Printers honoring LDS chief

A news conference was staged last year to announce that Thomas S. Monson had been called to be the 16th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Journalists asked the veteran church leader the expected questions about his background and vision for the global religion he now directs. Then one reporter tossed out a curious query. Why, the man wanted to know, did President Monson have such a fondness for the color yellow?

"Yellow is the printer's color," he answered without pausing. "It's the color that gives life to all the other colors."

He went on to explain that yellow is the quickest color to fade on an illustrated print. To this day, President Monson can spot a picture hanging on a wall and know instantly if the yellow is fading.

For almost a half-century, Thomas S. Monson has served full-time in general church leadership. But he has never lost that "printer's instinct" he first honed as a young teen under his father's direction. G. Spencer Monson was a typesetter and printer by trade.

"My father believed in young men learning to work, so I started out with a little job in the printing business after school when I was 13," he told the Church News last August. "I worked each night after school and on Saturday mornings. I have a good work ethic."

The printing lessons President Monson learned in his early days would serve him well during his professional career and throughout his storied ecclesiastical service. Now his lifelong connection to the press and the publishing industry has earned him a place in the Utah Printers Hall of Fame. President Monson and six others — James Dunn, John C. Graham, Roy T. Porte, Loren "Bish" Taylor, James H. Wallis and Brigham Hamilton Young — will be inducted into the hall at a ceremonial dinner Tuesday in Provo.

Young Thomas Monson's printing career was interrupted for a time while he completed a term of active duty in the U.S. Naval Reserve. But soon he was back among the ink, paper and hum of the press. He worked part-time for the Deseret News while studying at the University of Utah. After finishing his business degree in 1948, he began working in the printing and publishing business full-time. He took a job with the Deseret News as assistant classified advertising manager and was promoted to manager of the department a short time later.

The remainder of President Monson's professional career would be defined by printing and publishing. He was appointed an officer of the Newspaper Agency Corporation in 1952 and became sales manager of Deseret News Press the next year. He would later become the assistant general manager at the Deseret News Press.