Obert began working to support his family when he was 5 years old. As a teen, he was shipped off to Canada to work on his father's ranch, but eventually his mother, Annie Clark Tanner, put her foot down — he would have an education — and that was that. All of her children who reached adulthood graduated from college, which was no small feat for a woman who eked out a living as a midwife.

Tanner fulfilled his mother's wishes and then some. He made a lifetime of studying and teaching and viewed a university the way a kid looks at a playground. He earned a law degree from the University of Utah and a master's in philosophy from Stanford.

By the time he died in 1993 at the age of 89, Obert had produced enough work for three lifetimes. He studied and taught at Stanford and Harvard and started a business in Salt Lake City, commuting to and from Utah to direct the Tanner Co., which specializes in making employee recognition awards. He amassed a fortune with the company and became a prolific philanthropist, endowing lecture series and building fountains, libraries and special rooms and heading up various community projects. He wrote nearly a dozen books, most of them on religious subjects. He championed the United Nations and represented the U.N. abroad, earning the nickname "Mr. United Nations."

But while he was out in the world working, there was sadness at home. Obert and his wife, Grace, had six children together. Only three of them reached adulthood. Dean, the oldest, died of polio when he was 10. Their grief drove the Tanners back to Utah from California.

Tragedy found them again. Another son, Steve, was run over by a car in the parking lot of the Brighton Ski Resort. A few years later, Gordon, 17 at the time, was killed in an automobile accident by a drunken driver. Just like that, more than half the family was gone.

"It was devastating and would have been for any family," Bishop Irish says. "It took my mom a long time to heal. Dad plunged into his work. It was a typical male response."

Work would prove to be therapy for Obert. Bishop Irish will say little about her two surviving siblings except this: "They don't have happy stories. Joan, she's become reclusive. Dave, he felt the expectations (of his father). He got into drugs. The deaths in the family were hard on her and my brother. But they are doing well now." Bishop Irish's mother, Grace, now 97, still lives in Salt Lake City.

"I think they've all struggled," says Kay Jorgensen, a close family friend for 30 years and senior vice president of human resources for the Tanner Co. "I think it comes from the loss of those three sons. They wondered, 'Why was I spared?' I think it's been hard for them. It changed the family dynamics. Their lives have all been a struggle. It fractured her parents.