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Consecrated Talents
By
Davis Bitton
Salt
Lake City, Utah Territory, 1881.
A young man knocked on the door and asked to see the judge.
Answering
the knock was a man twenty-one years old, who had a clean-shaven
face and looked about seventeen. “What can I do for
you?”
“Well,
I want to get married if I can find the judge.”
“I
am the man you want. Bring in the lady and I will perform
the ceremony.”
“Are
you sure this is all right?”
“Why
certainly, my friend. I wouldn’t play a joke on you in such
a serious matter.”
The
groom went out and returned with the bride. All through
the ceremony he looked very worried. On the way out, still
unconvinced, he turned and said, “You’re sure there’s no mistake
about this?”
During
his tenure in this elected office, the young justice of the peace
performed exactly one hundred marriages. His name was George
D. Pyper.
If
he had been like many children in Utah as well as the rest of
the country at the time, young George might have received only
about three years of elementary education. But he wanted
more. After attending ward schools, he went on to the University
of Deseret and studied with John R. Park. One day an attractive
young woman recited in class. The admiring boy slipped her
a note: “You did splendid.” She read it, wrote something
on it, and sent it back to him. She had added two letters so that
it read “splendidly.” She later became his wife.
Young
George Pyper arranged to be tutored in the law by Joseph Rawlins
and George Sutherland. He took instruction in penmanship
from Heber J. Grant. His secretarial skills were put to
use from the age of fourteen when he began serving under his father,
Bishop Alexander Pyper, as clerk in the police court. So
when George became justice at a young age, he was not without
qualifications.
George
Pyper had a beautiful, natural tenor voice. Building on
this natural gift, he took lessons in singing from George Careless
and in choral performance from Evan Stephens. He became
choir director in his ward and sang in a quartet considered the
best in the West. This quartet sang at more than one thousand
funerals.
Pyper
was a member of just about every music organization in town.
He belonged to the Orpheus Club and the Philharmonic Society.
He became manager of the Musical Arts Society. For four
years he served as president of the Salt Lake Civic Music Association.
But
Pyper’s interests were not limited to music. He served as
associate editor of the Contributor, assistant secretary
of the Deseret Agricultural Society, and secretary of the territorial
fair organization. At the great world’s fair in Chicago
in 1893, he spent six months in charge of Utah’s agricultural
department. Utilizing and using his people skills, he warmly
greeted visitors as they came to see the Utah exhibit.
A
Goodwill Mission
In
1896, George Paper was called to join B.H. Roberts on an eight-month
goodwill mission that took them to Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago,
Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and New York.
They enjoyed modest success in other places but were most successful
in St. Louis, where Roberts gave a monumental series of forty-two
lectures. Pyper added to the interest of each evening by
rendering a tenor solo. When they left St. Louis, the branch
there had sixty new members.
A
year later the state of Tennessee held its great centennial exposition,
and George was called to take charge of the Church’s exhibit there.
While he was in Tennessee, a new music organization was formed
in Utah — the Salt Lake Opera Company. George received in
the mail a copy of an opera score. By the time he returned
to Salt Lake he had memorized the leading role. For a quarter
of a century he was the leading tenor of the Salt Lake Opera Company,
singing and performing in twenty-five different operas.
Opposite
him in the soprano role for some of these operas was Emma Lucy
Gates Bowen, who went on to a successful professional career that
included the Royal Opera of Berlin. Later in life she said
about George Pyper, “I never sang with a tenor with a more beautiful
natural quality of voice ... It almost melted me to tears.”
In
1898, Pyper was appointed manager of the Salt Lake Theatre.
In this capacity he met many of the world’s famous actors and
actresses. To recount the history of this important cultural
venue, including many of his personal experiences, Pyper wrote
Romance of an Old Playhouse (1928).
Pyper
also served on the Church Music Committee. From that experience
he wrote a series of articles about hymns that were compiled into
the book Stories of Latter-day Saint Hymns (1939).
In1930,
as the Church celebrated its centennial, it mounted an ambitious
pageant “The Message of the Ages.” With a reputation
second to none as someone who could “make it happen,” George D.
Pyper was appointed manager of the pageant project. In the
words of one admiring observer: “Who but Mr. Pyper could have
manipulated and managed anything as many-sided and complex as
that pageant!”
A
writer summed up his contributions to the cultural life of his
people as follows: “Shining through the artistic expression of
the Church is the name of George D. Pyper, which for half a century
and more, has been linked with the best we have in music and drama.”
One
of Pyper’s special interests had always been the Sunday School.
From serving as ward secretary he went on to become general secretary,
then a member of the general board, and then a counselor in the
Sunday School general superintendency under superintendent David
O. McKay. For a number of years, Pyper was editor of The
Instructor magazine. In 1934, he became general superintendent
of the Sunday School.
On
his seventy-fifth birthday, messages of congratulations poured
in from many parts of the world. A gathering in his honor
was held in the Lion House. One of the speakers said, “[Brother
Pyper] is about the only man who has been able in life to make
a multitude of friends without a single enemy.” That speaker
was President Heber J. Grant.
Here
is another tribute. “Like the mellow glow of an Indian summer
day is the autumn of George D. Pyper’s life — rich and warm with
kindliness, love, and spirituality ... There has been no
period of his existence which has not been replete with interesting
activities.”
At
his death in 1943, the Deseret News described George D.
Pyper as a man of courtesy and simple goodness, cheerful, and
full of animation. “His fine note of modesty remained
with him throughout his life. When a call came to him from his
Church, he conceived it as a call from God and in that spirit
of faith, he undertook his duties.
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