Preface

In a 1926 letter my father, Spencer W. Kimball, said, “I am planning to use the many records and books left by my father [Andrew Kimball] to write a biography for him, but I have been so tied with other duties that I have not been able to get at it yet.” Over the next sixty years he collected and preserved the raw materials he would need to write that biography. He spent hundreds of hours at the task, including drafting some pieces of the story, yet the size of the project and the busyness of his life kept him from finishing it as he had hoped.

Andrew Kimball as a young man and later in life.

After my nephew and I had written Spencer W. Kimball, my father’s biography to 1977, and I had written Lengthen Your Stride in 2005, describing the remainder of his presidency, I committed myself to fulfill his desire that the story of his father’s life be told. Considering how much preliminary work he had done, it would not be inappropriate to consider him a coauthor.

When I retired in 1996 I began for the first time serious work on the biography of Andrew Kimball, my grandfather. I intended to produce a book privately published for family interest, but a conversation with John W. Welch, the editor in chief of BYU Studies, led to a realization that the manuscript would fit into the BYU Studies series titled Biographies in Latter-day Saint History. That prospect pleased me and I am sure it would have pleased my father.

Many of the documentary sources are in the process of being cataloged by the Church History Library and are not available for the meticulous review usually given them by BYU Studies editorial staff. Errors and deficiencies are mine.

I express my great appreciation to BYU Studies for its willingness to publish the story of Andrew Kimball despite its lack of commercial prospects, and I enthusiastically acknowledge the high professional skill and cooperative spirit of Heather M. Seferovich, Marny K. Parkin, and others of the staff.

Edward L. Kimball
Provo, Utah, April 2011