The Life of Russell Marion Nelson: Part II- Apostolic Preparation
The following quotes by descriptive sources best tell the story of Russell M. Nelson from 1952-1984, especially his providential preparation to his future roles of apostle and prophet:
“The first patient to undergo such open heart surgery in Utah was Mrs. Vernell Worthen, 39, from Price, Utah. She did not appear to be anxious or frightened, and she showed great confidence in her young surgeon.
On November 9, 1955, Dr. Nelson operated on her to close an atrial septal defect. All went well. She recovered without complication, and the Deseret News featured her in an article 25 years later titled ‘Utahn’s Life Gets Bonus from Heart Surgery: 25 Extra Years to Love, Learn, Live.’”
“Despite his busy medical training and career, Dr. Nelson always put his family first in his life. Dantzel White Nelson stood beside and supported her husband in all of his family, Church, professional, and military activities. Their constant, mutually supportive and loving relationship was an inspiration and steadying influence for each of their 10 children—nine daughters and one son. Their relationship ‘was very sweet and very giving to each other,’ according to daughter Sylvia Webster. Their youngest, Russell Nelson Jr., recalled, ‘It was always obvious that my parents loved each other very much.’”
“I was a witness and a minor participant in an important episode in the professional life of Dr. Russell M. Nelson and his wife Dantzel. This occurred as part of my first meeting with the Nelsons in 1965, over 52 years ago. In his autobiography, Dr. Nelson tells how he was offered a professorship of surgery and chairmanship of the Division of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery at the University of Chicago. This offer, he wrote, ‘made resources available to me in the way of financial support, research laboratory, and staff support that would fulfill the dream of any academician. As a further inducement, the offer included four years of college for all of our nine children at the institution of their choice, with all the bills to be paid by the University of Chicago.’ The dean told Dr. Nelson, ‘One of the reasons we want you is that we know you are a good Mormon. We want you on our faculty. We need you here to bring the influence to this University that a Mormon could bring.’
As part of his aggressive recruitment of this remarkable doctor, the dean telephoned for my help to persuade the Nelsons to move to Chicago. I was then a professor of law at the University of Chicago and knew the dean of medicine because we served together on the university’s faculty senate. The dean asked me to have the Nelsons to dinner at our home. He urged me to tell them all about the Church in Chicago because he knew this was a critically important consideration for them.
So it was that my late wife, June, and I met Dantzel and Russell Nelson and had them to dinner and a wonderful visit in our Chicago home on Sunday, November 21, 1965. We did our best to persuade them to move to Chicago. I later learned from his autobiography that they ‘were very much attracted to this offer and had even picked out a home in one of the suburbs of Chicago where [they] might raise [their] family.’
What happened next is but one illustration of how the Lord’s inspiration directed the decisions and preparation of Russell M. Nelson. Back in Salt Lake City, he sought counsel from President David O. McKay (1873–1970) to guide the Nelsons in their important decision. The prophet prayed, and the answer came: ‘No.’
President McKay said: ‘You already live in the best city in the whole world. You have a way of life that can’t be equalled anywhere in the world. Here your daughters will be accorded the very best environment that they can be given. They are more important to you than any fame or future that could come to you in any university. No, Brother Nelson, your place is here in Salt Lake City. People will come from all over the world to you because you are here. I don’t think you should go to Chicago.’
Full of faith, Dr. Nelson refused the Chicago offer and remained in Salt Lake City. There, in future years, he performed open-heart surgery and prolonged the lives of many grateful patients, including President Kimball, Elder Richard L. Evans (1906–71), President Boyd K. Packer (1924–2015), and many other Church leaders and members and their families.”
“Russell M. Nelson has also served the Lord as a stake president after serving in bishoprics and high councils. In 1971 he became the general president of the Sunday School. Then in 1979 he was called as a regional representative. Each time a call came he moved forward, confident that the Lord would bless him in his assignments.
’When Elder Kimball called me and set me apart as stake president in 1964, we were just starting in medicine on the challenge of replacing the aortic valve,’ President Nelson said. ‘Mortality rates were high, and the time commitment to each patient was extremely high—almost one-on-one for many, many hours, sometimes even days. When Elder Kimball called me to be the stake president, he jokingly said, ‘Everybody we’ve interviewed around here says you might be all right, but you don’t have the time. Do you have the time?’
Dr. Nelson
Dr. Nelson examines a model of the human heart. As a surgeon, he was instrumental in creating the first heart-lung machine and performed many open-heart operations.
’I replied, ‘I don’t know about that, but I have the faith!’ And then I explained to him the challenges—that getting into the field of aortic valve replacement was a heavy time commitment and that our mortality rates were high. Both problems were of great concern to me.
’In the blessing that he pronounced upon my head that day, he specifically blessed me that our mortality rates with aortic valve surgery in particular would be reduced, and that no longer would the procedure be the drain on my time and energy that it had been in the past. The following year, the time demands of the operation did decrease, and I’ve had the time necessary to serve in that and other callings. In fact, our mortality rates went down to where they are today—at a very low and acceptable, tolerable range. Interestingly enough, that’s the very operation I did for President Kimball eight years later.’”
“Then President Kimball called on Dr. Nelson to speak, asking, ‘What can cardiac surgery offer?’
Dr. Nelson said, ‘I indicated that the operation, if it were to be done, would be a compound surgical procedure consisting of two components. First, the defective aortic valve would require removal and replacement with a prosthetic aortic valve. Second, the left anterior descending coronary artery would have to be revascularized with a bypass graft.’
President Lee asked, ‘What would the risks be with such procedures?’
Dr. Nelson replied, ‘We have no experience doing both operations on patients in this age group. Therefore, I cannot give you any risk data based on experience. All I can say is, it would entail extremely high risk.’
Then a weary President Kimball said, ‘I’m an old man and ready to die. It is well for a younger man to come to the Quorum and do the work I can no longer do.’
Elder Nelson described the dramatic reaction of President Lee: ‘At that point President Harold B. Lee, speaking for the First Presidency, rose to his feet, pounded his fist to the desk, and said, ‘Spencer, you have been called! You are not to die! You are to do everything that you need to do in order to care for yourself and continue to live.’
President Kimball responded, ‘Then I will have the operation performed.’
’Sister Kimball wept,’ Dr. Nelson remembered. ‘When he spoke those words, my heart sank, for the weight of this decision seemed suddenly to pass to me. But this was a remarkable event. This momentous decision, which shaped the history of the Church, was not based on medical recommendation. It was based strictly on the desire of President Kimball, as an Apostle of the Lord, to be obedient to the inspired direction of the First Presidency of the Church.’
After this momentous decision had been made, a brief discussion followed regarding the timing of the operation. It was March 1972, and Dr. Nelson recommended postponing the operation until after general conference. The decision was made to perform the operation on April 12.
’President Kimball attended only one of the seven sessions of general conference in April 1972,’ Russell recalled. ‘His breathlessness and inability to exert himself because of his congestive heart failure forced him to listen to the other sessions from his bed.’
Russell received a blessing from the First Presidency on the eve of the operation, under the hands of President Harold B. Lee and President N. Eldon Tanner. ‘They blessed me that the operation would be performed without error, that all would go well, and that I need not fear for my own inadequacies, for I had been raised up by the Lord to perform this operation.’
The operation began the next morning, and as the first incision was made, the resident physician exclaimed, ‘He doesn’t bleed!’
Dr. Nelson observed, ‘From that very first maneuver until the last one, everything went as planned. There was not one broken stitch, not one instrument had fallen from the table, not one technical flaw had occurred in a series of thousands of intricate manipulations. I suppose my feelings at that time may have been like those of a concert pianist rendering a concerto without ever hitting a wrong note, or a baseball player who had pitched a perfect game—no hits, no runs, no errors, and no walks. For a long and difficult operation had been performed exactly in accordance with the blessing invoked by the power of the priesthood.’
President Monson recalled that eventful day. He was seated in the temple with President Lee and the other Brethren. They had been fasting, and their hearts were filled with hopeful anxiety. When the phone rang, President Lee left the room to take the call. President Monson noted, ‘President Lee was a master at masking his feelings, and he walked back into the room as somber as he could be. He said, ‘That was Brother Nelson. Spencer is off the pump!’ We all smiled and said a prayer of thanksgiving.’
Russell recounted, ‘Even more overpowering than the feeling that came as we shocked President Kimball’s heart and it resumed its beating immediately with vigor, was the manifestation of the Spirit which told me that I had just operated upon the man who would become president of the Church!’
’I knew that President Kimball was a prophet. I knew that he was an Apostle, but now it was revealed to me that he would preside over the Church! This feeling was so strong that I could hardly contain myself as we performed the routine maneuvers to conclude the operation. Later on in the week as he convalesced, I shared these impressions with him and he and I wept.’ Russell added, ‘I know that he did not take this feeling as seriously as I did because he knew that President Harold B. Lee, who stood before him in the Quorum, was younger and more healthy than he.’
Both physician and patient became close during President Kimball’s convalescence, which went smoothly. That is not to minimize the burden of pain and anxiety that he experienced. Frequently, Dr. Nelson would visit President Kimball’s home and find that he was discouraged, as are most convalescing patients.
’The thing that President Kimball feared most was disability,’ Russell said. ‘He did not fear death, but he did not want to be a drain on the Brethren, the Church, or his beloved Camilla. He was concerned that although his life might have been prolonged, he might not be able to return to full service in the Church.’
In the midst of this postoperative recovery came the death of President Joseph Fielding Smith, in July 1972. Dr. Nelson went immediately to the Kimball home upon learning of the death of President Smith. He and Sister Kimball helped President Kimball get dressed so he could attend the meeting of the Quorum of the Twelve wherein the presidency of the Church would be reorganized. Russell said, ‘I even sat down at President Kimball’s typewriter and wrote a medical report on President Kimball that I hoped would be of some value to President Harold B. Lee as he, the new president of the Church, considered the reorganization.’
From that time forward, President Kimball began to gain power and strength. As more was asked of him in the Church, and as more was expected from him, his ability to perform increased remarkably.
The evening after Christmas 1973, Brother Nelson heard the fateful news on television that President Lee had just died and that President Romney and President Kimball were at the hospital, where he had passed away. Dr. Nelson immediately left home, sensing that his place was beside President Kimball. He went into the board of directors’ room at LDS Hospital and there found President Kimball and President Romney. Brother Nelson and President Kimball embraced each other and wept. Russell said, ‘I thought maybe you needed me.’ President Kimball replied, ‘I surely do. Thanks for coming.’
Russell recalled, ‘Over the next day or two I began to sense a mood of anxiety, not only among President Kimball and the other Brethren, but in the whole community, for three presidents of the Church had been buried in the three-year period from 1970 to 1973. Now the mantle was to fall upon President Spencer W. Kimball, a man known to have cancer controlled with surgery and radiation, heart disease mended with open-heart surgery, and another illness for which he had just been hospitalized in the preceding month.’
Russell added, ‘As I sensed these anxieties, I was impressed to write a letter to President Kimball on the Sunday he was ordained president of the Church. President Kimball read excerpts from my letter to the Brethren in the temple and again at his first press conference. It gave him a great deal of fortification, particularly with the press as they questioned him pointedly, for he was then able to refer to the letter.’ The letter read in part, ‘Your surgeon wants you to know that your body is strong, your heart is better than it has been for years, and that by all of our finite ability to predict, you may consider this new assignment without undue anxiety about your health.’
President Kimball became the president of the Church on December 30, 1973, at age seventy-eight. Filled with renewed enthusiasm and the Spirit of the Lord, he encouraged the Saints to ‘lengthen your stride’ and ‘quicken your pace.’ It would be a dozen years before he passed away at the age of ninety.”
