He also installed Kim B. Clark, former dean of the Harvard Business School and church member, as the 15th president of BYU-Idaho in 2005.

President Hinckley also presided over the biggest construction undertaking in church history. In the early 1990s, the church was building a chapel a day; 10 years later it was averaging almost two a day. There were also 18 missionary training centers, 434 seminary buildings and 313 Institutes of Religion.

One crowning achievement was the rebuilding of the Nauvoo Temple, for which reconstruction was announced in 1999 and was dedicated in June 2002.

President Hinckley was sustained as an Assistant to the Twelve April 6, 1958, and a member of the Twelve in general conference on Oct. 1, 1961. He filled the vacancy in the Twelve created when Elder Hugh B. Brown was sustained as a counselor to President David O. McKay.

"Your grandfather was worthy of this, as was your father. And so are you," President McKay told then-Elder Hinckley in extending the call to the apostleship.

"Tears began to fill my eyes as President McKay looked at me with those piercing eyes of his and spoke to me of my forebears," he remembered. "My father was a better man than I have ever been, but he didn't have the opportunities I have had," he recalled in his biography.

President Hinckley also dedicated more temples than any other church authority — 85.

Also when he became church president, he was the senior church employee in length of service.

Born Gordon Bitner Hinckley on June 23, 1910, to Bryant Stringham and Ada Bitner Hinckley, he lived with his parents in the 1st Ward of the Liberty Stake, where he loved to go sledding down 700 South and ice skate on the Liberty Park pond during the winter. Summers were spent at a family summer home in the Millcreek area.

While in his youth, he served in the deacons and teachers quorum presidencies, taught Sunday School and did home teaching.

One of his forebears, Stephen Hopkins, came to America on the Mayflower. Another, Thomas Hinckley, served as governor of the Plymouth Colony from 1680 to 1692. see picture in Church News of 29 Apr 1995.

President Hinckley's father was serving as a counselor in the Liberty Stake presidency at the time of President Hinckley's birth and later became stake president. Earlier, Bryant Hinckley had been an alternate on the Salt Lake Stake's high council and, when the Liberty Stake was split off from the Salt Lake Stake in 1904, became a member of the Liberty Stake's high council. Bryant Hinckley also served on the YMMIA general board from 1900 to 1925.