Spencer Woolley Kimball (March 28, 1895 – November 5, 1985) was an American religious leader who was the twelfth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).
The grandson of early Latter-day Saint apostle Heber C. Kimball, Kimball was born in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory. He spent most of his early life in Thatcher, Arizona, where his father, Andrew Kimball, farmed and served as the area's stake president. He served an LDS mission in Independence, Missouri, from 1914 to 1916, then worked for various banks in Arizona's Gila Valley as a clerk and bank teller. Kimball later co-founded a business selling bonds and insurance that, after weathering the Great Depression, became highly successful. Kimball served as a stake president in his hometown from 1938 until 1943, when he was called as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Like most other LDS Church apostles, Kimball traveled extensively to fulfill a wide variety of administrative and ecclesiastical duties. Early in his time as an apostle, Kimball was directed by church president George Albert Smith to spend extra time in religious and humanitarian work with Native Americans, which Kimball did throughout his life. He initiated the Indian Placement Program, which helped many Native American students gain education in the 1960s and 1970s while they stayed with LDS foster families.
In late 1973, following the sudden death of Harold B. Lee, Kimball became the LDS Church's twelfth president, a position he held until his death in 1985. Kimball's presidency was noted for the 1978 announcement ending the restriction on church members of black African descent being ordained to the priesthood or receiving temple ordinances. Kimball's presidency saw large growth in the LDS Church, both in terms of membership and the number of temples. Kimball was the first church president to state publicly that the church expects all able-bodied male members to serve missions in young adulthood, resulting in an increase in missionary service.
Kimball's paternal grandfather, Heber C. Kimball, was one of the original LDS apostles who were called when Joseph Smith first organized the Quorum of the Twelve in February 1835. Kimball later served as first counselor to Brigham Young in the church's First Presidency from 1847 until his death in 1868.
Kimball's maternal grandfather, Edwin D. Woolley, was a prominent LDS bishop in Salt Lake City for many years.
Kimball was born on March 28, 1895, in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, to Andrew Kimball and Olive Woolley. He had ten siblings. In 1898, when Kimball was three years old, his father was called as president of the St. Joseph Arizona Stake, and his family relocated to the town of Thatcher, in Southeastern Arizona's Graham County.
During his childhood, Kimball had a number of medical problems, including typhoid fever and facial paralysis (likely Bell's palsy), and he once nearly drowned. Four of his sisters died in childhood, and his mother died when he was eleven. Though only 5 feet 6 inches (1.68 metres) tall as an adult, Kimball was an avid basketball player, and he was the star and leading scorer on most of his school and recreational teams. In addition to being an athlete, Kimball was an honor student at the LDS Gila Academy (modern Eastern Arizona College). During summer holidays, he often worked at a dairy in Globe, Arizona, milking cows, cleaning stalls, and washing bottles for $50 to $60 per month as well as room and board.
Kimball graduated from high school in May 1914 and, one week later, was called to serve as a missionary in the Swiss–German Mission. Less than two months later, his European mission call was cut short by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the subsequent outbreak of World War I. Kimball was reassigned to the Central States Mission and spent most of the rest of his mission in the towns and rural settlements of Missouri until 1916.
Marriage and early career (1917–1925)
Hoping to become a schoolteacher, Kimball spent one semester at the University of Arizona in the spring of 1917, but he received an army draft notice later that year. During that time, he courted Camilla Eyring (1894–1987), a schoolteacher at Gila Academy, where Kimball had attended high school. They began dating in August 1917 and exchanged letters regularly after Kimball left for a semester at Brigham Young University (BYU) the next month. After one month at BYU, Kimball was notified that his call into the army was imminent, and he had to leave the university and return to his hometown. He returned to Arizona, but his army group was never called for duty before World War I ended with the signing of the Armistice of 11 November 1918.
Kimball and Eyring's relationship deepened quickly, and by late October, they had decided to marry. Because of their employment commitments and lack of money, the couple could not afford to travel to Utah to marry in the nearest LDS temple. They were married in a civil ceremony in Camilla's home in Pima, Arizona, on November 16, 1917. Seven months later, the couple made the two-day journey by train to Salt Lake City where they were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple on June 7, 1918. They eventually had four children: Spencer L. "Spence" (1918–2003), Olive Beth "Bobby" (1922–2018), Andrew E. (1927–2020), and Edward L. "Ed" (1930–2016).
In 1921, Kimball began work at the Thatcher branch of the Arizona Trust and Savings Bank, where he was eventually promoted to assistant cashier at $225 per month, a high salary at the time. The bank failed in 1923 in the aftermath of the Depression of 1920–21; Kimball lost his $3000 investments in bank stock and was forced to take a lower-paying job at another bank. Kimball also performed a variety of other local jobs to earn extra income to support his wife and children, including playing the piano and singing at local events, stringing with Camilla for local newspapers, distributing for an herbal laxative company, and clerical work for local stores.
Shortly after Kimball married, his father called him to serve as clerk for the St. Joseph Stake. In the 1920s, local stake clerks still performed the extensive record-keeping and reporting duties that are now digitized and done centrally at the LDS Church's headquarters in Salt Lake City. The position of stake clerk was essentially a part-time job, and those called were paid a monthly salary of $50.
Career and stake presidency (1925–1943)
In 1925, Kimball and Joseph W. Greenhalgh, a Latter-day Saint businessman who served as a bishop in a local ward, began a small securities business making and purchasing loans from local businesses and individuals. By 1927, the business became independent, and after investing $150 of his own money in the business, Kimball began running it full-time in Safford, Arizona, as the Kimball–Greenhalgh Agency, dealing in local insurance, real estate, debt collection, and bonds. The business suffered greatly during the Great Depression and lost much of its capital between 1930 and 1933. Through continued work and re-investment of profits, it survived the Great Depression and became increasingly successful during the late 1930s and early 1940s. By 1943, Kimball's initial $150 investment in the agency was worth nearly $100,000.
Kimball was active in many civic organizations, including the Parent-Teacher Association, city council, Red Cross, Boy Scouts, and he was elected leader of the Arizona Rotary Club in 1936. Kimball had achieved record success in organizing new Rotary Club chapters, and the Arizona membership voted to pay for him and his wife to travel to the club's 1936 international convention in Nice, France. They went by train to Chicago and then to Montreal, where their oldest son, Spencer L., was serving as an LDS missionary. They traveled on a week-long passage on an ocean liner to Le Havre. From there, they visited Paris, Monte Carlo, Genoa, Rome, Pompeii, Florence, Venice, Vienna, the Swiss Alps, Belgium, the Netherlands, and London.