Hunter, Howard William

(b. 14 November 1907 in Boise, Idaho; d. 3 March 1995 in Salt Lake City, Utah), attorney and religious leader, best known as Prophet, Seer, Revelator, and president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), 1994–1995.

Hunter was born in a working-class family to John William Hunter, an inactive Episcopalian and railroad worker, and Nellie Marie Rasmussen, a granddaughter of Scandinavian Mormon immigrants and homemaker. He grew up in Boise and in a nearby rural area.

Nellie took Howard and his younger sister, Dorothy, to Boise’s LDS, or Mormon, branch (small congregation), where she served in the children’s and young women’s auxiliaries. Although John would eventually join the LDS Church, his early religious views led him to oppose Howard’s baptism at the usual age of eight. Therefore, Howard was not baptized until age twelve, an age when most Latter-day Saint boys are ordained to the priesthood. Howard was ordained shortly thereafter and was active in the Boy Scouts of America, reaching the rank of Eagle.

During his youth, Howard worked part-time and mastered a number of musical instruments. He attended Boise High School, from which he graduated in 1926. While there Howard organized an orchestra, “Hunter’s Croonaders,” which played for dances in Boise and nearby towns. In 1927 he booked the group on a cruise ship bound from Seattle to Asia. Thereafter, he promoted a dance club and worked in advertising.

In 1928 Hunter moved to Huntington Park, California, where he worked as a shoe salesman and orange packer until April 1928, when he landed a job with the Bank of Italy. In November 1930, after the Great Depression had begun, Hunter worked on bookkeeping for the conversion of the Bank of Italy into the Bank of America.

On 10 June 1931 Hunter married Clara May Jeffs in the Salt Lake LDS Temple. They became the parents of three children, one of whom died in infancy.

Settling first in Hermosa Beach, California, the Hunters moved later in 1931 to Inglewood, California, where Howard worked as assistant cashier at the First Exchange State Bank in Inglewood until the bank passed into receivership in January 1932. He worked at a series of jobs until January 1934, when he accepted an appointment in the title department of the Los Angeles County Flood Control District.

Because of the legal complexities of title work, Hunter enrolled in Southwestern University Law School in September 1935, while continuing to work full-time. He graduated cum laude and third in his class in June 1939 and was admitted to practice in January 1940. Hunter practiced law and worked part-time at the flood control district until 1945. He then devoted himself exclusively to his law practice and church work until 1959. He specialized in corporate, business, and probate law, and he served on the boards of more than two dozen companies.

In the meantime, Hunter accepted a series of increasingly more responsible church calls. In 1935 he directed the scouting program for the Hollywood LDS Stake (an administrative division consisting of approximately six to ten congregations, called wards, which are generally made up of from 250 to 500 members). He served on the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area Scout Council and chaired the committee to finance construction of a chapel for the Inglewood Ward.

In 1936 the Hunters moved to Alhambra, California. In September 1940, at age thirty-two, Howard was ordained as bishop of the newly created El Sereno Ward of the Pasadena Stake. He served until November 1946. Hunter was then called as president of the High Priests Quorum (the highest office in the LDS priesthood) of the Pasadena Stake.

In 1948 the family moved to Arcadia, California, where they became members of the Las Flores Ward. In February 1950 Hunter was called as president of the Pasadena Stake. In this capacity he served as spiritual leader for 4,482 members in the six wards of the Pasadena area. He also served as chairman of the Southern California Regional Council of stake presidents.

In October 1959, after nine years of service as president of the Pasadena Stake, Hunter was at age fifty-one called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the second-highest governing body in the LDS Church. He continued to live in Southern California until April 1961, when he moved to Salt Lake City. Between 1959 and 1961 he commuted to Salt Lake City, attended to the administrative and spiritual duties required of one of the Twelve, and wound up his law practice.

As a member of the Twelve, his major responsibilities were to bear witness to the divinity of Jesus Christ and of his atonement, to make policy for the church, and to oversee the spiritual and temporal affairs of the church. In carrying out these responsibilities, Hunter visited stake conferences and served on the general welfare committee, the general priesthood committee, the missionary committee, the personnel committee, the Brigham Young University board of trustees, and the church board of education. He also advised the Sunday School (the teaching auxiliary for adults) and Primary (the teaching auxiliary for children) and reviewed clearances for divorced persons seeking to enter the temple. Additionally, Hunter served as president of the Genealogical Society (1964–1972), church historian (1970–1972), chair of the advisory board of the New World Archaeological Foundation (1961–1985), and president and chair of the board of the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie, Hawaii (1965–1976). His wife Clara May died in 1983.

Hunter also began a round of visits to non-Mormon national and civic leaders and to LDS leaders and members throughout the world. He oversaw the construction of the Brigham Young University Center in Jerusalem (dedicated in 1989), a project opposed by ultra-orthodox Jews. The project succeeded largely because of the support of Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek, with whom Hunter and other church leaders developed a close relationship.

Although confined to a walker, crutches, or a wheelchair following back surgery in 1987, Hunter continued active church service. He was called as acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in November 1985 and as permanent quorum president in June 1988. Hunter married Inis Bernice Egan Stanton on 12 April 1990. In June 1994, at age eighty-six, Hunter was ordained as president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As president, he expanded the worldwide charitable work of the church and continued to promote the construction of temples. He served until his death nine months later of cancer at the age of eighty-seven. He is buried in Salt Lake City.

Hunter served as an apostle and church president during a time of enormous growth and change in the LDS Church. Between 1959 and 1994, Mormon Church membership increased from 1.6 million to 9 million members worldwide. At the same time, the church expanded from an organization with a majority of members in the Inter-mountain American West to a national and worldwide religion. Hunter was the only LDS church president who had neither been converted to the church as an adult, grown up in a family in which both parents were active members, nor lived before his call to the Twelve in an area where a sizable proportion of the population consisted of Latter-day Saints. In part because of this unusual background, Hunter—as a young man in Boise and as a bishop and stake president in Southern California—understood the need to develop good relations with less active members and with non-Mormons. All remember him as an inspiring, kind, and tolerant leader devoted to the promotion of harmony within the church and good relations with non-Mormons.

The Howard W. Hunter Journals, 1959 ff., are in the possession of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah. They are not available for research. Eleanor Knowles, Howard W. Hunter (1994), is a favorable biography, but it was written before his death and before his service as president of the LDS Church, so it does not include important information on that service. Obituaries are in the Deseret News (3 Mar. 1995) and New York Times (4 Mar. 1995).

Thomas G. Alexander