Brief Biography of Robert K. Thomas

Robert Kedzie Thomas was best known as a popular English professor and administrator at Brigham Young University. He was born July 22, 1918, in Utah, of Welsh and Mormon pioneer heritage. He spent most of his young life in Oregon. On December 24, 1948, he married Shirley Ann Wilkes, and they became the parents of three children. He passed away October 3, 1998.

The Thomas men of earlier generations had been coal miners, and Robert and his two brothers were the first to earn advanced degrees. Robert earned a bachelor’s degree at Reed College, Portland, Oregon, where he benefitted from an excellent honors program and close association with faculty members. While pursuing his degree at Reed, he worked as a welder, and he continued to work with his hands throughout his life. He then earned a master’s degree from the University of Oregon and a doctorate from Columbia University.

Thomas joined the faculty of BYU in 1951. He saw a steady improvement in student scholarship at BYU and noted that as the campus grew from a few buildings to many, students and faculty increased their academic achievements in similar manner.¹ To attract the best and brightest by providing the option of more challenging general education courses—and hoping to elevate academic inquiry in all realms of the campus—he promoted creation of an honors program comparable to what he experienced at Reed College. He was appointed the first director of the BYU Honors Program at its founding in 1960. He held that post until 1968, when he was appointed academic vice-president of BYU. A history of BYU records, “Thomas possessed both the preparation and the personality needed to initiate the Honors Program. He was highly respected by faculty and students both as a scholar and as a teacher. He was also a personable man who related to others with grace and diplomacy. . . . Three factors contributed to [the Honors Program’s] initial success. First, the University administration fully supported Thomas in his efforts. Second, many professors approached by Thomas were willing to teach honors classes in addition to their regular departmental loads, even though they received no additional compensation. Finally, Thomas was untiring in his commitment to the program’s success and in his efforts to organize a superior Honors Program curriculum.”² Accompanying his work in the honors program, Thomas coached the BYU team participating in the College Bowl program on CBS television. In five weeks in 1962, the team won four matches, and they also won the hearts of the nation with their “maturity and mutual kindness,” as Thomas reported.³

As academic vice-president, he was a liaison between the faculty and the president’s office. He worked on academic planning and accreditation, hired incoming faculty members during a time of tremendous growth, and even wrote speeches for President Ernest Wilkinson. He continued as academic vice-president when Dallin Oaks became president of BYU in 1971. Thomas’s manner was self-effacing, hard working, and collaborative. His breadth of knowledge was remarkable. President Oaks described Thomas in this way: “Who else in the university, certainly not his colleagues in the university administration, could lecture BYU life scientists on Watson’s double helix, enlighten a national audience of academic administrators on accreditation and the current abuses in continuing education programs, edify a class on the Bible as literature, and inspire an audience of idealistic young marrieds on gospel ideals and practices, all with the effortless grace of the experienced professional in each of those fields and more. In truth his fields were as wide as the domain of a church university and as deep as needed to give new insights to every group he addressed and every person he counseled.”⁴

Robert Thomas served in many positions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including bishop, stake president, and president of the Australia Melbourne Mission. Many of the speeches in this collection reflect the wisdom he gained as he served in Church leadership positions over the decades. He interwove his faith and his academic life from the beginning. A speech in this collection, “The Book of Mormon as Hebraic History,” includes his telling about writing his undergraduate thesis, a literary analysis of the Book of Mormon, and defending that thesis to the faculty at Reed College. In the 1960s, he and fellow BYU English professor Bruce B. Clark were commissioned by the Church to create a course of literary study for the women of the Relief Society, and they produced the five-volume anthology Out of the Best Books. In later years he served as a senior editor and contributor for the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, which was published in 1992.

Thomas earned the love and devotion of his family. His daughter, Angie, remembered, “As a father he determined never to demand conformity. . . . It required the patience to persuade and the respect to listen to our questions and concerns. He talked with us a great deal, but he never talked down to us. He believed in our ability to understand and to follow.”⁵

This volume collects his best speeches, which offer his insight into many facets of wisdom and Christian discipleship. As Thomas stresses in these speeches the importance of personal accountability, humility, and respect, may we follow his counsel and example and find our way, as he did, to joy and fulfillment.