Spencer W. Kimball - Career and Stake Presidency

Career and Stake Presidency

In 1925, Kimball and Joseph W. Greenhalgh, a Latter-day Saint businessman who served as a bishop in one of the local wards, began a small securities business making and purchasing minor loans from local businesses and individuals. In 1927 the business was strong enough to become independent, and after investing $150 of his own money in the business, Kimball began running it full-time in Safford, Arizona as the "Kimball-Greenhalgh Agency", dealing in local insurance, real estate, debt collection, and bonds. Greenhalgh was much older than Kimball and was semi-retired, and had little to do with the agency's daily management. The business suffered greatly during the Great Depression, and lost much of its capital between 1930 and 1933. In the mid-1930s, Kimball invested some of the agency's capital in the creation of KGLU, the area's first ever radio station. The station was a success and became part of NBC in 1940. Through continued work and re-investment of profits, the agency survived the Great Depression and became increasingly successful during the late 1930s and early 1940s. By 1943, Kimball's initial $150 investment in the agency was worth $100,000.

Kimball was actively involved in many civic organizations, including the PTA, city council, Red Cross, Boy Scouts, and was elected leader of the Arizona Rotary Club in 1936. Kimball had achieved record success in organizing new Rotary Club chapters, such that the Arizona membership voted to pay for him and his wife to travel to the Club's 1936 International Convention in Nice, France. They traveled by train to Chicago, then to Montréal, where their oldest son, Spencer LeVan, was serving an LDS mission. They then made the week-long passage on an ocean liner to Le Havre, and from there visited Paris, Monte Carlo, Genoa, Rome, Pompeii, Florence, Venice, Vienna, the Swiss Alps, Belgium, the Netherlands, and London.

In 1938, LDS Apostle Melvin J. Ballard was sent to Thatcher to divide the growing St. Joseph Stake in two. The newly-created Mount Graham Stake covered the eastern half of the old stake, and Kimball was called as its first stake president. Though smaller than the previous stake, the Mount Graham stake covered a large area, and for Kimball and his two counselors to visit each ward in the stake required travelling a total of 1,750 miles (2,820 km). During the Mount Graham stake's biannual stake conference in September 1941, unusually heavy rains caused the Gila River to overflow its banks, flooding several of the towns in the Mount Graham stake and causing $100,000 in damage to the farms and buildings of Latter-day Saints in the area. As stake president, Kimball coordinated the LDS Church's humanitarian response, which quickly mobilized funds, materials, and manpower to care for displaced residents and begin recovery. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the United States' subsequent entry into World War II, a number of young men from the Mount Graham stake left to join the US military. At one point 250 men from the stake served in the war, and Kimball ensured that each received a copy of the monthly stake bulletin, and often wrote personal notes on each copy to the recipient.

Kimball was widely known and respected in the community, and was constantly stopped on the streets of Safford by acquaintances and friends asking for his advice. After being called to serve as stake president, non-LDS residents and travelers in Safford often asked Kimball to perform marriages for them. Though it was known he would never accept payment for performing marriages, when grooms insisted Kimball would ask a $5 donation which he would then give to the bride as a wedding present. Kimball's demanding schedule of managing the Kimball-Greenhalgh Agency, serving in civic organizations, and serving in LDS Church leadership positions, all while making time for his wife and children, took mental and physical tolls on his body. His journals from the 1930s and early 1940s often mention his exhaustion from days spent working 16 hours or more: "Am on a tension from 7 a.m. till 11 p.m. every single minute every day. I know I'm working too hard but there seems no place to stop." Beginning in 1932, Kimball began suffering from painful boils and infectious sores, which plagued him until the advent of antibacterial medicines like sulfonamides and penicillin during World War II.