But polls, research and dozens of interviews show his impact on the state is broad-based — for community leaders, those who know him well and for those who know him only as the leader of their church.

"He has influenced me a lot — and this is purely religious — he is someone who is very orthodox, a very faithful Latter-day Saint," said Geneva Steel chairman Joe Cannon, whose family has had connections with President Hinckley going back two generations. "He is also one who regards it a mission to be connected to the non-LDS world. That is a very powerful message to a lot of people in the church."

"What happened was that my '60 Minutes' colleagues and I learned, from the time we spent with Gordon Hinckley and his wife, from his staff, and from other Mormons who talked to us, that this warm and thoughtful and decent and optimistic leader of the Mormon Church fully deserves the almost universal admiration that he gets." — Mike Wallace in a foreword for President Hinckley's book, "Standing for Something."

In the early 1930s, he was a young University of Utah graduate who learned Greek and was familiar with the classics. Few in the crowds at London's Hyde Park appreciated his background, and President Hinckley regularly engaged in verbal combat defending his faith there during his LDS mission from 1933-1935.

"We didn't baptize many people in London in those days, but Elder Hinckley was a knockout in those street meetings on Hyde Park corner," said Wendell Ashton, a friend and companion, in President Hinckley's biography, "Go Forward With Faith," by Sheri Dew.

"We learned to speak quickly on our feet, and Elder Hinckley was the best in the bunch. He gained tremendous firsthand experience defending the church and speaking up courageously for its truths."

President Hinckley once jokingly called himself a "slave," a common staff person in the LDS Church office headquarters where he worked for years. Now he has been in the church's organization for two-thirds of a century, rising up and up in the hierarchy. For this history, the prophet and leader may well be the last of his kind, said Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the church's Quorum of the Twelve, who describes himself as having a meaningful association with President Hinckley for 45 years.

"He is a man who rises to lead his church who is still connected to the pioneer past of the LDS faith and the settling of Utah," Elder Maxwell said.

Now President Hinckley has seen the religious organization grow to millions of members. He's watched construction of the new Conference Center and supervised construction of many of more than 100 temples. "That gives him an incredible perspective," Elder Maxwell said.