LDS Pres. Hinckley gentle, unpretentious

The president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints pulls out a pocket knife, balances the tip gingerly on his nose, flips his wrist and lets go. The blade stabs at the top of the walnut desk — an heirloom used by two previous presidents — but doesn't stick.

"My brother and I used to play mumble peg for hours," says the 95-year-old Gordon B. Hinckley, retrieving the knife to try again. It was a rare, unscripted moment for the shepherd of 12 million Mormon souls — one that left his public-relations executives wincing.

To those who know him well, the moment is pure President Hinckley, a man revered by his followers as a prophet of God and a third-generation Mormon who became the 15th president of the church in 1995.

"It shows how real he is," said President Hinckley biographer Sheri Dew, who is president of Deseret Book, a church-owned publishing house. "There are no pretenses with him. What you see is what you get."

President Hinckley has spent 70 years working for the church — one of the world's fastest-growing religions — helping to shape everything from its public face to the development of missionary programs. His charisma and kindness routinely disarm skeptics.

"You won't find any (criticism)," said veteran CBS newsman Mike Wallace, who twice put President Hinckley on "60 Minutes." "I love him. I can't think of any individual I admire more. He's open. He's optimistic. He has a vision and he is honest."

CNN talk show host Larry King, who interviewed President Hinckley in 1998, is equally enamored but is critical of the church for being slow to embrace racial equality and wrong to denounce homosexuality.

Nor does King, a self-described agnostic, believe President Hinckley could be a prophet.

"I can't conceive that God talks to him, if there is a God," said King, whose wife Shawn is Mormon. "But I can't disparage him in any way. I like being around him. You feel good around him. I hope he lives a long time."

President Hinckley "likes to talk about his age. He likes to say, 'I'm the last leaf on the tree and the wind is blowing,' " said Dew, who spent two years working on the biography. "But he doesn't act like he's 95."

This year alone, he visited Africa, Russia, Iceland, Korea, Taiwan, India and Western Europe — the most traveled president in church history. Church insiders say he meets daily with leadership and takes an active role in church programs, always looking for innovative ways to solve problems or make improvements.

The LDS church was founded in April 1830 by Joseph Smith, who said that 10 years earlier God and Jesus appeared to him in a vision as he prayed in the woods near Palmyra, N.Y. He later said an angel, Moroni, led him to a buried set of gold plates inscribed with the story of a lost tribe of Israel that had settled North America. Smith's translation of the plates became known as the Book of Mormon, the faith's foundational text.

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