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title: "President Hinckley Passes"
date: 2008-01-28
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# President Hinckley Passes

![Gordon B Hinckley](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/hinckley_medium1.jpg)Although it's outside my blog's focus, I'd feel remiss if I didn't express admiration for Gordon B. Hinckley, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who just passed away tonight at age 97. Much unlike a prophet of doom and gloom, President Hinckley was an optimist who encouraged us to stand taller, to take longer strides and do better.

One of my favorite talks he gave was entitled ["Slow to Anger."](http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-775-23,00.html) Quite amazingly, he doesn't recollect ever quarreling with his wife, who he'd been with for 67 years. In this talk on anger, he quotes a story that made me laugh:

> Once a man who had been slandered by a newspaper came to Edward Everett asking what to do about it. Said Everett, “Do nothing! Half the people who bought the paper never saw the article. Half of those who saw it, did not read it. Half of those who read it, did not understand it. Half of those who understood it, did not believe it. Half of those who believed it are of no account anyway” (“Sunny Side of the Street,” Nov. 1989; see also Zig Ziglar, *Staying Up, Up, Up in a Down, Down World* [2000], 174).

For more info on his passing, see the [LDS Newsroom](http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/), this [article in the New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/us/28hinckley.html?hp), or [other tributes](http://www.timesandseasons.org/?p=4368).