Utah Gothic or Mormon Weirdness
By Contributing Writer, 12-06-05
Story and photos by Clint
Wardlow,
UtahGothic.com
For many years it was of Salt Lake City’s best-known secret. Tucked between the
Wonder Bread factory and Chuck-A-Rama near 700 South, most Salt Lake City
residents had no idea such a bizarre animal existed. Gilgal Gardens, a plot of
strange sculptures with a weird Mormon ambience, is the creation of Thomas
Battersby Child Jr., a former LDS bishop.
Child spent nearly twenty years working on the garden, located on about a
half-acre behind his home. He filled it with twelve original sculptures and over
seventy engraved stones. The most arresting of his creations is a sphinx with
the head of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Faith.
However, the garden is filled with strange carved images, such as grasshoppers
and disembodied heads (there is even a life-size statue of Childs). A visitor
must walk a stone path to view these works of art. Each stone is engraved with
biblical and literary quotes.
For years the park was open to the public only on Sundays. If someone wanted to
view the wonders of Gilgal on a day other than the Sabbath, he would need to
call a phone number listed on a sign that adorned the non-descript gate that
closed off the gardens
That didn’t stop all curious folk. Many, who only knew the place as Stoner Park,
would hop the fence at night to get high amidst the bizarre surroundings. Most
had no clue about Gilgal or how it had come into being. It was just one of those
weird quasi-Mormon places that pepper Utah.
Filmmaker
Trent Harris (Rubin
& Ed,
The Beaver Trilogy)
used the garden to memorable effect in his cult movie
Plan Ten From Outer Space.
Gilgal epitomized everything weird and wonderful about Utah and its dominant
religion.
The history of Gilgal begins in 1945 after Child retired from his role as a
bishop of the Mormon Church. He remained active in the Church, serving as the
director of the bishop’s warehouse and co-chair of Pioneer Day activities but,
to fill his otherwise spare time and re-avow his faith, he would create a
monument to the Church—one unlike any other in Mormondom.
Child enlisted the help of Utah sculptor Maurice Brooks. The two men often drove
into the canyons to acquire the materials required to accomplish this mammoth
work. Child would haul the stones (some boulders weighed as much of 72 tons) in
the bed of his truck. He named this wonderland after the fabled gardens near the
River Jordan where the Israelites had crossed on their way to the Promised Land:
Gilgal Gardens.
Gilgal was a work in progress. Child added to the garden right up to his death
in 1963. After that, Gilgal fell into limbo. Rumor has it he tried to give it to
the Church, but they didn’t want it. Mormonism was trying to embrace a clean-cut
image—they didn’t need any works that emphasized their strange history.
So there Gilgal sat for thirty years, pretty much ignored, in the shadow of the
Wonder Bread factory.
But people—folks that love the strange side of Utah the Church takes such pains
to hide, found out. They were Gilgal’s champions and spread the word about this
mondo weirdo garden to anyone that would listen. Through word-of-mouth (usually
stories of inebriated nocturnal visits to the eerie garden), Gilgal’s mystique
grew.
When, in early 2000, rumors surfaced that Gilgal was to be razed for a
condominium development, these champions leapt into action. The Friends of
Gilgal came to the rescue of their beloved garden, working tirelessly to promote
awareness of the unique sculpture garden and solicit donations to save it. And
they succeeded.
The Friends raised $600,000 (including $100, 000 ponied up by the LDS church) to
purchase Gilgal and save it from developer’s bulldozers. Gilgal’s saviors
donated the park to the city. It has since been turned into a public park
(tended by volunteer master gardeners educated by the city) where visitors can
browse its strange wonders at will. Ironically, the one day it is not open is
Sunday.
Gilgal Gardens, 452 S. 800 East
Mormon church weighs in on 'alco-pop' sales issue
The Associated Press
January 17, 2008
SALT LAKE
CITY (AP) The Mormon church said Thursday it endorses the idea of moving sweet
malt beverages known as "alco-pops'' out of Utah retail stores and onto the
shelves of state-run liquor shops.
The drinks, which have a 3.2 percent alcohol content, are popular with underage
drinkers and are sold in stores all over Utah.
"To allow the sale of distilled spirits in grocery and convenience stores
promotes underage drinking and undermines the state system of alcohol control,''
said Kim Farah, a spokeswoman for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, Utah's leading religion.
Attorney General Mark Shurtleff believes the state should make it tougher for
teens to get the drinks. The legal drinking age is 21.
Utah's Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission has asked the Legislature to
address the issue. Commission spokeswoman Sharon Mackay said the decision was
partly driven by a need to define flavored malt drinks in state law.
Mackay said the commission has not been contacted by the Mormon church.
The commission has prepared a draft bill that would define the drinks as liquor,
but no legislation has been formally introduced. Lawmakers start their annual
session Monday.
"The church agrees with the position of the Alcoholic Beverage Control
Commission and the attorney general that the sale of distilled spirits,
including so-called alcopops, should be restricted to state liquor stores,''
Farah said, reading from a statement.
With that statement, "there's no doubt that the battle just got tougher,'' James
Olsen, president of the Utah Food Industry Association, told The Salt Lake
Tribune.
The group represents more than 8,000 stores that sell flavored malt beverages.
Mormons are told to abstain from alcohol, but the church said it supports the
state's philosophy that alcohol should be "reasonably available'' to responsible
adults.
Rebuttal: Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Nehemiah 8:10
THE MORMON BIGFOOT GENESIS THEORY
February 5, 2008
10zenmonkeys.com
Is it Bigfoot?
Or a fugitive from the garden of Eden. Or maybe both.
The Journal of Mormon History recently published a new investigation into
stories suggesting that the giant Sasquatch monster is really Cain, the
murderous second son of Adam and Eve.
It may not be the first controversy tackled by new Mormon President, Thomas S.
Monson. But the article's author, Matthew Bowman cites a 1919 manuscript
describing Hawaiian missionary E. Wesley Smith "being attacked by a huge, hairy
creature, whom Smith drives off in the name of Christ" the night before the
mission was dedicated. His brother tells him the attacker must've been Cain.
("Now therefore cursed shalt thou be upon the earth, which hath opened her mouth
and received the blood of thy brother at thy hand...a fugitive and a vagabond
shalt thou be upon the earth.") And then he refers him to a story by a
celebrated Mormon martyr who was one of Joseph Smith's original twelve apostles.
In 1835, as evening fell, missionary David W. Patten had spotted a figure
walking near his mule in Tennessee. His tall, dark body was covered with hair,
he wore no clothing, and... ...he
replied that he had no home, that he was a wanderer in the earth and traveled to
and fro. He said he was a very miserable creature, that he had earnestly sought
death during his sojourn upon the earth, but that he could not die, and his
mission was to destroy the souls of men.
I rebuked him in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by virtue of the Holy
Priesthood, and commanded him to go hence, and he immediately departed out of my
sight.
"As best as I can determine, the explicit connection to Bigfoot arises around
1980 in Davis County, Utah," Bowman writes on the Mormon Mentality site.
"At that point in time, you have a conjunction of two things — 1) the
publication of
The Miracle of Forgiveness, which reprinted the original Patten story; 2) a
rash of Bigfoot sightings.
"By the mid-1980s, the two strains of folklore begin to fuse, and the story
gains resurgence, particularly on Utah's college campuses."
The book of Genesis does specify that God issued the mark of Cain, "that
whosoever found him should not kill him." But did that confer immortality?
On the Mormon Folklore blog, Bowman received an interested response from
someone who'd heard Patten's story at the church's Missionary Training Center,
"where he was on his horse and eye-to-eye with the standing Bigfoot."
[O]ne of the missionaries suggested that this is another example of Satan copying the ways of God. His logic was that God preserved the lives of John the Baptist and the Three Nephites to work as agents for Him until the end of time — Satan did the same thing with Cain (thus, the ability to live through the flood).
There's already been a controversy about the Mormon church's teachings on Cain.
Brigham Young believed that God punished Cain's ancestors, and that "the mark of
Cain" was: black skin. The same belief continued through a 1966 edition of the
church reference book Mormon Doctrine, and black Mormons were banned from
the church's priesthood. But at that same time, church president David O. McKay
announced that "It is a practice, not a doctrine, and the practice will some day
be changed." The position was ultimately reversed by church president Spencer W.
Kimball, and the church ordained its first black priest in 1978. (Thomas S.
Monson, the new Mormon President, conducted that priest's marriage and sacred
ordinances.)
Eugene England, a professor at Brigham Young University, addressed "the Cain
legacy" in a 1998 article in Sunstone magazine.
This is
a good time to remind ourselves that most Mormons are still in denial about the
ban, unwilling to talk in Church settings about it, and that some Mormons still
believe that blacks were cursed by descent from Cain through Ham...
I check occasionally in classes at BYU and find that still, twenty years after
the revelation, a majority of bright, well-educated Mormon students say they
believe that blacks are descendants of Cain and Ham and thereby cursed...
Of course, Mormon theory has faced skepticism before, like the blog commenter
who opined that "The bible is just a waste of paper and the Book of Mormon is
even less useful." But regardless of its credibility, the new attention to the
"Bigfoot" legend provided an interesting opportunity to examine the way the
church's theology had evolved.
"I find the idea that Cain, the original Son of Perdition in our theology, would
degenerate into something half human/half animal is notable..." wrote blogger
Fenevad. "[D]id it occur when Brigham Young was teaching that the Sons of
Perdition would fall prey to eternal retrogression? ... Perhaps one message of
the story is that evil is big and scary, but ultimately controllable."
And another comment notes that it's not the first time monsters from folklore
have found their way into religious debates.
That reminds me of the story that I used to hear that the Loch Ness Monster was a surviving dinosaur, thus proving that the earth is not as old as scientists say it is. Uniquely Mormon? No. But I have heard variations on that one as a way to argue for young earth creationism among Church members back when that seemed to be a hot issue.
Over at Museum of Hoaxes site, blogger Alex Boese couldn't resist making
the obvious joke. "[I]f Bigfoot is Cain, maybe Nessie is really the snake from
the Garden of Eden."
But in a 21st century flood of information and misinformation, the discussion
offers its own testament to the way new generations will grapple with questions
about faith, folklore, and our popular culture.
Even if the commenters at the Mormon Folklore blog add their own twist.
I also
seem to remember a story about a noted church leader — I think his name was
Childs — sitting next to Cain on an airplane and starting up a discussion about
the Book of Mormon only to have Cain tell him that his mission in life was to
destroy the souls of men, especially the younger generation...
Hang on, no, wait... that was Mick Jagger. My bad.
The day had finally dawned. After 12 years of being girlfriend and girlfriend, Holly Miller and P.R. Banks were getting married. Dressed in a cream trouser suit with a sparkly pink top, Holly, 44, looked radiant as she adjusted a silver tiara on her highlighted hair. P.R., who won't reveal her age, looked equally serene, wearing a traditional wedding gown with a matching tiara perched atop her elegant blonde bun.
"I take you, P.R., to be my beloved," Holly told P.R., looking into her eyes. In the front row, Holly's mum sat enthralled by the ceremony, held in the upstairs function room of a popular upscale restaurant; her father looked vaguely bored. On the right of the makeshift altar, two of the six ushers standing solemnly in shirtsleeves and ties were women.
This was no ordinary gay wedding, if any gay wedding could be construed as ordinary. It took place recently in my hometown of Salt Lake City, Utah, which doesn't have a reputation for being exceptionally progressive or tolerant.
The city is known as the seat of Mormonism in the U.S. The religion, established in upstate New York in the 1820s, takes its teachings from the Book of Mormon, an additional scripture of the Bible which tells of a visit by Jesus to North America. In wider terms, Mormonism is associated with strict religious beliefs and polygamy, although the church has disavowed the practice.
When I was growing up, my school was about 95 percent Mormon. I was one of three Jewish students in my year and my family was looked down on for drinking coffee and tea, which contain “stimulants” the church is against. I've lost track of the times I was asked when I was planning to convert. This was my first trip back in years from my adopted home of Hampstead, north London.
At the moment, Massachusetts is the only American state where civil marriage is legal for gays and lesbians. But surprisingly, Holly and P.
R.'s wedding was more than just a public demonstration of their commitment. In September 2005, Salt Lake's then mayor, Rocky Anderson issued an Executive Order granting same-sex partners in the City proper the same health and other employment benefits available to heterosexual couples. Executive orders have the force of law based on existing statutory powers, and require no outside backing for them to be enforced.
"Fundamental principles of fairness and justice obligated me to grant equal benefits to same-sex domestic partners of employees," Anderson told me. "While my Executive Order granting equal benefits was unpopular in some quarters, even spurring lawsuits, it was the right thing to do."
One couple which has benefited from his laws is MaryEtta Chase, a former Mormon housewife with three grown daughters, and partner Shelle Marchant, whose own mum grew up in a fundamentalist polygamist household. Shelle drives heavy machinery for the City of Salt Lake, and their civil ceremony two years ago means MaryEtta enjoys the same medical benefits Shelle's colleagues' wives get. "It's all about love,"
says MaryEtta, stroking Shelle's hand at the reception as the presiding Reverend Bruce Barton of the Metropolitan Community Church, wearing an Indian headdress, danced to the Village People's YMCA with a handful of other guests.
A former Mormon missionary, Reverend Barton has been with his male partner for 30 years and has an eleven-year-old son. He didn't actually come out - to himself or others - until he was almost 30. "I thought I couldn't be gay as the only gays I knew of were flaming queens, and I wasn't," he says.
Holly, who works in health care information technology, was one of my most sensible friends while we were growing up. She grew up Baptist and had several long-term girlfriends over the years, but P.R. was obviously The One. "The first time we met, Holly sang and played her guitar for me, and I fell in love," says P.R. "I've been in love her ever since, and I always wanted to get married. For me, this wedding is a dream come true."
P.R. also comes from a devout Mormon family. A former care assistant studying to become a hairdresser, she is the youngest of ten children.
Although both her parents have died, she doubts they would have attended her wedding to Holly. In fact, only one of her many siblings showed up, an elder brother. A sister had previously agreed to be a bridesmaid but backed out six weeks before the Big Day.
So what's next for Holly and P.R.? In the immediate future, they are going on a week-long Caribbean cruise with Olivia, a travel company that caters to lesbians. "We are so excited! Neither of us have ever been on a cruise before, or to the Caribbean!" Holly told me on her hen night, held in a women's sports bar called Mo Diggity's. "And everyone will be gay!" Now there's a change.
Ken Wynn
ran the DABC for 30 years. Now, he wants to fix Utah’s crazy laws
07/17/2008
A lavender-lined path in Red Butte Garden leads to a quiet nook guarded by pines. Two benches there offer a tranquility punctuated by bird song and nearby children’s laughter. One is dedicated to the memory of Verna Wynn, the other to her son, Brian. When Brian died of AIDS in 1994, his father, Ken Wynn, asked for gifts to the arboretum in lieu of flowers. He did the same when his wife Verna died in 1999. Ken Wynn’s colleagues from the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, where he was director for 30 years, and members of the hospitality industry, which the DABC oversees, contributed over $20,000 to pay for the alcove. For two groups who have fought many hard-bitten battles over Utah’s liquor laws, tragedy for two brief moments brought them together.
Ken Wynn is Utah’s “Mr. Liquor.” For 30 years, under four governors, Ken Wynn directed one of the state’s most powerful and controversial agencies, overseeing the sale and control of alcohol throughout Utah. Now 72, Wynn retired from the DABC in June 2007. A few months ago, he married for the second time. Along with this change in his personal life, the man who steered Utah’s $265 million-in-annual-sales liquor agency for three decades has taken a hard look at his life’s work.
And Wynn doesn’t like what he sees when it comes to how the DABC, in cahoots with the Attorney General’s office, bullies private clubs over alleged liquor-law violations.
“Kenny was a good soldier,” says Jim Sgueo, president of the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association. “I never knew a director who had a better handle on finances and budgeting.” Wynn and his deputy, Dennis Kellen, ran the state’s liquor stores. Under Wynn for 18 years was also regulatory director Earl Dorius, who continues to manage the educational department that helps licensees comply with the law. Dorius also presides over prehearings with the attorney general’s office on licensee violations brought to him by law enforcement.
Wynn reported to the five-person commission, appointed by the governor to serve staggered terms. The commission is charged with implementing liquor laws, including approving new licenses and settlements with violators. Until recently, former DABC compliance officer-turned-attorney Rick Golden says the commission typically consisted of white, Mormon, male lawyers. Now, there’s a new commission in town—three women and two men, only two of whom are lawyers. Their mostly open-minded approach to Utah’s liquor laws is apparent in the recent staging of public hearings on repealing private-club membership requirements.
Wynn is now watching the commission and the DABC as a board member of the Utah Hospitality Association, a lobby group of bar owners. He takes no compensation for the job. A twinkling-eyed grandfather, Wynn drives around town in a Ford Thunderbird with a vanity license plate proclaiming “DA BIRD.” He approaches everything on his own terms, whether as a beer-friendly Mormon or in his work at the Utah Hospitality Association. The man who says he would often go home and pound the walls in frustration at the liquor laws the Legislature passed or at the dictatorial high-handedness of some former commissioners is now lobbying for a better world for Utah’s drinkers and liquor licensees. Finally, it seems, he’s free to speak his mind.
Wynn has survived two sons and his first wife, along with a bout of heavy drinking to cope with his grief. After Verna Wynn died, DABC’s spokeswoman and Wynn’s administrative assistant for seven years Sharon Mackay says the agency became his family. Indeed it’s tempting to see his former deputy, 65-year-old Kellen, now the DABC’s director, and regulatory director Dorius as Wynn’s younger brothers. Now, as if out of the script of a 1960s John Wayne Western, Wynn has returned to the ranch house to put his family—and his legacy—in order.
The “misbehaving” relative is ex-state prosecutor Earl Dorius. “He did a hell of
a job for me,” Wynn says. But prosecution, he adds, is in Dorius’ blood, it’s
his nature. And it’s Dorius’ punitive DABC role with which Wynn now finds fault.
“I didn’t like it then, I don’t like it now,” Wynn says, over a beer at his friend Randy Finnas’ Murray establishment, the Barbary Coast Saloon. “It’s just a conflict of interest. You don’t license, regulate and punish all in the same spot.”
Yet Wynn oversaw the very process he’s now criticizing. He sat to the left of the commissioners each month, as they approved—or rejected—the settlements of bars and restaurants’ violations. So why, after so long, is he challenging Dorius, a man he regards as a friend? “I should have done it sooner,” Wynn admits.
For years, he thought the system was fine. Then, he heard some club operators were getting strong-armed. Wynn cites one club’s 2007 violation for serving an intoxicated person. The club received a letter proposing a 15-day closure for the alleged violation. The club’s manager called assistant attorney general Sheila Page to complain, Wynn says, that the punishment was too harsh. When the manager asked what would happen if the club appealed the sentence, Wynn says Page’s offered this response: He would get more than 15 days in the dark.
That Wynn should be standing up for bar owners against the DABC doesn’t surprise some. Former DABC compliance officer Golden recalls Wynn held little faith in what he describes as “detail-orientated rules, such as membership.” Wynn’s approach was simple, Golden says. “He was more of a ‘Let’s try and keep it simple, stupid. Keep your nose clean when it comes to serving minors or intoxicated customers.’”
Wynn’s personal tragedies showed licensees and the DABC could find common ground in a pine-sheltered alcove high above Salt Lake City. He hopes his new role will provide further reconciliation. “There’s no question there’s a sense of fear out there [among bar owners]—as much as I tried and tried over the years to convince them, “We’re not here to put you guys out of business, we’re here to keep you in compliance,’” Wynn says.
“I don’t want to do battle with the department, although I know it looks like that,” he adds. “It’s about fairness.”
Ken Wynn was born in 1936 in Thermopolis, Wyo. Raised by a strict Mormon mother
and a bourbon-drinking father who resisted entering the LDS Church until his son
was 32, Wynn shared some of his father’s diffidence about his mother’s faith.
While Wyoming, like Utah, is a liquor-control state, its approach to control is quite different. Wynn was raised with open public bars and billboards touting liquor. He drank his first beer when he was 19, just before he married Verna, as equally devout a Mormon as his mother. Just prior to the wedding, Wynn was baptized LDS. “I thought it was about time,” he says.
With a degree in bookkeeping, Wynn was appointed a state income-tax auditor in Eleanor, Mont., in 1962. After a theft and bribery scandal in Montana’s state liquor operations, Wynn in 1973 took over the newly formed liquor division. Despite his faith’s condemnation of alcohol, Wynn took a less critical view. “It’s a legal product, so I figured people have the right to drink if they wanted to,” he says.
Montana politics were controlled by an odd coalition of bankers, churches and cattlemen’s associations. Wynn took products off the shelves that weren’t selling, running afoul of liquor companies and their brokers. In 1977, Wynn’s new boss, a former beer distributor, fired him. Wynn was 41.
Utah Gov. Scott Matheson appointed Wynn director of the DABC in the fall of 1977. His wife had mixed feelings about leaving her first son’s grave behind in Montana. Two years before, at the end of a day of tobogganing, 17-year-old David tied his sled to the back of a car. As he rode the toboggan down the hill, he lost control, careened off the road and hit a rock. He had severe brain damage and was comatose for seven months, paralyzed from the neck down. “He’s not going to make it,” a doctor told the family. “I hated him,” Wynn says now about the pull-no-punches physician.
After David’s death, Wynn grew closer to his church. “I just thought we needed to get active, to get to the temple, to have our kids sealed to us,” he says, referencing the Mormon ritual to unify families for existence in an afterlife. Not that he experienced the moment of divine inspiration most Mormons cite as part of their rite of passage into the church. “I don’t know I ever got there, but I spent a lot of time praying,” he says.
In 1933, Utah was the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment, and in so doing became the deciding vote in repealing national prohibition. But since enacting its own 1935 Liquor Control Act, Utah has been, in every sense of the word, a control state. The act established a government monopoly over liquor, making spirits only available in state-run stores. Unlike the other 17 control states, Wynn says, Utah regulates liquor for moral, rather than tax-revenue purposes.
LDS Church involvement in the liquor laws never surprised Wynn. The church was like any other special-interest group, he says, be it bankers or insurance companies.
Just how big a role the church played in liquor policy was apparent in the demise of the legendary mini-bottle in 1990. The forerunner to the Utah Hospitality Association, the Private Club Association and local law enforcement supported dumping the 1.7 ounce mini-bottle, in part because the volume of alcohol it contained got many people drunk. Then-compliance officer Rick Golden wrote a position paper advocating metered, one-ounce liquor dispensing. A bill proposing the new system garnered no support on Capitol Hill. Then, Golden’s paper, Wynn says, found some attentive readers in the LDS Church hierarchy. Overnight, 28 legislative co-sponsors signed on.
Wynn’s hardest years at the DABC were spent with commissioners he terms as “zealots.” Chief on his list is one-time chairman Nick Hales. Wynn complains Hales was “so Mormon,” dictatorial, and anti-alcohol. An attorney and Internet security business owner, Hales served from 1991 to 2007, seven years as chairman.
When the DABC wanted to list liquor stores in the phone book, Hales labeled it “advertising” and said no. “How could a phone number and an address be advertising?” Wynn growls. “It didn’t make sense.” Hales says the statute did not allow it but that eventually, they found a way around it.
Their biggest fight was in 2003 over amendments to private clubs that banned children from bars and social clubs. Dorius, Wynn says, went along with it, even when Wynn told his fellow LDS colleague how he’d take his 7-year-old grandson to a private club for lunch. Wynn had dated a woman who took her eight grandchildren to the Barbary Coast every Sunday for breakfast.
“Taking business away from bars was so unfair,” Wynn says. He and Hales argued, “and it got nasty,” Wynn says. He offered to raise the markup on alcohol a half percent if children could stay in bars until 6 p.m. “No deal, Ken,” Wynn says Hales told him. “I’ve already raised the markup 1 percent.” There was no negotiating with Hales. “He just did it,” Wynn says. Hales doesn’t remember any such conversation. He says he didn’t call the shots when it came to the laws. Wynn’s involvement in the legislative process, he adds, was minimal.
In his personal life, Wynn remained plagued by tragedy. In 1989, the Wynn’s
second oldest son, 29-year-old broadcast journalist Brian, returned to Salt Lake
City after several years working for Alaskan TV. He fell ill, although he never
told his family what was wrong until 1994, when he was dying. By then,
complications from AIDS had taken his eyesight.
Wynn and his wife, Verna, tended their son at home for the last months of his life. The Wynns were devout Mormons at the time. Ken Wynn had told his bishop he needed time off from teaching Sunday School because he was visiting his son daily in the hospital. When Brian came home, Ken Wynn was about to resume his ecclesiastical duties when he heard an LDS general authority gave a speech at Brigham Young University.
“It offended the hell out of me,” Ken Wynn recalls. “He basically condemned everybody, particularly gays and lesbians.” What was he supposed to do, Wynn remembers thinking: Throw his son out on the street? To hell with it, he thought.
“I kind of walked away from the church.”
When Brian died in 1994, Wynn says, his wife “just gave up.” Verna had struggled with lung problems much of her life. In 1999, suffering from anemia, she went into kidney failure.
“When he lost his children, he and his wife always had each other to lean on,” says national colleague Jim Sgueo. “When she passed away, he had a tough go of it for a while.” Wynn spent more and more time at work. Friends suggested he undergo therapy. He thought he could handle the mourning process. “Then something happened, I’d see a scene in a TV show, and I couldn’t handle it anymore.”
Wynn still struggles. He recalls Brian playing baseball as a child with his brothers, and says he could tell the boy was gay, based on his mannerisms. “It was just the way it was,” he says, his chin trembling. Wynn removes his glasses, wipes his eyes. “He was a neat, neat kid.”
The occasional drink became more frequent, Wynn says, to numb his grief. Not that the drinking affected his work. Wynn still arrived every day at 3 or 4 a.m., something he pointed out to Nick Hales when the commissioner came to “clear the air,” Wynn says, about rumors he was an alcoholic.
After Verna died, some liquor brokers and bar owners who shared his passion for golf took him under their wings. Wynn got to know several private-club owners well. “They were just good guys, trying to make a living,” he says. His empathy for bar owners grew the more he saw how they suffered under Hales’ commission. “There were times Nick just wouldn’t be reasonable,” Wynn says, with regard to implementing legislation to the letter or imposing draconian punishments of bars caught in alleged violations.
Hales’ and Wynn’s falling out was bookended by two scandals. A state audit revealed that between November 1998 and May 2003, DABC administrative manager Richard Pearson had misappropriated $130,308. Pearson, who hung up on a call from City Weekly for comment, was accused of using the agency’s petty-cash fund to make what the audit called “inappropriate disbursements both to [Pearson] and to others out of the account.” If there were other agency executives involved, only Pearson ended up in court.
The January 2004 published audit was “very critical of Ken and Dennis,” Hales says. Wynn, ever blunt, agrees. “The auditors would tell you we didn’t do our job; we should have dug that out a long time ago.” The commissioners wanted Pearson fired; Wynn refused. “Richard would give you the shirt off his back,” he says. “I wouldn’t do it.” Instead he let Pearson “retire.”
Pearson was convicted and served 150 days in jail. Wynn had other problems that year, too. While attending an out-of-town meeting of liquor agencies, he got drunk and made “out of line” comments he refuses to specify. A senior executive told Wynn such behavior couldn’t be tolerated. Wynn says he quit drinking hard liquor.
The chill between Hales and Wynn reached a deep freeze. For the last two years of Wynn’s leadership of the DABC, Hales did not communicate with its director. Hales spoke to Dorius or then Operations Manager Kellen. Wynn says he sent Hales e-mails asking what was wrong but received no reply.
Hales says their cold war is a private matter.
The men have never reached a truce. Consider the matter of Hales’ portrait at DABC headquarters. Just before Wynn retired, the framed photograph disappeared from the office gallery of commissioner portraits. Hales says he got a phone call shortly after he and Wynn retired last year telling him the picture had been removed. Hales’ only comment: “Ken’s a bitter man.”
Wynn says he doesn’t know about the picture’s fate—and couldn’t care less. “I would hope to never see that son of a bitch in the building again.”
A couple of years after the legislative audit on Pearson, the agency suffered another pummeling from a state audit—this time over allegations of double dipping. Between 2000 and 2005, 12 DABC senior employees took retirement, worked part-time for six months, then came back on full or half salaries. Earl Dorius was the first of two management chiefs to take advantage of a law enacted by the Legislature in January 2000. Newspaper editorials labeled the practice a loophole that needed closing.
“It was perfectly legal,” Wynn says defiantly. “I signed off on every single one of them. If I had to do it over again, I would.”
The final skirmish between Hales and Wynn was over Wynn’s replacement. Wynn says he e-mailed Hales, telling him he would retire after a successor had been named. Hales insisted Wynn would not name his own replacement. True to the tight-knit family nature of Wynn’s DABC, no national search was conducted for the position nor were other candidates considered. All five DABC commissioners approved the appointment of Dennis Kellen, who had Wynn’s back for 30 years as his deputy.
“There was a feeling Dennis had earned it,” Hales says.
Commissioner Kathryn Balmforth joined the board in 2005. She views her “yes” vote in the 2007 appointment as “engineered,” and it still rankles her a year later. It wasn’t that she opposed Kellen, she says. It was, simply, given the importance of the position, there was neither criteria for the appointment nor any evaluation of the candidate.
When Balmforth started on the commission three years ago, she noticed that then-director Wynn was, she says, “untouchable.” The only way he could be fired was to show cause. And since Wynn wasn’t evaluated from 1997 on, there was no way to document cause.
In the end, Hales and Wynn left on the same day, June 30, 2007. “Which really disappointed me,” Wynn says. “I wanted to outlast the son of a bitch so bad.”
Wynn even has a favorite to someday replace Kellen—52-year-old John Freeman. He replaced Kellen as deputy director. A friend of Wynn’s for 30 years, Freeman is also a certified peace officer. He keeps his police accreditation by doing 40 hours a year service at the Harrisville Police Department, north of Ogden.
In 2003, Freeman left a job managing Granite Furniture, where he’d worked for nearly 25 years, to join the DABC. After two years in the compliance division, Freeman took over human resources. While there, he assigned himself $16 per hour security work at the state liquor store at 205 West 400 South. Ken Wynn saw no conflict of interest. “He took a tremendous pay cut to come to us,” he recalls. “He needed some money and, [since he was] a certified police officer, I said, ‘Why not?’”
Whether Kellen and Freeman’s promotions are exactly in keeping with the agency’s mission statement of maintaining “sound management principles and practices,” is debatable. It’s clear, nevertheless, Wynn values loyalty to friends and to his DABC family. Even to the point, it might be argued, of ensuring long life for what appears to be an old-boys’ club. One indeed that will reflect his influence for years to come.
The Utah Hospitality Association was anxious to sign up the retired Wynn as a board member. “Just your name, your connections will help us,” board members told him. And Wynn has run with the assignment.
Back in 1989, Wynn brought Earl Dorius into the agency. Dorius’ relationship with the DABC dated back to 1981, when then-Assistant Attorney General Dorius was assigned to the liquor agency as legal counsel. Dorius enjoyed notoriety after handling the death-row appeals of one of the Ogden Hi-Fi Shop killers and Gary Gilmore’s execution. In late 1989, incoming Democratic Attorney General Paul Van Dam shuffled Dorius sideways into public utilities. Wynn says Dorius wanted out.
Kellen and Wynn visited Gov. Scott Matheson and asked his blessing on adding Dorius as the DABC’s in-house attorney.
Dorius was also hearing examiner for a year, until he and Wynn decided it would be better for an external officer to hear violation cases that had not been resolved at pre-hearings. “I felt I could be fair, but I didn’t want the perception of unfairness,” Dorius says.
That, however, is exactly what he’s got. Clearfield’s Bogey’s club co-owner Mark Livingstone calls the prehearing process a “a kangaroo court.” Piper Down owner Dave Morris complains bar owners are automatically guilty in the DABC’s eyes.
Morris characterizes a meeting with Dorius and assistant attorney general Sheila Page: “They say, ‘This is what you did; this is what you get; end of story.’” Which is one reason why, Livingstone says, every licensee is scared to death of the DABC.
Rep. Curt Oda, R-Clearfield, says he heard from friends who own bars, including Livingstone, that Dorius and particularly Public Safety’s liquor-law-enforcement division were acting like “the Gestapo” going after bar violations. Oda threatened legislation to transfer Dorius’ punitive duties to the attorney general’s office and then accepted commitments from the DABC to effectively be “nicer” to licensees. Wynn praises Oda for raising the issue but says the bill “wouldn’t have done a damned bit of good. Page prosecutes the cases now and she wouldn’t change.” He suggests a full-time administrative law judge should deal with the pre-hearings. Whoever it is, the judge must know the liquor laws.
“Monday morning quarterbacking” is how Hales describes Wynn’s criticism of Dorius. Dorius’ reputation as someone who loves to close clubs down is undeserved, Hales says. “The biggest criticism from the conservatives on the commission was that Earl was too willing to do whatever he could to keep a licensee in place.”
What matters to Wynn, though, is that most bar owners don’t have the $20,000 (the cost bar owners cite) to fight a violation charge. They feel they have no choice but to roll over. “Earl’s got too many complaints from licensees about the heavy-handedness of the department,” Wynn says.
Dorius deflects his friend’s criticism. Their relationship is complicated. “Ken has a kind of love-hate relationship with me,” he says. “He genuinely loves me and the effort I’ve given this agency. He just doesn’t like this one little corner of what I do.” He adds with a strained laugh, “Hey, it’s my job.”
Civilian Wynn has a significant ally in new commission Chairman Sam Granato, who agrees on moving the screening and prehearings of violations out of the DABC. “We’re here to be [licensees’] friends, not their enemies,” deli and restaurant owner Granato says. He prefers providing a better training program for licensees rather than a punishment program. As to what legislators would make of such a move, he responds, “Wouldn’t that be interesting?”
When Wynn retired, he promised his tearful staff the process would be seamless.
But there are differences in style between Wynn and Vietnam veteran Kellen. For
a start, Wynn’s top rule as director was that he alone spoke for the department.
Kellen, on the other hand, mirrors so many other agency heads these days by
directing media inquiries to a public information officer.
Other departures from Wynn’s approach include on-hold music played on the telephone. Another is new electronic locks on all the doors.
Much of Wynn’s value to the Utah Hospitality Association is access. He recently took some of the UHA board to meet with Dorius, Freeman and Kellen. Several group members came away—to their own surprise—favorably impressed with Dorius.
“There’s room for coming to terms, for negotiation,” Wynn insists. And he’s playing a part in that, bringing his state-friendly profile to the fight. The governor’s office recently contacted Wynn for his own, and UHA’s, views on liquor control. When Wynn learned that cops had gone to a bar claiming the DABC had asked them to “keep an eye” on the place, he went straight to Dorius. Dorius denied giving those instructions. “Because of who I am, I can contact a licensee and say, ‘We’re not doing that,’” Wynn says.
As Wynn works for change in laws he represented for three decades, he also does the same in his private life. He and his new wife, Jeanene, have talked about going back to the LDS Church. He hasn’t decided whether to give up beer. “It’s part of the Word of Wisdom,” he says, referring to the church’s scriptural edict against tobacco, alcohol and caffeine.
He pauses for a moment before finishing his beer and paying off his tab. “When you hit that final judgment day,” he says with a quiet smile, “I don’t think that will be a big issue.”
Temple Square restaurants cater to Mormon cuisine
By Kathy Stephenson
The Salt Lake Tribune
07/20/2008
Buddy and Lori Jefferson could have
celebrated their eighth wedding anniversary at a pricey steakhouse, an elegant
French bistro or even a tiny Italian cafe while visiting Salt Lake City
recently.
Instead, the Idaho Falls couple chose a place that feeds the Utah soul -
historic Temple Square.
Their choice is not unusual.
Each year more than 120,000 people of all faiths - from all over the world -
dine at one of the four restaurants on the 10-acre site that serves as
headquarters for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
"This is just the top of the world to come here," said Lori Jefferson as she
gazed out the picturesque window of The Roof restaurant, located on the 10th
floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building at 15 E. South Temple.
The Roof is Temple Square's fine dining establishment. It offers an
expansive buffet with a one-of-a-kind view of the Salt Lake Temple, the LDS
Tabernacle and the city's western skyline.
The Garden Restaurant, also on the top floor of the Smith Building, has a
more casual atmosphere - as does the Nauvoo Cafe, on the building's ground
floor, and the Lion House Pantry, the cafeteria-style restaurant in the basement
of Brigham Young's historic three-story home to the east.
All four restaurants serve classic comfort food that is a trademark of the
Mormon culture, says Neil Wilkinson, Temple Square Hospitality's marketing
director.
"No matter where they travel, guests want to come and experience the food of
the area," said Wilkinson. "When you are in Amish country, you want an Amish
experience. And when you are in Mormon country, you want a Mormon experience."
Mormon food. While Texas is synonymous with barbecue and Louisiana is famous
for gumbo, Mormon cuisine is more difficult to define. It requires an
understanding of the people and their history.
Members of the LDS faith typically have large extended families, all of whom
devote significant amounts of time to church callings. Often only one spouse
works and 10 percent of that lone income is tithed to the LDS church.
While members today come from all over the world, the pioneers that settled
Utah were mostly from Scandinavian countries, not necessarily known for their
use of exotic spices or ingredients.
All combined, that means Mormon meals - whether it is a weeknight dinner or
a church pot luck - must be easy to prepare, economical and feed the multitudes.
While that can include any number of foods from baked ham to spaghetti and
meatballs, two foods have come to represent Utah culinary culture - Jell-O and
cheesy "funeral" potatoes.
Those stereotypes often overlook the baking skills of Mormon cooks. Many
parents - mostly mothers - teach their children at an early age how to bake
bread, rolls, cakes, cookies and pies, often using old-fashioned recipes that
link them to their pioneer heritage.
At a Temple Square restaurant, that means a gourmand will be disappointed.
But for those who yearn for pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy, turkey pot
pie or homemade rolls, this is the place.
Tourist favorite. Wilkinson said Temple Square Hospitality's busy season
starts in April with LDS General Conference and continues through September,
when dining peaks.
In June, for example, 18,000 people ate at one of the restaurant or banquet
facilities. Of those, at least 50 percent were tourists, he said. The Lion House
Pantry, famous for its fluffy dinner rolls, handled the bulk of the traffic,
serving about 11,000 people.
The numbers are not surprising when one considers that Temple Square is the
capital city's biggest tourist attraction. Guests come to tour the immaculate
gardens, hear the renowned Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing or search their
genealogy. In between, they have to eat.
Mary Ellen Elggren, owner of Clawson Shields Tours, said the Temple Square
restaurants are a "double attraction" for tourists.
"You can combine a meal with a historic building," she said.
Because tour groups are often on a tight schedule - and budget - fast-food
and chain restaurants are often where guests eat. Temple Square offers a more
gratifying meal and satisfies the curiosity many have of the Mormons.
"I really didn't know what to expect," admitted tourist Marge Lambert, a
Wisconsin resident who ate at The Roof during a recent tour. "But I was looking
forward to the experience."
Tourists who purchase the Connect Pass or Connect Pass City Tour, through
the Salt Lake Convention & Visitors Bureau, also get a free meal at the Lion
House, said Shawn Stinson, the director of communications.
The passes allow tourists to pay one price and visit several city
attractions. About 60 percent of those who buy the pass take advantage of the
free meal. The comfort food is just part of the draw.
"It's the epicenter of a world church and it's interesting to visitors,"
said Stinson, likening Temple Square to touring Vatican City, home to the Roman
Catholic Church.
Except, at St. Peter¹s Basilica, there isn't a restaurant next door that
serves heavenly rolls.