Obituaries : S. McMurrin; Utah Academic

Sterling McMurrin, former U.S. education commissioner, longtime University of Utah philosophy professor and an influential Mormon intellectual, has died at 82.

McMurrin died Saturday at Dixie Regional Medical Center, where he had been treated for lung and heart ailments.

He was commissioner of education during the Kennedy administration, and was known for championing school desegregation and national initiatives for hiring women and minorities in education.

He became a professor of philosophy at the University of Utah in 1948, and retired as dean of its graduate school in 1978.

McMurrin was sometimes controversial in his influence on Mormon intellectuals, and in the 1950s was known as an “articulate and loyal heretic,” said Jack Newell, a colleague at the university.

During that period, McMurrin was part of an informal group of scholars who regularly met on the campus to talk about Mormonism. Neither promoting nor naysaying the Mormon faith, they called themselves the Mormon Seminar but were nicknamed “the Swearing Elders.”

McMurrin was a critic of the church’s exclusion of blacks from the priesthood long before the practice was changed in 1978.

He grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from Manual Arts High School. After earning his degree at the University of Utah, he returned to Los Angeles to study at UCLA and obtain a doctorate at USC.

McMurrin is survived by his wife, Natalie, two sons, three daughters and five grandchildren.