On the evening of 5 February 1961, a Salt Lake City general meeting opened under the direction of Leroy S. Johnson. The brother asked to conduct told the congregation he had “just been informed that there are over 300 here tonight, the largest crowd we’ve had yet.”1 That is the first hard number the year’s recordings give us, and it sets the tone for what follows: these were not sparse gatherings.

The same meetings name their leadership in plain speech. On 5 November, Carl O. N. Holm told the room, “We are meeting tonight, brothers and sisters, under the presidency of our Elder Leroy S. Johnson, president of this wonderful society.”2 Speakers later in the year kept noticing the size of the house: a “well filled” room in March and again in May, and, on 17 December, the remark that “all the rooms are filled.”3 On 17 September the meeting was opened as a “beautiful Sabbath day”; a July recording likewise calls itself a “Sabbath meeting.”4

Most of the year’s official audio is labeled as Salt Lake City general meetings, not as tapes recorded in Short Creek itself. What the speakers say about Short Creek and Colorado City is part of the 1961 story anyway. In the 3 December meeting, Rulon T. Jeffs recalled “a wonderful time last month with Brother Johnson in Colorado City” — that is, in November.5 Two weeks later, in the 17 December meeting, a speaker described “trying to prepare a home in Colorado City for President Johnson,” and said he “felt the Spirit of the Lord direct us to do this.”6 On 19 November, J. M. (Marion) Hammon referred to something he had “said in Colorado City the other night.”7 In September, a speaker at the Salt Lake meeting praised “our school in Colorado City” as “one of the most benevolent gifts God has given to us” — “a place now where we can gather our children.”8 Short Creek is named in the March meetings as a place for which “funds we’ve raised” were remembered, and as a place where a speaker had once lived and “tried to carry on an order.” The recordings do not, in the passages read for this page, date that earlier residence to 1961, so it is not treated here as a 1961 event.9

The same J. M. Hammon is addressed in these tapes as Marion. In the 19 February meeting a speaker refers to “Brother Marion’s repetition of what Brother Barlow had” said; in other 1961 remarks, men speaking to him use the name Marion.10 Other regular voices in the Salt Lake meetings include Guy H. Musser, Alma A. Timpson, Richard S. Jessop, and Carl O. N. Holm. A few Sundays survive only as separately labeled speaker recordings, not as one full meeting tape — notably 16 April and 5 November, and the shorter 22 October set. The 6 August recording labeled as a full meeting runs 44 minutes 52 seconds, much shorter than the typical two- to three-hour Sunday recording; that is the length of the file that remains, not a claim that the meeting itself was short.11

Outside the regular Sundays, the year has a clear calendar of special gatherings. On 8 May, a Salt Lake home was dedicated for Lara Jean and Hazel Zitting. Hazel’s remarks at that gathering, preserved in a transcript of her talk, speak of going “hand in hand with Lara Jean” — that is the spelling she uses on the tape, though some filenames say Laura or Laur.12 On 27 June, a funeral was recorded for Susan Alice Bell Clark Steed, with a life sketch by her daughter and remarks that include her nephew D. C. Tanner, Parley J. Harker, Rulon T. Jeffs, Guy H. Musser, and J. M. Hammon.13 On 10 October, another Salt Lake funeral was recorded under the title “Grandfather Carl O. Holm,” with remarks by Edward Carson, Leroy S. Johnson, Guy H. Musser, and J. M. Hammon. The recordings do not settle whether that deceased “Grandfather Carl O. Holm” is the same person as the Carl O. N. Holm who spoke in the year’s meetings.14

On 4 December the community met in Canada. Alma A. Timpson’s remarks on that trip announce, in so many words, “the morning session of the 4th of December Conference 1961.”15 A separate set of Canada conference compilation tapes is labeled August, October, and December 1961 together. One of those tapes, already transcribed, continues “President Musser’s talk on Get the Spirit of the Lord and Keep It.” Those compilation tapes do not, in the transcript read so far, speak a single calendar date, so they are kept distinct from the 4 December conference on this page.16

Two photographs in the 1961 picture folder are titled “Sunday school 1961” and “Men in sunday school 1961.” Their titles are the evidence for the year; the images themselves are withheld so that faces are not shown.17 A 32-minute testimony file is named for Heber Kimball Cleveland and dated 6 February 1961 on the filename only; it has not yet been transcribed, its contents are not summarized here.18 And the four-minute 22 October recording labeled as a “general meeting” is not a full meeting: the transcript begins by calling on Brother Woodruff Steed to bear his testimony.19