(Talk given by Alfred L. Pace III at William’s funeral service).
My wife didn’t tell you that until she was eight she thought that William Odell Tolman was the president of the Church. She really thought when she saw him conduct church meetings as bishop that was the president of the Church and she said that even though the president was the president of the Church, in her mind’s eye he always remained the president of the Church and that he was.
My first acquaintance with William 0. Tolman, I can’t even tell you the date, it was in Provo at the Thomas Means home in the Provo 8th Ward. They asked him to come and speak at a fireside. I knew my sister Sherrie loved Brother Tolman because she had him as her seminary teacher. I heard so many profound, wonderful things about this man and that night I gained a testimony that they were true.
On November 2, 1962, Loraine and I were traveling the old highway from Provo to Salt Lake. We were going to the Tabernacle to see my sister’s boyfriend go on a mission. Sherrie was going to be in the dating while waiting club, if you know what that is. In the Tabernacle choir seats they had all these elders.
At 80th South (and I never intended that night to get engaged—I really hadn’t I probably wouldn’t have gone—but that is not saying anything against Loraine), I turned to Loraine and said: “I’m ready to talk to your dad.” We went about two blocks and she said: “Okay.” We went about two more blocks and she said: “Did you just propose to me?” I went about two more blocks and said: “Yes, I believe I did.” Well in any event our stay at the Tabernacle was short. There seemed to be something more important than a mission right now, and so when I got to Bountiful to the home in which they used to live in, she said: “Dad, Buddy is ready to talk to you.” (Buddy is short for Alfred Lawrence Pace III.) That meant that I was ready to ask for the hand of his daughter in marriage. I knew emphatically from the day I met Loraine that I would never marry her unless he gave permission. She told me from the start that I would go to her father, if it ever came to that, if it ever got that serious, I would go to him and ask. If he said “no” there was no persuasion on earth or in heaven that would make her feel otherwise.
And so we left the sisters in the family and the brothers that were there in the front room, and he and I went into the bedroom for an hour and forty-five minutes for my interview, one of the most pleasant experiences I have ever had. He there told me the greatness of his daughter, and how he had spent twenty years making her a model woman and lady, choice and virtuous and modest, versed in the scriptures and convinced that the husband she had would be the head of her home like he had been in her home; and it was fun to just sit there. I think it was fun for he and I to make the sisters wait and wonder. But we had that interview and I think every father ought to do that. The young man ought to come in the home and sit down and be interviewed.
He asked me if I was worthy. He said: “I am not your bishop, but I am the father of Loraine.” And he gave me an interview and asked if I was worthy. And I think he had the right as the priesthood holder with the keys in that home to do just that.
After that hour and forty-five minutes, we went into the front room and he said: “Loraine, You have my permission. You can be married to Buddy.”
We had a dream in the seminary program. I have been in the seminary and institute program now for seventeen years, and I love it and he loved it; and I am glad John is in it and he loves it too.
We dreamed of the day coming that someday we could be on his faculty in Bountiful. And so I asked my coordinator Lavar Thornock, and he said: “Well, I’ll go to bat for you.” I understand, and the other coordinator is in the back there, Brother Richens, I understand when they went there they got some static and they said: “No, we don’t do that. We found that when relatives are on the same faculty it is not harmonious and is not good. My coordinator Brother Thornock and Brother Richins said: “Why not? If they think they can do it, let them try.” And so I thank Brother Richins for that opportunity.
We loved that year. We really didn’t want to be transferred. We only got to stay a year and oh how I wished I could have stayed because I loved his faculty and we had a banner year.
Brother Tolman had great faith. After twenty-seven years of being out of college he went back to finish his bachelor’s degree with a family of seven. When he went on to his master’s, he let some hours lapse because he got busy and couldn’t finish; and so he approached the staff at the BYU and asked if he could still keep his lapsed hours. They said: “No, we don’t do that. It just isn’t done and would set a precedence if we allow you to do it. Dad said: “Well I have to. I just can’t do those hours over again. I don’t have the money and I don’t have the time. I’ve got to have the hours. If I can prove to you that I am just as adept in those courses now as when I received those straight ‘As’ when I took the courses, will you give them to me?” They said they would talk about it and they did. They said later: “If you can come and prove to four doctors that we submit as your board and you can sit for some hours and just show us that you know your information, we will give you your Master of Science in Church History. They said there was no other way he could do it.
He told us of the hours he would study and then in the middle of the night inhis dreams, and Mother can verify this, all of a sudden he would sit straight up inbed. He said that sometimes he nearly scared her to death. All of a sudden he would sit straight up in bed with a question. He would write it down right then and the next day he would study that. Or he would raise up in bed suddenly awake with an answer and he would write it down. And he wrote all those questions and all those answers down. And then the morning he was to go from Bountiful to BYU and take that exam, he said in his final study he ran across the words the Black River Lumber Company which just grabbed a hold of him. He never heard of it.
He said he needed to know what that meant and he searched frantically and he couldn’t find the answer, and he looked and looked and finally the time came for him to leave and so he made one final glance in his library and in the upper right hand corner was a little book, which when he opened it fell open to the Black River Lumber Company which was established by the Church up river to provide lumber for the Nauvoo Temple. When he walked into his exam in Provo,
he first question was: “Brother Tolman, you tell us all you know about the Black
River Lumber Company.” And then they asked the questions he had had in his dreams and he gave those answers that came in dreams. That’s the kind of faith he had.
I’ve been a bishop for seven months in the college ward. Since the day I was ordained bishop, every time I have met this great man he has extended his hand and said: “Hello, Bishop Pace.” And every time he has done that I have felt a little bit taller because a man had that kind of respect for someone twenty-six years his junior. I have not been a son-in-law to William Tolman, I have been a son. And the two men I love the most are here—my dad and my dad who has now gone to another mission. I love my two fathers. I love my dad and my dad-in-law who always said: “Son.”
And when people tell of mothers-in-law and things that are said about mothers-in-laws, it goes against the grain of my soul because my mother-in- law is as great to me as my mother and my mother is the greatest mother… and I love my mother.
Now I know as I know I live that this is the Church of Jesus Christ, that it bears his name because it is his, and that Joseph Smith was and is a prophet and that the five foot prophet who stands at the head of this Church is a prophet of the living God, and may I just say this in closing—I dare you. I dare you to find any organization in the world that has had twelve straight men heading it whose lives have been above reproach. Nobody in the history of the world can ever make that claim. This is his Church. God does live. He has greeted back to Him one of the greatest sons in my estimation who has walked the face of the earth. And I bear you that witness asking of the family: “Let’s keep the commandments.” In the name of Jesus. Amen.
(Contributed by the Thomas Tolman Family Organization. Excerpt from William Odell Tolman: Patriarch, Genealogist, Teacher compiled by Loraine Tolman Pace, First Edition, 2009, page 525-528).
Visit FamilySearch to learn more about William Odell Tolman and other ancestors. Also visit the Thomas Tolman Family Organization to find out how you can get more involved in family history.