Clerk to Stake President Romney

…Previous Church assignment: Clerk to Stake President Gordon H Williams

Gordon

Gordon Williams was our Bishop in the Cambridge Ward in the late 1970s, with, I believe, Mitt Romney as his Executive Secretary through at least part of his administration.

Early on, I was cleaning out some old files in the Stake offices and came across the carbon copy of a 1958 letter from Cambridge Branch President E Earl Hawkes to New England Mission President Junius M Jackson* requesting authorization to perform the marriage of Robert Chandler to recently-returned missionary Norma McKinnon. I presented it to Bob and Norma; they seemed pleased to have it as a keepsake.

As I recall, their marriage was among the first gatherings I ever attended in the Cambridge Chapel: perhaps the first outside the normal meeting schedule.

Mitt succeeded Gordon as Bishop and then became his counselor and then again, in 1986, his successor as our Stake President. Mick Watson and Bill Ence also served as Gordon’s counselors. I was Gordon’s Stake Clerk from 1982 on, and when he completed his term of office, I was afraid I’d be released, too, but Mitt kept me on for a year.

Meanwhile, Gordon had been called as Regional Representative, and he had a job for me there, too. More about that in 1987.

*Had some difficulty remembering his name, after all this time; didn’t even help that his son Doug was in the Branch Priests’ Quorum with me.