48 Andrew’s Death

In December 1923 Andrew reported an attack of rheumatism in his left arm and shoulder that lasted two weeks, until he had an infected tooth extracted.⁷⁹² Then by March 1924 he suffered enough from rheumatism that he moved to Salt Lake City for medical care⁷⁹³ and had his remaining teeth pulled.⁷⁹⁴ He and Mary lived in the Connelly home, at 817 First Avenue, with her elderly father. In June, Mary reported, “He is very weak. He pants when he gets on his feet and says it feels like needles in his legs. He can neither sit up in bed or lie down unaided. He is very thin. When the rheumatic pains come on he screams with the pain.”⁷⁹⁵ In July, Mary wrote, “The doctor has given your father up.”⁷⁹⁶

Andrew late in life.

In early August, Andrew thought he was about to die and he sent a request for his life-long friend, President Heber J. Grant, to come administer to him. President Grant was playing golf when he got the message, but after playing two more holes (while waiting for his car to arrive) he went to perform the ordinance.⁷⁹⁷

Dell, Spencer, and Gordon each came separately to help look after their father. Spencer wrote,

Poor Father. We are giving him drugs now, but he suffers so in spite of it. Ever since yesterday he has been so nervous he could hardly stand it. Just moaned and cried all night long and throws his arms around and twitches. He knows very little, at least he can not follow his thot thru. It is pitiful to see him. . . . Can’t possibly understand how Father can get any worse, but he does. We gave him paregoric, whiskey and drugs and in spite of it he never rested a minute till 4:30 when he quieted down for about 20 minutes. He is all unstrung. His nerves are unhinged. He throws his hands and pounds the bed and wrings his hands and runs his hands thru his hair and straightens out and draws up his left leg, the only one he can move and moans and yells with all his strength all night long every 10 or 15 seconds he goes thru it all then quiets down for 5 or 10 seconds and repeats it. He cries O! My! over and over and sometimes O My God! How long! for hundreds of times then O! My! Father let me die! It is the most pitiful thing I ever saw. And still he lives on and his heart beats in spite of everything. Begins to look like he must starve to death.⁷⁹⁸

On August 31, 1924, Andrew mercifully passed away. A few hours before he died, he had asked Elders James E. Talmage and Orson F. Whitney to bless him that he be released from his suffering and they did. The death certificate gave cause of death as “arteriosclerosis (cerebral thrombosis and endarteritis).”

As with Ollie, a funeral for Andrew was held in Salt Lake City. James E. Talmage praised Andrew’s patience in suffering. Orson F. Whitney recalled that as a child Andrew was resourceful and had carved little boats and wagons with his pocketknife. President Heber J. Grant recalled that he and Andrew had been boys together and that “wherever he was . . . he always wore his colors so that everybody saw them and knew his standard.”⁷⁹⁹

The Thatcher Ward held a second funeral. President Heber J. Grant attended that service also. He had decided less than an hour before train time to travel with his wife all the way from Utah to Arizona to participate in this recognition of the passing of a personal friend and a significant Church leader.⁸⁰⁰

Eleven hundred people attended the funeral in Arizona. Non-Mormons and Saints alike showed their respect. Organizers of the scheduled baseball game between the San Carlos Indians and a Safford team postponed it on Andrew’s account.⁸⁰¹ In 1927, when the Hubbard and Graham Wards consolidated, the new organization was called the Kimball Ward in his honor.

While President Grant was present in Thatcher for the funeral he convened a special stake conference and installed a new stake presidency—Harry L. Payne as president and Andrew’s twenty-nine-year-old son, Spencer Kimball, as a counselor. When Andrew became stake president in 1898 there were thirty-seven stakes in the Church; when he died in 1924, there were ninety-two.

Mary moved back to Salt Lake City and in 1929 she became editor of the Relief Society Magazine, a position similar to the one she had previously held with the Young Woman’s Journal. She died on November 24, 1937, of cancer.⁸⁰² Even after Andrew died she treated his children as though they were her own.

Andrew and Mary brought one another great satisfaction during their short marriage. Mary wrote to her stepchildren, “I appreciate your father more all the time. He was so wonderful that I was not big enough to fully realize what an unusual husband I had. Very, very few men can approach him.”⁸⁰³

Spencer administered Andrew’s estate. When all was distributed in 1931, after seven years, the total paid out to each of the six surviving children (and Ruth’s son, Nicholas Udall) was $10,500.⁸⁰⁴ Spencer had spent long hours managing the estate and selling the properties to advantage, refusing any compensation.⁸⁰⁵ One of the children wondered whether Nick, only a boy with no dependants, should receive the same portion as adults with families to support, but they concluded that he should have his mother’s full share.

The property Andrew owned at his death consisted of the home place (estimated worth $3,300 to $3,500); adjoining orchard ($600 to $750); Montierth place ($800); lot across the street from the home ($200 to $400); and ten acres of hayfields ($2,000). Spencer sold the realty and divided the proceeds. The personal property, mainly furniture from the house, was divided among the children, with the pieces’ estimated value being charged against their share of the cash. They cleared the attic of miscellaneous papers that were dumped down the abandoned old well in the backyard.⁸⁰⁶

Spencer W. and Camilla Kimball at Andrew’s grave in Thatcher.

Andrew’s legacy included twenty-six years he had spent as the father figure of a substantial and growing community of Latter-day Saints, the St. Joseph Stake established in 1883. Andrew Kimball took it from its adolescence (age fifteen) to a maturity of forty-one years old, nearly ready to divide. During his presidency the stake had grown from thirty-four hundred members to nearly six thousand, despite the transfer of a number of branches to the California Mission and the outmigration of many members seeking work in California and elsewhere. At the time of Andrew’s death there were twenty-two units in the St. Joseph Stake, fifteen in Gila Valley (Ashurst, Artesia, Bryce, Central, Eden, Emery, Graham, Hubbard, Layton, Lebanon, Matthews, Pima, Solomonville, Thatcher, and Thatcher West); five east of the valley (El Paso, Franklin, Gila, Redrock, and Virden); and two west of the valley (Globe and Miami).

Andrew Kimball served as a bridge between prophets, his father, Heber C. Kimball, and his son, Spencer W. Kimball. Heber lived and served during the time of covered wagons and persecutions; he experienced the formative years of the Church as a close associate of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Andrew then served as a middle-level Church officer in responsible callings as mission leader and stake president for a total of thirty-nine years.⁸⁰⁷

Andrew’s son Spencer came to the apostleship in 1943, after having learned by observation of his father’s life what it meant to be a committed worker in the Kingdom.

Trelva Lines Wilson recalled Andrew’s funeral:

As a child I stood with the Primary children in a long line to move through the living room of the Andrew Kimball home, view the body, and pay our respects. My father had said over and over, ‘President Kimball is the finest and best man I ever knew,’ so I went with curiosity to see the finest and best man in the world and I was disappointed. He seemed just an ordinary man.⁸⁰⁸