By Jerald and Sandra Tanner
In October, 2001, controversy erupted over who had the rights to various research papers of Dr. Leonard Arrington. Arrington, a well-respected historian and former professor at Utah State University, served as the official LDS Church historian from 1972-1982 and was then transferred to the Brigham Young University. During his lifetime of research he collected a vast amount of photos and documents relating to sensitive areas of Mormon history. After his death in 1999, his papers and research were placed in the Utah State University Library in Logan, Utah, but were not opened to the public until October 2001. The Salt Lake Tribune explained:
The LDS Church contended Thursday it has an “ironclad” document giving it full ownership of some of the papers historian Leonard Arrington deeded to Utah State University before his death. USU isn’t so sure. . . .
On Oct. 11, the Arrington Collection, containing 658 boxes, was opened to the public.
Within days, eight LDS Church employees went through the entire collection, some boxes more than once, over four days, said Ann Buttars, director of USU’s special collections. . . .
After that initial search, the church asked the university to set aside about 148 boxes of papers. . . . Some of the items in the collection, such as minutes of meetings of the Council of the Twelve Apostles, are copies of documents the church does not make available to researchers, [Richard] Turley [managing director of the LDS Church’s Historical Dept.] said.
“We consider they are of a sacred, private and confessional nature,” he said. (Salt Lake Tribune, October 26, 2001, pp. A1, A11)
[Bold in quotations is added for emphasis and does not appear in originals.]
The Tribune article on October 26th contained a long list of disputed documents, minutes of various Council of Twelve meetings, items relating to the temple ceremony, private letters of church leaders, etc.
Then, on November 4, 2001, University of Utah Professor Dean May wrote to the Tribune protesting that the Arrington papers did not belong to the LDS Church and should be given to the Utah State University as Arrington requested (Salt Lake Tribune, Nov. 4, 2001, p. AA3).
In a letter to the Tribune, Steven Sorensen, director of LDS Church Archives, argued that Arrington’s papers included items owned by the LDS Church and they should be returned to them. “Among those items were some 70 years of minutes of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, temple records, employment files, and other materials considered by church officials to be sacred, private, or confidential” (Salt Lake Tribune, Nov. 11, 2001, p. AA11).
One wonders how the church determined what was “sacred, private, or confidential”? Or was the real criteria whether the documents were potentially embarrassing? After all, most of this material is about 150 years old and some of it is already available in college libraries.
On November 25, 2001, the Salt Lake Tribune reported:
Barely a month after LDS Church officials said they owned up to 60 percent of a huge collection of papers donated to Utah State University by the late Mormon historian Leonard Arrington, the church graciously accepted a half-box of material. . . . They include only a copy of a Book of Anointings, which describes sacred Mormon rituals; portions of LDS Apostle Heber C. Kimball’s 1845-56 diaries discussing temple ceremonies, and partial copies of minutes from the church’s Council of Twelve meetings between 1877 and 1950. (Salt Lake Tribune, Nov. 25, 2001, pp. A1 & A15)
Ironically, the Book of Anointings material is already in the Marriott Library at the University of Utah, and Heber C. Kimball’s diaries have been published (see On the Potter’s Wheel: The Diaries of Heber C. Kimball, edited by Stanley B. Kimball, Signature Books, 1987). Quotes from the Book of Anointings are also in the book, The Mysteries of Godliness, David John Buerger, pages 87-90.
The Deseret News described the non-temple documents as follows:
The other returned documents consist of a “smattering” of minutes of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles regarding a particular topic that Arrington was commissioned to research for a private church study. Daines [the Arrington family lawyer] declined to identify the topic. . . . Daines said the issue regarding the minutes was not one of content, but of ownership, and that details of how these papers ended up in Arrington’s collection are unclear. (Deseret News, Nov. 25, 2001)
Since the documents in question were copies and not the originals, one is forced to conclude that the issue is truly one of “content” rather than “ownership.” Even the topic of the “private church study” is being suppressed.
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