Interesting that Steve Benson posted his essay on Mormon racism early this morning. I haven’t read it all yet, but only browsed – pretty damning material there. I was searching for John J Stewart references. Mom tells me he was particular about the J, that it was not an initial and so did not have a period after it. His middle name was simply J (without a period). He was my grandpa and he died yesterday.

I read his “Mormonism and the Negro” when I was a teenager twenty or so years ago and, in my 1990s values, found it quite awful. Asked Mom about it and she was caught rather speechless. I told her I didn’t agree with it and I was relieved when she said she didn’t, either. The events and conversations that children remember often vary greatly in content and detail from adults. So I found it remarkable that, just a few months ago, as I discussed for the first time with Mom my disaffection from Mormonism, that she also recalled that same conversation about John J’s book.

Grandpa had been dying a long time. We’ve been astonished for years at the various cancers and heart surgeries he’s survived. He was terrified of death because he feared he was going to hell. I think that kept him fighting.

After my disaffection, I wanted to ask him about his beliefs. He was an accomplished scholar, devoured material on the American West, interviewed several interesting people. For example, Mom, as a little girl, joined him at the home of Billy the Kid’s sister for an interview. (His sister insisted the conventionally accepted history of Billy’s death is false.) He also wrote the forward to the latest printing of “The White Indian Boy”, a fascinating autobiography of a twelve-year-old boy who ran away and lived with the Shoshone Indians in the 1850s.

His consumption of material included the Joseph Smith papers as they became available. I wanted to ask him about his beliefs, including how he felt about “Mormonism and the Negro”. But a few months before my faith shelf collapsed in spring 2013, he had a stroke that took away his memory. I tried a few times to ask about past events, but it only served to trouble him, reminding him of his lost memories. He dryly joked that losing his mind was a blessing from God – that way he didn’t have to be tormented just before death by the memory of awful things he had done. He always had, and maintained to his dying day, a peculiarly delightful sense of humor. In contrast to when I was a child, he adored having visitors during his last years of life. After the last stroke, he didn’t usually know who the visitors where, but delighted in them nonetheless and invariably protested their departure.

I didn’t feel much when I received the news of his death yesterday. We knew it was imminent and, as is typical in the contemporary male hyoo-man, emotions have a hard time letting me know they’re there. But this morning, I’ve had an odd jumble of feelings. Overall, it comes out in a disturbing desire to get in a fistfight (albeit with a fellow not too much bigger than me who won’t pull a weapon, beat me after I’m no longer able to fight, have friends jump in, or otherwise fight dirty – a real gentleman scrapper, if you will, but at the same time deserves a beating).

I’m reminded of how Grandpa loved and encouraged my interest in illusionary magic, how he loved to give us kids each a pack of sugar-free gum when we left his house, how he was often cold and stand-offish, that he refused to neuter or put down his vicious pet dog who had bit several people including Grandma and John J himself, that he was so remorseful and sad, weak, brilliant, both stingy and tragically loose with money, wrote an insightful dramatization of Jesus’s last week, perpetuated hurt through a repugnant Mormon racism apologetics book, had a rich and complex sense of humor about life, relationships, suffering, deity, death, and the multitude of pills placed in front of him every day: “Here, I’ll take these ones, and you can have the blue and pink ones. They’re the best.”

Know what else is funny? Ten (so far) of his great-grandchildren are mixed-race.

TL;DR – John J Stewart was my grandpa. He’s dead. I’m fine; this is just my way of working through it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/06/2014 02:26PM by Good Clean Fun.

It is interesting, indeed, that on the day of his death, I was citing his earnest Mormon apologetics in the review that you mention:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1345321


Your grandfather's extensive research was quite helpful in identifying source documents tracing to historic, systemic and official racist Mormon doctrine and practice.

I went back and removed the period from his middle initial, as you noted that the "J" did not represent an actual middle name. Something tells me that, given your grandfather's attention to detail, he might have appreciated that. :)



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/06/2014 01:50PM by steve benson.

steve benson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> I went back and removed the period from his middle
> initial, as you noted that the "J" did not
> represent an actual middle name. Something tells
> me that, given your grandfather's attention to
> detail, he might have appreciated that. :)


That's a very nice touch to a lovely thread.

steve benson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I went back and removed the period from his middle
> initial, as you noted that the "J" did not
> represent an actual middle name. Something tells
> me that, given your grandfather's attention to
> detail, he might have appreciated that. :)

Haha - thanks, Steve. That's kind of funny and probably accurate. I had forgotten to notice if your citing included the dot. I only intended to use "J" issue as a funny opening quirk. I did notice that my TBM sister used a dot in her friendface eulogy, at which I smugly patted my heretic back. Ego is a riot.


> Your grandfather's extensive research was quite
> helpful in identifying source documents tracing
> to historic, systemic and official racist Mormon
> doctrine and practice.

Interesting that I discovered the Lowry correspondences separately; I don't remember from which DAMU blog. After studying it out in fascination, I connected the dots (haha - those damn dots) and realized John J wrote his book in response to Lowry. If their respective writings were actually rap, it would not be difficult to judge who won that epic-to-exmos-but-obscure-to-every-one-else battle of history.

In my trip to Utah for the funeral and such, I'm going to try and secure a first-edition copy of the book. Might be hard, though, because my family knows I'm disaffected and might suspect unworthy motives.

Holy shart, is family going to expect me to stand in a priesthood circle to dedicate the grave? We'll see how that goes. According to LDS doctrine, I still have the priesthood. But also according to LDS doctrine, I'm (arguably) unworthy to exercise it. I don't think I givvuhdam either way. Whatever suits dear Mum.