John Willard Marriott

J. Willard Marriott was born in Marriott, Utah, a settlement pioneered by and named for his grandfather. Raised on a sheep farm, he early incorporated in his character the independence and industry which are reflected in his extensive business enterprises.

Starting as a young man with little more than a new wife and a root beer franchise in Washington, D.C., Willard Marriott rapidly increased his number of restaurants in that area, then began a continuing expansion into other states. His Hot Shoppes becom­ing increasingly known, soon he was diversifying to catering for airlines. In the mid-fifties he led the Marriott Corporation into the hotel field, in which it is now one of the fastest-growing companies. From the original root beer stand, the corporation has grown to a $400 million enterprise.

The author attributes his success not only to his own diligent effort but also to the climate of free enterprise in America, the land which he is firmly convinced is the "land choice above all others." A further factor is his allegiance to Church principles and practices. He traces much of his personal growth to his expe­riences as a young missionary, from which he went on to become, after many other Church leadership positions, President of the Washington Stake for nine years.

Willard Marriott holds directorships in American Motors Cor­poration, Riggs National Bank of Washington, Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company, and Acacia Mutual Life Insurance Company. He has received honorary Doctor of Law degrees from Brigham Young University, the University of Utah, and Weber State University. He is a former president of the National Restau­rant Association, and he continues to be active in many civic and charitable affairs in metropolitan Washington. At President Nixon's appointment he was chairman of the 1969 Inaugural Committee. He is chairman of the executive committee for Honor America Day, which promotes America on July 4 and throughout the year.

Willard Marriott is married to the former Alice Sheets. The couple have two sons.

J. Willard Marriott

WASHINGTON’S CATERING MAGNATE

If you think this spells success, you're only partly right. Of course, most people would like to be wealthy and they are usually thinking about money when they talk of success. But success is not measured by money alone. It has to include happiness and peace of mind. And I know some very rich people who are very miser­able.

I suppose I was fortunate in getting the right kind of training and background. I came from a sturdy pioneer ancestry. My grandfather opened up a little settlement about three or four miles west of Ogden which was named after him-Marriott Settlement. He was sent there by Brigham Young. He had been in Nauvoo, and when the saints were driven from that city he remained there for about ten years to help settle some of the real estate sales and other property matters for those who had gone West.

Physically my grandfather was a powerful man, and my grand­mother was equal to him in every way. Her short diary is a re­markable example of sacrifice for the gospel. In it she tells that to get to conference she walked all the way from the settlement to Salt Lake City with sacks tied around her feet because she didn't have any shoes. She and my grandfather were converted in England and they came to America at about the same time, but they did not meet each other until they arrived in Utah. She was my grand­father's second wife, his first having died. She raised eight children of her own and nine children of her husband's first wife.

I am grateful to the Lord for that kind of ancestry and to my father for giving me an opportunity to develop my individuality and my sense of responsibility. My father was a careless man in many ways. He would send me out to the sheep camp on an assignment but would tell me little about what I was to do or where I was to find the sheep. Even when I was a little boy, such problems were for me to solve, for my father never did my thinking for me. He could have been a little better teacher and it would have been a lot easier for me if he had been, but I doubt if that would have developed me to the same extent. His "system" helped me to make my own decisions and stand on my own feet.

In 1915, when I was fourteen, my father put me on a freight train on which he was shipping sheep. I rode the caboose from Ogden to San Francisco. Every time the train stopped, I had to get out of the caboose and run down the tracks and poke the sheep so that they wouldn't smother, because the train's sudden halt stacked them on top of each other. Then I had to climb on top of the train and run back to the caboose. Times have changed. I can't imagine my wife even allowing one of our boys to ride on a freight train at fourteen years of age.

That was my first trip away from home, and I was impressed with the beauties of California in March when everything was frozen and cold in Utah. All the flowers were out and it was like spring. After I had turned my sheep over to the commission mer­chant, I attended the World's Fair which was being held in San Francisco that year. All in all, the trip was an exciting experience.

The next year my father put me in a caboose on a train going to Omaha with another load of sheep. Now I was fifteen, but when I arrived at Cheyenne, Wyoming, the new conductor that got on the train put me off. He said I was too young to ride on a freight train. I had to get the passenger train to Omaha, and when I arrived there I waited three days for my sheep to come in and they didn't arrive. We started looking for the sheep and it took us three more days to find them. They had been put off the train into a feeding corral in Valley, Nebraska.

Even when the sheep did arrive in Omaha my troubles weren't over, because some greenhorn in the stockyards turned our sheep in with somebody else's, another big herd from Texas. My father not only raised sheep but he bought and sold them too, and these sheep I had brought carried many different brands because they had been purchased from the stockyards in Ogden. The sheep from Texas were all mixed brands as well. I was almost frantic, not knowing what to do. Finally the manager of the stockyards put me on the gate and let me cut out whatever sheep I wanted to take. Fortunately the sheep from Texas were much smaller than ours, so all I could do was to cut out the big ones.

I said I would never go on another trip to sell our lambs. But I had to change my mind. The next year it was the same all over again, except that we didn't lose the sheep.

Being in the sheep business was a really rough life in those days. We had to trail sheep for over a hundred miles from summer range to the desert, and then graze them in the desert all winter. Then we had to trail them back again in the spring.

After I returned from my mission I stayed out of college for one year, and during that time I spent the winter herding sheep. I was with two Basques, neither of whom could speak much English, so I had to learn enough Spanish to be able to commu­nicate with them. It was one of the most profitable periods in my life because I had time to read. I read a lot of books, including many Church books, and I particularly remember reading all of Emerson's essays.

It was an enjoyable winter for me, even though it was an uncomfortable and difficult time. We had to depend on snow for water, and often it didn't snow. Many times we had to go to the tops of the mountains, melt snow, and bring the water back for our horses. There were other problems too. The coyotes and lions got into our sheep and killed a lot of them. Then the sheep got into poisoned water and that killed 201 at one time.

These kinds of experiences gave me a lot of independence. I don't know any place where a young man has to use more in­genuity in getting things done than he does on a farm or in ranch­ing. I think that accounts for the success of so many of our national leaders and the successful men who have developed our great busi­nesses. They were reared on farms, where they learned to work and use their ingenuity. I can thank my father for teaching me to work. On the farm, the long working day were normal. Milking cows at six o'clock in the morning, working hard all day, then milking the cows again at night and doing the chores, this was just a part of life. But somehow I still enjoy work, and without this willingness to work I'm sure I wouldn't have had the success I have enjoyed.

It's funny that sometimes what begins as a necessary discipline can end up being a pleasure. On the other hand, I suppose the most pathetic and unhappy and unsuccessful person is the one who always does the things he wants to do and never the things he should do. Someone made a statement to the effect that the purpose of all education is to get us to do things we should do when we should do them, whether we want to do them or not. Apparently I must have gained this kind of education in my youth, though it didn't come through formal schooling. I'm glad, because it's in your youth that you form lifelong habits. You can change later, of course, but it's not easy. That is why the Church has been so important in my life. It helped me tremendously in providing the right religious background and training so that I began to develop good habits instead of bad ones.

Bad habits can be ruinous. I saw this demonstrated in my youth, when I spent a lot of time with sheepherders and cow punchers, many of whom were without character and loaded with bad habits. Some of them would stay out with the sheep for six months and then go into town and spend all of their money in two or three weeks on liquor and women. After that they would go back and work for another six months so that they could go into town and have another "big time."

Fortunately for me, I was reared in a religious home. My father was in the bishopric for seventeen years in our ward, and my mother was an intensely religious woman. We always had prayers in our home. I can remember us all meeting around the table before each meal and having our family prayer. When I was young my parents taught me to pray about any problem I might have. If any of the family got sick, we called in the Church lead­ers to administer to us. The healings that happened through these administrations made an impression on me that has lasted all my life.

I remember the time my younger brother became very ill with spinal meningitis. His jaws were locked so that he couldn't eat or drink anything. He was losing his mind, and we were all afraid that he was about to die. So we called in the "old baker" who came around our way twice a week selling baked goods. He was a fine member of the Church, a man of great faith. When he administered to my brother, he commanded him in the name of the Lord to be well. Immediately my brother relaxed in his bed and asked for something to eat. He was well from that time on.

In 1919 a terrible influenza epidemic swept the country, and many people died from it. It was at this time that the father of my future wife, a bishop, was taken. All of the eight children in our family as well as my mother and my father came down with the flu, and there was no one to take care of us except some of the Relief Society sisters who came in occasionally when they could. The elders came too. I'm sure it was through their administrations that we were able to live through this ordeal.

We had a mile-and-a-half to walk to our chapel in the Marriott Ward. Our entire family always went to church on Sundays and participated in the Church activities.

My pre-university schooling was something of a hit-and-miss proposition. My father being in the sheep and cattle business and also farming, I was kept out of school almost every year until after the crops were up, and then in the spring I was taken out of school again and sent to help lamb the sheep. So I had a rather spotty education.

Attending high school was not easy for me, because I either had to walk four miles to school or go in a horse and buggy. When I arrived I was usually covered with dust or had manure on my shoes, and I used to think how wonderful it would be to live in the city and have a bathroom. I thought I would be rich indeed if I just had a house with a bathroom and other modern facilities.

When I started going to town, I made the discovery that there were good and bad boys and girls. We had "zoot suiters" in those days, boys with bell-bottom pants and long hair cut off straight across at the bottom of the neck. They were trouble makers, many of them immoral, though I don't believe they were as lazy and dirty as the hippies of today.

While I was at Weber Academy a young man named Ernest Wilkinson was one of the outstanding students and president of the student body. Later he was to become a successful lawyer and for twenty years President of the Brigham Young University. Once when I was visiting Utah many years after I had attended Weber Academy, I looked up a lot of my old schoolmates. I found that the ones who had been good students when I was in school-the ones who had good habits, were good workers, attended church, and so on-were now, years later, leaders. Most of them had good homes and good jobs and had been successful in whatever they had undertaken. On the other hand, those who hadn't tried to live the gospel, whose bad habits had shown up in those earlier years, had gone from bad to worse. Many of them had been divorced, and had had a lot of trouble in their lives.

When I was nineteen I was called on a mission, and that was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I served in the Eastern States. Mission under Mission President George W. McCune. At that time there was no period of missionary training as there is now. I went to Salt Lake City, was there set apart for my mission, and then was put on a train with a group of new missionaries and sent to my mission.

Because of my scanty schooling, when I arrived in the mission field it was a struggle for me to keep up with the boys who had lived in the city and had a good education. The first thing I bought was a dictionary; as I read and studied I looked up every word I didn't understand and wrote down its meaning. I had plenty of scope for this exercise because I was studying the Articles of Faith and Jesus the Christ, written by Elder James E. Talmage, and that author's extensive vocabulary and powers of expression are almost legendary in the Church.

I was assigned to labor in Vermont in the middle of the winter of 1919-1920. The natives said that that was the coldest winter they had had in many years and I could well believe it. The tem­perature dropped to 40 degrees below zero. My companion was a huge, rough, wonderful man named T. W. Tanner. He was considerably older than me. He had been a sheriff in Snowflake, Arizona, for fifteen years; his lips were cracked and his hands were roughened, and you could see that he had had a very difficult life. But he was a worker, and I admired his spirit and dedication.

Like me, Elder Tanner didn't have much education. I think one of the first things a missionary recognizes are his faults and failings and his lack of preparation, and my companion and I were at one in this respect. So we would get up at 4: 30 in the morning, as cold as it was, and study until about 7: 30. Then we would cook our breakfast on a little stove in the room, and after that we would go out tracting.

We didn't tract from door to door because it was too cold; instead we would go to department stores, or down to the old rail­road station with its huge stove. The railroad tracks wound around the mountains in Vermont, and it seemed to me that that state had the worst railroad service in America. The trains were always late. People would wait by the hour to make their connections. This situation gave us missionaries an opportunity to talk with people while they were waiting, and we had many good gospel conver­sations in that railroad station. It was there that we spent most of our proselyting time during the winter. I tried to be a humble missionary and lived close to the Lord; and the Lord blessed me and helped me to improve myself and advance my education.

I had some great experiences with Elder Tanner. He believed that we should do our proselyting as the apostles of old did, so in the summer we went out into the country tracting without purse or scrip. We depended on the Lord and the hospitality of the people to take care of us.

The first day out, several miles north of Burlington, Vermont, we called on a family whose daughter we had met in Burlington. They were very kind to us and asked us to stay with them that night. There were about three hundred people in the town, and three churches. We tracted the town, and Elder Tanner tried to get the ministers to let us hold a meeting in one of the churches, but they refused to do this. However, that night we did manage to hold a little meeting in one of the halls; but when we came out in the dark the whole town was waiting for us. And they weren't exactly a welcome committee, either.

The crowd had buckets of rotten apples which they threw at us with great gusto. They screamed and shouted as they pelted us, leaving no doubt in our minds that they intended to drive us out of town. To keep the mob from harming us, the people we were staying with told us to run for our lives, then they got out onto a platform and talked with the people to try to calm them down. In the darkness we two missionaries fled from the scene, got our suitcases from our friends' home, and tried to make our way out of the town. But some of the mob had preceded us down the road and we had to run off into the fields to escape them. They hunted us all night but we got away. I have never heard such swearing and cursing as that mob used at us, nor seen such an example of evil as was exhibited in their hatred for the Mormons.

At that time a terribly bad spirit and attitude towards Mor­mons was manifest in the New England states generally. I recall that Elder Tanner and I were sitting on a bench in the park one day talking to a gentleman, when an old man with a cane stood by and heard us. When he found out we were Mormons he took his cane and shook it at us and called Joseph Smith and Brigham Young every name he could think of. This was the kind of spirit we found in many places in our missionary work. The converts were few and far between, but we did have a few faithful Church members in Burlington and St. Johnsbury and other parts of Vermont.

After being in the mission field a short time, I decided that the missionary's life was the greatest way to live. I didn't have to worry about earning a living. All I had to do was read the scriptures and teach people who didn't understand them. I couldn't imagine a more enjoyable life. Of course, the secret was that I was getting a tremendous amount out of my mission because I was working hard at it and the Lord was blessing me greatly.

After I had been out a few months, apparently most of the missionaries in our district who were having difficulties were sent to me, one by one, as companions. Except for Elder Tanner, most of my companions were boys who had become homesick, or who didn't want to work, or who wanted to sleep in the mornings and visit the saints at night. But I think I was instrumental in getting a lot of them to work and to become good missionaries.

I can honestly say that while I was on my mission I learned the value of the gospel and what it can do for a person's life. Not only did I experience this in my own life, but I saw the great transformation that came to the lives of others who accepted the gospel and lived it.

I arrived home from my mission in the fall of 1921 in time to enter Weber Academy. Aaron Tracy was president of the high school and college at that time-they had just established the college department-and what a wonderful man he was! He helped a great many people who couldn't afford to go to college-helped them to get jobs and so earn enough money to see them through school. Also he helped a lot of people to make up their missing credits so that they could go on through college; and this is one way he helped me. Because of my starting school late in the fall and ending early in the spring all through my high school, I had very few high school credits. President Tracy made it possible for me to take college subjects which were similar to high school sub­jects and make up my high school credits in this way. But for this, I would not have been able to get a college education.

At first I had problems about paying for my schooling. After World War I the United States had a great depression, and it hit the sheep business as well as others. Sheep prices dropped from $14.00 a head down to $3.00 and $4.00 a head. My father bor­rowed money from the bank for his business; and when the price of sheep dropped so dramatically he was caught in the bind. Like most of the sheepmen in Utah, he went broke.

This reversal of fortune made it necessary for me to earn my own way and also to help other members of my family-my seven brothers and sisters needed help to get through school. I was grateful when President Tracy gave me the job of running the bookstore at the Academy, managing a little theatre, selling year­books, and a lot of varied jobs which helped me to pay my tuition and to get along.

When my summer vacation came, I was fortunate in finding an opportunity to make some money. I became a salesman for the Logan Woolen Mills, and with another returned missionary and a suitcase full of samples I left for Nevada, for the lumber camps of the Sierra Nevada mountains. My friend and I worked from six in the morning until ten or eleven at night, and that summer we made enough money to put us through school the next winter. We sold men's suits, overcoats, and shirts; ladies' sweaters, suits, and dresses; and children's sweaters, caps, and dresses. But most of our money was made in selling underwear-black underwear.

This black underwear was made principally for the loggers and miners. We had white underwear also, but most of the men bought black because that color didn't show the dirt too quickly. The underwear was made like a very fine sweater, and a suit of it would last for about five years. It sold for $22.00 a suit. That was a lot of money in those days, but the underwear was popular with the loggers because by absorbing moisture it helped to prevent rheu­matism in the wet climate of the Sierra Nevadas. It kept the wearer warm and wore like iron.

This enterprise became very profitable for me. In my third year of schooling, when I attended the University of Utah, I signed up forty-five student salesmen to cover various territories in seven states. I got a percentage on the sales of all these salesmen, and I also went out and sold on my own. Then during the school year I took the salesmen out from door to door and trained them in selling.

For a while I also worked for Franklin D. Richards, who is now one of the General Authorities of the Church. He had been on a mission with me in the Eastern States. I stayed at his home during my first year in Salt Lake City, and he was very helpful in getting me acquainted with students at the university. I worked for his White House Caterers as a salesman at the university, selling food and beverages for sorority and fraternity parties and various university functions. This was my first shot at the food business.

My associates at the university were nearly all returned mis­sionaries, so I was able to develop good, wholesome friendships. But here again I saw the results of both good and bad habits in our young people. It was a saddening experience for me to see some of our young students, even ex-missionaries, wasting their time and their lives in practices foreign to Church standards.

In my last year at the university I met a wonderful young girl named Alice Sheets. She had been reared in a religious family--her father had been bishop of their ward for many years before his death-and she was a fine Latter-day Saint. I fell in love with this young lady at first sight. About seven years younger than me, she was only one year behind me at school. I graduated in 1926. She graduated-with highest honors-the following year at the age, of nineteen.

I suppose the greatest blessing of life is to get a good partner in marriage, and in accomplishing this I attained my most worth­while success. Alice became my lifelong partner in everything I did. We were married in the temple in 1927.

One of the most difficult times of my life was in making the decision of what I was going to do when I finished college. My education a liberal arts course with a major in history and political science-had not prepared me to earn a living in any specific field. I could have taken a job somewhere, but I had never worked for a boss, and I still wanted the challenge and independence of working for myself. I prayed constantly to the Lord to guide me and help me in making this decision. I believe he answered my prayers, because although I got into a very difficult business, I feel that it has rendered a service and has given opportunities to hundreds of young men and women to earn a good living.

At that time, an A & W Root Beer Drive-In had opened in Salt Lake City and was doing a phenomenal business selling a five-cent glass of ice-cold root beer. Here was my opportunity. I obtained the franchise for Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia and Rich­mond and went East to go into business with one of my good friends Hugh Colton, who was finishing law school at George Washington University. Immediately after opening my first root beer stand-in Washington, D.C.-I returned to Utah to marry Allie.

After the wedding we climbed into our Model T Ford and set out for Washington. It took us eleven days to get there. There were very few paved roads in those days, and we were stuck in the mud several times. Thirty-five miles an hour was the limit of our speed, and every time we went over a hill the radiator boiled and we had to get out and put water in it. The trip was quite an experience!

Starting a new business takes a lot of work and drive. Now my previous experience began to payoff the experiences on the farm with my father in learning to work and to take responsibility, and later in working my way through college. These helped to give me a background of confidence in my ability to see the job through, and I am sure this assurance had a lot to do with my making a success of my business. And because I had a wife who was always in there pitching in, even the hard work was fun.

We had only been in business a short time when the severe depression of 1929-30 hit the country. It put millions of people out of work. Fortunately I was selling a low-priced item in a city where there was not too much unemployment, and my business thrived in spite of the depression. Then again, my business was something new. We were catering to people with automobiles and we had a market all of our own. One problem we had was in finding suitable locations. Property was expensive, especially of the size we needed for lots for drive­-ins. But we were persistent, and we approached the problem as intelligently as we knew how. My wife and I would check out a location by the cars that passed by at different times in the day, and by checking in other ways to see whether it was the right kind of neighborhood for our business. We picked some fine locations and our business grew very fast.

Another problem was that at first we had only a summer prod­uct-root beer. We needed hot foods as well. About the only hot foods we could produce from our Western background was chili and tamales and barbeques, so we put these in our drive-ins. That's the reason we took the name Hot Shoppes.

Since our first stand was near the Mexican Embassy, we got our recipes for the chili and tamales from the chef there. At first Allie made the chili and tamales. She was also our cashier. It was hard work, especially until we developed an organization. We both worked from early in the morning until about midnight. As well as working, we attended all the Church meetings we could, and always went to church at least once on Sunday. When I was arranging to open my first drive-in in Washington I had a problem in getting a permit. The idea was so new that no permit had ever been given for such a business before, and although my request was legitimate I ran up against the inertia of local gov­ernment. So I appealed to Senator Reed Smoot for help. The Senator was one of the twelve apostles, and he served in Washington for many years as a senator from Utah and wielded a lot of influence for good in the capital. Among other things he was chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee. After one telephone call from him to the agency concerned I was able to get my permit.

I was grateful to Brother Smoot for his assistance, and I like to think I was instrumental for good in his life later on. Years after the episode of the permit, my wife's mother, who had been a widow for several years, came to visit us. Senator Smoot's wife had died some time before this. I introduced Sister Sheets to the Senator and it was love at first sight. They got married and at the invitation of President Hoover, who thought highly of Senator Smoot, they spent their two-week honeymoon at the White House. This worked out as a great opportunity for Allie and me, for we now saw the White House from the inside and got acquainted with that wonder­ful family the Hoovers.

As I look back over my nearly forty-five years in Washington I can't help thinking what a tremendous influence the Church has had, both in my own life and in the lives of others. I've seen hun­dreds of young men and women come here from the West to go to school and to work. I don't think there is any group in the nation's capital that has a better reputation or that will be hired quicker for a job than a member of our Church.

Employers want young men and women who come to work with a clear mind, who are healthy and well, who have a good attitude, a good education, and who want to work. I find these qualities in most of our young people who come from the West, members of our Church. And because government officials understand some­thing about our Church and the habits and character it produces in our young people, they are eager to employ Church members.

As a stake president for many years, I have been proud of these young people who have brought much credit and admiration to the Church. My observation is that it is to the advantage of our young men and women to advertise the fact that they are Mormons. They needn't be ashamed of the gospel. Nor need they do the things that other people do which conflict with their standards, even though they must live in the world. In fact, if they do let down, the world will condemn them because it expects higher per­formance from them than from others.

I have never believed in pushing my religion on anyone, but if I can set a good example I believe that will be far more impressive and influential than words. Today we have twenty-eight thousand people working in the Marriott organization in the United States, South America and Europe. I am sure that most of these people know that my family are active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I believe this knowledge has been an influence for good.

My own organization has certainly benefited by the good Church members who have worked for it. Early in my business career I discovered how important it is that your associates in a business have good habits. Some of my most competent men fell by the wayside because of bad habits. I recall that as our business grew, I developed two really competent, able men who knew the business well. But the story was the same in each case-as soon as they started to become prosperous they took to drinking, gambling, chasing women, and doing all the things that destroy a person. I gave one of them considerable stock in my company, but it wasn't long before I had to redeem it from a pawnbroker because the man had gambled on horses and lost and had had to forfeit his stock. If he had kept that stock, he would have been worth millions of dollars today.

During my life, I suppose I have hired several hundred thousand people. I notice that the ones who really succeed are those who have developed good homes and a good family life, who have good habits and who practice their religion. Any way you look at it, there is no substitute for the good life.

My years in Washington have seen a steady increase in the public esteem for the Church. President Eisenhower had a Church member as Secretary for Agriculture, and President Nixon selected two for his original cabinet. When President Nixon wanted some­one to head up his inauguration ceremonies he picked me, and I am sure that his regard for the Church and its people had a lot to do with this choice.

I also had the privilege of being the chairman of the Honor America Day Committee in Washington, which put on a tremen­dous celebration to try to unite Americans and to call their attention to the bounties and blessings of this great land to the privilege of living in a land which I firmly believe is a land choice above all other lands. This Fourth of July celebration, which was carried on all TV networks, came at a time when students were rioting on campuses, hippies were burning the flag, and dissidents generally were trying to destroy America. The results of the Billy Graham and Bob Hope productions in this celebration helped tremendously to bring about a better atmosphere of patriotism.

But we must realize that even this favored land of America will not give us what we want. Nor was it so intended. I am a staunch believer in our free enterprise system, and I believe people need to work for what they get. Giving gifts and welfare payments to people who are able to work, weakens character and in time de­stroys the recipients. I think we should be sympathetic and helpful to those who are unfortunate and can't work, but it is a great dis­service for the government to give welfare handouts to anyone who can work and doesn't when there is a job available for him, no matter what that job may be. There are too many Americans today who want all the comforts and blessings this great country has to offer but don't want to work for them.

A long time ago I learned a poem which expressed my own deep convictions about developing character and succeeding in life. It goes like this:

The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby thing.

The man who never had to toil
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man
But lived and died as he began

Good timber does not grow with ease,
The stronger wind, the stronger trees.
The further sky, the greater length.
The more the storm, the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees and men good timbers grow.

Where thickest lies the forest growth
We find the patriarchs of both.
And they hold counsel with the stars
Whose broken branches show the scars
Of many winds and much of strife.
This is the common law of life.

That's the way it is in life. The more difficulties we overcome, the stronger we become. To put it another way, opposition is nec­essary for growth-which is what the gospel of Jesus Christ teaches.

How grateful I am for that gospel, for what the Church has done for me! And not only for me but for my family! Both of my sons have married good Mormon girls. I sent them to school in Utah for that very purpose. They could have gone to prestige universities, but I insisted that they go to Utah because I wanted them to bring home Mormon girls, and to associate with boys and girls with ideals and backgrounds similar to their own.

What a blessing it is for any young man or woman. To be able to associate with good Latter-day Saints! This Church affiliation and the development it gave me, plus the opportunities America offered, are largely responsible for whatever success I have had in family, Church, or business matters. I'll be eternally grateful. And if I had it all to do over again, I'd do it in just about the same way.