World tour for LDS leader

To cap off his 95th birthday celebration, President Gordon B. Hinckley plans to visit 10 international cities in a 13-day whirlwind tour at the end of July, adding thousands of miles to his log as the most traveled of LDS Church presidents.

Speaking to reporters at a press conference Monday in the LDS Church Administration Building, the ever-spry church leader joked with reporters that he carries a cane simply to "stay in style" with several past LDS presidents.

"When you get to be my age, people look at you as if you were an artifact in a museum."

He said he doesn't have "the slightest idea" what he'll do to celebrate his 100th birthday five years from now. "I'm not counting on it. I'll live as long as I can and then cash in."

A family celebration will take place Thursday to commemorate his 95th year. He said he plans to have just a small sliver of birthday cake because he has diabetes.

On July 22, the leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be the guest of honor at a birthday bash in the LDS Conference Center. It will feature broadcast journalist Mike Wallace along with Gladys Knight and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

After that celebration, he plans to travel to various cities around the globe and dedicate the church's Aba, Nigeria, Temple in the process.

"It's work that keeps you alive," he said of the breakneck pace he continues to keep, despite the passing of his wife, Marjorie, a year ago last April.

"I had the good fortune of marrying a truly wonderful woman. I can honestly say I have no recollection of a serious difficulty between us."

Theirs was an "idyllic" relationship that lasted for 67 years, and he said if all were able to have such a happy marriage and family life, "it would be a vastly different world."

As for the aged who may be tempted to give up on life, he said, "The secret at this age is to keep busy. Work, work, work is the best antidote for loneliness, incapacity or any other thing that happens to impede your progress. That's the only antidote I know. It's work that's saved me and has been an offset to the sorrow and loneliness I felt."

Despite the challenge of losing his wife, "I'm an optimist. If you dwell on the negative, it will hurt you, depress you and really destroy you. If you work on the positive and dwell on it and seek to bring it to pass, it will make you lighter and brighter, younger and more vigorous. That's my feeling and that's my program."

Had he not been called to the hierarchy of the LDS Church, he said he "wouldn't be living this long. People die when they don't have any challenges. That's what keeps me going. I'm so grateful to have something to do every morning when I wake up. There's always more to be done than I can get done."