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I'm really excited to have the opportunity to interview you. I've been wanting to interview you for a long time. Ever since Dan Witherspoon told me about your book. I think I'm going to go ahead and hold up your book for our audience.

The book is called Lengthen Your Stride. The presidency of Spencer Debbie Kimball. I remember hearing about this several years ago and really enjoying and appreciating what you did.

But this is a biography. It's your second biography on Spencer Debbie Kimball, is that right?

The first was published in 1977 and it covered his life up to that point. This covers all of the presidency years from 1973 to 1985, 12 years.

And I guess it should be stated that you are the son of Spencer Debbie Kimball.

It's on the youngest of four children.

Let's talk about your life and your reflections and impressions. Maybe let's start a little bit about your father.

What can you tell us about just a quick five minute version of his upbringing and maybe what type of background led to him being prepared to become profit for the church?

He was born in 1898 in Salt Lake City, Utah. And when he was three years old his father was called to be Stake President in Arizona.

The uprooted his family moved there like a mission calling, but he was there the rest of his life until 1923, 25 years he had spent mostly in Arizona.

And my father went to school there and married there and went into business there, established an insurance and real estate agency.

And in I think in 1936 he was called to be Stake President over the area where his father had been Stake President.

What part of Arizona again?

He was in the Hele Valley. There's a new temple being built in the town adjacent to the town of Thatcher, which is where he lived for his early years and within a couple of miles of the place where we lived until 1943 when he was called to be a member of the Corps of the Twelve.

His life was that really a small town businessman who was active in the church. He was acquainted with other general authorities. His father had been a friend of Heber J. Grant when they were boys.

He was a grandson of Heber C. Kimball. Well, Golden Kimball was a son of Heber C. Kimball, so that was his uncle.

He was not an anonymous person. He was somebody who was known so that when they called him to be a member of the Corps of the Twelve, they were not dealing with a stranger.

He had, among other things, been instrumental in dealing with a flood in Dunkin' Arizona on the Heeler River.

It sort of brought attention to him because he had successfully managed the welfare effort to try to rehabilitate the town that had been severely damaged by flooding.

He had recruited church members to help bring back the town and what was suffering community.

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