Living Church History: Faith Thrives in LDS Sites' Shadows
   
By Robert Walsh, Mormon Times
   
Kathleen O'Meal still remembers when her family joined the LDS Church in Palmyra, N.Y.

She was 6 years old and saw two Mormon missionaries walking up the driveway to their door. She knew who they were and went in the house to tell her mother, "The good men are here."

O'Meal didn't know at the time that neighbors had also seen the "dreaded Mormons" outside her house. They called her Presbyterian parents to warn them to get their children inside and lock their doors. But her parents welcomed the missionaries, listened to the discussions and were baptized a short time later.

Palmyra was "a wonderful place to grow up," she said. "I think I was handpicked to be here."

Like other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who live in areas where Mormon history has a strong presence, O'Meal's life is influenced strongly by her surroundings.

But being a religious minority in Palmyra had its drawbacks. Because there were no other LDS children at her school, those years were difficult for O'Meal—filled with incidents of persecution by teachers and classmates.

"I remember . . . name-calling and shunning," she said. One teacher tried to make her drink iced tea at an outing. Another ridiculed her in class as belonging to a cult. She was encouraged by friends to run for class office—and won. But then because of her religion, her classmates voted her "most gullible."

"People in the community told (our family) we were loons and grave-robbers," O'Meal said.

Still, she found strength in her family and the church.

"My house was like a children's heaven," she said.

And there were the frequent visits to the Sacred Grove. She would ride one of her family's horses there and spend hours enjoying the peace and serenity.

"I learned the scriptures teaching the gospel to my horse," she said. "I never get sick of going to the Sacred Grove."

At the age of 16, she had the chance to play Mary in the Hill Cumorah Pageant. She was able to meet many general authorities, including presidents of the church, and eat supper with them and missionary couples in the Joseph Smith home.

The pageant is important to Palmyra life, she said. Meeting people from all cultures is especially meaningful.

"The visitors connect us to the church," she said. "Palmyra is truly the crossroads of the East. . . . I wouldn't trade being here for anywhere else in the world."



The Salt Lake Temple has always played a huge part in Johnnie Bobo's life.

When Bobo was a young boy living in Farmington, Utah, his grandfather was the gardener at Temple Square. Bobo remembers being with his grandfather, staring up at the temple and thinking it was the most important place on earth. I was always interested in the temple," he said.

Memories of the temple followed him, even after his family moved to Alabama when he was 6. On a vacation trip to Utah when he was 12, he did baptisms for the dead in the Salt Lake Temple. He saw the building again when he entered the old mission home on North Temple Street before serving in the Texas San Antonio Mission. After his service, there was no question where he would be married.

That happened. He met his wife, Diana, at BYU. She had converted to the LDS faith at age 23 in London, Ontario, Canada. "The missionaries said, 'Now that you've joined the church, you have to go to BYU to find a husband,'" Diana Bobo said. "And converts do what the missionaries tell them."

Johnnie Bobo said, "The Salt Lake Temple has been the key ingredient to everything I've ever thought about in the church."

While raising a family, the couple lived in Alabama, Tennessee, Washington, D.C., and Dallas. Children went to Utah to attend school and live, so the Bobos tried to find a way to be closer to their family.

That happened, too.

When Johnnie Bobo was interviewing for a finance job with the LDS Church, he looked out the window of the Church Office Building, saw the Eagle Gate Apartments and said, "I want to live there." He was tired of the traffic in Dallas and wanted to be close to work—and the temple.

That happened, as well.

"It's a plan that actually came together," he said. "We're within walking distance of everything we need. . . . It's a wonderful environment, a beautiful place."

The Bobos were ordinance workers at three different temples in the East, and they continued that service when they arrived in Salt Lake City. A couple of months ago, however, he was called as bishop of the 18th Ward and had to give up his temple duties. But he still keeps an eye on the Salt Lake Temple. His ward meets in the adjacent Joseph Smith Memorial Building, where all the classrooms overlook the temple.

"This is the only building where that happens," he said. "(The temple) is the background for every lesson that's given here."

Bobo feels a special bond with his great-great-grandfather on his mother's side—Brigham Young's younger brother, Lorenzo Dow Young, who served as the second bishop of the same 18th Ward for 27 years in the 1800s.

"Church history through us is family history," Bobo said. "But I never had any association at all with this part of the world . . . until we moved in. . . . I'm nothing special. I'm just an ordinary person . . . but these are astonishing blessings to enjoy in our lives."

Diana Bobo said the people in their ward "are givers and servers. It's good to be with them."



Karyn Dudley grew up in Battle Creek, Mich., where her parents joined the church in 1972 when she was 5 years old. The closest temple was in Washington, D.C., a 12-hour drive.

She went to Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho, and now lives in South Jordan, Utah, just a half-mile from the new Oquirrh Mountain Temple.

"It means a lot to me . . . to literally live in the shadow of the temple," she said. "It personalizes (the gospel). It's not just a story that you read."

But what really hits home for Dudley, who has lived in Utah for 19 years, is the history of the black pioneers and the chance to visit their monuments at Salt Lake City cemeteries.

"To visit, see and read about them gives a deeper meaning to me," she said. "Reading their testimonies . . . gives new meaning to 'endure to the end.'"

Jane Manning James, one of the first freeborn African-Americans to migrate to Utah, holds a special place in Dudley's heart. The night before the dedication of the monument to James in the Salt Lake Cemetery in 2000, Dudley says she was asked to be the voice of James—to read her biography at the dedication.

"That was amazing to me," she said.

Dudley also took part in sharing James' testimony in the play "I Am Jane," written by Margaret Young and Darius Gray, which was performed in Utah, Chicago and Long Beach, Calif. While visiting Nauvoo, Ill., she learned about James' life there in the home of Joseph Smith.

Dudley is active in the Genesis Group in Salt Lake City, which was organized by the First Presidency to support black Latter-day Saints and their families and friends. She was Genesis Young Women's president for seven years, an activities chairperson for four years and is now the compassionate service leader. In her ward, the Daybreak 1st, she is a visiting teacher.

"My anchor was the history of the black pioneers," she said. "Learning that did a lot for me. . . . It's really important to visit these (monuments) . . . and to visit them often."



Since Gregg and Natalie Robison moved to Concord, Ohio, 13 miles northeast of Kirtland, they have noticed the effect living there has had on their children.

"The spirit of being here has truly brought out the best in our kids," said Gregg Robison, first assistant in the Kirtland Ward's high priest group. "It's been phenomenal."

During the last school year, one of their daughters left home at 5:20 a.m. every day for seminary. A younger daughter, a 13-year-old eighth-grader, decided she wanted to go, too, and got up at 4:30 every morning to get ready for the day. No matter that she was a year early and didn't have to go to early-morning seminary yet.

The Robisons, who moved from Salt Lake City a year and a half ago, say it has also been a good experience for their children to participate in "This Is Kirtland," a play about the early church there.

"I couldn't be more grateful they're here, taking part in the play—playing parts of real people," said Natalie Robison, who serves as the ward's Young Women president.

"They know these people—Eliza Snow, Parley P. Pratt, Joseph Smith. That's the greatest blessing of living here."

She counts as another blessing the chance to drive past historical sites every day on her way to Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, where she is taking nursing classes. "It feels sacred every day ... and I always slow down passing the temple."



Once Darlene Banker met Natalie Robison in nursing classes at Lakeland, Banker's life changed dramatically.

"I took (her) to the historic sites," Robison said. "She grew up here but never knew what a special place this is."

Banker, who lives in Willoughby, Ohio, just three miles from Kirtland, said, "I was used to a lot of different churches, but I was not acquainted with the Latter-day Saints."

Her father was Lutheran and mother Catholic, so she was raised in the Catholic faith and even taught catechism to children in public elementary school for six years. But as time went on, "I didn't feel nourished and started doing some church shopping," she said. "The LDS (Church) never hit the radar."

Until she met Robison.

"What a shining star she was," Banker said. "She struck me as something different."

Banker went to a sculpture exhibit and saw a bronze piece depicting Joseph Smith kneeling in the woods. "I need to know more about this," she thought.

The two missionaries who soon knocked at her door taught her, and she was baptized March 28, 2009. She is now the adult singles activity coordinator in the ward.

"I feel like I've been preparing my whole life for this," she said. "I passed the (Kirtland) temple I can't tell you how many times. . . . It's exciting to me to be part of this. I feel this energy in my life. . . . I have a new resolve to live a godly life."



Pat Baldauf used to live right behind the Hill Cumorah.

When she married, her husband was the groundskeeper for church sites in Palmyra, so they lived in a mobile home parked behind the hill.

"It was extremely exciting," said Baldauf, who was born in Salt Lake City. "Both my girls learned to walk on the Hill Cumorah."

Now a widow, she lives in a six-bedroom home—renting out five of them to Palmyra visitors—three miles from the center of town. She calls it the "Baldauf Astoria," and there's even a white sign out front.

Having lived in Palmyra for 39 years, she has met many general authorities as well as presidents of the church. She gains more strength working as an appointment secretary at the Palmyra Temple, where she sets up wedding and baptismal appointments. She also serves as president of the music committee of the Palmyra Ward.

Baldauf loves going to the Sacred Grove.

"I go in the fall when the leaves are coming down," she said. "I often go there to think over problems and concerns. It's a grove of my own."



Hugh and Marlene Pierce live just five blocks from the temple in Nauvoo, Ill.

He operated a motel in town for 26 years, served as president of the Chamber of Commerce for two terms, has been active in the Lions Club and has served on various town committees.

Pierce, a native of Moultrie, Ga., has also been Nauvoo's mayor—the first Mormon in that job since Joseph Smith. He has been branch president, bishop, a counselor in the stake presidency and stake president in Nauvoo. He also worked with Nauvoo Restoration Inc.

He even found love in Nauvoo. After his first wife, Josephine, passed away while they were serving as family history missionaries in Salt Lake City, Pierce went home and soon met widow Marlene Layton of Salt Lake City, who was serving as site historian for the new Nauvoo Temple. An LDS Church News article in November 2000 recounted how she was released so they could pursue a relationship. They had a short courtship before being married in the St. Louis Temple, after which they were called as a couple on a 24-month mission in Nauvoo.

"(This) is such a tremendous place," Hugh Pierce said. "The spirit that's here is tremendous. . . . I feel it all the time. . . . We draw from the association of seeing so many people coming to Nauvoo who are members of the church as well as nonmembers who are coming. They . . . feel something. They say they just don't know what it is, but there's sure something about the place. . . . It's a strength to me to live here and see what the Saints went through in church history . . . their dedication and seeing what strength they had."

Marlene Pierce said, "When the temple was being built, there were several conversions and reactivations by the workers because of the spirit they felt . . . and so people are brought into the church because of the spirit."

During the Nauvoo Pageant each year, the town gets a big influx of visitors, and a new arrival center is being built across the street from the temple for people who need to change clothes and a room for brides and their mothers.

"This is a great town," Hugh Pierce said. "We wouldn't live anyplace else."



Deanna Cook, seminary teacher in the South Royalton (Vermont) Ward near Sharon, Vt., used to teach her class at the ward's historic chapel. But the current renovation project meant a move for a while to the Joseph Smith Memorial Birthplace Visitors Center.

She and her students meet in a room that has a life-size picture of President Thomas S. Monson on the wall and a life-size bronze statue of Joseph Smith in the middle of the room. "It was kind of intimidating to teach the gospel," she said. "It's not like they were watching me, but it was actually kind of neat. . . . This room has a wall of windows and it looks out over the monument, and so I was pointing out to my students, 'No other seminary class anywhere has this view.'

"It makes it so real. You can really feel like this was a real prophet. It's definitely a very strong spirit up at the memorial."

She remembers well President Gordon B. Hinckley's visit in 2005 for the 200th anniversary of Joseph Smith's birth. "That was pretty special," she said.

Cook, whose husband, Eric, is bishop of the ward, is originally from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, went to BYU and moved east in 1999. The family, which now includes three young children, lived in Boston 6½ years before moving to Vermont four years ago.

There are a lot of "really cool perks" living there, she said. Lots of visitors come to see the memorial built on top of a hill, the ward chapel down the hill and Camp Joseph—a campground for stake Scout and girls camps—and its pond named "Waters of Mormon."

"The history is powerful, (and) you can really see Joseph Smith's New England roots," she said. "Now I really love it here, and I wouldn't want to move."