Many mornings during the 1930s, President Heber J. Grant would tee off at 6 a.m. at the Forest Dale golf course, play a few rounds, then head to the nearby Granite Stake Tabernacle for some more practice: trying to sing.
"Oh, President Grant was quite a golfer," recalled Walter Trauffer, the tabernacle's custodian at the time, "and he was anxious to improve his singing."After golfing with his friend, J. Spencer Cornwall, then Tabernacle Choir director, President Grant would sing over and over the same Church hymns, while Cornwall accompanied him on the organ, said Trauffer, 88, a former bishop.
This is just one of many colorful incidents in the 60-year history of the Granite Stake Tabernacle, an imposing structure in the Sugar House area of Salt Lake City that recently underwent renovation and was rededicated Oct. 1. Pres. Paul F. Mecham of the Salt Lake Granite Stake described the building, the stake center to some four generations, as "distinctive."
"It wasn't made from any cookie-cutter mold," he emphasized. The wood-pipe organ, cast-stone archways, mosaic tile surrounding the spire, inlaid rock, imitation gold-leaf stencils and unique mural support that claim, he said.
"By today's standards," Pres. Mecham explained, "it's pretty extravagant."
But then, so is its history. The stake was organized at the turn of the century, when population growth in the Salt Lake Valley necessitated a triple division of the Salt Lake Stake, the only stake in the valley between 1847 and 1900.
The tabernacle was completed March 1930, and dedicated by President Heber J. Grant in June 1938.
During the flooding of 1983, the tabernacle became an island. Although damage to the interior was minimal due to sandbagging efforts, said Pres. Mecham, up to five feet of muddy water sloshed past the building, isolating the tabernacle and forcing members to use another meetinghouse for quite some time.
The logistics of organizing such a move, however, were minimal in comparison to what they might have been nearly a century ago, when the total stake population passed the 9,000 mark. Compared to today's area of about 30 city blocks, or one square mile, the original stake area of 7,612 blocks, or 385 square miles, seems gargantuan. Sixty-six stakes are now in the area that encompassed the original Granite Stake.
"It's like watching the Church grow in your own backyard," said Pres. Mecham, who has been attending stake conferences in the tabernacle since he was 7 years old, and has known personally all but the first stake president. Other past leaders include Hugh B. Brown, the second stake president who later became a counselor in the First Presidency, and Spencer H. Osborn, the sixth, who was just released as a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy. Pres. Mecham is the ninth president.
The Granite Stake has been a pioneer since its early years, having initiated the first seminary program in the Church in 1912, and inaugurated a family home evening program in 1907.
