Affable churchman served on Mormons’ governing quorum
L . TOM PERRY ( 1922 — 201 5 )
SALT LAKE CITY — Mormon leader L. Tom Perry, a member of the faith’s highest governing body, has died from cancer. He was 92.
Perry died May 30, surrounded by his family at his Salt Lake City home, a church spokesman said.
Perry was diagnosed with cancer in late April. He began receiving radiation treatment and briefly returned to work as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a group modelled after Jesus Christ’s apostles that serves under the church president and his two counsellors.
Perry was the oldest member of the church’s top 15 leaders and was the quorum’s second-most senior member. He wrote a book in the mid-1990s titled Living with Enthusiasm.
Perry was in attendance when Mormon leaders and Utah state lawmakers introduced a landmark bill in March that bars discrimination against gay and transgender people while protecting the rights of religious groups and individuals.
Perry was greeted warmly by LGBT advocates that day. But he drew their rebuke in early April when he spoke at a semi-annual church gathering in Salt Lake City about the faith being a leading advocate for traditional families and opposing “counterfeit and alternative lifestyles.”
Perry was born Aug. 5, 1922, in Logan, Utah. After a Mormon mission, he served in the Marine Corps. He went on to be a vice-president and treasurer in retail businesses in Idaho, California, New York and Massachusetts before being chosen for the quorum in 1974.
As a church leader, Perry became known for his affability and optimism and for being unpretentious, said Matthew Bowman, a history professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
One of his most wellknown quotes came during a 1998 church conference, when he said: “The almost universal gift everyone can develop is the creation of a pleasant disposition, an even temperament.”