President Boyd K. Packer observed his 75th birthday Sept. 10. Three-quarters of a century have passed since he was born in 1924 in Brigham City, Utah, the 10th of 11 children of Ira Wright Packer, a garage mechanic, and Emma Jensen Packer, a mother who devoted full-time attention to the care of her family.
Now acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve, President Packer commemorated his birthday with his wife, Donna Smith Packer, and members of their family.
An educator by profession before he became a General Authority, he has continued to teach and instruct; he is known particularly for insightful, thought-provoking addresses in general conference, Church Educational System firesides and other Church-sponsored occasions. He has been known to take advantage of teaching moments as he has visited with missionaries — individually or collectively — during extensive travels throughout the Church. He has written many books, each of which contains valuable lessons centered on the gospel of Jesus Christ.
After he served in the Army Air Corps from 1942-46, he received a bachelor of science degree in 1949 and a master's in 1954, both from Utah State University in Logan. He taught seminary full-time and was supervisor of seminaries and institutes for the Church. In October 1961, when he was called as an Assistant to the Council of the Twelve, he was completing work on a doctorate in education, which he received from BYU in 1962. He was sustained to the Quorum of the Twelve in April 1970. He has been serving as acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve since June 5, 1994.
President Packer has spent much of his life as a teacher, not in the formal sense of one who stands before a class but in the manner of one who turns a variety of experiences into object lessons or teaching moments.
A casual leafing through past conference addresses reveals dozens of talks in which he has related experiences — his own or others' — and has commented, "I learned a lesson from that," or "that taught me a lesson."
Many lessons, he said in the April 1982 general conference, do not take place in the formal setting of a room with table, chairs and chalkboard. Nor need they be lengthy. For example, he once he sat on a log for 10 minutes and counseled a young man to return to school.
And many times, he is the one who has done the learning. In the October 1972 general conference, he spoke of an elderly widow who taught him a valuable lesson when she told him of an argument she'd had with her husband years earlier. President Packer said that the elderly woman could not remember what started the argument or what it had been about, but she remembered following her husband to the gate and calling out a "last biting spiteful remark" as he left for work. The widow wept, saying that her husband had been killed in an accident that day and she had lived the ensuing 50 years with the bitter knowledge that the last word he heard from her was her spiteful remark. The widow's words comprised, he said, "the lesson I have never forgotten."
He considers his most important teaching moments to have been in his home, to his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Sister Packer recalled that one evening another General Authority was visiting their home. When a child had a question about something, President Packer excused himself to talk with the child. "He always takes time to answer the children's questions," Sister Packer commented.
As he reflected on his 75th birthday, President Packer said that he counts as his greatest blessings the association that he and Sister Packer have with their family.
