In the spring of 1935, Arvilla Wootton Ritchie and Horace J Ritchie traveled from Heber City to Salt Lake City, Utah for Arvilla to give birth to their son. J Bonner Ritchie was born on May 16, 1935. Bonner spent his early years in Heber where he excelled in school. He received much encouragement from his academic mother and former-teacher grandmother Ida Bonner Wootton (or M’Ida as he lovingly...
In 1956 I was serving as a missionary in the Eastern States Mission. On a train ride from Pittsburgh to New York City to attend a mission conference I decided to do something productive (in addition to catching up on sleep) by memorizing scriptures. For some reason I chose the 121st Section of the Doctrine and Covenants. Although I was taking a break from my engineering studies at the University...
Gene first came to my attention when, as a graduate student at Berkeley in the late sixties, I heard of a couple of Mormon intellectuals “down the peninsula” at Stanford who were founding “a journal of Mormon thought.” I had not met Gene (or Wesley Johnson, the other founding editor), but I immediately assumed that I would like him. The life of the mind is addictive, and I knew I wanted to...
(Sunstone, June 1996, written with Dave Ulrich) WHY ASK WHY: Most Mormons focus on doing more, not thinking more. A FRIEND RECENTLY OVERHEARD US CASUALLY discussing some observations about the Church — the lack of the Spirit in many meetings, the tendency of some leaders to “exercise unrighteous dominion” by imposing their personal political, social, or theological bias on others...