45 years ago today - Sep 16, 1974-Monday

[Leonard Arrington]
Had a minute's chat with T. Edgar Lyon this morning. ... Ed said she was not any very good model of Latter-day Saint womanhood. He said that he knew from close family connections that her first husband, who divorced her, was appalled at her treatment of the first two children, Leah Widtsoe being one of them. She was so anxious to get the children out of the house so she could do something worthwhile, from her standpoint, that she had them outside even at night playing in their nightgowns. He said that after she married Jacob Gates, she was so oblivious to housework that he had to do all the house cleaning, the dishes, cooking, the meals and everything else that a housewife or mother usually does. She went blindly on with her editing, her writing, her interviews and her contacts with important people.

Ed thought that poor Jacob Gates deserves a gold star in Heaven for keeping the family together.

... It will be remembered that Sterling was given that big interview by President McKay in which President McKay made the statement that the failure to give the priesthood was not a doctrine but a practice .... It will be remembered that President McKay came to the rescue of Sterling McMurrin when Sterling was about to be excommunicated from the Church. President McKay saved him. ...

[Confessions of a Mormon historian : the diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, 1971-1997, Gary James Bergera, editor, Signature Books, 2018]

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