The actual spark for an Ogden Temple actually came indirectly.
This effort involved the Church’s first-ever building committee -- with an Ogden resident who was one of its three founding members.
In 1965, the First Presidency approved the creation of its first-ever building committee.
Emil B. Fetzer.
Called to that landmark committee were: Mark B. Garff, construction company owner, as chairman; Fred A. Baker, a vice president of Ogden’s Commercial Security Bank, as vice chairman; and Emil B. Fetzer as church architect.
This committee eventually established planning, structure and budgets to a growing Church that had previously “winged it" on its building projects.
Fred A. Baker
The committee first got world-wide chapel construction under consistent control and structure.
Then, according to Fred A. Baker, who was assistant chairman of the Church Building Committee, from 1965-1972 (and who became the Church Building Committee Chairman from 1972-1991), President Tanner called for a meeting with the building committee in his office, and said, "We're very much concerned about the Manti temple and the Logan temple. They're overcrowded. The temple districts are too big for them, and we must do something to increase the through-put of the temples. Would you please go take a look at those temples and see what you can do to increase the size and make them so they can handle their districts better.”
At that time, the Manti Temple had Provo and Utah County in its district and the Logan Temple included Ogden and Weber County in it borders -- and yet they weren't built for that scope. They were designed to serve Manti and Logan.
Brother Baker continued to recollect in some taped interviews on the subject of the first Ogden Temple:
“So we went to both temples, and of course, that's where you just tear your hair out,” Brother Baker recalled. “See, the temples are all grand-daddied as far as all the codes are concerned. As long as you don't touch them, the counties and the cities are kind enough to just leave you alone. You couldn't put another wire anywhere in the temple without moving something else: I mean, they've been there forever and they are chuck-full of every violation of every code ever imagined. So you're safe if you leave it alone, but the minute you say, ‘We need to change this,’ or, ‘We need to add this’, then the whole building must immediately be remodeled to meet the current codes.”
Brother Baker continued: “Well, they didn't meet any of the fire codes. They didn't meet any of the illumination of getting out of the building. They didn't meet wiring. They didn't meet HVAC, they didn't meet engineering, I mean, you name it ... there was another violation right there.
“So you're faced with literally ... literally tearing the building apart and adding something to it and then re-doing the whole building as a new building. That costs twice as much as building ... it's just not sensible, not practical. You don't get additional space that you need and all of that.”
“Anyway, we're just scratching our heads,” Brother Baker recalled of 1967. “The only news you got is bad news. There is no good news. Instead of saying, ‘We have good news and bad news, which would you like first?’, you say, ‘We have bad news and worse, which would you like first?’ It was just horrible.
“And so we're driving back from Manti, and, you have to understand now, we've had this little bit of success with the budgeting and the new program and putting things together, and surprisingly enough the budget works. Whoo! Whoever heard of the budget working, you know? We're feeling bold, you know, we had a success.
So we said, "That's kind of dumb. We had a site in Ogden, and there's one up by BYU in Provo that somebody has offered. The smart thing to do is, why don't we build a building ... a nice temple in Provo; a nice temple in Ogden; and then you wouldn't have to change Logan and Manti. That would reduce the temple down to the point where it would handle the people and so we could do some refurbishing in Logan, some refurbishing in Manti, and they'd go right on and be just fine. We wouldn't have to do anything more than just refurbish. But then you put the Ogden and Provo temples where the people are, and they don't have to drive through Sardine Canyon every winter and all that kind of stuff. Doesn't that seem logical?”
A new Church study in 1967 had revealed that 52 percent of all temple work, world-wide was performed in just three temples: Salt Lake, Logan and Manti. This also supported the need for temples in Ogden and Provo.
The plan was then presented to the First Presidency.
Brother Baker further recalled: “So, we're all elated, and they arrange a meeting back in the Hotel Utah, and there are six of us present this time; three of the Twelve, three of the Presidency, and Mark and Emil and I. I don't even remember a secretary or anybody being there. And the Counselors make the proposal to President McKay, and he just lights up like a Christmas tree. Of course, he would, because this is home. Here's his chance for a President to propose a temple in his native country. How wonderful!”
President David O. McKay
”Well, they thank us, and they say they'll take it under advisement. We leave, and we expect we'll hear about this in 1989 or something, they'll think about it for several years.
“About a week later we get a call back and say, ‘We want to talk about this. Bring the stuff over.’
"At first the Twelve didn’t know where the idea of two new temples came from, and they really were concerned. I don’t blame them, but nobody said anything to us to indicate that we were not to propose temple projects. I thought it was reasonable and sensible. And it didn’t take the Presidency five minutes to approve. I’m used to how the mill grinds slowly, and you put an idea in there and later you would hear something. This idea took about fifteen minutes, and it was approved just that quick,” Brother Baker concluded.
Fred A. Baker, center back, meeting with LDS Church President David O. McKay
and other church building committee members, probably in the late 1960s.
The First Presidency publicly announced that there would be a temple built in Ogden on Aug. 24, 1967.
That first Ogden Temple would open in early 1972.
Brother Baker agreed that much of the delay for a temple in Ogden was caused by the liberal image of Ogden. He said that feeling persisted into the 1960s.
How was the site selected for the Temple?
In Brother Baker's own words:
"Well, it
came down to the old traditional argument
the only reason not to use it was
the preservation of that absolutely beautiful, marvelous old tabernacle. Pardon
me, it was horrible! I mean, it was the worst example of a building you could
ever find to preserve! If you're going to preserve something, pick something
nice! That old building just didn't have any class, it had nothing! But anyway,
I understand people feel that way about buildings. That's where the argument was.
They always intended to use that site except the big ruckus ..."You can't
tear down our old tabernacle!" And there were several other sites that I'm
aware of. One up Seventh Street, way up high, that from the highway would have
been a beautiful site. But, both from President McKay's desire to keep the cost
down as much as possible and from the location in town, it was the logical
place to go with it," Brother Baker stated.
There were 3 finalists for the temple site: 1. Tabernacle Square, a site first designated by Brigham Young himself; 2. The top of Seventh Street site (owned by the Hislop Family and former Weber State University cross country/track coach Chick Hislop said his late father was very proud that his 7th Street land was considered for a temple); 3. Where the McKay Dee Hospital used to be at 38th Street and Harrison Boulevard, just west of Weber State University.
Yet another factor was that downtown Ogden business leaders pleaded with the Church to have the new temple on Tabernacle Square, in hopes of revitalizing a dying downtown business center. With the railroad industry downsizing, Ogden was hurting.
The original Ogden Temple construction.
The original Ogden Temple, according to Brother Baker, was so simple/plain and was the way it was because that's what the First Presidency wanted.
In Brother Baker's own words:
"President
McKay has decided that he wants to do this. But he's .... how shall I put
it ... he is so terrified that the people will think he's a spendthrift. After
the budget thing that we've been through and everything else, now, because that
seems solved, suddenly we have the money for two new temples.
So he is absolutely determined that
these will be the most austere buildings ever built. And while we're present;
the six of us; he gives Emil absolute, very clear instructions ... boy, no
kidding about the instructions. There will be NO solemn assembly room. There's
one in Salt Lake, one in Logan, one in Manti ... if they need a solemn assembly
room, they can travel. There will be NO multiple spires. That is not necessary.
A single spire is fine. No multiple spires. There will NOT be any excess
footage. He's seen the typical temple where there's footage by the ton, because
you don't build a temple on an austere basis, you build it on a
magni ... there will be NO cubage, because he's been up there and looked at that
forty-foot ceiling and said, "Oh, I'm having to heat and air condition
that," you know?
And so, I'm not kidding, I'm talking
about austerity! "You must use [one] plan for the buildings. You can
change the exterior panels to be slightly different if you want to make them
look different, but the plan ... I'm not paying for two architectural
plans." One plan.
The crowning one of all, there will NOT
be an Angel Moroni on the temple. Oh! I made some notes til I got to that last
one, then I said, "scratch that last one. You may start out that way, but
that angel will fly up there one way or another."
As we walked back from the meeting,
we're all just ... don't know what happened.
As we walked back from the meeting, Mark said to Emil, "Emil, be
sure to set those (supports) strong enough to support the angel. We don't want
to have to tear it all down and do it again," Brother Baker concluded.
Cornerstone of the original Ogden Temple.
How did the actual plans for the two temples, Ogden and Provo, come to be:
In Brother Baker's own words:
"So Emil gets
his little staff together and starts working on sketches. We're probably three
months in by that time, and Emil and I are scheduled to go to London. But Emil
has been in Los Angeles all week refurbishing the Los Angeles temple, and I've
been in Salt Lake all week taking care of the building program, and we're going
to meet Friday night at the PanAm building in New York and jump on PanAm over
to London, and then do the European tour.
During this week I'm out of contact with
Emil; he's in Los Angeles and we're both working. We don't have any chance to
talk. Tuesday the telephone rings and Janeal, my secretary, said, "Derek
Metcalf from the temple department would like to talk with you."
I said, "have him come up."
Derek came up and said, "I've been
asked to tell you that the First Presidency has had BYU do a new temple film.
We have just seen it, and approved it (with some minor changes), and the
Presidency has decided that you're now authorized to use the film
domestically."
Now, we've had film in Europe before
because of the language differences, but never domestically. We've never used a
temple film domestically. That's all brand new.
Wow! That's a dramatic change!
I pick up the phone to call Emil, and of
course, they can't find him ... he's off looking at furniture or some such
thing.
The next day the telephone calls and
Janeal says, "It's Bruce Smith from Advanced Planning." Bruce was the
guy who ran the computer programs for the church. Bruce came to my office and
said, "I've just been able to convince the
Brethren that we can now handle all of the accounting in the temples
with the computers. There is no longer any need for a temple company."
Now, up to this point, the temple
company was the way you kept track of who got work done, who didn't get work
done. And people didn't know that. They just thought the company was counting.
Well now, the company is the thing that holds everything up in the temple. How
many times I've been in Salt Lake temple, and you're waiting for Sister Smith,
and she's got there late and is a little old a dresses slowly, and here's 285
people sitting there waiting for Sister Smith, who strolls casually in and sits
down ... you know, that's what a company does to you. It kills you. I mean,
efficiency-wise.
Well, suddenly, in two days, we throw
out the company, and we can now use the film.
Bruce said to me, "Did you ever
think what that meant?"
I said, "Not only have we thought
about what it meant, we've talked about it a hundred times the possibilities
that could make for multiple sessions, because now, if you can use the film you
could program the whole thing differently. Instead of
move .... move .... move ... you could have sessions going on all where .... well.
I'm thunderstruck, and I try to call
Emil again, and he's still looking at furniture.
And so I decide there's no sense of
telling him ... it means his three months of sketches are in the garbage can, but
we'll let him know when we get there.
So, I fly Friday morning to New York,
and he flies Friday morning to New York, and we get there at 8:00 o'clock at
night and get on PanAm, and we're on our way to London. As we get on the
airplane, the stewardesses say, "We're late tonight, as you know, so
instead of the food being delivered
cold, we had it all delivered all warm, so it's all ready for you, the minute
we take off you're going to eat."
And I say, "Well, I don't want to
tell Emil. I don't want to spoil his steak. So, I guess I'll wait until we
eat."
We have a nice dinner, and clear
everything away, and then I can say to him now, "Emil, I have some good
news and some bad news. Which would you like to know about?"
And he said, "Let's get the bad
news out of the way."
I said, "Well, your three months of
sketches, you can throw them in the garbage can, because it's all changed.
He said, "What in the world do you
mean?"
So I said, "Well, first of all, we
don't need companies any more. At all."
"You're kidding!" he said.
"We've always had companies!"
I said, "Well, you don't need them
anymore. The computer is now taking over the company."
"Oh! That's great!"
And then I said, "Next we have a
new temple film which is authorized for use in the United States, as well as
overseas."
At first that confuses him a little bit,
and he says, "Now wait a minute! What do we need a film for?"
And I said, "Well, you need it
because you're going to have smaller temples everywhere. You're not going to
have casts that can do that. It's too difficult: too challenging."
"Oh yeah", he says, "I
can see that. That's going to..."
Well, anyway. So I said, "Think of
the possibilities now. Here's a Celestial room, and now you can put several
ordinance rooms around it, on a schedule, so that they operate with each other,
not against each other. So you have a central Celestial room, you have several
ordinance rooms, you have a veil space, and what we have to do now is get that
organized so that it makes sense and works together and not against each
other."
I don't know, when you went to school,
did you have to do simultaneous equations? Those equations where you had to
solve two things at the same time, and when you got the solution, both answers
were right? That's what we were trying to do that night. Emil got a tracing
paper out and we're working on these little tiny, silly tray tables; and the
nice girl comes up and says, "What in the world are you doing?"
We said, "We're trying to work on a
plan."
She said, "Well, look ..." back
in the good ole' days ... plane in those days was a ... across from the galley was
a regular restaurant table. You know, the table with two benches, and the girls
used that to get the meals ready and everything. She said," We're not
using that, why don't you come back and spread your stuff out on that
nice..."
So, geez, we went back and spread our
stuff out and we started working ... you see you had to know how many rooms, how
many seats in a room. We knew the film length, including the pauses for the
tokens. We knew approximately how long it takes to get a number of people
through the veil. And so you have all this information, and now you need to decide, "Let's see, now ... how
many rooms, and how will it fit together, and the clock's running and we worked
and worked and worked and worked, and, of course, neither one of us are
mathematicians; we're idiots. It was the biggest mess you've ever seen in your
whole life. We had papers and formulas. It was just comical.
Finally, we get down to a thing where we
try five rooms...that won't work. Four rooms ... doesn't come out. You've got
conflict in the veil space every time, and then in the Celestial room every
time. And we just fuss and fuss, and finally we got six rooms with eighty
people in each room, and we start going around, starting a session every twenty
minutes to see how it works out.
Surprisingly enough, it works out,
except in the veil space. And we keep working, and keep trying to figure out,
"How is that working? It works in the rooms, why doesn't it work in the
veil space?"
And them Emil comes up with the idea. We
were going, in rooms ... one, two, three, four, five, six ... and if you went one,
six, and then in the middle, and then across, nobody ever saw each other in the
veil space. It was just vacant when you went in there.
It all worked! And by the time we got
that figured out, the captain came on and said, "In twenty minutes, folks,
wake up; we're landing in London in twenty minutes ." We worked all night
long on that one little thing.
Now, I didn't have anything to do with
architecture. I didn't have anything to do with what the temple was going to
look like, or be like, or size-wise; that was all Emil's instruction from
(inaudible) ... all I helped work on is this little space up here that was key to
the whole thing going on, and we believed it would work...we tried the math a
million times and said, "It will work".
We took it back to the Presidency and
they said, "Eureka! Let's go with that plan." And so suddenly we had
a domestic temple that had the potential to just totally explode vicarious work
for the dead.
Why no one else believed us, I don't
know, but no one else believed us. It was the strangest thing," Brother Baker concluded of how the actual plan for the Ogden/Provo Temples came to be.
Ogden Temple photograph with President Smith's signature/date. From Fred A. Baker's collection.
A painting by Keith Wilcox, as if the temple sat right by the mountains.
When the Ogden Temple opened the first statistics caused an uproar with Church Headquarters. (The Ogden Temple opened before the sister Provo Temple did.)
In Brother Baker's own words:
"Well,
after Ogden opened for a month, I was in the Tuesday meeting. One of the Brethren
, I don't even remember who, said, "Have you had any indication about the
activity at the Ogden temple?" and I said "Only that I know it's
crowded...I mean, it's just jammed, because everybody's interested in the new
temple."
They said, "Why don't you call and
find out how the work's going."
I said, "I'd be glad to."
So I went back to the office and called
Derek Metcalf and said, "How's the activity?"
He said, "Well, Ogden has done more
work in one month than any other temple has ever done." More vicarious
work in one month. And I think, "Isn't that neat?"
So I go back the next Tuesday and
report. My report is, "You asked for the figures..." and I gave them
the figures, (I've forgotten what they were now) ..."Ogden has done more
work in one month than any other temple."
And I thought there would
be ... what ... happiness? Satisfaction? I don't know what. I didn't expect them to
dance on the table, but I thought they'd be happy about it.
Silence. And someone said, "That
figure doesn't sound right to me. Would you go back and double-check ?"
I said, "Oh, yeah. I'd be glad
to." So I called Derek and said, "Add another week to it."
He said, "Well, now the Ogden
temple has done more work than Salt Lake and all the other
temples...combined."
And so, I report that. Again, they were
just not happy about things. Isn't that odd? Wouldn't you think that was
strange?
As we walked out, Mike, (who was the
secretary of the committee) put his arm around me and said, "You seem a
little glum."
And I said, "I'm a little shocked.
I thought this was the time for applause, maybe.
He said, "Fred, you just don't
understand. These are the senior brethren of the church. To them the Salt Lake
Temple is the flagship temple. In their fondest imagination nothing, no
building, no location will ever do more work than Salt Lake. That's just
ingrained. It's their home. It's where they meet every Thursday. It's
everything to them, and you come in there and say 'That little pipsqueak up in
Ogden has done more work than your big ole' fancy temple.' Surely you
understand that?"
I said, "No, I'm the happy little
ten-year-old. I was born in Provo, but moved here when I was six months old. I
don't know anything but Ogden. Ogden has always been my home. It's a great,
neat little town! I grew up there, I went to its schools, I went to Madison, I
went to Central, I went to Ogden High, I loved the school system, we had great
neighborhoods ... I had fun in our neighborhoods, we enjoyed everything ... it was
just wonderful! You know, I thought Ogden was just the greatest place in the
world! When they think of Ogden, they think 'They elected the first non-Mormon
mayor! That's where those railroads are that wouldn't come to Salt Lake, and
that brought all those labor unions here, and all those democrats!' You've
ruined my whole day, because I've always thought just the opposite of Ogden, I
thought Ogden was a nice place!"
So that's how different it is. Now I
think the attitude would be a little different. But in those days they were not
happy that any ... it wasn't just Ogden ... he said they wouldn't have felt quite
so bad if it had been Provo because of BYU ... but to have Ogden? Oh, that's
gotta' be the ultimate problem. So, there you go! Now isn't that strange?" Brother Baker's recollection of the first statistics ended.
A photo of construction on the first Ogden Temple in about 1971.
How did Ogden gain the new temple version in 2014?
The number of weddings were down at the Ogden Temple. A leaking roof and declining downtown were other problems. Some Ogden leaders and businessmen lobbied the Church for something to be done.
Finally, LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley toured the Ogden Temple. He was shocked by the decline of the surrounding area and it was this reaction that put things in motion. The Church wanted to revitalize the area -- and remodel the Temple.
The only timetable was that the original Ogden Temple architect, Emil Fetzer, had to pass away first, according to Brother Baker.
"The (new Ogden Temple) plan
was done six years before Emil died," Brother Baker stressed.
So, the fact the Brigham City Temple would not be open yet to fill the gap didn't matter. The new Ogden Temple had its own independent timetable.
Sure enough, some months after Emil passed away, the Church announced their new temple plan.
Why the delay in completion of the new Ogden Temple"?
The delay in the construction of the second Ogden Temple was from the underground water problems in the area, something that the new designers and contractors refused to acknowledge from those who were around for the building of the first Ogden Temple. This extra work added almost 18 months onto the process, according to Elder William R. Walker, executive director of the church's temple department, at that time. Elder Walker declined to provide any cost for the new temple.
(The underground water problem is also the "why" there is no direct access from the underground parking to the temple's interior.)
New Ogden Temple cornerstone and plaque.
The original Ogden Temple was not much fancier than an LDS Chapel -- very simple. However, the new Temple is notches above that and is very elaborate -- like other new temples.
When Brother Baker was asked if he had any regrets about the original Ogden Temple being torn down and replaced, he quickly said no -- he said he just wished there was some sort of monument or marker somewhere to acknowledge that the original Ogden Temple ushered in a new, faster era of endowment work.
"If
I had my way I would have off to the side, in a little alcove, a nice little
monument that says, 'This was the site of the original building that,
because of the decisions of the Presidency to use film changed...revolutionized
vicarious work for the dead and caused the thing to just explode,'" Brother Baker said.
Later Ogden Temple renovations (after 2014) centered on its parking lot
and underground work. This work was primarily to more securely anchor the
temple’s parking structures. It also explored other options to possibly connect
an underground pedestrian tunnel from the parking lot directly into the Temple’s interior,
but there was still too much underground water flow to do that.
SOURCES: Recorded/transcribed of interviews with Fred A. Baker on Sept. 8, 2014; other interviews with Fred A. Baker by the Church History Department; Articles in the Church Archives; Ensign Magazine Archives; Ogden Standard-Examiner archives; telephone interview with Elder William R. Walker; other personal interviews.
(Fred A. Baker passed away on December 10, 2015.)
-NOTE: This history has been put on-line since much of it has not been available to Church members.
He co-wrote the official history of the Ogden Temple for the LDS Church. This book was distributed exclusively to only a select group of LDS Church members.
Lynn can be contacted by email at: lynnarave@comcast.net
-Since the Provo Temple has most of the same shortcomings as the original Ogden Temple did, it is likely only a matter of time before that temple too is remodeled ...
