Our sacrament meetings (in Manhattan) seem to draw the LDS celebrities, so to speak. Some weeks ago David Archuleta showed up. Yesterday Mitt Romney was there.

Cool. Do you meet in the temple building? My guess is that that is the one people would go to.

Although some people have mistaken me for a celebrity, I am not of myself celebritous.

It’s all about where you live. There’ll be higher concentrations of Mormon politicians in DC suburbs, higher concentrations of movie celebrities in Malibu and Santa Monica, CA, and higher concentrations of spiritual rock stars in Salt Lake. I happened to live in the first two areas for short periods of time.

Good point, annegb–I’m adding you to my list.

Bay Buchanan is a Mormon? I had no idea. I always wondered why she was so fond of Mitt.

President Hinckley came to a couple of family funerals. He always came early for the viewing and then left. If you asked Marjorie how he was doing she’d say, “Burnt Out!”
Jack Anderson was in the Potomac South ward (along with Marriott and Nolan Archibald) when we were there and he did a fireside where he said he was pretty sure the mob killed Kennedy.

Mark Madsen once held my kid while I was teaching EQ.

Jimmy Osmond would come in for a frozen yogurt when I worked at The Yogurt Station in Provo. Bit of a flirt, that Jimmy Osmond. Oh, and I bumped into Johnny Whitaker (think Family Affair and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters) in a stairwell once. Lucky me.

Elder Monson came walking into my room in the LTM. We chatted for a while. He was sent to look over the St. Francis School, which the church was using while the MTC was being built. It was P-day, so it was just me and my companion.

While a student at BYU I attended the official luncheon in honor of the inauguration of Rex E. Lee as the new BYU president. I got there early and found a seat at a very large table, but Boyd K. Packer came over and asked me to please move to another table, because he wanted it just for his own party. A Brush with Shame.

Confession: I had to google Mark Madsen. If I knew sports I bet I would have a lot more celebrity encounters to share. I sat next to the BYU quarterback for a whole semester in class and had no idea until a roommates’ brother was watching a game at our apartment and I saw him. I don’t think he was Mormon, though.

Larry Miller was in my ward growing up, I student taught an Osmond grandchild ( we are distant kin to the Osmonds), my sister knows the Osmond family, DDH served with Harry Reid’s son, a She-Daisy taught my daughter in Sunbeams, and I worked for Robert Redford, one summer, while was still married (just barely) to his ex-wife who is LDS.

Unfortunately, Mark Madsen is most famous for two minutes of dancing while Shaq was rapping: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1ciMXvSE8U It’s unfortunate that he’s famous for this incident because he had a nice college career at Stanford.

My roommate sophomore year was the daughter of one of the non-singing Osmond siblings. When I worked in the BYU bookstore Donny Osmond’s oldest son started talking to me and I was confused as to how he knew my name. He looked familiar, because he resembles his father, but I finally remembered that I was wearing a nametag. :)

Donny Osmond moved into my ward briefly during the 80′s when performing in London.

Mark Madsen was at the temple one day and helped out our youth group with BftD.

I was working in the MTC cafeteria when Shawn Bradley came through.

Glen Larson’s son served n my mission at the same time as me.

So did Hyrum Smith’s daughter (Franklin Planners)

I was in Hugh Nibley’s ward for the summer.

I went to a pre-MHA dinner a couple of years ago with 20 or 30 bloggers. That’s enough brushes with fame to last me for a lifetime.

And I would like to announce that I once dated someone anonymous, but whether it was this Anon or another I am not at liberty to say.

I took a Pearl of Great Price class from Hugh Nibley in the fall of ’92 (one of the last he taught, I believe). I’ve also exchanged a couple of letters with Elder Ballard–who, by the way, is a great example of a true shepherd.

Also, my mother’s mother cleaned house for Ezra Taft Benson’s family for a while in Preston, ID. (She didn’t like him very much.)

And my second counselor in my ym organization growing up beat a family to death with a cricket bat. More infamous rather than famous.

I was also roommates with Lincoln Hoppe, but you really have to know your trivia for that one.

Oh, and Stephen Covey the 3rd was in the boys’ hall that was in the same ward as the freshman hall I was an RA for.

My Family met President Thomas S Monson at the Chicken show held in Farmington UT. He likes to Attend ( I guess he used to raise birds). I felt bad because the Wife wanted a picture with the Family( I did not want to take time away from him). He took the time to take a picture with us and talked to our kids. He was wearing a Baseball Cap in the picture. Very cool. My Brother in Law met him at the Barber and has a shot of President Monson Pretending to Brush his Sons Hair.

Anon #30–so intriguing! Elder Packer? An Osmond?

Those Osmonds really get around.

Orwell–watch out for that Will!

TStevens–I know who Lincoln Hoppe is! No google or anything.

ESO–Both Elder Packer and the Osmonds have Malad Valley roots. Elder Packer’s mother was born on Elkhorn Mountain (your grandfather has a story about taking him there on a visit), and I think the Osmond mother (now deceased) was born in Samaria.

oh, you are all so very young! For any other old-timers who might remember him, Kresimir Cosic was in my family home evening group at BYU in ’71-’72. That was before he joined the Church.

“I’m friends with Steve Evans. Does that count?”

Says who?

I shook hands with Dallin Oaks at a regional LDS con­fer­ence years ago, near Chicago. I hope, of course, that he wasn’t yet infected with what­ever dis­ease is dri­ving his recent speeches. It’s not like I had a bot­tle of Purel with me, and for all I know, his con­di­tion may be contagious.

Nick, I think the disease to which you refer is a condition known as “being a lawyer.” Elder Oaks was afflicted with the condition at the time, but rest assured: it is not contagious.

Perhaps the only moderately famous Mormon I’ve ever met was Mike Leavit, back when he was Administrator of EPA, right before he went over to HHS. I guess I’m not one for Mormon celebrities. I didn’t even know who the Osmonds were until college.

(Just curious, because it impacts if I’m going to bother recounting the stories.) Do Ty Detmer and Shawn Bradley count as Mormon royalty? Or are they more sports celebrities?

Are you kidding, queuno? People are talking about rubbing shoulders with severely diluted Osmond stock and you wonder if Ty Detmer and Shawn Bradley count? Do tell!

These are both family-related stories.

1. My wife cooked dinner for Shawn Bradley when he was a freshman at BYU. Her roommate was calling someone else and got the wrong number. She asked who she was talking to, he gave his name, they didn’t believe him, they invited him to dinner, and he showed up. Funniest thing later was that after we moved to Dallas, my wife got picked to help guest-host a sports radio talk show (the listener-host, if you will) because of her Shawn Bradley story (she also discussed crossdressers and gave dating advice to sports-obsessed divorced men). She got invited back a second time to talk about marketing and Mark Cuban.

2. Ty Detmer. Setup: So my mother went back to teaching in the mid-90s. She’s a huge baseball fan, and one year she casually asked the Cleveland Indians if they’d send a couple of players into the school to read to her class (she’s a master at reading programs). The Tribe sent a couple of players on the injured list, and it was a huge success. Every year they’d send a couple of players and it became a recurring thing.

So a couple of years later, the Cleveland Browns (2.0) are back in business. They’ve signed this guy named Ty Detmer. Of course, my parents would have no idea who he is, because my mother only follows the Indians. Ty Detmer moves into a condo on the street behind my parents (I’m giving up way too much personal info at this point), into their ward, but they are there only during the season. Of course, the ward is a-twitter over this, but my parents could care less. Ty Detmer tears his ACL, during the season. He’s on IR, and so he’s not traveling with the team, so he’s actually attending the ward on Sundays. My mother strikes up a friendship with the wife, and being the sainted being she is, invites them over for a FHE (the Detmers could basically walk a half block and then cut through my parents’ back yard).

So my mother is casually telling me, “oh yeah, we invited that nice football player over for FHE and dinner”. Celebrity utterly wasted on her. She knows he went to BYU and plays for the Browns, but is utterly unimpressed with the credentials.

My mother asks him over dinner (recognizing that he’s a Brown), if he would come to her school and read to the kids. He’s got nothing better to do than rehab, so he immediately accepts. She goes to her principal and announces that she has Ty Detmer coming in to read to her class, and it’s as if the universe has comes apart. Forget the fact she’s had Indians players in; the entire school goes bonkers over the idea that a Cleveland Brown will be there. Other teachers are slipping my mother footballs (from their husbands) to have him sign. It was an amazing success (you see, Ty Detmer can actually *out loud*).

(Sidebar: The Browns called my mother for a few years after that to send players, in limos, but they had to cut it short after a couple of years since they got a few players who couldn’t read.)

Did I men­tion that I was ordained an elder by some­one who was ordained an elder by some­one who was ordained an elder (and so on) by some­one who was ordained by Joseph Smith, who was ordained by Peter, James, and John, who were ordained by Jesus himself!?!?!?

Giggle.

My mother is one of those people completely unimpressed by celebrity. In a weird sense, she ends up hitting it off very well with celebrities, because she doesn’t fawn over them. She just doesn’t care. She’s entirely about what they can do for her, not what they’ve done, and when they are performing service, I think they enjoy not having to “act”. I think with the Detmer story, he only said yes because she asked him in a context of a FHE/dinner where she’d gotten to know his wife at Church (and as a fellow sister, not the wife of a celebrity). If she’d called the Browns and asked for him, it probably never would have happened, because the Browns are so in demand (seriously) and no one would have given her the time of day.

(My mother won some national 4H award as a college student and went to a dinner at the White House with the VP. I like to think that when she meets some athlete, her thought is, “yeah, I’ve met better…”).

She’s met lots of general authorities due to a past calling and treated them with the same deference she’d treat her bishop (i.e., respect the calling but not treat the person any differently).

We’re just a tad more intelligent than the average Cowboys fan. We’re aware of our fallen state and know what it takes to improve. Cowboys fans haven’t had their eyes opened yet…

Oh, I ran into Elder Eugene Hansen buying clementines at some warehouse location under the bridges in SLC. He was impeccably dressed. My wife went to HS with his son and we chatted awhile. He seemed disappointed his son was living in Houston and hoped he would move back to SLC. (My wife says that in HS, they asked his son how many cars the family had and he didn’t know.)

My brother manages a drugstore, of sorts, up in the Roy area. Elder Nelson is a frequent shopper and uses $1-off coupons when he has film developed (doesn’t he have a digital camera). My brother reports that when Elder Nelson comes in, it’s usually very early in the a.m. (5 or 6) and he’s usually dressed in a suit, although one time he was in a jogging suit.

I’ve had experiences with both Elder Holland and Elder Mickelsen where I met them VERY briefly, but months later, ran into them again and they remembered me.

Okay, here goes.
I got talk to Elder L. Tom Perry as a new apostle at the Arizona Temple Rededication on 1974 or 75. I think I was 14.
I got to know Johnny Whitaker a bit before our missions in 1979. We were both members of a Priests Quorum in a BYU Ward.
On my mission I got to speak with Pres. Kimball when he came to the Tokyo Temple dedication. I also became acquainted with the Nagoya Stake President who in his youth had been a champion body builder. There was a statue of a naked man out in front of the main Nagoya Train Terminal that he admitted had been modeled after him. Jimmy Osmond made a promotional appearance at that same train station the last month of my mission in 1981, but rolled his eyes when he saw us four elders at the back of the crowd. Probably ’cause one of the teenage girls there to see him grabbed someone’s flipchart and started jumping up and down with a picture of Joseph Smith to get his attention.
Later, living in Japan, we got to know Elder Han In Sang, the first Korean GA. My Dad is a Korean War Vet and really enjoyed meeting him when they came to visit us in Japan in 1994. Also in Japan our family got to speak briefly with Pres. Eyring at an area conference in Tokyo in 1993. Last Christmas my daughter met him again as a missionary in Monterey, Calif., and he told her he remembered our family!
We’ve had nice visits with the Duttons, an amazing LDS performing family at their Branson theater. Also, when they brought their show to the Mesa area.
Last spring we attended an LDS artists’ concert and got to talk to Brooke White after. I kept trying to take a picture of her and my wife together and messing up with her phone camera, trying both of their’s patience.
So, lah-tee-dah!

I sometimes love the celebrity brush but currently I question the value of it. I suppose it does validate a lot of our feelings about ourselves, our beliefs, self-identity, etc.

I have met a few celebrities (by differing definitions, for sure) and some of these have been fun to recount.

But the biggest celebrated people in all of our lives are our families and those that we are obligated to serve.

And yes, I do think that we will all meet the Great One, Jesus Christ. For the mean time, why not Donnie Osmond and Mark Madsen?

Blog on.

I’ve run into several GA’s in airports: Elder Scott, who’s very humble and kind, Bednar, Mickelsen (who wanted me to go away & sort of said it) Madsen(buying duty free in white shirt and obvious garments when it was 100+, he looked like a walking dead guy since he’s so pale but was friendly to me). Then acting president Hunter who was very frail and just slept while people around him did everything. Also met with several GA’s before some stake conferences but that doesn’t count here I suppose.
Also saw the Smart family once in La Guardia(think), about 7 of them. Elizabeth is tallish for a girl and very pretty. I kept my distance but you could tell they’re a close nit and happy family. I think most people that day recognized them because it was only a year or so after she returned home.

Oh, and I’m fairly sure I saw Elvis once (his spirit gets around nowadays) and he also read the Book of Mormon; deseretnews even said so!

And was she stuck up and snooty?

Marie was very, very nice to my brother-in-law. She was grateful he came, etc. His only comment was about how many family photos were around and that the house was very clean. She must have good housekeepers.

Friend of mine recounts that he was on a plane with Elder Scott, and there was an empty seat. So he goes over just to say hi and tell him how much his talks have meant to him and starts to return to his seat. At which point Elder Scott asked him to stay and basically gave him a PPI for the rest of the flight, and answered any question my friend had.

Said friend thinks that Elder Scott was really bored and looking for conversation, and was happy to get a church member…