Word: bensons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Benson." For two years, he spread the Mormon gospel through the slums of Newcastle, hard hit by postwar depression. Clad in workman's pants and a green turtleneck sweater, young Benson became a familiar figure preaching to groups of unemployed on street corners. He organized athletic clubs, ran picnics, signed up converts. Many a Newcastle oldtimer still refers to him fondly as "our Benson." Said one last week: "He spoke with the voice...
Home again in 1923, Ezra made straight for Flora Amussen's doorstep, and proposed. But the Mormon Church stepped in again. This time it was her turn to do a missionary stint in Hawaii. Benson enrolled in Brigham Young University, where he matched Flora's reputation by being voted most popular man in his class, and graduated with honors. One professor recalls: "He was the smartest agriculture student I've ever had." Finally married in 1926, Flora and Ezra set off in a model T pickup truck for Iowa State College, where he had won a scholarship...
...became an economist for the University of Idaho's extension service at the age of 30. He helped boost the new Idaho Cooperative Council; as its executive secretary, he was behind a publicity campaign that helped put Idaho baked potatoes on restaurant menus all over the U.S. Benson caught the eye of others in the farm-cooperative movement, in 1939 was offered a Washington job (at $25,000 a year) as executive secretary of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, an organization of 53 farm groups. He took the job on one condition-that he would not have...
...cooperative offered him a job at $40,000 a year, and Benson, then president of the Washington Stake* of the Mormon Church, set off for Salt Lake City to get advice from his superiors. He never even got to ask; instead, the Mormon leaders asked him to become one of the Twelve Apostles. Benson accepted, was given a living allowance of about $6,000 a year...
Soap-Dish Detail. Elder Benson, as he is known to fellow Mormons, settled down to the life of an Apostle in a ten-room Devonshire-Norman-Spanish house in Salt Lake City. Like many good Mormons, the Bensons set aside one night a week to be spent with their six children (the eldest, Reed A., 24, is now an Air Force chaplain). Such "family nights" are always opened with a prayer and a reading from the Scriptures; then Benson flicks on the family jukebox for some spirited dancing with his four daughters...