I had the privilege of serving as counselor to Howard Perry in the presidency of this stake.  That was over 20 years ago.  We traveled all over Eastern Oregon, and I think that I came close to memorizing the names of everyone in the stake.  But now, as I come to meetings in La Grande, I find myself studying faces and dredging around in my memory trying to come up with the names.  Sometimes after a ten-minute struggle the name will come, but often I can’t force the memory no matter how hard I try.

I’ve known lots and lots of truly noble people in this stake—true saints—who have greatly affected my life.  I’d like to tell about several.  They were all common, ordinary people like you and me, but they had a profound influence on me just as you’re having, unknowingly, on someone else.

As a 19-year-old young man I was given a Book of Mormon.  I started reading it and began attending church in the Baker First Ward.  There were two men in that ward that greatly impressed me.  They were both very quiet men.  To me they seemed to glow.  One was Glen May, a former bishop of the ward, and the other was S. H. (Sebastian Henry) Hyde.  They were so saintly that I determined that if I ever got sick, I would have the two of them administer to me.  They were so saintly in my eyes that I knew that I’d be made well.

When I had made the decision to be baptized, Glen May was assigned to be the speaker at my baptismal service.  I don’t remember a word that he said, but I remember being pleased that this great man would do this for one such as I.

Glen was never one for many words.  He rarely said anything.  But in his quiet way he let me know that he loved me.  He couldn’t just come up to me and cheerfully greet me with a friendly handshake.  His style, instead, was to slip up beside me before I knew that he was there, reach around my middle, grab my side, and squeeze until I almost cried out in pain.

Years later Glen’s wife, Edna, died.  I was asked to speak at her funeral.  Glen then moved to Everett, Washington to live with his daughter in his old age.  That move took him out of my life.  I rarely thought of him for the next 10 years.  His children noted that with their mother’s passing, Glen could no longer pass the phone to her when they called.  Quiet Glen now had to talk with them himself.

One night I had a dream.  In the dream Glen May came up beside me, reached around my middle, and squeezed me with his hand until I almost cried out.  The dream was still vivid in my mind when I awoke in the morning.

The phone rang shortly after I arose.  The caller informed me that Glen May had passed away that night, and it was being requested that I should speak at his funeral.

As I spoke at Glen’s funeral I mentioned my having received a hug from him on the night of his passing.  To my surprise and delight three or four people came up to me after the funeral to tell me that they had also received hugs from him that morning.

Life does not end at death.  Neither do friendships or family relationships.  Happiness is only augmented at death for one such as Glen.

Last night as I lay thinking in my bed during a sleepless phase, I asked myself who were the greatest, most-outstanding people I’d known in my 50-plus years of Church membership.  Glen May was the first person I named.  Next was Mae Hyde, the wife of S. H. Hyde.  Mae was an elderly, white-haired saint.  She and her husband had owned and run a laundry, and were the church custodians.  She was beautiful, and I repeat, a saint.  One day she rose in the old chapel on second street and bore a testimony that I’ve never forgotten.  I can still see in my mind’s eye just where she was standing.

Mae recounted the story of how she became a convert to the Church.  I’m sure my mouth must have dropped open in astonishment as I pictured this beautiful, white-haired saint in her former life.

Mae’s son had been befriended by the youth in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  He began attending Mutual and church and playing basketball with them.

Mae said, “I decided that I needed to find out what my son was getting into.  So I got a Book of Mormon, a bottle of beer, and my cigarettes, and laid down on the couch to see what this Church was about.”

The rest is history, and is a testimony to the power that is in the Book of Mormon to change lives.

Years later I was officiating in the initiatory ordinances in the Boise Temple when a man named Hyde entered as a patron.  As ordinance workers we were instructed to not engage the patrons in conversation so as to not interrupt their spiritual feelings.  However, as this brother cycled through for the third time I just couldn’t contain myself, so I leaned down where he was sitting and asked, “Who was S. H. Hyde?”

His head jerked up in surprise, and he said, “That’s my daddy!”  The man was the brother of the boy befriended by the LDS youth.

It would be impossible to calculate the number of lives eternally affected for good by the testimony Mae Hyde gained when she laid down on that couch with her cigarettes, her bottle of beer, and the Book of Mormon.  She passed away without a clue to the number of people she had affected.  She would be amazed to know that her testimony lives on in my memory 50 years later.

Mae died before her husband.  He moved to Ontario to be near his son.  He met a woman and decided to ask her to marry him.  He spent the night before the wedding at her house.  When she went to awaken him in the morning, she found him dead.  Mae always referred to her husband as “Brother Hyde.”  She had a forceful personality.  It’s easy for me to imagine her coming to her husband that night and saying, “Brother Hyde, this isn’t right.  Come with me.”

When I tell this story I always have to pair it up with the experience that Nina Stephens’ father, Hudson Miller, had.  As with Brother Hyde, Hudson’s wife died.  He, too, found another woman that he thought he’d like to marry.  He went to her house to propose to her.  To his great consternation he found his deceased wife there, sitting on the piano bench shaking her head in a negative manner.  He didn’t make the proposal.

Life does not end at death.  The deceased are intimately and acutely aware of our situations and activities, and are often in a position to help us make proper choices.  Joseph Smith in fact said of the righteous dead, “Enveloped in flaming fire, they are not far from us, and know and understand our thoughts, feelings, and motions, and are often pained therewith.”  (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pg. 326).

The third great person that I’ve known was Grant Lindsay.  Grant was a former bishop of the Baker First Ward, also.  He had been my wife’s bishop when she was a girl.  Grant is great in my eyes because he loved us.  He admired my wife as a girl, and held her up to his own children as the example of what a girl should be.

Grant was our neighbor living about a mile away as we were raising our children.  Grant was on the high council.  His wife was stake Relief Society president.  He was a geologist working for a government agency.  He was a common, ordinary man—but he loved us.

In his younger days he had served in World War II.  His ship was sunk out from under him, and he and some crew mates were adrift in a lifeboat for weeks in the freezing North Atlantic.  All but Grant lost fingers and toes from the cold.  Grant kept his buddies alive by making them move and exercise, by cheering them up, and by teaching them the songs he’d sung at Mutual the night before.

One morning eight of our children came out of their bedrooms with chicken pox.  The ninth one had brought it home two weeks before.  It was an epidemic of epic proportions centered in one family.  The kids were miserable, but misery loves company, so they turned their illness into a great school-skipping party.  They filled the living room with sleeping bags and pillows and had a grand time being miserable together.It was all fun for everyone except the eldest.  He was bummed out because that was the day that the high school caught fire and burned down.  It was the event that every kid prays for, and he missed it.

Grant heard about our plight and set to work to personally make a giant stew for his beloved neighbor family.  He delivered it, and saw the pocked-marked hoard in the unbelievably disorganized living room.  He went back home and emphatically told his wife that it was “the most pitiful thing I ever saw.”

One of my children, after hearing of his report said, “And he was in the war!”

I got to speak at Grant’s funeral, too.  The basis of my talk was a statement made about Jesus Christ, but which also applied to Grant Lindsay:  “We love him, because he first loved us.”  (1 John 4:19).

Love has such far-reaching effects that it can overcome the most profound sorrows and hardships.  Look at what the Savior’s love for us accomplished by enabling us to repent of our sins, and to learn of our capabilities, and to enable us to serve and to love one another, and to eventually be resurrected and to spend eternity with our families and friends.  I miss Grant Lindsay, and look forward to seeing him again.