I Remember Tom Cheney
By Davis Bitton

He’s been dead ten years now. Born in 1901, he lived through almost all of the twentieth century. I think he qualifies as being part of history. What I am sure of is that Thomas E. Cheney is part of my history.

In the mid-1930s, he and his family, along with his wife, Fern, and two young daughters, showed up in my hometown of Blackfoot, Idaho. He was the new seminary teacher. Since he was a member of our ward, we saw him often.

Every so often, he would bring seminary students in to address the congregation or provide a special musical number. He was called on to speak in sacrament meeting, perhaps more often than most because it provided an opportunity to promote interest in seminary among the young people. It was from him in that setting that I first heard the lines from William Wordsworth that Latter-day Saints like to quote:

Brother Cheney, who loved English literature, knew this passage by heart.

When I entered high school, I was eligible for seminary and found myself in his classroom. We followed a good textbook and I suppose learned something about the Old Testament. But Cheney did some things on his own that left a mark on me. He had us keep a notebook and dictated some things for us to write in it. That procedure, common in the classrooms of past generations, was frowned upon even then, but it worked for me. I still remember some of the aphorisms thus recorded.

He also suggested that we write out selected prayers. Of course we knew that it was not standard usage in the Church to read prayers, and so when called upon to offer an opening prayer we did not read from our notebook. But just having thought it through led to some wonderful, touching sentences that got us out of the "vain repetition" of many prayers. Mr. Cheney did not make a big issue of this but simply encouraged something that might help our spiritual development.

He had a seminary chorus. Not a trained musician, he led us in some choral numbers, sacred and patriotic, that became lodged in the recesses of my brain and feelings. A real esprit de corps existed in this chorus, and it was fun to be part of it.

He sponsored an abstinence club. I may be wrong, but I don’t think that this organization was known elsewhere; certainly it was not common. Alerted in advance as to what we would be doing, seminary students who wished to voluntarily gathered in the stake tabernacle on a designated evening and there, solemnly taking a pledge, agreed to abstain from the "prohibited" substances mentioned in the Word of Wisdom. I have no idea how effective this was, but one had taken a stand and from that point on, if tobacco or alcohol were offered, could say, "I can’t — I have made a pledge to abstain."

A tall, thin man with a distinctive face, Thomas E. Cheney was loved by the people in that small town. Cohort after cohort of students passed through his classroom.

Then the Cheneys moved away. Brigham Young University was faced with the prospect of an enlarged student body, including many who had spent time in the military service during World War II. With a Master’s degree, Cheney was hired to teach in the English Department and moved his family to Provo. Later he completed the course work for a doctorate.

When I became a high school senior, it was time to decide on a university. Without giving details, I can say that lures and offers came from the University of Idaho, Idaho State University, the University of Utah, and Stanford University. My parents must have communicated with their friends the Cheneys, because in the mail came a long letter describing what BYU had to offer. Charming and persuasive, this letter from Tom (that’s how he signed it) helped tip the scales, and the next fall I enrolled as a college freshman at BYU.

When I signed up for the required freshman English course, my professor turned out to be Thomas E. Cheney. Using a standard anthology, we studied and discussed essays, drama, fiction (Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native), and poets from Keats to Yeats and Eliot. Some of the students in that class were pretty sharp — let’s face it, brighter than I was. But it was a wonderful experience.

The next year I signed up for Cheney’s course in creative writing. One of the consequences of my taking this course was an invitation to join the staff of the student literary magazine. I became nonfiction editor and participated in staff meetings with some delightful, talented people.

Without recounting all my memories of Cheney and his family, I can say that he was one of those teachers who exert a profound influence and who somehow stay with you forever.

Thomas E. Cheney made important contributions outside the classroom as well. He was one of the pioneers in the study of Utah and Mormon folklore. A founding member of the Folklore Society of Utah in 1958, he served two terms as its president. He was a board member of the National Folk Festival Association.

In 1968, he published Mormon Songs from the Rocky Mountains: A Compilation of Mormon Folksong. In 1971, with Austin Fife and Juanita Brooks, he compiled and edited Lore of Faith and Folly. In 1973 appeared Cheney’s The Golden Legacy: A Folk History of J. Golden Kimball, still one of the best treatments of its subject. Included in the William A.Wilson Folklore Collection at BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library is a body of material collected by Cheney and his students.

In 1991, he published Voices from the Bottom of the Bowl: A Folk History of Teton Valley, Idaho, 1823-1952. Partly autobiographical, it includes many colorful characters, including the unforgettable high school teacher Katheryn Spurns in "Red Hair in the Sacred Grove." A little gem of its genre, Voices from the Bottom of the Bowl ranks alongside Edward Geary’s Goodbye to Poplarhaven and deserves to be more widely known.

Back in 1969, Thomas E. Cheney was invited to give the sixth annual faculty lecture at BYU. I drove to Provo to hear my dear friend and mentor speak on "Imagination and the Soul’s Immensity." The last two words of this title are from Wordsworth. "Man is imprisoned in the world but his imagination is free," said Cheney in a statement of his thesis. "Hence part of his reality is the world of the imagination." In a wide-ranging address that probed and compared, quoting authors from Plato to Henry Adams, Cheney exhibited the quality of his mind and spirit. With clear references to the counterculture of the 1960s, elements of which are still part of our world a generation later, he addressed large issues of perennial human significance.

Drawing on his experience as a folklorist, he gently admonished Latter-day Saints to be less gullible in accepting as part of their religion every story they heard. But, he insisted, they need never give up their belief in the essential events and truths of the gospel.

"Tradition in song and story preserves for us a legacy of faith, faith in the guiding and protecting power of God. In answer to prayer, sea gulls came to devour crickets that would have destroyed crops. We have no need to destroy what has become legend." For the curious, that faculty address can be read in BYU Studies, volume 9, issue 3 (Spring 1969).

Yes, I remember Tom Cheney. Like many others whose names do not become household words, he served his people well. Full of years, he died in 1993. Presuming to speak for hundreds of others, I salute him and thank him for his kindness, his good humor, the excellence of his teaching, his generosity of spirit.