Elder Richard G. Scott:
“The Real Power Comes from the
Lord”
By Marvin K.
Gardner
Assistant Managing
Editor
Ensign, Jan 1989, 7
The news was
heartbreaking.
Doctors informed the
family that their father
had cancer and would
live only a few more
months at best.
Medical science could
do no more.
One of the grief-stricken sons was a nuclear
engineer, an expert on what man can do through the
miracles of technology. But in this situation, technology
was helpless.
In a spirit of fasting and prayer, Richard Scott and
his four brothers gathered in a circle and gave their father a
priesthood blessing in which he was promised a full
recovery. The blessing was fulfilled.
Elder Richard G. Scott, former nuclear engineer
and now a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles,
has witnessed great power—man’s and God’s. He respects
both. But man’s power is finite; God’s is infinite.
“I cannot comprehend [the Lord’s] power, his
majesty, his perfections,” he told the Church in his first
address as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve. “But I
do understand something of his love, his compassion, his
mercy.
“There is no burden he cannot lift.
“There is no heart he cannot purify and fill with
joy.
“There is no life he cannot cleanse and restore
when one is obedient to his teachings.” (Ensign, Nov.
1988, p. 77.)
Over the years, as Richard G. Scott has worked on
the cutting edge of technology, his faith in the Lord has
grown ever stronger. He comes to the Quorum of the
Twelve with an unshakable love for his “perfect friend—
our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus the Christ,” and for
another “precious friend”—the Book of Mormon. (Ibid.)
Elder Richard G. Scott was sustained to the Quorum of the
Twelve on 1 October 1988, one month shy of his sixtieth
birthday.
Born on 7 November 1928 in Pocatello, Idaho, and
reared in Washington, D.C., Richard developed an early
interest in science. His parents, Kenneth Leroy and Mary
Eliza Whittle Scott, encouraged him and his brothers to
explore—to tinker with mechanical things, discover how
they worked, build them, repair them. They even trusted
the boys to fix the family car. He smiles: “One time, as a
joke, we put a caboose whistle on the exhaust pipe!”
His father was not a member of the Church, and
his mother was not active. But they were people of
principle, with high standards of integrity. Richard was an
outgoing young man; he was a class president in high
school, played clarinet in the band, and was drum major for
the marching band.
Still, he felt something lacking in his life.
Encouraged by bishops and home teachers to attend church
meetings and activities, he went, “although at times
reluctantly.” For some reason, he sometimes felt as though
he were on the sidelines looking in. The same was true at
school: although he excelled academically and was well
liked, he lacked confidence socially and athletically and
often felt alone.
It wasn’t until he was a missionary that he
discovered what could have eliminated those feelings. “The
expanded understanding of the gospel that came from an
urgent desire to share the gospel with others filled all the
voids of loneliness,” he says. “I began to recognize that
those feelings need not have been part of my life if I had
really understood the gospel.”
Ezra Taft Benson, then a member of the Quorum
of the Twelve and U.S. secretary of agriculture, was the
Scott family’s stake president in Washington, D.C.
Richard’s father worked for him as assistant secretary of
agriculture. President Benson’s example—“his integrity,
his devotion, his great ability to defend principle—very
deeply touched my father,” says Elder Scott. “As that
relationship grew, President Benson had a significant
influence in Dad’s conversion.” When Richard’s father was
baptized, he invited President Benson to confirm him. He
and his wife subsequently served for more than ten years in
the Washington Temple, where he was a sealer.
As a teenager, Richard was determined to earn his
own money for college, and he showed a remarkable spirit
of adventure in going about it. One summer he worked on
an oyster boat off the coast of Long Island. Another
summer he cut down trees in Utah for the forest service; he
also repaired railroad cars.
During a later summer, his application to work for
the Utah park service was denied because all the jobs were
taken. He tucked away the rejection letter without telling
anyone about it and left for Utah. By the time he had made
the trip across the United States, he had only three cents
left in his pocket.
“Didn’t you receive our letter?” asked the man
when he showed up.
“Yes,” Richard replied, “but I would like to work
anyway. Is there a position as desk clerk?” The man
laughed incredulously. Lowering his expectations, Richard
asked, “How about bellboy?” He got hardly more than a
laugh. Swallowing hard, Richard pulled out all the stops:
“All right,” he said, “I’ll wash dishes!”
“Forget it,” the man said. “We don’t have any
openings.”
Fingering the three pennies in his pocket, Richard
was desperate. “I’ll wash dishes for two weeks,” he said,
“and if you don’t like my work, you don’t have to pay me.”
At least that way he’d have a place to stay and eat, he
figured. The man relented.
Richard washed dishes—but he also went into the
kitchen to see if he could help. By summer’s end, he was
the number two cook.
These experiences did more than pad his college
savings account; they also helped him grow spiritually.
During spare minutes he read and pondered the Book of
Mormon and experienced a powerful spiritual awakening.
Back home, he attended George Washington
University, studying mechanical engineering and playing
clarinet and saxophone in a jazz band. As he neared
graduation, all of his career plans seemed to be on
schedule. But then “the Lord placed a bombshell in my
little world: Jeanene Watkins.” A vivacious young woman,
Jeanene was the daughter of Utah’s Senator Arthur V.
Watkins.
Their budding relationship presented a problem for
Richard’s carefully laid career plans. One night Jeanene
said to him, “When I marry, it will be in the temple to a
returned missionary.” He had not thought much about a
mission, but with that motivation, he prayed harder than
ever before and ended up talking to the bishop about it.
Soon after graduation, he left for a mission to Uruguay.
Jeanene graduated the following June in sociology and left
the next day for a mission to the northwestern states. Two
weeks after he returned, they were married in the Manti
Temple.
During his mission, he immersed himself in the
Book of Mormon, and the foundation of his testimony
became more sure. He discovered that the more he forgot
himself and served others, the stronger his faith became.
On one occasion, a family invited Richard and his
companion to their home to explain what the Church
taught—with an agreement not to try to convert them.
When they arrived they found another visitor: the head of
another church for all of South America. “He challenged
and contradicted everything we said. I was torn between
trying to defend my beliefs with my meager knowledge,
and keeping the commitment we’d made not to try to
convert them. I settled on doing the latter. But when it was
over, I went home feeling terrible. I felt I had defended the
Church poorly; I knew my knowledge of the gospel wasn’t
what it had to be. I did a lot of praying that night.”
The next day, the family invited the missionaries
back. They were embarrassed by what had occurred and
were impressed that the elders had kept their promise, even
though the other person hadn’t. Now they wanted to be
taught. They were eventually baptized.
Before Richard had left for his mission, a professor
had tried to dissuade him from going; he would be
throwing away a promising career, the man said. A few
weeks after returning from Uruguay, Richard was invited
to be interviewed by Captain (later Admiral) Hyman G.
Rickover for a job on a top-secret military project
involving nuclear energy.
The interview seemed to go miserably. In response
to one question, Richard mentioned his mission. “What
mission?” Captain Rickover demanded. “And what do I
care about your mission?”
Richard reacted to that, because his mission had
been such a precious time in his life. “Everything I really
appreciate began to mature in the mission field,” he says.
“So I decided to respond vigorously to every question.”
Then the captain asked, “What was the last book
you read?”
“The Book of Mormon,” he responded. And so it
went through the rest of the interview.
With all hopes extinguished, Richard got up to
leave. “Just a minute,” said the captain. “I’ve been testing
you to see if you could stand up for what you believe. This
is not going to be an easy project. We need people who can
work with confidence.” Richard got the job working on the
design of the nuclear reactor for the Nautilus, the first
nuclear-powered submarine.
Later, while checking personnel records, he
discovered the name of the professor who had urged him
not to go on a mission; the man was now working under
Richard’s direction, about three levels down.
Brother Scott worked for Admiral Rickover for
twelve years. In 1955 he completed the equivalent of a
doctorate in nuclear engineering at the Oak Ridge School
of Reactor Technology in Tennessee. (Because of the
classified nature of the work, a university degree couldn’t
be given.) He also helped in the development of the first
commercial land-based nuclear power plant.
During those years, Brother Scott served as
president of a seventies quorum and as stake clerk. And
then in 1965, when he was thirty-seven years old, he was
called to be mission president in Argentina. Again he had
to make a decision between a mission and his career—and
he was vigorously encouraged not to accept the mission
call. But again there was no question in his mind, even
though it appeared that he was putting his career on the
altar.
As mission president, he again found the Book of
Mormon to be a constant source of inspiration, and he used
it extensively in zone meetings and in counseling with the
missionaries. He was an efficient, compassionate mission
president. One of his missionaries, Wayne L. Gardner,
remembers serving in an outlying area and receiving the
assignment to make arrangements for a conference.
“Everything went wrong,” he says. “I had scheduled a
building for us to meet in, but at the last minute it was
cancelled. By the time I got to the airport to get the
president, I was late and he had been waiting. I forgot to
ask the taxi driver to wait for us, and there weren’t any
others in sight. We were stranded.
“Even though I could see frustration in the
president’s eyes, he put his arm around me and told me he
loved me. He was so patient and understanding. I hope I
never forget that lesson.”
When the Scotts returned to Washington, D.C.,
Brother Scott joined other Rickover colleagues who had a
private consulting firm specializing in nuclear engineering.
He served as counselor in a stake presidency and later as a
regional representative. During that time the Washington
Temple was completed, and President and Sister Scott
invited many friends and associates to their home in
preparation for the temple open house. One office
companion and his family were baptized, as was a neighbor
family.
Then in 1977, eight years after being released as
mission president, Richard G. Scott was called to be a
member of the First Quorum of the Seventy. For a year he
served as Managing Director of the Priesthood Department,
then as Executive Administrator in Mexico and Central
America. He and his family lived in Mexico City for three
of his six years in that assignment.
Elder Scott’s great love for Latin-American people
deepened even further as he served with them again. And
that love was reciprocated. The people saw in him not only
a leader, but also a friend.
One Sunday in Mexico City, Elder Scott sat
listening to a priesthood lesson. The teacher was
unschooled, his presentation was not polished. But it was
obvious that he loved the Lord and his brethren and had a
humble desire to share the gospel with them. A sacred
feeling enveloped the room.
As he listened, Elder Scott received a spiritual
confirmation of the man’s message and also some
impressions for his personal benefit. He wrote them down
and “found that I had been given precious truths I greatly
needed to be a more effective servant of the Lord.”
Through the morning, he continued writing the impressions
that poured into his mind and heart. That experience has
been repeated.
“I don’t think my experience receiving promptings
is different from others’,” he says. “But I believe we often
leave precious personal direction of the Spirit unheard
because we do not record and respond to the first
promptings that come to us when we are in need or when
impressions come in response to urgent prayer.”
When he returned to Church headquarters, he was
called as Managing Director of the Genealogy (now Family
History) Department. A year later, in 1983, he was called
to the Presidency of the First Quorum of the Seventy and in
1984 became Executive Director of the Family History
Department.
Over the next four years, Elder Scott oversaw
some major shifts in the department. Not surprisingly,
many of them involved applying technology to the
challenges of family history research.
A clear signal of that trend was the change of the
name from Genealogy to Family History. Other changes
involved simplifying the steps necessary to identify
ancestors; moving away from trying to train people to be
genealogists and focusing more on helping them identify
ancestors; increasing the rate of microfilming records
around the world; internationalizing family history centers;
and decentralizing key functions away from headquarters.
The man who spent much of his life involved in
technology gets especially excited when he talks about
computer-assisted family history work. So does his wife.
“Since Rich’s father was a convert,” she says, “all his
ancestors needed to be identified, and the temple work
needed to be done for them. We worked with his parents to
gather genealogy on his line. And now it’s exciting to see
what we can do with computers; the kinds of little facts
that I used to spend ten years gleaning here and there just
pour in!”
Elder Scott refuses to assume any personal credit
for the changes in the Family History Department. “They
were made in accordance with inspired long-range goals
established by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the
Twelve,” he says. “And I was fortunate to come to that
position after a great foundation had been laid by my
predecessors—and to have the help of experienced
Managing Directors and a devoted management staff. I
have worked with outstanding individuals before. But I
have never been blessed to serve with a more dedicated,
capable, devoted group of men and women, nor more
consistently felt the guiding influence of the Spirit than
during this singular experience in the Family History
Department.”
It’s no surprise to see Sister Scott immersed so
completely in an area where her husband is heavily
involved. “When I think of Dad,” says a daughter, “I think
of Mother too. I see my parents functioning as a team.”
Elder Boyd K. Packer commented on Sister Scott’s
strength when he welcomed her husband to the Quorum of
the Twelve during general conference: “He is sustained by
his lovely wife, Jeanene, who is not one whit less a
spiritual power.” (Ensign, Nov. 1988, p. 18.)
The quality Elder Scott loves most about Jeanene
is “her love of the Lord and her spirituality. And she is a
devoted, hardworking, and capable wife who has made the
family the center of her life. Besides,” he adds, “we have
an awful lot of fun together!”
“We really do!” she smiles. “He’s my best friend.”
That bond is immediately obvious. Humor and laughter are
friendly companions in their marriage. “We know when to
be serious and when to have fun,” he says. They tease one
another, but it’s a gentle teasing. Their affection for each
other and their sensitivity to one another’s needs are lasting
memories for their children.
“A gift Jeanene has is to take things that I don’t do
well, and because she has great capacity in them, she
makes me think I’m good at them,” says Elder Scott. “Take
dancing, for example. I can’t dance worth anything, but she
dances beautifully. And she makes it look like I know what
I’m doing. One time at a large stake activity we won a
waltz contest! Highly improbable, since it was the first
waltz we had ever done together!”
Since their dating days, they’ve shared an interest
in jazz music. Now they also collect and listen to South
American folk music. They both also love to paint, a hobby
they’ve developed since they were married. He
watercolors; she uses pastels. But neither finds much time
for it any more.
Elder Scott
occasionally
paints with
watercolors.
“This has been
his way to relax
through the
years,” says
Sister Scott.
Hiking and
birding—as a couple and as a family—have captured their
interest in the last few years. “Last summer we had some
wonderful hikes in the mountains, just the two of us,” says
Sister Scott. “Wildflowers were everywhere! We hiked
farther and higher than we ever thought we would.”
There’s a bird feeder in the back yard, and when the family
eats out on the patio, there’s always at least one pair of
binoculars at the table.
True to his mechanical inclinations, Elder Scott is
the family fix-it man, taking care of the plumbing, the
electricity, the cars, and anything else that needs work. He
built a deck onto their current home, and designed and built
an additional living room, master bedroom, and bathroom
onto the previous one.
The Scotts have five living children: Mary Lee
served a mission in Spain and is now completing her
doctorate in applied linguistics at UCLA; Kenneth served a
mission in Texas and lives in Salt Lake City; Linda lives in
Houston, Texas, with her husband, Monte Mickle, and their
three children; David lives in Salt Lake City; and Michael
is studying in Israel and looking forward to a mission.
Mary Lee remembers lots of father-daughter talks.
“I could talk to him about anything and know that he
would be understanding and loving, and yet frank.” For
several summers she worked at the White House, just a few
blocks from her dad’s office, and they would commute to
work together, listening to conference tapes or just visiting.
“I would rattle on about what I had been doing that day,”
she says. “He and my mother have always been my closest
friends.”
She also remembers many priesthood blessings her
father has given her over the years and the letters he sent
her on her mission. “They are like scripture to me.”
Early in their marriage the Scotts lost two children.
A daughter died just before birth, and six weeks later their
two-year-old son died in heart surgery. Hard as it was, “it
was a real testimony-strengthening time for us,” says Sister
Scott. “We just knew it was the will of the Lord. As I look
back on it now, I wonder how we were so strong about it.
But there are many blessings that come from these
sadnesses.”
Elder Scott’s own experiences in life—the happy
as well as the painful—are “perhaps the reason I feel so
intensely about having other people gain an appreciation of
the Savior,” he says. “How much he would help us if we
would but live his teachings! How the suffering and the
loneliness could be taken care of if we were to come unto
him!”
On 29 September 1988, President Ezra Taft
Benson—“with tenderness and love and great
understanding that I will never forget”—extended to Elder
Richard G. Scott a call to become a member of the Quorum
of the Twelve Apostles. Elder Scott was sustained two days
later, on October 1.
“Sister Scott and I have prayed a great deal since
the call came,” he says. “I know the call is from the Lord. I
know that there is a great gap between what I am and what
I am expected to do. That recognition is very humbling. No
one would undertake to serve in this assignment without
the assurance of the support and direction of a loving God.
The real power comes from the Lord.”