Howard Hunter, 14th President of Mormons, Dies

Howard W. Hunter, the 14th president and prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died Friday in Salt Lake City, just nine months after he assumed the leadership of the world’s 9 million Mormons. He was 87.

Hunter, a former Los Angeles corporate lawyer and onetime president of the church’s Pasadena stake (diocese), died at his apartment. With him were his wife, Inis Bernice Hunter, and his personal secretary.

He had been suffering from prostate cancer since the 1980s. The church announced in January that the cancer had spread to his bones.

“Though his service as prophet and leader . . . was brief, it is his lifetime example that will stand forever as a testament of compassion and service to others,” said Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, a Mormon.

Mormon presidents are chosen for life and are believed by the faithful to be God’s living prophets on Earth. Hunter was the first president-prophet of the church born in the 20th Century and he served the shortest term. He succeeded the late Ezra Taft Benson only last June 5. Benson died May 30.

If the church follows custom, Hunter will be succeeded by its most senior apostle, Gordon B. Hinckley, 84.

Hunter’s frail health was apparent even before he was ordained as president. When he appeared for his first news conference as president, his voice was weak and aides had to help him walk and take a seat.

He had suffered a heart attack in 1980 and in 1986 underwent quadruple-bypass surgery. In 1987 he had surgeries for a bleeding ulcer and a painful lower-back condition. He had an adverse reaction to medication in May, 1993, and was in a coma for three weeks.

Despite the brevity of his tenure, Hunter was credited by both Mormon and non-Mormon authorities on the church with reinvigorating the faithful, while seeking to strike a tone of civility and reconciliation between the church and disaffected Mormons.

Several excommunicated members had been complaining publicly about the church’s prohibition against ordaining women in the Mormon priesthood and about restraints on scholarship that challenged traditional Mormon theological views and church history.

In his first public statement after becoming president, Hunter told reporters, “I pray that we might treat each other with more kindness, more courtesy, more humility and patience and forgiveness. To those who have transgressed or been offended, we say, ‘Come back.’ To those who are hurt and struggling and afraid, we say, ‘Let us stand with you and dry your tears.’ ”

“This man had one of the most compassionate hearts I’ve ever known,” said church spokesman Keith J. Atkinson in Los Angeles. “He had such a sweet spirit it was hard not to be touched by it when you were around him.”

Still, Hunter’s gentleness of spirit and frail health belied his absolute fealty to Mormon orthodoxy. His fervent pleadings for disaffected Mormons to return to the fold were those of a father beckoning errant children. He made it clear from the beginning that those returning would be expected to do so on the church’s terms. “Come back. Stand with us. Carry on. Be believing,” he said.

In an interview last October with The Times, Hunter reaffirmed the primacy of the church’s teachings over individual conscience, the authority of the hierarchy, and the appropriateness of ecclesiastical sanctions against those who cross the line.

When asked if the time would ever come when women might be admitted to the priesthood, Hunter explained the church’s view of the scriptural basis for barring women from ordination and said, smiling, “I see nothing that will lead to a change of direction at the present time--or in the future.”

Elbert Peck, editor and publisher of the independent Mormon magazine Sunstone, which has run stories about dissent, said he did not see any major policy shifts under Hunter.

Hunter’s greatest impact, Peck said, may have been the fact that the church again for a brief time had a living prophet within its midst who was publicly visible and could articulate a vision for the faithful.

During the last three to four years of his life, Hunter’s predecessor, Benson, rarely spoke or appeared in public because of failing health.

“We had a living, visible symbol of our belief that God speaks to humankind through our prophets,” said Peck. This may have been particularly important, Atkinson added, to young church members who had little or no memory of Benson before he was incapacitated.

Indeed, after Hunter’s homecoming to the Pasadena stake last October, the editor of the stake’s newspaper wrote, “We were frequently brought to tears as we saw and listened to the prophet of the Lord. . . . We were lifted to a spiritual plateau that few of us have ever experienced before.”

Jan Shipps, a member of the United Methodist Church and a leading authority on Mormonism, said it would be difficult to underestimate the presence of a man believed by Mormons to be God’s living prophet, just as was Moses during biblical times.

“The reappearance of the prophetic voice is extraordinarily important,” said Shipps, a retired Indiana University professor of history and religious studies.

Hunter was president of the Pasadena stake from 1950 to 1959. He also served as a bishop in El Sereno. He became a member of the Council of the 12 Apostles in October, 1959. He served as president of the council from June, 1988, until he was ordained as president of the church last June.

His leadership was marked by renewed emphasis on temple worship, in which, according to Mormon belief, marriages and family ties are sealed for eternity.

Hunter was born in Boise, Idaho, the son of John William and Nellie Marie Rasmussen Hunter. He was active in the Boy Scouts of America and was the second boy in Idaho to become an Eagle Scout.

As a young man, he organized his own dance band in 1927--called Hunter’s Croonaders--and went on a five-month Asian cruise aboard the President Jackson. During the trip his group played in hotels and restaurants in Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Manila.

Later as an adult in California, he became a Scout leader and worked as an assistant cashier. He also worked as a state banking examiner.

Hunter earned a law degree from Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles in 1939 and practiced as a corporate attorney in California and Utah.

He served as a director of several corporations, including Beneficial Life Insurance Co. of Salt Lake City, First Security Corp. and the New World Archeological Foundation. He also served as chairman of the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii and the church’s Genealogical Society.

He married his first wife, Clara May Jeffs, in 1931. She died in 1983. Hunter married Inis Bernice Egan Stanton in 1990. In addition to her he is survived by two sons from his first marriage, John Hunter of Ventura and Richard Allen Hunter of San Jose. Another son, Howard W. Hunter Jr., died in infancy. Also surviving are 18 grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren and a sister, Mrs. William Marvin Rasmussen of Orem, Utah.

Funeral services are pending in Salt Lake City.