Kathy was to prove to be more than a good wife and mother. She was to be another of those defining influences in the life of Henry B. Eyring. The best example of that happened when Hal had been teaching at Stanford for about nine years. It was a richly satisfying time in their lives. He was given considerable freedom to design the classes he taught at Stanford. He returned for one year to Boston as the Sloan Visiting Faculty Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He had also entered the business world now, serving as an officer and director for Finnigan Instrument Corporation and becoming a founder and director of System Industries Incorporated, a computer manufacturing company. In the Church, he had taught early-morning seminary, served for a time in the bishopric of his own ward, and then was called as the bishop of the Stanford First Ward, a campus ward.
But that was all to change. “One night,” Elder Eyring reports, “Kathy nudged me and asked, ‘Are you sure you are doing the right thing with your life?’ ” He stops for a moment and then explains, “I was surprised. Now remember my situation. I have tenure at Stanford. I am the bishop of the Stanford ward. We are living next to her parents. I love what I’m doing. It’s like the Garden of Eden, all right? And then she asks me that question.”
“Couldn’t you do studies for Neal Maxwell?” she went on. Elder Eyring stops again. “You have to understand something. Neal A. Maxwell was the commissioner of education at that time. Kathy didn’t even know him. I didn’t know him.”
When asked about that night, Kathy is not sure what it was that brought forth that question. “We were very happy there,” she agrees, “but somehow I just felt like there was something more important that he should be doing. I knew that his teaching at Stanford was wonderful, but I felt there was something he could teach that could truly change lives.” She knew about the Church Educational System (CES) and somehow remembered that Neal A. Maxwell was the commissioner. Thus her comment.
It was enough. Hal determined he would pray about it. At first he got no answer, or so he thought. But it wasn’t long after that when the phone rang and Commissioner Maxwell, who apparently knew of Hal Eyring, was on the line asking if Hal could come to Salt Lake City. He went.
“I was at my parents’ house,” Elder Eyring recalls, “so Elder Maxwell came over there. The first words out of his mouth were, ‘Hal, I’d like to ask you to be the president of Ricks College.’ ”
Elder Eyring smiles at that. “You’ve got to remember, I grew up in the East, and I was living in California. I have to admit I didn’t even know where Ricks College was then. If you had asked me whether it was a two- or four-year college, I couldn’t have told you.” But a call of such importance was not treated lightly. Even before leaving Salt Lake, he began to pray about it. For a day or two, he could get no answer, which troubled him. “And then,” he says, “as I was praying, an impression came that simply said, ‘It’s my school.’ ” Realizing that was all the answer he needed, he returned to California, and he and Kathleen began making plans to leave Stanford. On 10 December 1971, Henry B. Eyring was inaugurated as president of Ricks College.
Gerald N. Lund, “Elder Henry B. Eyring: Molded by ‘Defining Influences’,” Ensign, Sep 1995, 10
