. I want to be as thorough and balanced as possible.

Thank you.
Matt Harris

Matt contacted me directly. I want to help him out but I don't have a lot of information. I was a toddler when Brown died. My mother hated my grandmother. I'm going to talk to my mother tomorrow and I will ask her if she wants to talk to Matt. What the hell maybe she will.

My mother is a card carrying democrat and my father voted Republican that I remember. So maybe she will have good things to say about her grandfather in law. My father didn't talk to me much. I was not a favorite.

I've lived with the shadow of HBB over my head my whole life. And I'm not really interested in him much or his life. I read many of his talks as a kid and saw him venerated all the time. My grandmother kept his house like a museum after he died.

If Matt's book sheds more light on HBB than Ed Firmages book I may read it. I've never read Ed's because I never liked him as a person.

My mother said she wants to talk to you. She just told me that she liked Rulon. She said that when Rulon was going to bring another woman Zola called her father who was a mission president in England and he told his daughter to leave him and she did.

Apparently, HBB really liked my father and so they spent a lot of time with HBB.

In 1965 or '66, Hugh B Brown came out to Annapolis, MD to ordain my dad a high priest and set him apart in the newly formed bishopric. I was 9 or 10. I remember a tall man with a great looking head of white hair. Although he was there to do official church business with the adults, I remember him taking time to visit with us 3 or 4 older kids. I remember him flirting with my mother, who was not usually suseptable to that sort of thing, but seemed very twitter-pated with the attention.

Even tho' I hate the mormon church and the fact that it still has hold over most of my family, I think he was one of the last of the real social democrats, who felt for the little people and was also not afraid of the truth where ever it may have led. If I'm not mistaken, he was one of the ones who actually expressed doubt in the historicity of the Book of Abraham.

I remember him well and fondly.

Sterling Skouson

I've never actually heard anyone say anything bad about him. I know that some of his talks are the most forward, pro-intellectual, and seemingly liberal that I've heard from any general authority. I like him in spite of his church affiliation. Some of his speeches even helped me look further into the truth about the church, he in essence gave me permission.

"Whenever I have to choose between justice and mercy, I always try to err on the side of mercy." ~ Hugh B. Brown

HBB was also my son-in-laws Great Grandfather. I have spent a great deal of time with the Brown family. It would be interesting to know where you fit in. I wonder if anything can shake my SIL's testimony--but on a positive note--he is the most wonderful person you would ever meet--and I love him dearly no matter what he chooses to believe!

Thank you all for your comments and keep them coming if you have them.

As to how I fit in to The Browns, my grandmother was Zola Brown. I am the 3rd son and 6th child of her eldest child who is her son.

That I know of I am the only exmo of my clan and the only liberal one of them.

If Hugh B was as socially conscience and as much a Democrat as I've heard, of my family, I'm the only one with that leaning.

I've never heard much bad about him but I suspect he was a church climber. From what I have heard, advancement in LDS Inc. was always his passion. I don't know if that was a good thing back in the day, but today I can't stand anyone with those aspirations. They are too unctuously political or just straight up self-righteous a-holyish. I suspect my great grandfather was a good LDS Inc. politician. The difference between him and other political types in my opinion is the harshness of his earlier life provided a tempering effect in him when as an aging man he gained a LDS Inc. throne.

He was the best, and after he passed away they never replaced him. Now all they have are dicks as "apostles."

Elder Berry,

The following is something I posted not too far back on this website:



I once sat on the floor of the mission home and listened to Hugh B. Brown. Nice guy. And he made a very interesting comment: "While gathering in the flock, we should make sure we don't lose the shepherds." I assume the statement suggests he wasn't totally happy with the business/marketing strategies (and especially the focus on numbers) that were taking over the church in general and specifically the mission where I was serving.

Well Zola only has a daughter left living I believe?? Know that someone in that group is head of the Democratic Party in a county here in Zion. Sounds like you two have something in common! Once I found a very long, long thesis in the car of "said SIL" from Grandpa Brown--Hugh's Son--it dealt with a lot of the issues he was seeing in the church in the sixties. He was certainly questioning--but then worked through it with the "no better place to raise a family" argument. I have often wondered if he would have had the internet and encountered the damage done to families argument if he would have been swayed! (So were you at Grandpa Brown's funeral a couple years ago with TSM?)

I have a link with Hugh B. Brown through my aunt by marriage. I'm still grateful to him for his humanism and grace, and wish his perspectives could have had more impact on Mormonism. Such a vast difference between him and BKP! And Mormons are expected to see both as being in direct contact with 'our heavenly father'. What a crock!

Zola has 2 sons by Rulon Jeffs still living, a step son her second husband Waldo kidnapped from his mother into my father's family and a daughter living in Provo who I think has a husband who is the main doctor (and a jerk I remember) at the MTC.

In fact I don't think any of my grandmother's kids are dead and I know my father isn't dead yet.

No I was 5 at the time he died and no kids were allowed in the tabernacle for his funeral or at least that was what I was told. I went to his viewing and his wife's viewing (she died before him) and that is where I saw the likes of SWK and other old men I didn't know.

No one that I know of is liberal in LDS Inc. unless you include my brother as a liberal Mormon in not shunning his gay son and partner. So I guess it is us two and this brother (who is a namesake of HBB) is someone who I was shocked to find out was liberal about his son.

All the family I've ever met from my father's family have been die in the wool Mormons with the exception of his brother and step brother. His brother left LDS Inc. but I've only had a couple of interactions with him. Seemed like a nice man. His step brother came home from either a mission or the temple and took his garments off and never went back to church.

But I barely know these men and what I know of them they want nothing to do with LDS Inc. I wish I could have nothing to do with LDS Inc. but alas I left to late in the game for that.

If you are talking about Charles Manly Brown, no I met him a couple of times but that was it. My older siblings might have gone to his funeral. He was my great uncle.

I admired him in the 60's as he inspired me to be a free thinker.

Yes that is who it was Charles Brown! TSM came in after the funeral started, walked right up to the stand and started talking. Everyone was star struck from that point on and poor Charles was pretty much forgotten. (So Rulon Jeffs is somehow part of the family--now I am really confused!!)

This is my father who changed his name from Rulon Jeffs Jr. to Richard Hodson (step father's name) when he was 18 and was finally adopted by Waldo (Zola's second husband) when "Dick" was 30. My father has a full brother with Jeffs as a last name.

``I respect him for who he is and for the integrity he has for following his beliefs, but his ways are different from my ways,'' said one of those sons, Dick Hodson, a devout Mormon who lives in Orem. ``Our paths have separated.''
http://www.culteducation.com/reference/polygamy/polygamy9.html

My father has always wanted to distance himself from his father's legacy because it was thought to hamper his church chances given that his grandfather was a big wig.

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My father has always wanted to distance himself
> from his father's legacy because it was thought to
> hamper his church chances given that his
> grandfather was a big wig.

So I was very wrong when I posted this information about my father.

I had thought that my last name came from my father's negative feelings towards his father and his father's polygamy. In speaking to my mother yesterday I found out that my father loved his stepfather so much that when he could at age 18 he changed his name. My mother said that my grandfather (adopted) loved my father and always treated him as his son. There are snatches of memories in my mind confirming this fact.

When I asked her why my grandfather waited until my father was 30 to adopt him she said I would have to ask my grandfather and that I couldn't because he was dead. She said that his stepfather wanted to adopt him and that my father just let his father do it or not. At 30 I guess Grandpa Hodson wanted to make it legal. I had no idea.

It was a strange mother's day conversation but every conversation with my mother has been strange and often strained. But lately the strangeness has been in her not judging and not demeaning things.

Take for example my kids. I told her that I didn't care if my kids ever married or had children. She accepted that. Weird. I think things may have taken a turn when last thanksgiving I gave her a piece of my mind and upset her. Maybe it is a huge combination of things. I don't know.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/2019 06:48PM by Elder Berry.

Charlie Brown (lol) seemed like a nice man. He wrote a book about "what if" all the 15 Big were killed in the temple on a Thursday by a bomb. I think he wanted to make GA as badly as my dad but couldn't because no one cares about you when your father or grandfather does nothing to promote you and you get lifts from pedigree only.

I have no idea why TSM dropped in on his funeral. From what I hear he was a beloved teacher and friend to many, so TSM ruining his funeral was sad, but great uncle Brown probably would have loved the drop in.

He looked a lot like his father the few times I met him I thought.

Based on H.B.Brown's quotes he seems like he was an exceptionally wise and good man. They suggest he may have no longer believed the Mormon foundational claims lies but kept it to himself. He counsel definitely would have ruffled B.K. Packhards feathers.

A few Hugh B. Brown quotes I like:

“I admire men and women who have developed the questioning spirit, who are unafraid of new ideas as stepping stones to progress. We should, of course, respect the opinions of others, but we should also be unafraid to dissent – if we are informed. Thoughts and expressions compete in the marketplace of thought, and in that competition truth emerges triumphant. Only error fears freedom of expression.”
- Apostle Hugh B. Brown, A Final Testimony,” from An Abundant Life, 1999

“There are altogether too many people in the world who are willing to accept as true whatever is printed in a book or delivered from a pulpit.” – Apostle Hugh B. Brown, “A Final Testimony,” from an Abundant Life

“If we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed.”
J. Reuben Clark

“Only error fears freedom of expression.” Hugh B. Brown
“The honest investigator must be prepared to follow wherever the search of truth may lead. Truth is often found in the most unexpected places. He must, with fearless and open mind insist that facts are far more important than any cherished, mistaken beliefs, no matter how unpleasant the facts or how delightful the beliefs.” Hugh B. Brown – General Conference, October 1962

‘Neither fear of consequence or any kind of coercion should ever be used to secure uniformity of thought in the church. People should express their problems and opinions and be unafraid to think without fear of ill consequences… we must preserve freedom of the mind in the church and resist all efforts to suppress it.’ Hugh B. Brown

and I grew up with those quotes ringing in my ears.

And...look how I turned out. ;o)

I took it all to heart. Investigation will lead to really KNOWING that the gospel is true (or so I thought). Questioning everything, even my own prejudices and favored beliefs, would lead me to an ever deeper understanding of how comprehensively all truth and knowledge corroborates and confirms the truthfulness of the gospel (or so I thought).

That's the attitude I had before, during and after my mission.

I've been an apostate since my mid twenties.

Everything I've continued to learn following the light-bulb moment that occurred while I was still a student at YBU (i.e. when I realized that everything made 1,000 times more sense when you looked at Mormonism from the perspective of believing that it was false compared to trying to make everything fit together from the perspective of believing it was true) has corroborated my understanding and ever-deepening conviction that Joseph Smith was a fake and his church was/is a fraud.

Clark and Brown were members of a particularly confident generation of Mormon leaders. The church had been gaining in respectability. The gap between the church and mainstream churchianity in North America was narrowing. The embarrassment of polygamy was behind them now. The church was growing rapidly. Money was coming in. Why not boast about how the whole thing could withstand the most rigorous, intense investigation and scrutiny that anyone cared to subject it to?

Boy was that a mistake!

If there's such thing as an anti-Christ, then, by analogy, Boyd K. Packer was the "anti-Clark" and the "anti-Brown" all rolled up into one man. Don't investigate! Don't scrutinize! Just believe and have faith and automatically reject anything that makes you doubt! That's pretty much been the governing principle since the mid 1980s.

> Clark and Brown were members of a particularly
> confident generation of Mormon leaders. The
> church had been gaining in respectability. The gap
> between the church and mainstream churchianity in
> North America was narrowing. The embarrassment of
> polygamy was behind them now. The church was
> growing rapidly. Money was coming in. Why not
> boast about how the whole thing could withstand
> the most rigorous, intense investigation and
> scrutiny that anyone cared to subject it to?

This is exactly right. That was a period when the church felt confident and was sure that inquiry would bear out its historical and doctrinal claims. That confidence, in turn, engendered an expansiveness and a slightly greater tolerance towards dissenters.

It was a moment in time that is now long gone. I wonder how those men would have felt if they had lived to see how the edifice would subsequently erode.

HBB wrote 'Profiles of a Prophet' which upon comparison to all recent (claimed/sustained) "prophets" demonstrates them to be FRAUDS;


as a matter of WTF! ChurchCo has re-published this not too long ago...


http://rikers.org/lds/ensign/2009-11/13.html



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/2019 07:37PM by GNPE.

I could tell some stories about some of his communist relatives that I knew very well, but they turn out really bad, just as socialist experiments tend to do, and I'm afraid I'd get deleted. :(

My dad was a teenager and then a young farmer when Hugh B Brown was here in Lethbridge. He knew Mr. Brown and told me he liked the man.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/2019 11:57PM by Lethbridge Reprobate.

My dad met him in England during WWII. My dad commented that he was the only GA who got near the guys who were going off and getting shot to pieces for their country.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/60042341/zola-grace-hodson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rulon_Jeffs


Rulon Jeffs, a LDS RM who later became the FLDS prophet, initially married Zola Brown (daughter of Hugh B. Brown) before he became "fundamentalist". Zola divorced him over this. Eventually he had a son named Warren Jeffs and he became FLDS prophet & selected Warren Jeffs to be his successor.

Oh nevermind ... I just googled some things and found a different thread in RfM history ... the connection of Rulon Jeffs to Hugh B. Brown is definitely well known to Elder Berry.

Yes, from sitting on Brown's and Kimball's lap as a small child attending Brown's wife's viewing to visiting Rulon several times in the Sandy Compound.

Check the spouses area in my grandmother's "find a grave." It shows her ex Rulon. Are ex-spouses usually listed here?

I remember seeing him on Gen. Conf. as a kid in the sixties. When I was learning to read at 5 or 6, I remember puzzling on the spelling of his first name vs. how it was pronounced.

I don't have any personal recollections--too young.

However, I did remember finding some relief his injunction that one doesn't have to believe anything that is untrue to be a member of the LDS Church.

Ironically, that was untrue. ;)

snowball Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ironically, that was untrue. ;)


Epically in this case.

"1. He will boldly claim that God had spoken to him.
2. Any man so claiming would be a dignified man with a dignified message—no table jumping, no whisperings from the dead, no clairvoyance, but an intelligent statement of truth.
3. Any man claiming to be a prophet of God would declare his message without any fear and without making any weak concessions to public opinion.
4. If he were speaking for God he could not make concessions, although what he taught would be new and contrary to the accepted teachings of the day. A prophet bears witness to what he has seen and heard and seldom tries to make a case by argument. His message and not himself is important.
5. Such a man would speak in the name of the Lord, saying, “Thus said the Lord,” as did Moses, Joshua, and others.
6. Such a man would predict future events in the name of the Lord, and they would come to pass, as did those predicted by Isaiah and Ezekiel.
7. He would have not only an important message for his time but often a message for all future time, such as Daniel, Jeremiah, and others had.
8. He would have courage and faith enough to endure persecution and to give his life, if need be, for the cause he espoused, such as Peter, James, Paul, and others did.
9. Such a man would denounce wickedness fearlessly. He would generally be rejected or persecuted by the people of his time, but later generations and descendants of his persecutors would build monuments in his honor.
10. He would be able to do superhuman things—things that no man could do without God’s help. The consequence or result of his message and work would be convincing evidence of his prophetic calling: “By their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:20).
11. His teachings would be in strict conformity with scripture, and his words and his writings would become scripture. “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:21)."
https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/hugh-b-brown_profile-of-a-prophet/

One of the Mormon missionaries I met many years ago was a convert to the Church and was socially and politically liberal. He spoke with admiration about Hugh B. Brown as someone whose views he had respect for. This missionary also told me that he dreaded the thought of Ezra Taft Benson becoming President of the Church and joked that it was his prayers that were keeping President Spencer W. Kimball alive.

You are in a bad state when you are praying for Kimball to survive because you think his successors will be worse.

One wonders how a missionary who had so little faith in God's ability to "call" a worthy prophet could be out and about trying to sell a religion that uses its claim to have "prophets directly called by god" as one of its main selling points. He probably never thought about it that deeply at a conscious level.

The funny thing is that certainly Ezra T. would in no circumstances have been worse than Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Compared to Brigham Young, Ezra T was generally a mild-mannered milquetoast with mainstream views on just about everything, other than possibly having concerns and fears about Communism that may have been somewhat more intense than average for his day.

I remember hearing people in the church echo similar sentiments about ETB back in the day. I may have forgotten some of the context now. But TBH, now that I look back on it, I can't see what they were really afraid of. IIRC, ETB was a bit more overtly political than most of the GAs, but he was comfortably inside the boundaries of the Overton window such as it was at the time. As it turned out, after becoming prophet he did nothing much that was remarkable at all during the short time that he was functional and then quickly slipped into extreme decrepitude.

ceremony were deleted under Ezra Taft Benson. We'll probably never get the inside skinny. But I would be interested in knowing whether he played a role in deleting the throat-slashing and disembowelment gestures.

I believe, but am not certain, that ETB was around the bend by this point. It could well have been Hinckley, the regent, made the decision on the basis of that well-known opinion survey.

Hinckley was in charge for both the end of SWK and all of ETB.

Yes. That's why I described Hinckley as "regent," the power behind the throne.

I've suggested before that today's Mormonism is the product of the interaction between Hinckley and Packard. The former ran the church from the middle 1970s for three plus decades, overseeing the anti-gay political campaigns and the now-definitive "mainstreaming" effort. Packard was the minaret who managed the correlation process and discipline, alienating intellectuals, gays, feminists, and anyone who wanted to chart a NOM path.

The result was the doctrinally impoverished, close-minded, totalitarian cult we all know and love.

I remember watching GC as a little boy and wondering how to pronounce "Hugh" when they showed his name on the screen as he spoke.

I always thought it a strange name granted.

Hugh B. was the hero of my generation. He seemed without guile, that so has plagued Mormon leadership for generations. Legrand Richards, too, accidentally saying things he wasn't supposed to, because he was honest. Hugh B Brown was known to be progressive and, unfortunately, "foreign," which got him nowhere with Benson and Smith.

Hi, EB,

I got kinda lost here: so, Hugh Brown is the father of Zola (your grandma?) who married Rulon Jeffs and left him and took her two sons —- one was Richard Hodson (your dad), And Zola was MiL to your mom ?

I know you’ve told me these things before, but I probably need to read the entire thread again. Anyway, I got all mixed up.

Hi Kathleen. You got it right. It is Mormonism in a blender for me.