Elder Steven E. Snow, church historian and recorder and executive director of the Church History Department, speaks at the Sunrise Service, presented by the Pioneer Chapter of the Sons of Utah Pioneers, at theTabernacle on Temple Square in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, July 24, 2012.
Kristin Murphy, Deseret News
SALT LAKE CITY — The Mormon pioneers of the 19th century are not so very far removed from the present day, and one need not be a direct descendant to appreciate their legacy, the newly called LDS Church Historian and Recorder said on Pioneer Day, July 24.
Elder Steven E. Snow of the Seventy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was the featured speaker at the annual Days of '47 Sunrise Service in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, the event that traditionally begins the day's festivities in downtown Salt Lake City, where President Brigham Young and the vanguard group of pioneers arrived in 1847 and founded the city.
Current generations are inclined to regard the courageous acts of the pioneers as "legendary, almost mythical, as we think back over the many years which have transpired since they first arrived," Elder Snow observed. "Was it so long ago? Has it been too long and the lessons once taught are not longer relevant to today's generations?"
A descendant of pioneers Erastus Snow, James G. Bleak and Archibald Gardner, Elder Snow said he was strengthened while growing up by a "virtual storehouse of stories of strength and faith."
He told of being a very young boy sitting on a stool in a workshop as his 96-year-old great-grandfather, James Hamilton Gardner, made canes. "My mother told me one moment we would be best friends and the next moment we would be arguing like children," Elder Snow recalled. Sometime later, he realized his great-grandfather was the son of Archibald Gardner, who joined the Church in 1845, came west, built numerous mills and helped form settlements in West Jordan, Utah, and Star Valley, Wyo.
He spoke of recently having viewed old color film footage, shot in 1940, of survivors of the Hole-in-the-Rock expedition in southeastern Utah in 1879-80.
"I was born just a few years later, and it occurred to me my lifetime had overlapped some of those who had made that perilous journey so many years before," he mused. "Their accomplishments suddenly did not seem so much in the distant past as I had imagined."
He acknowledged that things do change, "but the lessons of the past remain the same and are as applicable as they were to earlier generations. By failing to learn our past, we risk losing a legacy of sacrifice and devotion which will ultimately accrue to our own detriment."
Elder Snow said appreciation of pioneer heritage is not dependent on ancestral lineage.
"We who have grown up in these valleys of the West take justifiable pride in our ties to our pioneer ancestors," he said. "We often define ourselves by how many 'greats' appear before the words 'granddaughter' or 'grandson' when referring to our famous pioneer ancestors."
