Welcome Back and Episode Introduction

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome again to this episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is November 2, 2020, and we are now on part two of our interview with, as I call him, living legend Lynn Packer. He served for many, many years as an investigative journalist in Utah. He was involved in so many of the really groundbreaking Utah Mormon press stories in the 80s and 90s, including serial killer

Lynn Packer [00:00:35] Ted Bundy.

John Dehlin [00:00:35] Remind me of his name.

Lynn Packer [00:00:37] Ted Bundy.

John Dehlin [00:00:38] Ted Bundy. Including barmer bomber and forger Mark Hoffman. And he's, he's most known by me for his work investigating Paul H. Dunn, the Mormon General Authority who Lynn Packer helped discover had been lying to telling false stories to the Mormon Church membership for years and years and years, making a ton of money and really building his fame and reputation from these false stories that were super compelling and gripping for the youth and adults, but also manipulative and unfortunately false.

John Dehlin [00:01:11] So Lynn Packer was a professor at byu and his investigative journalism work affected his employment there. And interestingly enough, he did all this as the nephew of Boyd K. Packer, one of the most powerful LDS church or Mormon apostles in the history of the church.

John Dehlin [00:01:30] So we just spent a few good hours talking about the early years of Boyd K. Packer and the Packer family living in Brigham City, the Packer Motor Company. And we talked about Boyd K. Packer's early years, marrying the Peach Queen, getting into the seminary, the LDS Church's seminary organization, and his meteoric rise, getting a. Getting his doctorate and his meteoric rise within Utah as a mover and a shaker that ultimately led to him becoming, being selected as an apostle. So that's where we left off. Lyn had a little bit of camera problems, so we stopped to fix his camera problems. We've resolved them. And now we are back with Lynn Packer. Hey, Lynn.

Lynn Packer [00:02:20] Hi again.

John Dehlin [00:02:21] Thanks. Thanks so much for helping us troubleshoot that problem. And it's so good to have you back.

Lynn Packer [00:02:29] Yes. Good to be back. I'm enjoying the comments that are made that basically all of them so far have been spot on.

John Dehlin [00:02:40] All right, I agree. And we do want to welcome our live listeners on YouTube and Facebook. We want to encourage them all to share this episode far and wide so we can get as many listeners as possible, at least back up to the 300 we had when we had to cancel. So please join us back, please spread the word and where we left off. I think, Lynn, where we left off was kind of with your upbringing like we, we, we got up to speed on Boyd K. Packer's ascent. And now it's time to talk about your ascent and then your parallel relationship with Boyd and with the church as you are raised a Packer in Utah.

Childhood and Family Life with Boyd Packer

Lynn Packer [00:03:18] Right. If you want to go to the next slide, I can describe what it shows. This is my twin sister, my older brother and me. I'm the one with the balloon walking near the car. I when I was born, it was to a small house on Main street in Brigham City.

Lynn Packer [00:03:39] Any of your viewers who are from Brigham City, it's across the street from where Peach City is now. It wasn't there then. Peach City was the most popular drive in restaurant. My twin sister worked at Peach City. The first time I saw my wife to be she was working at Peach City. And that's where I met her. And that's dad's first family car. Because he was a mechanic, he spiffed it up. He had chrome trim on the wheels. He had chrome on the headlights.

Lynn Packer [00:04:14] He always fixed up his cars. That's something that I'll show you that I picked up. And then the next slide shows my first car. This is in 1947. This is the same year that Boyd got married. It's the same year that Packer Motor started a Chrysler franchise. So besides repairing cars, they started to sell them.

Lynn Packer [00:04:41] And the next slide shows that when I was just younger than that, this is the news story. I was two and a half or three. We were driving to Lagoon. I think it was the first time dad was taking us there on the old highway north of Brigham. And the car that you saw had suicide rear doors. And you're going to see why they called them suicide. Because I was playing with the door handle.

Lynn Packer [00:05:12] It swung open. I was thrown out. The car was doing probably. They didn't drive as fast on those roads then, probably 50, 55, something like that. And bounced down the road, and my mother looked back and saw me rolling down the road. As they saw what happened to me when I went out. The reason I bring this up is because I'm sort of a black sheep of the family and all my brothers and sisters are Republicans and moderate, not arch conservative Mormons.

Lynn Packer [00:05:50] And so they would always say, this is why you turned out the way you did. You got your head bounced down the road. And I always come back and say, no, I had some sense knocked into me. So that was that incident. But it's one that even though I was just two and a half, I remember parts of it or remember right after being put in the car. And I have a vague Recollection of being in the hospital. So anyway, then to the next slide is that this is part of the Packer tradition, is that this is a block away from the house you saw previously on First West.

Lynn Packer [00:06:40] Again, this is the street first west in Brigham City that several aunts and uncles lived along, including Boyd. Further down, this is a shot and the shot of the house under construction. And dad and his brothers built most of the house just like Boyd supervised ward members building a lot of the 7th Ward that's further down the street. This took a long time. I remember as a kid, probably four about that time, three and a half or four, going down there, watching some of the work. I was too young to help, but I remember it being under construction.

Lynn Packer [00:07:18] Dad coming home from work every night, going down and working there. And then you see the completed house with one of its several paint color changes that painted the trim pink. This is certainly in 1962 because of the 62 Plymouth that's sitting in the driveway. And you see my motor scooter that I drove for several years sitting on the front Lawn.

Lynn Packer [00:07:44] And the 51ish Plymouth in front is what my brother was driving when he commuted to Weber just before he went on his mission to Texas. Then if you move to the next slide is something that I certainly have the strongest and lasting memories of is the Third Ward building in Brigham City. It was just slightly more than a block away from our house. So I could always walk to initially primary and we could, we would walk to church. You never drive.

Lynn Packer [00:08:20] And this is one of the few chapels in the church that had stained glass of the first vision. And I saw this and would look at it for over the years, hours on end, looking at it, looking at Joseph Smith, seeing God and Jesus appearing to him.

Lynn Packer [00:08:40] And then of course, when I went on my mission, that was the first thing that you brought up in the first discussion. And we started out in this building. Then when Boyd and the others finished the 7th Ward, even though we were closer to this chapel, we were divided off and I went to the 7th Ward for most of the years of growing up. That's where I think I mentioned before. I was a deacon and a.

Lynn Packer [00:09:08] A priest and first passed the sacrament there. But then just shortly before I went on my mission, they split the ward again and I was back in this ward. So this is the ward where I had my farewell.

Lynn Packer [00:09:26] This is back when you collected money and you paid for your own mission. So I had saved for my mission. I paid for a lot of it myself. And this money that Was collected and coming back to Packer Motor. Packer Motor agreed that any of the nephews that went on missions would pay a monthly amount. I think it was $50amount, which back then was quite a bit. So the family helped out on the mission.

Lynn Packer [00:09:53] And Boyd spoke at my farewell here I was one of the older nephews. And so Boyd would often speak at the farewells. That. That is something that as he moved up in the ranks and there got to be more nephews and then more grandkids, then he discontinued that and would only occasionally appear at an event like that. So the next slide shows my shot. That was.

John Dehlin [00:10:26] Hey, Lynn. Lynn, A real quick question. Really quick. So this, this Third Ward building would have been built long, a long time ago, is that right? Because the stained glass isn't. Isn't. Hasn't been a standard for some time.

Lynn Packer [00:10:41] I guess you've heard of Bennett Glass in Salt Lake. It was a well known glass company. And the two senators, Wallace and his son, were associated with Bennett Glass. They handled it. But there's some people who think that they only arranged for the glass to be stained in Europe. But it's. It's a little bit unclear, but it was Bennett Glass who handled this. And yeah, it's. It's. Was built, I believe, early in the 1900s. It's really old.

John Dehlin [00:11:15] Is that building still there today?

Lynn Packer [00:11:17] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:11:18] And the stained glass is still there?

Lynn Packer [00:11:20] Yep. Yep, it's still there. Still a block and a half from.

John Dehlin [00:11:24] I'm sure Boyd K. Packer would have never allowed that building to be taken down in his life anyway.

Lynn Packer [00:11:30] No, because he remained active in church architecture in Brigham because he had a lot to do with the historic tabernacle in Brigham being renovated. And then he also had everything to do with the temple being built there and its design. And of course was to the. To the dedication of the temple in Brigham, which he helped choose the location for, which is across the street from the tabernacle on. On Main Street.

John Dehlin [00:11:59] Okay. Okay. So the next slide.

Lynn Packer [00:12:03] Okay. This shows my baptism. This is my twin sister and I being baptized. I was very excited to be baptized and still remember looking forward to receiving the Holy Ghost. I thought something would happen. It really didn't, but I still looked forward to that.

Lynn Packer [00:12:22] Malcolm Young is in the picture. His daughter, who is standing between us. Kathleen was baptized the same day and he did the baptism. My twin sister, when I asked her about it, Linda, she says, no, no, dad baptized. I said, no, it was not Dad. I said, dad wasn't even there. I think mom took this photo but as I recall, my father was not at the baptism, and I'm next to certain of that. And I'm certain that that President Young was the one who. Who did the baptism.

Lynn Packer [00:12:58] And for whatever reason, I never asked dad why he didn't do that, because I. I know he baptized my younger siblings as they came into the church.

John Dehlin [00:13:11] Are you thinking that there might have been some reason he wasn't allowed or.

Lynn Packer [00:13:15] There could have been. There could have been some sort of, whether, you know, a worthiness issue. You have to. You know, you have to. He was. I think he was still an elder at the time, I don't remember.

Lynn Packer [00:13:34] But it was never the. Dad was. Was inactive. He was always active. Dad wanted to be a bishop in the worst way. He aspired to be a bishop. He wanted to be a bishop, but he never got into the sort of the clique that it takes to get into, to get that sort of a calling.

Lynn Packer [00:13:58] The highest he ever got was he was a clerk in the stake presidency for years, which a job he really liked because he was. Was doing that. Dad was. Really had good street smarts, but he was not. You wouldn't say, okay, he's. He was not smart like Boyd. Boyd was a lot more. For lack of a better word, a lot more intelligent. My mother was really smart.

Lynn Packer [00:14:28] She was a lot, frankly, a lot smarter than dad. And. But dad was a hard worker, and he had really good street smarts and good street sense, and I hope I picked up a lot of that. And I was closer to dad than I was to my mother because I love cars and love mechanics. I was always going down to the garage.

Lynn Packer [00:14:49] He would. In the old building, he. He would perch me on a fender, and I would watch for hours as he would pull the flathead off a Plymouth straight six, pull out the valves, regrind the valves, clean up the heads, they would get carbon build up in them. And I knew and understood that as early as six, I would say, and took an interest in it, which I. Which continues to this day.

John Dehlin [00:15:20] That's so cool.

Lynn Packer [00:15:24] Yeah, so cool. The next one, the reason I put this in, this is my Cushman motor scooter that I say, for years we always were struggling for money. It's one of the things my mother died in 1986 of just being worn out, raising the kids, struggling with money, dealing with diabetes.

Lynn Packer [00:15:51] It was. It was hard. And so I saved for years to get enough money to buy this motor scooter. And I fixed it up by putting a rear seat on it. You see a little Chrysler emblem on the side that my uncle, who is parts manager got for me. I named it Alley OOP because there was a hit movie or tip movie hit, scratch a song right then called Alley oop. And it had the line in it, mean motor scooter. So I considered myself as having a mean motor scooter. And I got it when I was 13 or 14, I think I was 14. And my dad wouldn't let me have a car until I graduated from high school.

Lynn Packer [00:16:33] That was a rule. Another uncle let his kids have cars, but dad, no, that was not going to happen. So I drove. When I started driving, I drove mom's car a lot. But he did let me get a motor scooter before I got a license a couple of two years before I got a license. And the reason was, is this is another one of these like callings I was talking about is I think the reason that I was called to do this or told, you need to do this, you're going to do it at Packer Motor is because I had taken a great interest in cars and I'd begun working there on Saturdays, just doing odd things on on Saturdays at Packer Motor.

Lynn Packer [00:17:23] And Packer Motor stayed late every evening for a couple of hours. And it was getting hard on the uncles to share that duty and they needed somebody to take a night and I was given Wednesday night. So I would go down after school and in between doing homework and be there so that you could finish up any tasks that needed to be done and let people pick up their cars and help out besides, because my uncle Bill would stay late some evenings because he was over used cars and people would take test drives and it was then too far to walk. So they let me get a motor scooter even though I didn't have a license.

Lynn Packer [00:18:06] And that was the main reason that they let me have a motorized vehicle of sorts before I had a license and. And break that rule. And they allowed me to take it to school. And that was pretty much it. I was limited because they didn't want me to get caught. And he had a ticket. And that was the other thing. I couldn't go on Main street because that's what was patrolled most of the time.

John Dehlin [00:18:30] Fun.

Lynn Packer [00:18:31] So that's my motor scooter story.

John Dehlin [00:18:34] That's fun.

Boyd Packer, Cleon Skousen, and the John Birch Society

Lynn Packer [00:18:36] Okay, then the next slide is a story that I think you will find interesting. And I wanted to work this in somewhere is this shows the inside of the newer Packer Motor. It's looking toward the Wash Bay where a couple of summers and Saturdays throughout the year, I would work at Packer Motor. And I started out on the wash bay, and then I moved over to the grease rack, helping my uncle there. And then at the last, I started specializing in doing electronic stuff, putting in radios and doing electronic repairs. Cars were a lot more unreliable back then doing that. The reason I put this in is this is where I heard another significant thing, of which there are many that Boyd said is what it was about 1961 or 62, and there was a lot of talk coming up about the John Birch Society and Ezra Taft Benson.

Lynn Packer [00:19:41] And my dad, because he was, you know, he was a Republican and interested in politics, is I was at the. The shop. And I don't remember which day it was or why, but I was at the shop. And dad and Boyd and I were about standing where you see the photograph, and we were walking toward the wash bay. I mean, this sticks out in my mind so much. I remember where we were standing and what happened. And dad and Boyd were ahead of me. And dad just pops up, as he usually does. He would always ask Boyd questions. He admired him, he adored him, and he liked to get inside skinny.

Lynn Packer [00:20:26] And he said. And dad said, boyd, what about the John Birch Society? Like? And he asked it anyway. Is this something I should take an interest in? And Boyd wheeled around, stopped where he was, and looked at dad and said, you stay away from that. Do not go near that. That was the end of the conversation. Dad did not question.

John Dehlin [00:20:51] And really quickly, how does that. I'm not. I have a follow up question, but does that tie to this picture? Just to make sure we didn't miss that. How does that.

Lynn Packer [00:20:59] The reason it ties into the picture is this is the closest to where I could show where it happened.

John Dehlin [00:21:04] Okay. Okay.

Lynn Packer [00:21:05] We were walking. The. The wrecker wasn't there. This was, I think Boyd's car was over on the wash rack. And for some reason we were walking that direction. They were having a conversation. Remember, I consider myself at this time a Republican. If I had voted at that time, I wasn't old enough to vote, I would have voted Republican. And so. And I'd heard about the John Birch Society. I knew who cleans Cleon Skousen was that he was a conservative, that he had been police chief in Salt Lake. I knew a little bit about that. And so it sounded like a perfectly good question. I. I had nothing against the John Birch Society at that time. And so it startled me. And there was no discussion because if Boyd said something like that, dad would not question it. He. And he would Take it to heart.

John Dehlin [00:21:59] Remind us what year Boyd became an apostle.

Lynn Packer [00:22:02] Would have been 69. So this is before.

John Dehlin [00:22:07] This is before he was an apostle.

Lynn Packer [00:22:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:09] Okay. Yeah. What's that?

Lynn Packer [00:22:13] Yeah, this is well before that time. This is near the time he's becoming. It's near the time he became an assistant to the 12. And what happened is, is that he had moved to Linden, he got his doctorate, and now instead of moving back to Brigham City, he moved to where he ended up staying the rest of his life on Forest Bend Drive in Salt Lake, out in the county, and that's where he was going to stay.

Lynn Packer [00:22:43] And. And he had things in storage in Brigham because they thought they were coming back. And I made. During this time, same time period, I made at least one or two trips with Dad's pickup, taking stuff to Boyd's new house.

Lynn Packer [00:22:58] I think some of it was farm equipment, because it was. He had acreage. And. And I know that the tractor we used at the. At his farm in Brigham ended up at his house in Salt Lake for his kids to cultivate with and. And haul stuff around. There was a trailer to haul whatever they hauled around to do that. So it was near this same time period that. That this was going on.

Lynn Packer [00:23:26] And when he made assistant to the 12, you thought, wow, could he make it to the next level? Is that even possible? And of course it did.

John Dehlin [00:23:38] So just jumping back to. And I'll. I'll just. Because you mentioned Cleon Skousen, the Jaun Society, I just have to give a shout out to a recent podcast series I did with Matt Harris where we talked about the Ezra Benson years and Cleon Skin and the John Birch Society. It's a great series. And. Yeah. And then this 61 time period was the time after Ezra Benson had been released from the Eisenhower administration, when the two terms were up. He's back in Utah causing all these problems. And one of the. One of the stories Matt Harris told in that interview was that Malcolm Jepson also went to Boyd K. Packer and asked if he should join the John Burch Society. And Boyd K. Packer told Malcolm Jepsen, no, not to do that.

Lynn Packer [00:24:27] Yeah, but see, what I observed is I observed Boyd saying it, and it was, you. You know Boyd. I mean, you know him from afar, and I know him from close up. And when he's firm on something, it's no, you stay away from that. It was not like, that's not a good idea. It was an order. He did not want his brother having anything to do with the John Bird Society.

John Dehlin [00:24:51] Yeah.

Lynn Packer [00:24:51] And he knew dad was a Republican and he knew his other brothers were Democrats and wouldn't have anything to do with the John Birch Society. Anyway, See, and I was transitioning. And we may get into it this segment, maybe not, but I've got Ezra Tap Benson stories.

Faith, Testimony, and Religious Upbringing

John Dehlin [00:25:07] Okay, so let's talk about. What do you want to share about your testimony, your faith, your religious upbringing within your family? Since this is Mormon stories, let's Mormonize this discussion a bit. Let's talk about the Mormon influence in your life, in your child and teenage years.

Lynn Packer [00:25:32] I was all in. I would say that I was the one in primary who sat like this, who had arms folded, was not creating a problem. Where some of my friends were rough housing and doing things like that. I was paying attention. It was in primary the first time I heard from the woman that she was an instructor, the sister who said. Who would say things like, the reason that.

Lynn Packer [00:26:00] That called Jews Christ killers and the reason for the Holocaust is because they killed Jesus. I was taught in primary along with a lot of stuff that's thankfully not taught anymore. I was active in all my quorums. I was president of whatever quorum it was. I worked to activate other deacons and teachers who didn't come out. When I got a license, I would drive and pick them up, take them to church.

Lynn Packer [00:26:33] My older brother was different. He had less activity, wasn't sure whether he wanted to go on a mission, but then he did, and then that then totally activated him. He. And he's remained active ever since and has been in the. In a bishopric. And I knew from grade school that I wanted to go on a mission. There was never, ever talking me into it. I wanted to prepare for it. I wanted to save money for it. And I knew I wanted to go to Germany. And I don't know why, just popped in my mind. That's where I want to go.

Lynn Packer [00:27:14] And so back then, they taught German in grade school and in junior high. So I took one. I took German classes because I knew and they didn't have the language training mission then. And so I knew it would increase my chances of going there if I took German. And by then, Boyd was involved. By the time I was to get my call, Boyd was involved with the missionary committee.

Lynn Packer [00:27:43] And I made certain that he didn't miss the fact that I wanted to go to Germany. And whether that was a factor or not, I open up the letter and surprise, surprise, I'm going to Germany. So where my brother's testimony and his faith was strengthened on his mission Mine was just the opposite, because it just was not, you know, I sat through one homecoming after another. This is the best two years of my life. I've got a testimony. I know that the church is truly through.

Lynn Packer [00:28:19] It's spiritual that these great things happen. They'll talk about people they baptized. And I wanted to go all the more. And it was just all downhill from the outset, from, from. From the. From the very beginning. And I think the next slide shows me.

Lynn Packer [00:28:41] I pulled a couple of shots from my mission. If you can show that. The one on the right shows me at the train station in Metmont. That was my first assignment. One thing that was good about my mission is except for one exception. I had a companion who had serious emotional problems.

Lynn Packer [00:29:01] Just liked every companion that I had. Got along well. That part of it was a really positive experience. And the. A shot on the left for those who are just listening shows me in front of the Swiss temple.

Lynn Packer [00:29:17] And we had two temple trips during this time. You look forward to it. They would load up the buses and you would drive the half the length of Germany into. Into Zollikofen, where the temple is. And you would go through the temple and something you look forward to. You look forward to going through the temple. You look forward to associating with missionaries because it was an out.

Lynn Packer [00:29:44] And the thing you really look forward to and all missionaries did, is that there was an AW just off the autobahn in Frankfurt, an A and W drive in. Today there's McDonald's, Burger Kings all across Germany. Back then, there were few places you could get an American hamburger. And so the buses would stop there and we would get American hamburgers going to and from the temple. And that's the. And that's the temple trip. But this is the only slide I have of the mission. But I'll tell you as much of the story that you want to hear is right off the bat. I was basically stunned with the approach of the mission because Germany was really tough.

Serving as a Missionary in Germany

Lynn Packer [00:30:34] It was still. Even though it was 20 years since the war, Germany was still rebuilding. Most of the missionary apartments didn't have bathrooms in them. You had to go down the hall. We had to go to city baths.

Lynn Packer [00:30:53] They had city baths where you could go take a shower. A lot of times you had to do that to go take a shower. You couldn't do it near your apartment. And the Germans were simply. They were still reeling from the whole Holocaust thing and they were not interested in religion generally at all. And so you'd track for hours and never be able to talk to anybody.

Lynn Packer [00:31:18] And if you introduced yourself off the top as a Mormon, then you had no chance. The, The Mormon religion had a poor reputation in Germany. The main reason, I think was because of. Well, not think it was because of polygamy. It was widely known that Mormons practiced it. And it's a. It's a practice that they didn't like and they didn't know to what extent it had been given up.

Lynn Packer [00:31:46] The Mormons church also had a very bad reputation among some Germans. It wasn't widely known as being pro Nazi during the Hitler time, which is something that I would grow. Grow to be very concerned about. The. The fact that the. The church didn't stand up and fit in and didn't want to be treated the same way as Jews and Jehovah's Witnesses and. And some other faiths. So anyway, so there was no such thing. So. So you had to have a door approach to sort of get your foot in the door. And so the way it worked. And I was told this the very first day as we had this sort of.

Lynn Packer [00:32:30] It wasn't a flip chart, but this little booklet thing that had plastic on it. We had a pen to write on it. And in German, the first page says, is this. Do you. Do you recognize this temple? So it started off with the temple that we went to to see if they knew that the Mormons had a temple in Europe to show that, hey, we're here.

Lynn Packer [00:32:57] And they would usually say no, and there was a yes and a no. And we would mark no or yes, and then we would say something. And it would lead up to the golden question within about three pages is, do you know anything about the Mormon Church? Would you like to know more? And then we would fill in what the answers were. Taking a survey. So we were survey takers. We were not missionaries. I'll never forget is that we went to the first two or three doors.

Lynn Packer [00:33:27] And this is another thing like packer motor and remembering exactly where I was when Boyd said, no, stay away from that. As we were walking between subdivisions, Metmont was just a beautiful city. It was still fairly rural. And we were walking along this path between subdivisions that was in a. Literally in a cow pasture and there were cows grazing.

Lynn Packer [00:33:51] And my companion stopped and got out a Kleenex or something and erased all the answers. You know, what do you know about them? And I said, what are you doing? Aren't we supposed to report this to the mission? I thought maybe they were trying to find out how aware they are. Says, no, that's just our door Approach that did not sit well with me at all.

Lynn Packer [00:34:17] But I did it. I. I went ahead and did it. Great companion. He was the senior companion, you know, was dedicated, a good guy. He was from Las Vegas. I ended up going to his wedding reception later, for some reason, my cousin Steve, who was in one of those pictures, knew him and he went with me.

Lynn Packer [00:34:39] Great guy, but just accepted this hook, line, sinker. So, anyway, so here we are struggling in Metmont, trying to get any baptisms. There were missionaries that would go a year, year and a half with no baptism at all. That was not unusual at all. It was a tough, tough mission.

Lynn Packer [00:34:56] And so it was coming up. We were still in Metmont. It was coming up on Christmas, and the mission president presidency changed. The Richards, who ran one of the furniture companies in Salt Lake, was the mission president. And lo and behold, he was replaced during this time period by Waldo Benson, a farmer from Idaho who was brother to, you know who, Waldo Benson. He was the new mission president.

Lynn Packer [00:35:28] They were trying to figure out how to incentivize missionaries to work even harder to track harder to place more books of Mormon. And so they announced in the weekly newsletter that went out to missionaries, ice cream party. I'll never forget ice cream party. Now, American ice cream is like, in Germany at that time was like American hamburgers. You could not get it. You ate Italian ice. I don't know if you've. You had Italian ice before, of course.

John Dehlin [00:36:00] Yeah, it's great.

Lynn Packer [00:36:01] You know that it's more like sherbet. It's just not the same thing. And remember, I grew up living a block from Peach City, where you'd always. Every evening I'd have a malt or a ice cream cone. So that was a big incentive. So I think the thing was, is if you get one baptism before such and such a day in December, you're invited to the ice cream party, to mission headquarters in Dusseldorf. And we were close to Dusseldorf, beautiful mission home, right near the Rhine river, across the Rhine, to get to it. And.

Lynn Packer [00:36:40] And so that was the incentive. So we work even harder. We work and work and work. And. And what happened is, is I don't think maybe three pairs of missionaries qualified. It would be an ice cream party with three people. So right at the end, the mission president relented and said, you guys deserve a break. You have worked hard to do this. Everybody comes.

Lynn Packer [00:37:06] So everybody comes. And it seems like the mission home had sort of like a mini assembly room like you would see in a high school for assemblies, you know what I'm saying? Sort of like a. Or a TV room. There was a big room that everybody fit into for this meeting. Maybe they use services there or something.

Lynn Packer [00:37:29] And that, for me, was even more jaw dropping, that meeting, than the whole tracting thing with lying basically about why we were there at the doorstep. And I'd never seen politicking like that in my life. Then you could see the elders that were trying to be part of the show so that they would be named the next traveling elder were even better.

Lynn Packer [00:37:56] Assistant to the president. And being a traveling elder in Germany was a big thing. They were the only ones who had cars. I think there were three sets of them. I think that. Remember, one of them was Dan Rona. I don't know if you ever remember his name, but he grew up Jewish and became famous running travel agencies and such in Jerusalem. I think he's still there today.

Lynn Packer [00:38:22] Talked to him once since he worked at KSL for a little while while I was there. So I knew Dan Rona well. He was one of them. He was famous because he was one who, when he was a traveling elder, would make trips into Holland with his. Because they had a car to get peanut butter for the missionaries. It was against mission rules, but he would go into Holland and get peanut butter and bring it back because that was also not well stocked on German shelves and you missed having peanut butter. So anyway, you'd be a traveling elder, so. So you wanted to do that.

Lynn Packer [00:39:02] Then you didn't have to ride your bike anymore and had prestige and you got to drive around. And there was just tremendous politicking. And the pressure to sell and get baptisms was intense. And the light bulb went off. I mean, this is like selling Tupperware.

Lynn Packer [00:39:21] This is like selling Avon. This is like selling cookware. This is like selling bug spray door to door. This has little to do with being really concerned about bringing these families something that would change their lives and help them. Although that certainly was part of the motive. But it was more about numbers.

Lynn Packer [00:39:44] How many hours could you attract getting those numbers up? How many books of Mormon could you distribute? If you fell back, you were in trouble, you were looked down on. And it's why you had so much cheating on the reports. You'd have missionaries cheat and hype their numbers. That went on all the time. And so here you had a system that encouraged you to lie in order to get in the door to cheat on your reports because these numbers were so hard to hit.

Lynn Packer [00:40:12] And you had elders politicking, campaigning to get named zone leader, district leader or zone leader or assistant. To the president. And you wonder, well, isn't the mission president supposed to pray about that? Don't they know? Doesn't God tell them?

Lynn Packer [00:40:36] And as I learned, I never learned past in German, like the first three discussions, there were six. Now, you went on a mission, right?

John Dehlin [00:40:47] Yeah.

Lynn Packer [00:40:47] And in fact, you have discussions.

John Dehlin [00:40:50] Yeah. And in fact, this is really relevant to me because I had a really corrupt mission where it was all about sales techniques and sales tactics and incentives and parties that only the elders who got a certain number of baptisms got to attend. And you got certifications. If you got more than 10 baptisms a month, you got a certificate. If you got a certain number, you'd get a Janice Cap Parry serving with Joy cassette tape. And there were these parties. And only the top baptizing missions can go. And then the assistance to the president were always the top baptizing missionaries. And it was so shocking for me to learn once I got home about the baseball baptism stuff that happened in the early 60s, which was right at the same time you were serving.

John Dehlin [00:41:35] And that was in the uk and this is right at the same time you're serving in Germany. And so it must have been. Go ahead.

Lynn Packer [00:41:43] I knew all about the baseball program because. Because once it was a success, and it was three years before my mission, once it was success, they tried it in Germany and it didn't work at all. But I remember going to one of the apartments and pulling open a drawer in the desk, and it had all the material, all the baseball material.

Lynn Packer [00:42:07] And I should have kept it just for historical reasons, but. But that's how I knew it. It had come there. We didn't try anything like that. The. Because the mission was so tough, to the credit of the mission president, even Waldo Benson, they were trying everything.

Lynn Packer [00:42:27] I mean, we could go out and join a track team. And I had one companion who ran for Utah State. And so we go join a track team. You know, the. The amateur for Ryan that does track. And so we would go and practice and run track and get to know people.

Lynn Packer [00:42:50] At one time, they formed a church basketball team to play against Germans. Basketball was coming on strong in Germany at that time. And that worked up until the time that they played a team and got into fights that the missionaries initiated and got kicked out of the game. And that ended the basketball program. But it wasn't anything like the baseball program where you get kids there and then initiate him by taking him and baptizing him.

Lynn Packer [00:43:24] Like what happened with the. With what went on, which was just terrific. Going on in England and So it was more liberal. You. You had more freedom to try things. There was not an order put out. You have to track it. Said, if. If there's something else you can do, go ahead and do it. And I remember the. The night that Kennedy was assassinated, my companion and I were speaking at another church. We just asked, do you want to hear about Mormons? And they said, yeah. And so we went and gave a little presentation to these people. And when we came back, as we walked in the door, the landlady said, your president's dead.

Lynn Packer [00:44:13] And which Germans took really hard. But I remember that was the night we were trying something different. But like I said, I never learned past, like, three or four lessons because you never got that far. And the only baptism that I had and the person I baptized with, this was the son of a preacher.

Lynn Packer [00:44:37] And we had locked in the deal by the third discussion. We never needed to get further. But that was the second thing or the third thing that I had a problem with were the discussions that they absolutely did not work for Germany. It was the wrong approach.

Lynn Packer [00:44:55] And I had one companion whose German was not that good. And so he was stuck with the. He did not try to learn how to speak extemporaneously, which is tough to do. I never really got it down until I went back to Germany and taught at a university and consulted there, where I could really just walk in and carry on a conversation.

Lynn Packer [00:45:19] And so we were teaching this one family the first discussion. And the father took offense to it. He said, don't. Quit asking me what I think. And he could sense that the discussions were deceptive. They were trying to make you think. Think that you were already a Mormon and already understood or already believed.

Lynn Packer [00:45:43] And on about three occasions, he said, don't do that. Just tell me what it is. Just tell me. And my companion could not do it. And he dropped right back into asking the questions, and we got thrown out.

Lynn Packer [00:45:58] And you could see that they weren't any good. And that's what got me. I got into trouble in the mission because I would start discussing this with other missionaries and saying, this is such a waste of time and it's not working, and there's got to be something else.

Lynn Packer [00:46:12] But I was really naive. I was. I was thinking that they needed to be replaced with something. And I was thinking the Brethren really weren't all that cognizant of how deceptive they were, but they were extraordinarily effective in the Northwestern states and in California and in England. So they figure they've got to work everywhere. And that's what we've got, and that's what we're going to stick to. And that's how we can control what the elders say so they don't say anything off the wall. And remember about five years earlier, you had that absolute blowout in France where several of the missionaries defected from the church and became polygamists and joined the Church of the Firstborn.

Lynn Packer [00:47:02] And so that was in the back of the minds of the leaders, not so much with us, but that played a role, I think, in the way my situation was handled, because the mission president didn't want a rebellion to pop up, didn't want missionaries to all of a sudden say, hey, we've got to have something better.

Lynn Packer [00:47:23] And so I am proud of myself for recognizing how bad the discussions were and how inappropriate and poorly done and irresponsible, but not proud of myself at all for not figuring out that you're just going to get into trouble over this because you're saying they need to change. I was very vocal about it with the mission president. This is not working. We need to do something about it. The missionary committee needs to take a look at it. We at least need to have something different for Germany.

Lynn Packer [00:47:57] And so I get into trouble over this and. And the first thing that they do as I'm having this discussion is they make me an assist, the junior companion to a traveling elder. So now I am a traveling elder, getting my license, and I'm driving around and have a companion. And he knows that I need to settle down and teach the lessons and do all of this. And we had a good experience. And he reports back to the mission president that, hey, this guy looks fine.

Lynn Packer [00:48:28] And so then I was assigned to a city in Germany where I was assigned as senior companion for the first time and branch president, because it was a branch that was having trouble, needed a lot of work. It needed a missionary to go in that had some money embezzled and some other stuff. And so I was assigned to go into that and was concentrating on that a lot.

Lynn Packer [00:48:54] But also I didn't want to do a lot of tracting if we had to still use the lessons. And so I still had raised this as an issue, which upset Waldo Benson a lot. And so what he thought is, is that my brother can straighten this kid out. And it was sensitive because, remember, Boyd is on the missionary committee, if not over it at this time.

Baseball Baptisms and Church Leadership Pressures

Lynn Packer [00:49:20] I think Gordon Hinckley was over it, but Boyd was playing a role in it. And to what extent Boyd knew about this, I don't know, I don't think he knew much about it. I don't think they wanted to tell him. I think they wanted to just solve the problem.

Lynn Packer [00:49:35] So Waldo Benson called, said, I want you to have a talk with Ezra. Now, remember, Ezra Taft Benson is now in Frankfurt over the European mission where he's been banished to get him out of the states during the 1964 presidential campaign, where, of course, he supports Goldwater, who is running against Lyndon Johnson. And by the way, because I still was leaning Republican, I had my mother send me some Goldwater buttons and some Ernie Wilkinson buttons because he was running for the Senate against Moss. So I hadn't transitioned fully at that time.

Lynn Packer [00:50:17] And so I saw Benson as. Say, you know, I'd heard what was said about the John Birch Society, and I knew he was somewhat involved. But anyway, so I was. And this was my second meeting with Benson. Amazingly, here he is out of the mission.

Lynn Packer [00:50:34] I don't think he ever came up and spoke at a mission event. But here's the second meeting I have with Benson. The first one took place when Benson, Ezra Taf Benson, arranged for himself to make a speech to the American businessmen in Bonn, Germany. Bonn was the capital at the time.

Lynn Packer [00:50:56] And he was giving what he considered an important speech to these American businessmen. They all spoke English. And Waldo Benson called me and my companion on the phone and said, my brother is giving a speech in front of the American businessmen. And he and I want a couple of missionaries to be there. Just be there. Just in support, not to proselyte, just to be there.

Lynn Packer [00:51:28] And there was an American member who lived near there, and he said, he will pick you up and he will take you there. And he needs to be there as well, because apparently Waldo was friends with this guy. And so he picks us up and takes us there. And this would be like, probably August, September 1964. And we get there, and President Benson signals us to come up and he wants us to sit on. What do they call it, the dais or whatever it is at the front when you're at a luncheon and they sit at the front. Other people sit down there. And he had me sit on the right side and my companion sit on his left side.

Lynn Packer [00:52:08] So he's there armed with missionaries, not to proselyte. He says, these are missionaries. I guess he just wanted to show them what missionaries looked like. I don't know. We were there, and ice cream comes into play here because we finished our meal.

Lynn Packer [00:52:24] And because it was the embassy, they were serving American ice cream. This is big. And I gobbled down my ice cream. You know, when you go to stuff like that, you only get a scoop. And then President Ben still looked over and says, here, do you want mine? And I almost took his arm off getting it and eating it. I was so grateful for that.

Lynn Packer [00:52:46] But here's what surprised me is he gave his speech and he didn't say anything about Mormonism. He gave a pure political speech and it was very right wing political speech. And remember, I have not yet exited my affiliation or leaning toward being a Republican. And I'm sitting there eating this stuff up. You know, communists are bad and all of this stuff. What he was doing was just, he was looking for any way to speak out and hopefully have the press pick up on in some way while he was in Europe being banished so he wouldn't be speaking in the United States.

Lynn Packer [00:53:31] And they're all eating it up. I mean, I'm eating it up and just sitting there agreeing with everything he says. And then I looked down in the audience and I was perplexed. They were just like, they were not resonating with what he was saying at all.

Lynn Packer [00:53:49] And I was wondering, this all makes sense, why there was no applause. There was no, you know, look, John, you've given lots of speeches and you would have given them sometimes to audiences that don't quite dial into what you're trying to say. And others that just, they want everything and they want more and you know how to read an audience.

Lynn Packer [00:54:10] And looking into those people, they did not care about what he was saying and they were not in agreement. And because they were businessmen in Germany, it's more likely that they were more liberal because they probably were learning another language and dealing with another culture and understood this. That was the first time.

Lynn Packer [00:54:30] So the second time, President Benson is trying to deal with my campaign against the discussion. So he sends me down to Frankfurt to the mission home to have this meeting with President Benson. It lasted about a couple hours.

Lynn Packer [00:54:51] We, I talked about problems the missionaries had in Germany. It was, I don't remember anything really distinctive about the meeting that we had for those two hours. It was interesting that it was how many years ago tomorrow. The meeting was on November 3, 1964, the day of the election where we would see if Goldwater would get elected and whether Ernie Wilkinson would beat Senator Moss.

Lynn Packer [00:55:25] And I wouldn't be surprised if he was sort of distracted that day. And this was just, okay, I've got to have this meeting and I'm really anxious to find out in a few hours how the election turns out was on that Very day. I mean, the very reason he was banished to Europe was that election. And I was there with him on the day that the vote was held.

Struggles and Disillusionment on the Mission

Lynn Packer [00:55:50] And so I go back to, to Germany. Duran Germany was the city that I was in. I don't recall. I recall writing my parents saying, this isn't, I'm not getting through. I think the missionary committee needs to know about this. I was so.

Lynn Packer [00:56:11] I was so naive. I, I thought that probably the missionary committee didn't even understand what the approach was with the six discussions. And so here I'm fighting against something that they've designed and developed on purpose because it yields in their minds a maximum number of baptisms.

Lynn Packer [00:56:34] And so I'm in the mode where I don't want to serve on a mission anymore. If I have to do this, I'm writing my parents, then all of a sudden I get a phone call from Dusseldorf and it's the mission president's office. And they say, you are to be on a plane to Salt Lake City this afternoon.

Lynn Packer [00:56:57] This afternoon. I didn't have time to sell my bike. I didn't have time to box up my stuff. I had a trunk. I had time to get a suitcase and be driven to Dusseldorf, where I went to some jump off spot to Chicago, to Salt Lake City. By time I got to Salt Lake City, I was severely jet lagged. I get more jet lagged coming this way than going there.

Lynn Packer [00:57:22] And made dozens of trips to Germany later and always dealt with it the same way. And I was just absolutely, just exhausted getting back. And I was taken to the church office building. And there I had to wait probably another hour.

Lynn Packer [00:57:39] And I go in and I have a meeting with Gordon Hinckley. And there was no discussion. It wasn't like, what's your problem? Can we talk this thing through? It was an hour of him telling me what a bad person I was, how I failed to follow orders, how I didn't get with the program.

Lynn Packer [00:58:00] And I had two choices. I could go home that day or the next day. I could sleep on it overnight, or I would be sent to Northern California to finish my mission. And I said, I said, I said, I'm not going back to Germany. I mean, that's where I wanted to serve. He said, no, you're not going back to Germany. You've got that choice.

Lynn Packer [00:58:24] So the next day, my family came down, we had a discussion. I was leaning to just pack it in. And I, I could see how hurt my family was. This was so embarrassing to them. And I had known other missionaries to come Home for other reasons early. And it was always bad. So I thought, okay, I'm just going to guts it out. So I said, okay, I'll go.

Lynn Packer [00:58:51] And I had a good friend in high school who was assistant to the president in the Northern California mission. And so I get on a plane, I go to the Northern California mission and what? See, now that's a shock. Another way, the weather, even though it was November, it was warm.

Lynn Packer [00:59:07] I went to the mission home in Oakland. The Oakland temple was just being dedicated. I went to the Oakland temple dedication. I was there a few days. They took me the mission home, took me to the Utah Cal football game.

Lynn Packer [00:59:27] You know, Utah came Utah one, by the way, when I was there. And, and then I was sent off to Stockton, California, where I had a series of. A couple of good companions. And I decided I'm going to get with the program. So I memorized the lessons the first month I was there, my companion and I. Hey, Lynn? Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:59:50] Can I ask just a couple things? Sure. So what would you have first, first question is, what would you have said to Hinckley or the missionary committee? What would you have recommended to them if they had said.

Lynn Packer [01:00:05] I said it's not right. It's not right. I said in the first place, I was misled about what a mission was about. I did not know this was a super sales deal. And the second thing is that for sure, these lessons don't work in Germany. And I love Germans and I love Germany. I wanted to go there and I wanted to succeed there. And I liked my companions and I liked everything about it except the deceptive stuff.

John Dehlin [01:00:32] When you say deceptive stuff, you mean

Lynn Packer [01:00:35] the, the approach, the, the tracking approach, the, the, the lessons, the, you know, trying to make people think they're already Mormons, the pressure to baptize them so soon, that doesn't work with Germans. That if it works with a German, you're baptizing the wrong person. Seriously. And, and so just to be clear,

John Dehlin [01:00:57] this is, this has been a consistent approach with Mormon missionaries for, for at least 60 years. Like the church still does this. It did it in my day. And that's why, you know, the activity rates within the Mormon church are something like 30%. And that's why even though the church claims 16 million members, there's really only five or six. Because the retention rates in foreign missions are like 10%. And it's because unlike, you know, Seventh Day Adventist or Jehovah's Witness or other, other similar churches, you know, they, they make the investigators wait months, if not Year, a year sometimes to get baptized. They make sure they're really committed, they really understand. For us, it's like find the poorest, least educated, most vulnerable person we can find. You know, challenge them to baptism and get him baptized in two weeks at the latest, preferably same day.

Lynn Packer [01:02:02] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:03] And my mission was like that. And it was awful. And it really did come from the top. Really quick, before we jump on to you getting with the program, I'm kind of surprised to hear that about Gordon B. Hinckley. Kind of surprised. Not surprised because his public image was to be just such a loving, you know, smiley, happy, calm kind of guy. And so it's really hard to imagine Gordon B. Hinckley being grouchy and angry.

Lynn Packer [01:02:32] It was. It was beyond brutal. It was. I see. I didn't know why I was going there. I thought there was a 50% chance that, hey, you need to. You've talked to Elder Benson about this Ezra Taft. Now you need to talk somebody with the missionary committee and see, Boyd was out of town, according to dad. And I think I had a discussion with Boyd. Boyd didn't know this was going on. And then when he found out, he was very unhappy. I can tell you that if Boyd had called on the phone and said, lynn, get with the program. You don't have it that bad there. And really this all stuff was not that strictly enforced in Germany. It was different in California, then that's what I would have done. And he probably knew that he could have nipped the whole thing in the bud.

John Dehlin [01:03:30] Really, really. One more, one more thing, Lynn. I just need to. Just to make a connection, a personal connection with you. I was unsettled by the baptism practices in my mission in Guatemala. Gordon Romney, who is a cousin of Mitt Romney. Gordon Romney was the mission president at the time. After I saw some really outrageous practices of assistance to the president baptizing, you know, just people that had no business getting baptized through pressure just to meet quota.

John Dehlin [01:04:01] I reported it to the mission president and he ended up yelling at me and making me feel threatening me to demote me as a zone leader down to something lower. And he ended up sending me home four months early, still with honorable release. And I had the chance to continue my service in Arizona, which I did.

John Dehlin [01:04:23] And I was his own leader there. And it was never a question of my faithfulness or my commitment or my obedience. It was actually that I took it all too seriously. And it was. It was top leaders, APs and zone leaders that were doing all this stuff. And I was Again, naive thinking that the mission president would be outraged if he knew what was really going on. But the truth is he was part of it. Church headquarters was part of it. And I was like this naive kid just not realizing how the world worked. And I was never the same. And that was the beginning of the end for my testimony.

John Dehlin [01:04:57] So I just wanted to make that connection with you because it's. It in some ways. Some. Some parts of our story sound almost identical.

Lynn Packer [01:05:05] Yeah, well, the story will turn funny pretty quickly because. So, like I said, we. My companion, I led the mission for one month. And the way it happened and way I saw with the practice was, is that you would go through the month trying to get some numbers and remember that there was not, like, lot of problem baptizing in the Northern California mission. And if you got close to the end of the month and didn't have your Mondays to report, you went to the west side of the tracks, you went to the poor section of town. That's exactly what we did.

Lynn Packer [01:05:41] We hooked a family, got the numbers, led the mission. And I went along with it because I was. I was going along to get along. I was doing what I agreed to do, learn the lessons, go out and baptize. What they thought is. Their theory was, is that Germany is so hard that if you taste success, you're going to gain a testimony, you're going to have success, and you're going to finish your mission baptizing and being happy about the whole thing.

Lynn Packer [01:06:15] So anyway, we did that. And the other thing that stood out is we had a zone conference coming up. And the way the zone conferences worked, there is a general authority would come, and it was Thomas Monson coming to this one. The missionaries would fill a chapel and part of the program would be, is they would call two missionaries at random out of the group, and then they would say, and they would not tell you in advance, they would bring the two missionaries up, put them between a flannel board and say something like, lesson four, you're Elder A, you're Elder B.

Lynn Packer [01:06:52] And then you had to perform in front of all the missionaries. And I think it was an attempt to embarrass me. I'm convinced that that was the case. Here I am a new missionary in California, and I was called up to be. I can't remember where there I was, A or B.

Lynn Packer [01:07:11] And I must have surprised him because I don't think there was a word misplaced with. With whatever lesson it was four or five. It was one of. The. One of the later ones. But I. I was resentful that they did that because what would happen is that, remember, I'm transitioning back from German to English.

Lynn Packer [01:07:34] I'm trying to reorient myself and all of that. And. But anyway, so that did not turn out to be a disaster. But after this happened, then I decided I cannot take this anymore. I am not going to go to the west side of town and baptize another person again. So I wrote the mission president a letter.

Lynn Packer [01:07:56] This is the funny part. Wrote him a letter and said, look, I gave it a shot. I think this is still bleep. I don't know if I said that in the letter. I probably didn't. I said, this still is. Is. I want to finish my mission. I don't want to be sent home. And I only had like a couple of months to go anyway. So there was an Indian reservation in Hawaii, Nevada and Hawaii, Nevada, that was strangely part of the Northern California mission was way out in the boondocks. It was like almost a two day bus ride to get there above Elko, up near the border with Idaho.

Lynn Packer [01:08:43] And it was always had two to four missionaries there, like an adult missionary couple and regular proselyting missionaries. And I knew about that. And it was known in the mission to be where missionaries were banished problem elders or whatever.

Lynn Packer [01:09:02] They were banished. Usually they were banished there. But I wrote the mission president said, I want to finish and I want to avoid you embarrassment with Hinckley and avoid embarrassment and family, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm willing to be reassigned to Hawaii to finish my mission there. And I will do it if I can pick my companion.

Lynn Packer [01:09:24] True story. And I got along with everybody, like I said. I only had one companion I liked. I. I had a wide range of friends in high school, had wide range of friends on my mission and. And he said, okay, okay. So.

Lynn Packer [01:09:44] So I got on a bus. My companion, it was just a missionary I knew from Provo who was a good guy, sharp kid, and was sent to Hawaii, Nevada to the branch. They had a fairly new branch house there on an Indian reservation. And we drove a Chevy Suburban because you had to go over muddy roads quite a bit.

Lynn Packer [01:10:10] And. And I was made branch president, so his branch president for the second time. That's where I finished my mission because it was closer to Salt Lake than. Than Oakland. When I left my mission, my parents picked me up. My parents picked me up, drove me to Salt Lake, had a meeting with Boyd.

Lynn Packer [01:10:32] Is everything okay? Yeah, it's fine. I had pretty much started to adjust. It started to sink in that That I was. That it was really stupid what I did, thinking that somehow the. The lessons could be changed or would be changed. It was far worse in California. Oh my. Hey.

Lynn Packer [01:10:58] Oh my heck. It. The. The. The regimentation, the pressure to baptize. The. The. It was bad. And I was glad to go to Waihe, where there I.

John Dehlin [01:11:12] We. Community.

Lynn Packer [01:11:13] We participated in community affairs. There was an assembly of God church and another church. We ran a boys club. We ran all the meetings, sacrament meeting, the. We did all of that. We were like. Like a branch president would. And that's how I. How I finished my mission.

Faith Crisis and Doubts After the Mission

John Dehlin [01:11:34] Let me, Let me just ask you, you know, so when you left your mission, would you say you had your testimony still intact?

Lynn Packer [01:11:42] Well, I never had a testimony.

John Dehlin [01:11:45] You never had a testimony?

Lynn Packer [01:11:46] No, never did.

John Dehlin [01:11:48] So, like, did you ever try and pray to read the Book of Mormon? Oh, sure,

Lynn Packer [01:11:54] I prayed to be. I. Everybody was saying, I know that the church is true. And it was usually almost sometimes an incident or a feeling or that they. That they had experienced something. And. And that was another thing that like the. Began in Germany especially is you would have these meetings and. And at the end of the meeting, all the missionaries would bear their testimony, not get up and say, I love being in Germany. I love the German people. Name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Lynn Packer [01:12:29] And pretty soon it was noted that I was never saying I know the church is true. And they started asking me and I said, because I don't know that. I've never. I don't even know how you do that. I've seen people around me.

Lynn Packer [01:12:42] I would have discussions with an elder and one of them said, well, I think I know it's true. I said, thinking, well, I said I think lots of things are true, but it doesn't make them true. And I came to believe that one of the big problems with the church is this whole personal revelation testimony thing.

Lynn Packer [01:13:03] And if we do a separate episode on Boyd, I will have some really. A really interesting story to tell you about that. When I communicated these concerns with Boyd based on news coverage I did about a radical Mormon who threw his kids off of a hotel balcony and killed him because he had prayed and believed that he was to, you know, speak to the prophet and that he had a message. And.

Lynn Packer [01:13:37] And this goes on so much and so many Mormons who are not totally emotionally mentally stable have revelations and get this testimony and then they're shunned and banned by the church. And anyway, we could get into that. But no, I never had a testimony.

John Dehlin [01:13:59] Yeah. And again, I relate to that because I, I prayed about the Book of Mormon and just never got an answer and thought there was something wrong with me, thought I didn't have enough faith, but I still served faithfully. But I would just, I would all struggle to say I know because I didn't know. But everyone else said I know. And I was taught to say, you know even if you don't know. And if you say I know long enough, you'll convince yourself that you do know.

Lynn Packer [01:14:25] And yeah, that was. There was a lot of discussion about that in both missions where I can't remember who wrote the book, if you think it or something. And there was a couple of speeches given that if you act on will happen exactly what you said. If you say enough times I know the church is true, you will come to know that the church is true. And I didn't buy into that.

Lynn Packer [01:14:48] I, I now think that that among many problems that keeps the church cult like is is that process where you have to have a testimony, you get up and bear personal testimony. I came to detest testimony meetings because they were mostly speeches and a lot of weird stuff being reported. A lot of little kids who are 6 years old that get up they with the mic. I know the church is true and make their parents so proud.

Lynn Packer [01:15:18] Had one of my kids done that, I would have been disappointed because I would have known that they're just saying it to, to say it.

John Dehlin [01:15:26] But that's a hard thing to go serve a mission when you don't believe.

Lynn Packer [01:15:31] Well, I did believe it. I mean, I believed that there was an important message. I believed that the message. And I still do. There's a lot in Mormonism that people would practice that it would improve their lives. We've spent what, a couple hours talking about the family orientation and the family sticking together.

Lynn Packer [01:15:52] And that, which is another problem I had with baptism is a lot of times we were permitted to baptize someone out of a family and it caused contention. And I thought that was reprehensible. I thought if the whole family doesn't go, you don't do it.

Lynn Packer [01:16:07] And that was the only baptism. That exact thing happened with the only baptism I personally performed in Germany. It was the son of a preacher and he had a falling out with his father. And that was just wrong. And yet it was celebrated because it was not only a rare baptism, but hey, you've baptized the son of a preacher.

John Dehlin [01:16:29] Yeah.

Lynn Packer [01:16:29] And it was, it was, it was not good.

John Dehlin [01:16:33] So did you ever try and talk to your mission president or even your uncle? Like, let's not get ahead of ourselves. By, by the end of your mission, were you. Were you. Were you troubled by the fact that you couldn't get a witness?

Lynn Packer [01:16:48] No.

John Dehlin [01:16:48] Or did you just conclude?

Lynn Packer [01:16:49] No, I never thought. I never.

John Dehlin [01:16:51] I'm not gonna.

Lynn Packer [01:16:51] Because I thought it was phony and because I had formed the opinion that most of the elders were just saying that, and the ones who maybe believed it didn't even really know what it was. What happened? Did you hear a voice? Did a light come down like with Joseph Smith, or you get this warm feeling in your heart? I just never saw that as being that important. And I thought that it was a. You know, missionaries used it sort of as like a deal sealer at the end of each discussion. I know that this is true and to try and convince people, and that's more of an emotional argument. And I just, I. I just didn't like it. So I didn't. So I. I didn't.

John Dehlin [01:17:39] But it's. But it's problematic when the church is claiming to be God's one true church on the earth. And. And you don't believe it is. Right.

Lynn Packer [01:17:46] Well, this is another. This is another. Where was I or where was I when I heard something or thought something? Is. One time I was sitting, I think in a primary, could have been a mutual class, and I was sitting in that 7th Ward building, the one that Boyd supervised the construction on, and somebody was talking about the church being the only true church.

Lynn Packer [01:18:14] And the thought came across my mind at that time and it was rather dramatic. And no, this is not a testimony. This is just a thought that I had was rather dramatic, is how could this little group in a little state in this country have the only true church? Boy, I'm lucky. How can I happen to be born into this? And of course, part of the story was, is that you were a little bit better in the pre. Existence to be born into this, into this situation. And so I had that thought and I guess that continued and then came to the realization. And remember back then, the church played that up more.

Lynn Packer [01:18:57] They don't play that up nearly as much as they did back then. The only true church thing, it's just not emphasized nearly as much. And I was aware of that because I remained active after my mission. Right after I got off my mission is when I started working broadcasting. I started. I was an announcer for kbh. My brother got me the job and trained me. He was into broadcasting and thought I should do the same.

Lynn Packer [01:19:24] And I was made elders quorum instructor. And for the next many, many years, My primary calling was either Elders Quorum instructor or teaching gospel doctrine. And I always packed them in, always was liked by the Elders Quorum president. The Sunday school, because I did not teach out of the manual, is that I promoted discussion. I didn't try to indoctrinate. I didn't. I.

Lynn Packer [01:19:54] People were hungry to talk about it, and they were hungry to talk about real life situations that gospel principles apply to. And I would always figure a way to turn the topic into a discussion. And I was. I did a good job teaching. And so, and, and I had no desire to be a bishop or an Elders Quorum president. That's. That's what I wanted to do. I want to do that and play church basketball.

John Dehlin [01:20:28] But did you have cognitive dissonance that you knew the church was proclaiming to be God's one true church, but that you didn't believe it? Did you ever have cognitive dissonance about that?

Lynn Packer [01:20:37] Well, sure. I mean, okay. But, you know, after my mission, I. One thing that it helped me do is I never really understood who I was or what I wanted to be until near the end of my mission. And so by time I come home and I had been essentially kicked out of two missions. I mean, the one I kicked myself out of and. And was cast into outer darkness for the last of my mission is that I was not ashamed of it. I was not embarrassed by it.

Lynn Packer [01:21:14] I had my homecoming, gave a talk about gospel stuff, and just moved on and still had a goal to get married in the temple. I thought that was important because I see the value of a temple marriage is the commitment you make. I don't see anything magical about it.

Lynn Packer [01:21:36] And I knew it was likely that I was dating all Mormon girls, and I knew it was likely that they would want to get married in the temple and be active. And. And so that's what I did.

John Dehlin [01:21:50] Really quickly give us a sense. There are certain things that we're kind of all discovering now, many of us who were raised Mormon. I'm 51. I was raised in the 70s, 70s, 80s and 90s. There are certain things that many of us feel were kind of withheld from us. So I'm going to just ask you a few things and just tell me whether by this, by the mid-60s, you have heard of who you had heard of any of these things. Okay, Are you ready? Yeah. So in 1912, several Egyptologists come out with a front page New York Times article basically declaring the Book of Abraham as a fraudulent translation. Had you heard of that? By the. By the 1960s?

Discovering the Book of Abraham and Church History Problems

Lynn Packer [01:22:36] Well, I'd heard about it. What happened is, is that my senior year, I was made editor of the campus paper. And one of the writers on the campus paper is one of my former mission companions in California. And he was into all of the study church history in that, and he found out about Dialogue magazine and introduced me to it. And a couple of the. Couple of people on the editorial board taught at Utah State.

John Dehlin [01:23:13] Okay, so that article, after your mission, right?

Lynn Packer [01:23:16] Pardon? Yeah, this is after your mission.

John Dehlin [01:23:19] Okay. I'm trying to. I'm trying to find out whether someone raised in Utah in what became a prominent family, would have heard of these things growing up in the church. Now, the stuff that comes later in your timeline. I want to deal with the timeline.

Lynn Packer [01:23:33] Yeah, I hadn't heard that.

John Dehlin [01:23:36] So you had never heard that the Book of Abraham had problems?

Lynn Packer [01:23:39] Not until after my mission.

John Dehlin [01:23:41] Okay. Had you ever. Had you ever heard about B.H. roberts growing up? That B.H. roberts had discovered problems with the Book of Mormon, discovered parallels with the view of the Hebrews, this other book that he had access to that had a parallel, almost an identical kind of a narrative arc, and that B.H. roberts was kind of silenced once. Once he sent to the brethren this report that the Book of Book of Mormon had historical problems. Would you have heard of that growing up at all?

Lynn Packer [01:24:16] Mostly no. I think I heard just an inkling of it. And the reason I remember is because when I went through the mission home, we were handed an extra little ring binder that was about this big, and it was titled something like archaeological proofs of the Book of Mormon. And that's where I had a photo of something they said was a baptismal font, had a little toy horse in it, had some other things. And I remember wondering, you know, can this. Is this. Can this really be verified? Are there archaeological proofs of the Book of Mormon? But it was only a slight issue inkling.

John Dehlin [01:24:56] Right.

Lynn Packer [01:24:56] That's my transition to where I just didn't believe it took place over a period of years. There was no, like, a light bulb going off and saying, oh, my heck, that there's a lot of serious problems with the Book of Abraham. And.

John Dehlin [01:25:13] Yeah, and I'll ask you about. We'll get to that in the story, but I've just. I wanted to find out what you knew growing up in the church. Really quickly, one of our listeners, E. Kermil, asks, what is Dialogue Magazine? Dialogue magazine is a journal of Mormon thought. It's kind of like an academic journal of Mormon studies that was started in the late 1960s by Eugene England and even Dallin H. Oaks and others. And it's existed for 40 or 50 years as the main place that people interested in Mormon history, Mormon studies, would publish academic, scholarly articles about Mormonism. It's a really important publication and you can go to dialogue journal, I think.org for more information. Let me just ask you a couple other quick questions. By the way, glad to be free again, writes Lynn. You're terrific. Thanks for your honesty. Your conscience was highly developed by age 18.

Lynn Packer [01:26:15] I agree.

John Dehlin [01:26:15] Thanks for that comment. Glad to be free again. I love it when people comment. Okay, Lynn, really quickly, had you heard of Fawn Brody in the book no man Knows My History. By the time you, you know, observed your mission?

Lynn Packer [01:26:32] For sure, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:26:33] And what was your, what was your understanding about that book?

Lynn Packer [01:26:36] I just knew it existed. I knew that it was considered by some anti Mormon and I was never interested enough to read it. It was years later that I read it.

John Dehlin [01:26:50] Okay. Had you heard by the time you're a missionary that Joseph had translated the Book of Mormon with a stone in a hat with the plates not being anywhere in the, in the house while he was doing that translation? Did you grow up with that understanding?

Lynn Packer [01:27:08] Yeah, that was actually, that was more widely known back then than it was later when the church tried to just got rid of all of it. I was aware that something like that may have happened but had never formed the opinion and never heard anybody say that is the way that it happened. And there were different ways. I, in my mind he used the Urim and Thummim as on a breastplate and literally looked at the gold plates and translated them.

Lynn Packer [01:27:46] And by the way, one thing that Boyd did while he was a seminary instructor at Box Elder High and he, I think he did most of the work at Packer Motor is he recreated the gold plates he had. They were made out of metal some way and he had a, a, a, a visual or something that he could use to show, you know, basically how much they weighed or what they may have looked like. Whoops, your audio was off for a second.

John Dehlin [01:28:26] So. So you had heard something about a stone in a hat.

Lynn Packer [01:28:30] Yeah. But still I heard about the divining rod, the treasure seeking, but just, just a little bit. I'd heard about the possibility that Joseph Smith may have had sex or taken as a wife or something, somebody who was already married. But remember there wasn't a lot of fact checking going on and there weren't people coming out saying, okay, for sure, this is the, this is the way that it was. And so Sometimes I may have just thought, okay, this is anti Mormon stuff. You hear about it, but that doesn't mean you believe it.

John Dehlin [01:29:06] So you would you have been raised to know that Joseph Smith had 34, 35 to 40 wives?

Lynn Packer [01:29:14] Yeah, that, that's something else that surprises me is there was no question about that, that he had a lot of wives and that he was a polygamist. And, and years later I would hear people say, well, I didn't hear much about that. And I think that was, it was due to these people who wanted to control what was being taught in seminary and what was in the lesson manuals. And the, the church paid a very high price for doing that.

Lynn Packer [01:29:46] And that's why they came out with the essays. And that's another reason that they don't make the essays. They don't talk about them much. They realize that they've lost a generation of people that they could be candid with.

Lynn Packer [01:30:00] And my view of the essays is, and my understanding is they're a preemptive strike. They're, they want to start off better with the new generation coming through seminary than they did with previous generations where they tried to cover up too much.

John Dehlin [01:30:15] But, but it's interesting. On the one hand, it sounds like boy, Boyd K. Packer was a sincere true believer and that that was like a defining characteristic of him. On the other hand, we've got this quote from him, you know, by the, by the early 80s of saying not all things that are true are useful.

Lynn Packer [01:30:35] Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [01:30:36] What, what that suggests is don't, don't always tell the truth about the history that, that faith is more important than truth or science or evidence. And there is something fundamentally dishonest about that. In other words, Boyd would have known, Boyd K. Packer would have known a lot of the inconvenient truths about Mormonism and he would have been a part of, and maybe even led this initiative to erase from the church membership's collective memory or conversation awareness about any of these problematic issues. And so while there's going to be debate about whether the Brethren were, are and were sincere believers, most think that they were mostly sincere believers.

John Dehlin [01:31:27] There's kind of no doubt that they knew the problems and that they intentionally engaged in a cover up that lasted three or four decades and that really misled generations of people from knowing the truth about the church and that your uncle was probably kind of part of that. And we'll get to it, but it's just important for us to understand what you would have known back then and that actually maybe there was more awareness about church history in the 50s and 60s than there was in the 70s, 80s, 90s and.

Mormons, Politics, and Church Leadership Dynamics

Lynn Packer [01:32:04] A little bit, I think. A little bit. And remember, the church generally was more moderate in Utah. By the early 60s, there would have been more than half of Utahns of voting age who would have either said, I'm a Democrat or I vote Democratic, one or the other. It was a majority.

Lynn Packer [01:32:28] And back then it wasn't so divided the way it is now. It was, you heard all the time as a reporter and growing up, is that I vote for the man, not the party. I heard that a lot of times. And the other thing that I heard and observed a lot was throw the bastards out, is that Utahns would become upset with somebody serving in either party and would vote against them the next time. Because, okay, it's time for a change.

Lynn Packer [01:32:58] And see, none of that exists today. You'll put in a Republican like Orrin Hatch, who I covered when he first ran, and he'll be in for year after year. There's no throwing him out and there's no voting really for the man. It's just, hey, I'm a Republican, he's the Republican. That's where I'm going to vote.

Lynn Packer [01:33:18] And I'm sure we'll get into it sometime. But that's just the, you know, tomorrow's election day and the church's strong alignment with one of the republic, with the Republican Party is one of the tremendous problems that the church has and will face and drags it further into being cult like when you do that and un American and anti American. It's deplorable and it's tragic. And it's too bad because they've now hitch their wagon to a party that's in decline and to a president who is an absolute deplorable person. And yet tomorrow you'll have a plurality of Mormons voting for Trump. Just staggeringly amazing and pathetic.

John Dehlin [01:34:10] And I should add a lot of my list. I should add a lot of my listeners like Trump. Not a lot, but let's say not as a percentage, but as a raw number.

Lynn Packer [01:34:19] Hey, that's fine. Because when I got off my mission, I wanted to tell my story about my mission. So I self published a book called A Missionary Experience. I brought it out for a very short time. It didn't sell well. Nobody would review it well. I had one review that was just scathing. It was not well done.

Lynn Packer [01:34:42] It was at a time I was transitioning from being an engineering major at Utah State to being a journalism major and it coincided with that. But my book became a sort of a. I don't know what you would call it, a guide for Mormons from the extreme right.

Lynn Packer [01:35:05] Amazingly, it was. It was read by them, it was discussed, because they agreed, amazingly, that it was wrong for the church to be telling missionaries exactly what to say, that they should be guided by the spirit. And so instead of the liberal Mormons embracing that idea, it was arch conservative. And I ran into people who were of that persuasion who just loved the book and said, hey, you were right on. You were ahead of your time. You should have said that. And so the fact that you have some Trump viewers that are into that, actually, I feel damn sorry for him.

Lynn Packer [01:35:51] Trump was. And we may get to that slide today, or not. But I knew early on, long before he ran for president, that he was a swindler and a huckster and a fraudster. Early on, I knew that's who Trump was and was astonished he even ran for president. And when he won, I said, something is seriously wrong with this country.

John Dehlin [01:36:20] So just for my listeners who are Trump supporters, just want to let you know that Mormon Stories cares about the world, cares about politics, but.

Lynn Packer [01:36:33] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:36:34] We don't ever want anyone to feel alienated about this program. And so, of course, of course, it's Lyn's story. Lynn gets to share his opinions. But I want to give a shout out to Trump supporters and say, you know, we're all, we're all in this together and we all want the best for this country, and we don't want you to feel like this. This program is about denouncing Trump. This is, this is just. We're letting Lyn share his feelings.

Lynn Packer [01:37:05] What you just said is what's important. It's the same thing about my relationship with Boyd, is that I'm of the mind that I'll go out to dinner with a Trump supporter. I'll have a discussion with a Trump supporter. I don't have hatred for Trump supporters. I get where a lot of them are coming from, because the corruption in government certainly has not been limited to the Republican Party as it exists now. But what I'm saying is what happened then is not a good thing. And over the next few days and few weeks and few months, fasten your seatbelt, because we are far too divided. And also keep in mind that I have several family members who are Trump's supporters, and I get along with them just fine about it.

John Dehlin [01:37:59] Thanks.

Lynn Packer [01:38:01] Part of my opinion is born out of my concern for all the fraud that's going on and I'm equally as harsh with Paul Dunn, who was also a fraudster, as I am with with Trump.

John Dehlin [01:38:16] A couple fun comments from listeners. Kit writes, neither candidate is appropriate. Robert writes, trump supporters or not, John loves you all. Daniel writes, ha ha ha. Like the disclaimer. And then my favorite comment is from Kit. Kit writes, we Trump supporters are not all snowflakes. We can handle Lynn's views. So I like that.

Lynn Packer [01:38:42] And a shout out to Trump supporters that likes Mormon stories because you deal with your, your trying to get at the facts about the church. You're trying to get to the truth about it. So. But it is what it is. That's how I feel about, well, it's your story.

John Dehlin [01:39:02] It's your story really quickly. How many more, how much more time will you have today just so that I can time plan our interview? It's, it's about three.

Lynn Packer [01:39:10] If you want to jump over a couple more slides, that's fine, but a little bit more.

John Dehlin [01:39:15] Okay. Okay. So we'll, we'll do another 45 minutes, you're saying.

Lynn Packer [01:39:20] Yeah, we could do that. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:39:21] Okay. All right. So you get off your mission and, and you don't really have a testimony, but you still want to get married in the temple. And your uncle is becoming, he's an assistant to the Quorum, to the first presidency of the quorum of the 12.

Lynn Packer [01:39:39] Quorum of the 12. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:39:41] And you know, that's, that's a, that's a big deal. And you've had interactions with Gordon B. Hinckley by this point, with Ezra Todd Benson, Is that right, what you said? So you've, you've rubbed shoulders at the top, at the, you know, highest levels of the church. I'm really interested to see where, where the story goes.

Lynn Packer [01:39:59] Yeah. And I will again when we have the done segment. I rub shoulders with elder spoused and hate in connection with that and by the way, had a very, I considered my experience with them very pleasant. And we'll get into that story later.

Life After the Mission, Marriage, and the Temple

John Dehlin [01:40:19] Okay, so what happens after your mission?

Lynn Packer [01:40:22] Okay, so if you go to the next slide, it just shows that right when I got off my mission here is I get into broadcasting. Is. I is like I said, my brother had plans for me to get into broadcasting. I was an engineering major at the time.

Lynn Packer [01:40:41] But so I started off at KBH in Brigham City and I was a disc jockey. I played records. But we also read the news live on the hour. We had, we were affiliated with the Mutual Broadcasting Network, and right after that we would read from the Watch and we had The Associated Press, state and local items, and I became fascinated with that. That's what drew me into journalism, is that it was called RIP and Read. You'd go to the.

Lynn Packer [01:41:17] To the. You. You would get the copy, mark it up a little bit, and then just read it live on the air. While I was working at KWH in Brigham, I started working at KVU and you and Logan, where I was going to school.

Lynn Packer [01:41:33] And I worked at both stations for a while. I worked weekday afternoons at KVNU and weekends at kbuh. And then later, when I became editor of the paper, I dropped the KBUH job and continued for a while with kvnu. So I switched my major to broadcast journalism, was editor of the paper.

Lynn Packer [01:41:58] And at one time, I wrote an editorial. It was critical of byu, and one of the institute teachers initiated excommunication proceedings against me. And so I was called into the state president over that.

John Dehlin [01:42:15] Wait, what? Explain that.

Lynn Packer [01:42:19] Well, there was an institute teacher who was, you know, far right, really radical right, and did not like the fact that a returned missionary editor would talk about BYU the way I did. And we had a political cartoon. We had a great cartoonist who did. I wish I could find it. Who did a diagram showing BYU as a factory and everybody coming out the same. He took real offense to that. It was true then, and it was true when I was teaching at BYU that they were trying to put everybody in the same mold.

Lynn Packer [01:43:00] And. And so I was called in by my stake president on a Saturday, and my wife went with me, and it seems like she sat outside. And when I came in, the stake president said, I've got somebody. I want to sit in on this. Do you mind? And I said, no, not at all. He said it was Leonard Arrington. Whoa.

John Dehlin [01:43:23] Okay, wait a minute. So you did get married. Which temple did you get married in?

Lynn Packer [01:43:28] Logan Temple.

John Dehlin [01:43:29] Okay, so you married your wife in the Logan Temple?

Lynn Packer [01:43:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:43:33] And was she an orthodox believer when you married her?

Lynn Packer [01:43:35] No, she never was. She was always active, but never. She always had problems with polygamy. She. She could not handle that. And so.

John Dehlin [01:43:46] And so did you. Did you. Was she a Brigham City girl or.

Lynn Packer [01:43:49] She grew up in Ogden, but her dad was an executive with Mountain Fuel and was transferred to Brigham for her last few years in school. And so she was. She's almost four years younger than I am. She was in high school when I met her. And. And she was active. And so when you get married and

John Dehlin [01:44:14] you get married in the temple, but you're not. Neither of you are really believers. Is there a formal discussion about well, okay, we'll do this Mormon thing, but we don't really take it too seriously. Or is it just something you never

Lynn Packer [01:44:26] talked about, something that your parents sort of hoped for? And I had no problem with. With that commitment.

John Dehlin [01:44:34] I'm saying, did you talk to her about it? Where there was like, an understanding, oh, Mormon thing, but we're not too serious about it.

Lynn Packer [01:44:40] We had a lot of discussions about my mission and what I thought and what I felt. And she wasn't the first one I dated that I had those discussions. Because you wanted. You didn't want to sell them a false bill of goods. You wanted them to know what you thought and what you're doing. And my intention was to continue to be active. You've, I think, before talked about the importance of community and being in the community. And I had lots of friends who were active Mormon and wanted to continue associating with them.

John Dehlin [01:45:16] So one of our listeners, Robert Wells, writes, did the temple not scare her? So you would have gone through the temple. You and her both would have gone through the temple endowment ceremony decades before they took out all the. Yeah, totally violent.

Lynn Packer [01:45:32] John, you should be asking if it scared me.

John Dehlin [01:45:35] Yeah, right.

Lynn Packer [01:45:38] My dad. I told you dad had really good street smarts and he believed in the temple stuff, but he also knew he understood who I was and my concerns with things like that. So my dad explained, even though he's not supposed to, most of the temple ritual in advance.

Lynn Packer [01:46:01] And when I went through the Logan Temple, they still had the actors, they still had Lucifer and. And they had all of that. And even his telling me I was in shock. The shock was seeing that and also the shock of, now you're going to wear garments. And that was.

Lynn Packer [01:46:22] I remember sitting on my bed that night thinking, boy, this is something. But I was okay with it. I mean, I had advanced warning and. And so did my wife. And we were never temple attenders. You know how you have temple night, you have people socialize and do that? We were never into that. And the only time we went back to the temple as if it were for. For a marriage ceremony or for an occasion, it wasn't just to do temple work, because neither one of us cared for that experience that much.

John Dehlin [01:46:59] Okay, okay, so you were. Now. Now you were talking about something later. Oh, your disciplinary council.

Lynn Packer [01:47:09] I was telling the. The. You said, it's okay if Leonard Arrington sits in. I said, that's fine. I knew who he was. He was teaching at Utah State at the time. I knew two of his other people in the history department Doug Alder and Stan Kazar really well, because I've taken classes from them. And I think Stan Kazar was in my ward. I went to. I didn't go to a student ward, I went to another ward and I taught Sunday school while I was going to college. And. And we had a discussion. I would say it lasted about an hour. And after that, the stake president says, there's nothing here. We're sorry we've even bothered you. And that was the end of it.

John Dehlin [01:47:55] Just as a total coincidence, Stan Kazir. Listeners who don't know Utah State University won't know that he was president of Utah State University in the final years of his life. When I had just started Mormon Stories, Stan Kazir would email me and correspond with me about my podcast before he died.

Lynn Packer [01:48:16] He's. He's a great guy and. And so is Doug Alder. And Doug Alder went on to be a president of one of the Southern Utah colleges. And when I was a reporter and Stan Kazar was coming back to Utah, I flew with my cameraman to the university where he was teaching in California. I can't remember which one it was. An interviewed faculty. What is he like? What is he doing? And did a story about the fact that he was coming back to Utah.

John Dehlin [01:48:50] Yeah. And again, you were. Your disciplinary counsel was for doing what I know you told us, but I just want you to.

Lynn Packer [01:48:55] I wrote an editorial. It was critical of byu. It grew out of when I was. When I was editor of the paper. There was a guest. You know, I have guests, lecturers come in that they pay to come in and speak to the student body. And we had a guest lecturer come in from New York. And he said, before I speak, I want to have dinner with the student body president and with the editor of the paper and a couple of others. And we had this discussion about education and how you did it.

John Dehlin [01:49:28] And he.

Lynn Packer [01:49:29] And we talked about BYU and how they did it. And the editorial I did was an outgrowth of that. It was. It was like it was meant to be critical that when you go to a university, you should learn how to think. And that's not what they taught at byu. That was the basic message.

John Dehlin [01:49:49] Yeah.

Lynn Packer [01:49:51] And it's true to today I look at some point, we'll talk about teaching at byu. It was a great experience, fantastic students, great people that I talked with, great program that they. That they had. The biggest failing was, is that you were restricted in teaching kids how to think and be critical thinkers. I restricted everything I taught to journalism.

John Dehlin [01:50:21] Right. Okay. Well, I guess. And any reflections on meeting Leonard Arrington? Any impressions?

Lynn Packer [01:50:29] No. I later read his seminal work. I'm trying to think of the name of it. It's on economics. It's thick and it's about.

John Dehlin [01:50:39] Or something like that, you know, when

Lynn Packer [01:50:40] it goes into Brigham City, being part of the United Order and how all of that worked and just a tremendous amount of research that went into it. And of course, he comes up again later when he's made a church historian and. And gets crosswise with Ezra Taft Benson and. And gets essentially demoted and pushed to the side and. When I taught at byu, I became educational friends with Leonard Arrington's son who was doing the. The Brother Brigham stuff. Were you familiar with that?

Vietnam War, My Lai Censorship, and Journalistic Work

John Dehlin [01:51:18] Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah.

Lynn Packer [01:51:20] So. And we would meet in neither my. I guess most of me were in my office at byu. We had a lot of talks about Arrington, about the church, about byu, and. And there were often discussions among faculty members of being unhappy with certain things. And that's just typical. It's typical of any university that you have faculty members that aren't happy about everything that's going on. And in some of the most divisive meetings I've ever been in were department head meetings at BYU where there was yelling and shouting going on at byu. And because I would attend the meetings and I would participate, but I would not get into the shouting matches.

John Dehlin [01:52:13] Sure. Okay, so you escaped disciplinary council for doing absolutely nothing. And how did things progress?

Lynn Packer [01:52:25] And then you could skip ahead a couple slides and. And now back you went too far. You go one past this and then move ahead to the next one. What happened to the. I may be working off in other slides, but the one I have after being USU editor is. I have. Where I. After I graduated from college, I had job offers from Deseret News, Salt Lake Tribune, Channel 4 and KSL.

John Dehlin [01:53:05] So you studied journalism in college?

Lynn Packer [01:53:07] Yeah, I was a broadcast news major and a German minor editor of the paper had won an award with a contest with the Salt Lake Tribune. There was a journalist in three or four states in college participated in it. So I had good credentials. And so I took the job at ksl and I was immediately signed to the Capitol to cover that. That I mentioned before. Lynn, would you have been 1968? Pardon?

John Dehlin [01:53:45] Would you have been inspired by, like, Edward R. Murrow and.

Lynn Packer [01:53:48] And for sure, yeah. All of that. All that basic, good, solid journalism. The textbooks we used were written by professors at, like, Missouri and, And Columbia, and they were just, you know, down the line, basic solid journalism. Which I also taught when I was at BYU.

Lynn Packer [01:54:16] But I was only at KSL for about four, three or four months and got deep into the 1968 elections when I was drafted and was sent to Fort Ord for basic training. And I rolled the dice and decided not to enlist because if you enlisted you were guaranteed what your job assignment would be. And I knew I would be guaranteed to do something in broadcasting because that was my experience both in college and professionally. I was a disc jockey, I was a reporter at ksl.

Lynn Packer [01:54:53] I decided to roll the dice and take a chance and let them choose the assignment. And most of the guys in my unit were assigned either armor or infantry. That meant they were going to non for sure fighting, that they were going to participate.

Lynn Packer [01:55:14] And I didn't believe in the war. There were protests going on when I was editor. When I was editor, I went out of my way to have a columnist who was a member of sds, which was a student for Democratic was a far left organization that was adamantly against the war.

Lynn Packer [01:55:33] I had a columnist who was a member of a commune. Remember there were a lot of kids going to college living in sort of free sex communes. I went out of my way to have a columnist who was Iranian because we had a lot of Iranian students. They're learning agriculture and I wanted them to have a voice. And so I had these columnists. But basically the paper was against the war, as probably most student papers were. And so I rolled the dice. And at the end of basic I lucked out. Most of the guys in my unit were assigned to combat. And I got was awarded directly broadcast specialist.

Lynn Packer [01:56:13] Didn't even have to go to college to the school to get it. Usually after basic you would go to school for two or three months. And I was assigned directly to Fort Ord. I went to Fort Ord and worked in a unit there where I was a broadcast specialist. It was a civil affairs unit.

Lynn Packer [01:56:35] And after there for a while, suddenly I learned that the FBI is in Utah asking questions about you. So you knew you were going to be open to some special assignment because they were doing a background check and you had to have a security clearance. So I was hopeful. And I thought what was going to happen is that I was going to be assigned to like the embassy in Germany, because I was, I spoke German and I was getting a background check. But no, I was assigned to AFBN in Vietnam to be a broadcaster there. And I went to Saigon where I got my assignment.

Lynn Packer [01:57:19] They had five broadcast studios in, in Vietnam because everything was line of sight that is, they didn't have satellites beaming signals down to the country at that time. So Vietnam is skinny. So I had to have five stations with five big antennas to reach the troops.

Lynn Packer [01:57:42] I was assigned to the northernmost unit in Quang Tree. That was about 15 miles from the DMZ. So we're right next to North Vietnam, broadcast into North Vietnam. And it was a marine base. The 3rd Marine Division Division was based there.

Lynn Packer [01:58:02] And the soldiers in my unit, some were Marine, some were Navy, some were Air Force Broadcasting in is in the military, all the forces participate together. And so one time we would have an army commander, one time we'd have a Marine commander.

Lynn Packer [01:58:22] And you work together with these guys. It was a very cohesive unit. We were there by ourselves on the base. We had a television station and a radio station that was broadcast mostly to Marines, but also to the first airborne division that was down the road, down Highway 1 at Fubai in northern, northern, southern Vietnam.

Lynn Packer [01:58:51] And, and so I, and, and so I was made. You could be a lot of different things, but I was made the anchor. I anchored the early and late news. I produced it. You'd get up early in the morning, go to the wire. You would get Kinescope film flown in from Japan that you would cut and edit, and you'd put together a new show and then broadcast it out of a van.

Lynn Packer [01:59:21] I don't have a photo of the van. But you'd broadcast it out of a van that was equipped with a tiny little broadcast booth with the control room next to.

John Dehlin [01:59:36] Almost looks like an episode out of mash. Seeing those photos right there.

Lynn Packer [01:59:42] Well, there's a story that you may not want to take the time to. To go into, but I was involved with the. The census censorship controversy in Vietnam. You see the photo of the. Of me with other soldiers. This was taken in Saigon during a congressional hearing.

Lynn Packer [02:00:07] All of these guys were. Well, you see me in the back next to Paul Baldrige, who broadcast for a while out of Saigon. And then I met him. He was reassigned to Quang Tree. And then the others, and then the other one next to me broadcast out of one of the other units. And then the others broadcast out of Saigon. And the one one night went on the air at the close of the newscast and said, I want to give all my viewers in the military here in Saigon a warning.

Lynn Packer [02:00:42] The news you're getting is highly censored, and that's against military regulations. The place was immediately surrounded by military police. And the story broke across the United States because all the guys who worked in Saigon. And I went down there a couple of times. They knew all the correspondence. Abc, cbs, NBC, they knew all those guys. And so the story broke big in the United States and I became involved in that controversy and that's why I'm there in Saigon. That shot is taken in Gary Shepherd's. He was a CBS correspondent in his apartment while we were there for the, for the hearing. And the hearing was conducted by John Moss of California, who was a Jack Mormon.

Lynn Packer [02:01:38] He was cousin to Frank Moss and a Mormon, but was known to be a Jack Mormon. And he conducted the congressional hearing into whether. Is there censorship that is illegal, that's unwarranted, involving newscasts of the troops in, in Vietnam.

John Dehlin [02:01:59] So listeners are writing in mentioning the, the movie Good Morning Vietnam. The Robin Williams role is that. That's based on a real character, right?

Lynn Packer [02:02:09] Yeah. And all that, all that rings true. The, the network we were in, that was a wild and a great experience, worked with great guys. But you were dealing with censorship. You're trying to bring the truth or accurate news to the troops. And you had these generals who were lifers who didn't want to follow the rules and wanted to every evening before the newscast go through and say, this story's out, this story's out. Even though that was illegal, that was against the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The only stories to be censored were those that endangered troops, that revealed troop movements. And see, I was there when the My Lai massacre story broke. And as near as I can tell, I was the first reporter that is, that had access to broadcasting or the Stars and Stripes to report the My Lai massacre to troops in Vietnam.

John Dehlin [02:03:10] Oh, wow.

Lynn Packer [02:03:11] Very first. The way that happened is. And the reason I was so incensed about censorship is I had free reign. We're here way up in the north part of Quang Tree. We'd probably be the first to get it if the, the north decided to invade.

Lynn Packer [02:03:32] There was not a lot of saluting going on or anything like that. There was a lot of drugs and alcohol. It was, that was sort of the way it is like in mash and, and, and, and I had free reign. I, I still am an early riser, and I was an early riser in Vietnam. I'd get up early, would go to the newsroom, and you see the newsroom and the one shot.

Lynn Packer [02:03:56] And I would start pulling the wire and start preparing early in the morning for the six and ten o' clock newscast. And I came in one morning when the me lie story broke and it came over the wire service and then A message came over, the censorship message, do not broadcast this story.

Lynn Packer [02:04:18] Do not broadcast the story. And so what I did was I took that and hid it. I hid the message so my commander never saw it. And I led the newscast with the Mei story.

John Dehlin [02:04:32] Whoa.

Lynn Packer [02:04:34] For at least two days and maybe a third. And after the third day, the story was so huge in the United States that they had to release it. And so it finally appeared on the Saigon station and in Stars and Stripes and became a huge story. And it was one that moved me a lot.

John Dehlin [02:04:55] Tell our listeners just a little bit about that massacre.

Lynn Packer [02:04:58] The massacre was when a unit went into a village in Vietnam and basically went berserk. They were out after revenge and shot almost every man, woman and child in the village, even lining some up on a ditch and machine gunning him down.

Lynn Packer [02:05:19] Men, women and children. And the thing that disturbed me most about it is because I was in the network, we got on a daily basis a compilation of news stories. And of course this was. And they didn't censor those. We got those so we could read them and know what was going on. And by then the New York Times, especially Washington Post, were doing stories. And I was so disappointed to tears. The two Mormons participated in that.

Lynn Packer [02:05:50] It was shocking to me. And I sat there, I remember reading it on my bunk saying, why did we go to primary? Don't we know the difference between right and wrong? What is going on with this church that you march into a village, everybody starts shooting and you get one I think had a machine gun, one had a. Probably an M16. It starts literally shooting women and children dead.

Lynn Packer [02:06:18] It was just. I was so upset. And I. I still am today and think, why isn't the teaching coming through? And there was a Catholic kid that was there and he saw what was going on, he didn't want to stop, So he shoots himself in the foot so he can be medevaced out of there and not participate.

Lynn Packer [02:07:05] And so that's what a Catholic kid did. And two Mormon kids shoot a me lie. And so this is what's leading up to me being upset about the censorship. And so when the censorship story breaks and see, in Saigon, they would get the message verbally to censor the newscast. They would just be told, you can't use that. But up in Quang Tree, where I was at, I had proof of the censorship and I shared that with a UPI reporter who broadcast is saying, hey, we've got proof that they're denying that they censored the news. And we have proof which made the worst the matter, all the worse for the brass.

Lynn Packer [02:07:48] And so all of us that you see in the photo, except for one, were kicked out of the network work. And I finished my tour, which was brief. I was near the end. So I get kicked out of my mission. I get kicked out of my unit in Vietnam and, and I finished with the 101st Airborne Division. I was sent down the road and finished, finished there where I.

Lynn Packer [02:08:17] Very quickly, I was. It's amazing, John. They put me in charge of the unit newspaper. It's, it's amazing that they didn't care. I mean they were the ones that knew I was an anchor. They watched my newscasts. They didn't care at all. They put me in charge of the newspaper. I reported a lot of really funny stories in the newspaper.

Lynn Packer [02:08:40] I made rank faster. I was promoted to Spec 5 in a short amount of time and I won the bronze star because they were happy with the work I did. And that's after getting kicked out of the network.

John Dehlin [02:08:54] You know, that, that two, two things that that story tells me, three things, I guess. One is just your conscious, your conscientiousness and your courage and your, your strong sense of moral values. It also is a lesson you never forget in terms of the harm and the damage of censorship. That is clearly gonna, and dishonesty. And then the third thing is that's clearly going to inform your work later on as you start to investigate things like Mark Hoffman, things like Ted Bundy, things like, you know, Paul Dunn. How do you go through an experience like that in Vietnam and see the COVID ups and the, and, and to see the way things can be really messy and even deadly behind the scenes and just learn to just stay quiet about it.

Lynn Packer [02:09:52] Yeah. And the whole Vietnam experience, I was always against the war and I was more against it after being there and seeing what was going on, as were most of the. Everybody just wanted to serve their time. Most everybody. There were very few who were gung ho and into the killing commies and just wanted to survive it and to get home. And that's why there was just a lot of alcoholism, lots of marijuana smoking was going on everywhere.

Lynn Packer [02:10:26] And it was not strictly enforced because the, you know, our, our, the, the military leaders knew that everybody was stressed out and needed to have some form of relief. And it was scary. I mean there were rumors all the time that the north was going to invade and that this could be it, that this could be the end. And then I'm living around soldiers who are going out in the bush and getting killed and Every day that I made a mail run to go to the post office and get mail, you'd have to go by the airport and you'd see the. The aluminum coffin stacked up, being ready to fly down to Saigon to be then sent back to the States.

John Dehlin [02:11:19] Yeah. That kind of makes life a little bit more serious after that, right?

Lynn Packer [02:11:23] Well, it does. I was hardened after I. More than I thought. I came back and started playing in church basketball games. And this was not unlike me. Got into a couple of fights. I'm thinking, what. What is this? And I realized that you've got a. You've got to dial it back a little bit. You become toughened and hardened. You're around this, like, death and mayhem that's going on around you. And it doesn't help that you don't believe at all in the war. And so many of the soldiers didn't. They were just. They were drafted. They had to do it, and so they did it.

John Dehlin [02:12:03] Yeah. Quick. A quick thanks or shout out to Talizan Oberlander. He wrote, I adore Lynn's moral fortitude and integrity. And he made a quick donation on YouTube to the podcast. So we all appreciate people who support Mormon stories. There's a little donate button there, a little dollar sign if people want to click on it down below the text box. But mostly we just want to say. Many people are. Are saying things like, win writes moving peace and love to you, Lynn. Jaina writes, heart wrenching that, Lynn, you're still affected by this horrible experience. I. I'll just say, personally, war is probably my biggest voting issue, because I think war is the most. Probably the most horrible thing. It's hard to imagine what's worse than war.

Lynn Packer [02:12:58] Yeah. And remember, too, is that when my uncles were all coming back from war, my father didn't participate in action. He was stationed stateside. But several of them, one was in the Navy and was in the South Pacific. Another uncle fought his way up Italy. He was in the army. He had the situation with Leon that he was on bombing runs and getting shot at. And even what Boyd did, I mean, when you. The. The war was over, but it was still a dangerous place to be. And you're seeing firsthand the destruction of war. The, The. The refugees, the, the people don't have a place to stay. And, And, And Boyd saw all of that firsthand, so he saw directly the consequences of war. And so they're all coming back. The same way I came back is that you're hardened and you have to readapt and readjust to Life.

John Dehlin [02:13:59] Yeah. Well, thank you for your service and thanks for sharing that heart wrenching story. Lynn, do you want to, do you want to go a little bit more or are you ready to kind of close it down?

Career at KSL News and Church-Owned Media

Lynn Packer [02:14:15] We could go like maybe 10 more minutes and just skip over some slides fairly quickly just to give them a little bit more of an overview.

John Dehlin [02:14:23] Okay.

Lynn Packer [02:14:24] I don't know if we're on the same one where I was a reporter for 15 years.

John Dehlin [02:14:29] Yeah. So let's talk about KSL.

Lynn Packer [02:14:31] Yeah, I was a reporter there. Tremendous experience working with great people back then. It was a solid number one. Dick Norris for most of the time was the anchor, had a great relationship with them. Spence Kennard was the news director for most of the time, even while he was doing music in the spoken word.

John Dehlin [02:14:54] That's the, that's the guy who was excommunicated or, or, you know, he was the voice of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Lynn Packer [02:15:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:15:01] And then he was caught in an affair. I loved that guy growing up and it was really.

Lynn Packer [02:15:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:15:06] I was so charismatic. He seems so intelligent. And then he, he, they took him down. He. He went down.

Lynn Packer [02:15:15] Yeah, he, he. It happened while I was teaching in Germany. So my wife told me about it, that that happened. But it was a great group. And two of the years I was the lead investigative reporter for the documentary unit. And like you said, I covered a lot of, a lot of stories.

Lynn Packer [02:15:36] Since then, television news in Salt Lake has been in steep decline. Viewership has gone way down. Back when I was a reporter, practically every other person on the street knew who you were. Some people joked that the two most famous packers were Boyd and Lynn because we. But, but of course he had a higher profile for a much longer time.

Lynn Packer [02:16:05] And so that was my experience with ksl. The one shot you see is when I was a reporter for the documentary unit, I did one segment that I. And I think I have it posted on YouTube about some of the stories I did in Vietnam. Because when I went there, I took my camera with me and nobody in the military questioned it. I on, I had a day off, which most soldiers did not.

Lynn Packer [02:16:33] And on that day off I would schedule to go out and cover a story and I would take my camera and I even still have it. I bought it after we switched over from going from silent to everything sound on film. And I took a camera and a tape recorder and would shoot a story and voice it and then send it back to the station. Once a week they would air the report from Vietnam. So it gave me a chance to get out away from the base and, and do some feature story. There was no intention of covering the war, which would have been inappropriate, but just doing feature stories about things going on and Utahns.

Lynn Packer [02:17:18] One of the most popular stories I did was I went to a, A conference in Da Nang, a Mormon conference. I'm trying to think of. I think it was. Could have been Bruce R. McConkey spoke at it. I don't remember one of the general authorities. And so I just walked up and down the aisle with my camera showing all the Mormon soldiers who were there. It was funny.

Lynn Packer [02:17:43] And that got more comment than anything because wives and parents and that saw, hey, east of church, he's doing okay in Vietnam. And so I did stories like that. And that particular shot that you see is, is, is when I, when I did that. And then if you go to the next slide.

John Dehlin [02:18:09] So while you were, while you were working for KS News, KSL News, number one, it would have been owned by the church, correct?

Lynn Packer [02:18:18] Right. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:18:20] And, you know, I'm, I'm shaping up in my mind the sense that you might have been perceived as a bit of a troublemaker, like a little bit of a dangerous guy because you're like, getting kicked out of, you know, submission stuff. You're going to Vietnam and you're kind of, you know, maybe going against the power there. You're a little bit of a. A conscientious objector kind of person. So I'm wondering, like, when KSL is hiring you and you're working for a station that's owned by the church, how do you do that? Or, or is your reputation not, you know, being perceived as I just described it.

Lynn Packer [02:19:06] I don't think it was widely known. And also, what's the big deal? He's a journalist. I mean, he's, he's, that's. He's going to want to get to the truth, want to get at facts. And like I said, I don't think it was really widely known. It wasn't that big a deal. I had. I established a reputation as working in broadcasting and being editor of the paper.

Lynn Packer [02:19:35] And when I went to ksl, I hit the ground running. I'm. From day one, I knew how to shoot film. I knew how to voice a story, I knew how to edit the film. I was really productive the very first day. Knew how to do that because I learned it in college.

Lynn Packer [02:19:52] And, and so I was quickly assigned to be Capital correspondent. That's a big jump to being a rookie and getting a beat like that. And it was a big advantage in advancing my career. And when I got back from Vietnam, somebody else had that. And so I covered city, county building for a couple of years and then when that person moved on, I moved back up to the capitol and beat reporting is what I like to do best.

John Dehlin [02:20:24] And did you do they pay their reporters decent wages back then? Was it hard to make a living?

Lynn Packer [02:20:29] Was it KSL probably paid the best, but was not great wages. I didn't make good money until I started consulting for television in Germany and consulting for law firms on cases. That's when I made got ahead financially the most. And certainly you don't make with freelancing. You just get a token amount when you freelance.

Controversial Stories and Investigative Journalism

John Dehlin [02:20:54] And so what were the years you were working for KSL?

Lynn Packer [02:20:56] Approximately from 68 to about 86, something like that. With, you know, and I was gone in the service during that time. And then part of it overlapped with teaching at BYU because I started teaching at BYU and switched to sort of part time at KSL where I worked weekends and Monday. But then sometimes I would spend two or three days down at BYU and the other time so it overlapped which was a huge plus for teaching because I was doing exactly what I was teaching and so was always up to date on practices and technology and. And then what was.

John Dehlin [02:21:50] Was there ever any stories while you were any Mormon church related stories while you were working at KSL that would have been highly controversial or highly significant?

Lynn Packer [02:22:02] Well, sure, the Mark Hoffman story. You don't have time in this podcast to get into that if you, I

John Dehlin [02:22:09] mean to list them. So. So I'm just thinking the Gary Gilmore probably happened while you were at ksl. The priesthood ban would have been lifted while you were at ksl.

Lynn Packer [02:22:22] I heard that.

John Dehlin [02:22:25] I'm thinking, yeah, Mark Hoffman probably would have happened during that time period. Was the Ted Bundy thing during that time? Yeah, yeah. So a lot of big things. I'm sure there's a lot of big things I'm not even mentioning.

Lynn Packer [02:22:41] The church at that time had to be pretty much hands off because of the fcc. Is that at that time the theory was is that this license belongs to the public, not to the company that's. That's operating the station. And you have to operate in the public interest. And if the church had made too overt an attempt to censor something, they could have lost their license. And with Reagan that started to change. And today my guess is, and I don't know this, that there's a lot of meddling going on. But the coverage is so bad today. Overall you wouldn't even know. You couldn't even tell. They just avoid all sorts of controversial stories.

John Dehlin [02:23:30] Someone else is mentioning John. John Williams writes the Lafferty brothers and the killings that would have happened during your time. Thanks.

Lynn Packer [02:23:39] John covered that. Brenda White was in the first class I taught at byu.

John Dehlin [02:23:46] Who is that woman who was killed?

Lynn Packer [02:23:50] She's the one and her child who was murdered. So I knew her. She had a brilliant career in front of her. She was very good. One of the better students I ever taught there. She was in going into journalism, have kids.

John Dehlin [02:24:04] She was going into journalism, yeah. Okay. Kid Bram mentions the MX missile. That would have happened during your time.

Lynn Packer [02:24:13] It did, yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:24:15] Okay. Well, what we've kept you for a long time. You've been so generous with your time. I don't want to give short shrift to, you know, the Hoffman stuff, the Paul Dunn stuff, the other things. So let's go ahead and just have you share whatever else you want to today and then we'll, we'll make sure and give full, full attention to, you know, the upcoming episodes on Paul Dunn, on Operation Underground and Tim Ballard and on any other story you want to cover more in depth.

Lynn Packer [02:24:48] Yeah, I think we've cover log round in a short amount of time. And I appreciate the fact that there is now not only a lot more discussion about belief and religion and truth, but also heartened by your long form. It's called long form journalism. As you know what you're doing. It's not a two and a half minute look at something and I think there's a growing demand that you have shown for doing that, for having discussion and thinking and getting different points of view of sitting through this, even if you're a Trump supporter, please tomorrow go out and vote for Trump. That's important as that everybody, that's how the system works best. If everybody will participate and vote for the one that they think is the, the best candidate.

John Dehlin [02:25:49] There's a, there's a question from a listener. Celinda asks, does Lynn have a favorite unbiased news source?

Lynn Packer [02:26:00] Well, I know pretty well, like a Washington Post reporter, I follow the Washington Post, the New York Times. My students did internships at cnn and although I watch CNN a lot, I would always warn them that cnn, even though it represents sort of the more democratic or you know, more factual reporting compared with Fox News, which is really terrible, but I said CNN has such a long way to go. I mean, I, I, as a reporter, I did, we were a CNN affiliate. That is, we use their material and I'VE done stories for cnn. I've done live shots for cnn. I've had students go on internships to see and always warn them.

Lynn Packer [02:26:51] As I said, when you get back, we're going to have to undo a lot of bad habits, a lot of bad stuff that you saw and nothing has changed my opinion on that. Journalism just across the board is sinking and in a way that some people are glad. They don't want it to have a stronger voice, they don't want it to be doing investigative reporting and they don't want it to be facts based. But for those who want more accurate, more in depth, more just covering a lot more stories, have to be really disappointed across the board, especially locally with the Deseret News, the trip and the major television stations. It's, it's, it's not good.

The Future of Salt Lake Media and Closing Reflections

John Dehlin [02:27:38] I was going to ask your opinion. Just the idea of Salt Lake City becoming a one paper town is kind of really unsettling and kind of deeply sad. I feel like the Salt Lake Tribune has acted as a check against the church for well over a century, if I got my history right. And now it looks like it's going to a weekly, it's going to be eliminating its paper service and if we're not careful, in the next year or two, it may go away. It's also owned and run by an active believing Mormon now. And it feels like the, the news stories have gotten softer on the church and it looks like the Trib may be seeing its final days. Anything you want to say about that?

Lynn Packer [02:28:23] I think you're right. I think that there's a fairly good chance it's going to go under. I've always had this is suspicion that the, well, not just the suspicion. I mean the, the church and the Deseret News did several things to hasten its demise.

Lynn Packer [02:28:41] My suspicion is, is they hope that it goes under so that the Deseret News will be more dominant. Print for sure is dying anyway and it's moving over to the web and they're making a bad transition to the web and not getting enough viewers to put properly monetize good journalism. It's, it's, it's really bad journalism is sinking and the end is not in sight. And it may be sinking when I die. And it may take a reinvention of journalism in 10 years, in 20, in 30 years, if it's ever revived at all.

Lynn Packer [02:29:20] It is in very, very bad shape overall. With some exceptions. You have the, the Washington Post, the New York Times surviving, but the local television stations are mostly surviving. Because of all the campaign ads, which is bad because there should be more restrictions on how much is spent and how it's spent on campaigning. But, but they, they take advantage of that.

John Dehlin [02:29:49] Yeah. And, and I just, this, this idea of investigative journalism in general, but specifically in Utah and specifically, specifically in the LDS Church. I think that's so important and that's what was so inspiring to me about you. It's like, whoa, some sort of on the beat reporter is like digging into stuff at the church and, and even willing to take on power. And then there was a, you know, a periodical like Sunstone, a magazine like Sunstone that would report and run your story. And oftentimes these stories would get picked up by national news. It seems like it's weird. You wouldn't think that over decades that type of thing would go away, but it's kind of going away. Who, who, what investigative journal journalist would be investigating the church in 2020? And I don't even know if it would exist. It's certainly not Peggy Fletcher Stack.

Lynn Packer [02:30:52] I always thought and hoped that it was going to continually get better. So I, I did not see this coming.

John Dehlin [02:31:00] Yeah, it's kind of sad, right?

Lynn Packer [02:31:03] Yeah, it is.

John Dehlin [02:31:04] Yeah. All right. Well, Lynn, I really loved your, your time with us today. Everyone here has loved your, your story. I love it that we took lots of time. What do we, what do we want to cover next? Just to give people a preview.

Lynn Packer [02:31:23] Well, you could, I could talk about Operation Underground Railroad, which I have five videos right now on YouTube reporting, doing investigative reporting on Operation Underground Railroad. And of course there's the Paul Dunn story. I've written a book about it. I think the book is now more relevant than it ever was because there's so many similarities between Paul Dunn and Donald Trump, sorry, Trump supporters.

Lynn Packer [02:32:00] And it's. People need to think more about the whole fraud and lying issue because it impacts more people more often than they think it can be. When you're buying a car or buying insurance or a house, how accurate and honest is the information that you're getting? When you're getting information, information from a doctor and such.

Lynn Packer [02:32:31] More people need to be more cautious about what it is they quickly believe and who they trust. Sad to say, that's the way life is and it helps them avoid becoming or reduces their chances of becoming victimized by these wolves in wolves clothing like, like Ballard and, and, and Paul Dunn and many others.

John Dehlin [02:33:04] Yeah. Well, Lynn, you're, you're an important voice and you've done a lot for us, whether we know it or not. And thank you for coming on Mormon Stories today. And I'm really, really honored to get to know you better. And I'm really excited to have you back.

Lynn Packer [02:33:24] Sure, my pleasure.

John Dehlin [02:33:25] Okay, thanks for everything. You take care, Lynn Packer, and we'll have you back on really soon. And Mormon Stories listeners, thanks so much for joining us today. It's been great to have you. We had a really strong audience all day long. And I just want to thank listeners and viewers that wrote in comments and questions. I want to thank everyone who has donated to the Open Stories foundation that keeps this alive. And less than one out of a thousand people that watch or listen donate. We have very few donors relative to our audience base. And so if you value this type of programming, if you want to see it continue, I just want to ask you make a plea.

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John Dehlin [02:36:10] Check that out and follow that and subscribe to it and just spread the word. But thanks so much today for everyone for joining us. We'll be doing more cool episodes coming soon. This is John Dehlin signing out today. Make sure and vote tomorrow. Tomorrow's Election Day. Last four, four years ago, I was a fool and I predicted the, the outcome and I was wrong. This year I'm just going to say vote. Vote your conscience and most importantly, just love each other and support each other and realize that we got to figure out better ways to talk and to get better information and to have dialogue because our country isn't going to do well without it.

John Dehlin [02:36:50] And I can't imagine a better person to interview on the eve of an election that Lynn Packer, a journalist that has helped make so much possible. So thanks, everybody. You guys take care. Please go vote. By the time we see you again, we'll have election results hopefully. And regardless, we'll see you again soon on Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.