Posted by:
Susan I/S
(
)
Date: October 19, 2010 04:38PM
The tale of three members of the Oklahoma City Oklahoma Temple Open House Committee
10/06/2007 - by Odell
Life can be so strange. Here is a story of three different people and what happened in the space of just five years.
In March 1999, the LDS First Presidency announced that a temple would be built in Oklahoma City. The stake president made the first public announcement in the ward I attended. He announced that he had some good news and some bad news. The bad news was that the ward was losing its softball field, the good news was that it was being replaced with a temple. Tears flowed from the congregation at this unexpected announcement. I could never have imagined how this event would change and shape my life.
In the subsequent months, the General Authority assigned to the area called on H. Jerrell Chesney to become chairman of the Open House Committee. Chesney had served as a stake president in the area and was a temple worker in the Dallas Texas Temple. He was a respected member of the community having served for many years as the Executive Secretary of the Oklahoma State Board of Regents, a position he resigned as a result of its decision to permit the showing of the “God Makers’ film on OSU campuses.
Chesney assembled committee members to serve in various functions. Later, I was asked to help on the committee with public relations issues. I may have been the youngest member. The committee met on a regular basis to discuss various open house issues. There I met many capable and good people. A committee member I had already known was Oklahoma City Mission President, James Engebretsen.
I had been a Ward Mission Leader when I first met Engebretsen. He was a youngish man who had made a lot of money in the Philadelphia area as an investment banker. We both shared a common goal. I had wanted to establish a branch in the small city of El Reno, Oklahoma. The town was within the ward boundaries, yet distant from the chapel. The missionaries could not find transportation for its investigators to attend church meetings. The town had a few strong families that could have served as the back bone of a branch’s leadership. I suspect that Engebretsen wanted a new unit created to show off to church general authorities. Despite our intense efforts, the stake president had opposed any new unit in El Reno.
We found ourselves together again on the temple committee. The open house was a great success. Shortly before dedication, my new friend, Jerrell Chesney was called to be the temple’s first president. I was called to be a temple worker. Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, I left work early to serve in the temple until late at night. During this time, my friendship with the Chesneys grew. They were totally committed to their temple assignments and worked very hard at it for the next five years.
After a couple of years as temple worker, I was released when I was called into a new bishopric. I would serve in two more bishoprics in the next several years and help with difficulties caused by relocation of ward boundaries.
The Chesneys served “faithfully” in their duties. The Oklahoma City temple became a model of temple efficiency with greater temple attendance than other larger temples. After being released as temple president in 2005, Jerrell was asked to serve as a bishop once more in the hometown ward in Shawnee, Oklahoma.
Engebretsen was released as mission president in 2001 and returned to the Philadelphia area. During his tenure he had campaigned hard to gain the attention of general authorities. He possessed a very apparent desire to be called into one of the Quorums of Seventy. Prior to his departure, he told me that he was founding a new bank with others “back East.”
I continued to work at the law firm and to take care of my family and church responsibilities. That all changed when I began looking for answers to my church questions. Research eventually caused me to leave the church. I was fortunate to depart it with my family intact. Today, I work in my own firm and my life is different than it was during my LDS years. I am involved in my community and have friends and interests much more diverse than I could have ever imagined.
Jerrell Chesney and his wife left the LDS Church nearly two years ago. He is very private and reserved about his departure. Yet, it was his unswerving integrity, which had caused him to be so committed and faithful as a church member, to force him to abandon a faith he had given his all.
And James Engebretsen later was an assistant dean of corporate relations at the Marriot School at the Brigham Young University, chair of the Peery Institute of Financial Services and a co-founder of the More Good Foundation, an organization established to provide “tools, support, education, and content to help LDS-oriented Web sites” – in order to combat the increasing knowledge members are learning from the internet regarding their own history. He is still not a general authority.
Three lives, three tales.