Reissued: Rick Turley, 35 Years of LDS Church History (S1, E4 - Part 1)

**Brad Westwood** (0:04)
Welcome to the podcast, Speak Your Piece, which we spell as Speak Your Piece, P-E-A-C-E and P-I-E-C-E, as in a work or something to share. This is a podcast about Utah's history.
My name is Brad Westwood. I'm Senior Public Historian at the Utah Department of Heritage and Arts. The past is never truly in the past.
It's all around us. It informs us. It speaks to our shared and to our separate identities. Speak Your Piece is a podcast where writers, historians, and contributors to Utah's history share their insights and discoveries. Today's guest is former Assistant Church Historian, Richard E. Turley of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Hello, Rick.

**Richard E. Turley Jr.** (0:50)
Hello, Brad.

**Brad Westwood** (0:51)
So good to have you here.

**Richard E. Turley Jr.** (0:52)
Thank you for the invitation.

**Brad Westwood** (0:54)
Rick is the author of a soon to be published book, that I believe you're working with Barbara Jones Brown on called After the Massacre, published by Oxford University Press. How's that going, Rick?

**Richard E. Turley Jr.** (1:08)
It's going very well. We've finished the manuscript. We're just trimming it down now. The title is still up in the air. We're not sure what we're going to title it yet.
Titles of chapters and even the title of a book is sometimes the last thing we work on.

**Brad Westwood** (1:19)
So we're not going to ask our listeners to go out and track that title. It may well change.

**Richard E. Turley Jr.** (1:25)
That was the contract title, but who knows what will end up being when it's published.

**Brad Westwood** (1:29)
Selectively, Rick has also written Wagens West, Brigham Young and the First Pioneers, The Desert Book in 2016, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, An American Tragedy, which he wrote in 2008 with historians Ronald W. Walker and Glenn Leonard. Also Victims, the LDS Church and the Mark Hoffman case, which was published in 1992
He is also the editor, and this is editor in the general sense as well as documentary editor, of these following select titles. Women of Faith in the Latter-Days, volumes 1, 2, 3, and 4 with Brittany Chapman. Standards of Truth, 1815 to 1846, volume 1 of Saints, The Stories of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, with Matt Groh and Stephen Harper, Scott Hales and others. Mountain Meadow Massacre, Collected Legal Papers, Selected Trial Records in the Aftermath, 2017 with Janice Johnson and LaJeanne Carruth.
Speaking of this Mountain Meadow Massacre, that's a fair amount of writing that you've done is on this subject.

**Richard E. Turley Jr.** (2:43)
Yes, indeed. It's a subject that engaged my attention a long time ago, even when I was a youth. And as I got older, I thought this is an area that has had a lot of research done. But I think in recent times, we've had a kind of renaissance. And so I've been enjoying that renaissance period of getting more access to information and writing with new interpretations.

**Brad Westwood** (3:06)
Rick, when I first met you, it was January 20th, 1986 I was a Cub Photographic Archivist working for the then called LDS Church Historical Department.
And you were just appointed the new Director of that department. It's been some years ago.

**Richard E. Turley Jr.** (3:23)
It has.

**Brad Westwood** (3:23)
What are some of the memories when you reflect back? What were the what was the context surrounding you being hired?

**Richard E. Turley Jr.** (3:29)
I had been working for a Chicago based law firm that had a Salt Lake office and was working for them at the time the Mark Hoffman bombs went off in Salt Lake City. And as one who was an avid historian, not by profession, but by avocation, I, of course, was intrigued by all of that and also did a lot of reading in the history area, had been doing that for since my teenage years.
And in the latter part of 1985, I got a telephone call that eventually led to my appointment on January 20th as the 29 year old Director of the Church Historical Department.

**Brad Westwood** (4:06)
I remember that day and so much has transpired since then and the whole story of Mark Hoffman and his effect on the Church's history is in some ways kind of been shadowy all over all of our lives.
Tell me, when I think of the Church and its history, I see it as maturing. Somehow it's improved in so many different ways. And I see you in the center of so much of that. Now, I know this is a team sport, there's lots of people involved in Church history. And right now, as I think back on the former department that you led, there's hundreds of employees now also involved. But tell me just, what do you think, how would you defend the statement, the Church's history's matured?