Ex-Young Women leader is a revered role model

It was 22 years ago this weekend when Ardeth Kapp and her husband, Heber, walked into the Tabernacle on Temple Square with a secret between them that would shortly become a news story.

Sitting on the front row of the Tabernacle during the opening session of the LDS Church's annual general conference, she prepared to hear her name read from the pulpit, then took what she remembers as "a long walk" to the stand as the new general president of the church's Young Women's organization.

She was only the eighth woman to hold the post since The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had called the first president of the Young Women's Mutual Improvement Association in 1880. Times had changed radically since then, and young women in the church needed a structured program to help foster spirituality and service in their lives.

As the church's 176th Annual General Conference opens Saturday in the Conference Center, Sister Kapp will watch those who now preside over the Young Women's organization take their place on the stand, knowing that much of what she and her presidency put in place more than two decades ago remains to guide young girls.

And though she spends her time these days in pursuits that are much less visible to the church's general membership, thousands of LDS women who came of age during her administration recall her as a role model for effective leadership in a church overseen largely by men.

Before her call as president, she had served as a counselor in a former general Young Women presidency under Ruth Hardy Funk in the 1970s, at a time when female leaders were much less visible to the church as a whole. But in April 1984, things had begun to change.

"By the time I was called, we were invited to sit on the stand in the red seats. While that might not seem like much today, it was a visible change then," she told the Deseret Morning News. "I also experienced an increased opportunity to sit in some of the councils of the church where our insight was not only accepted, but seemed to be appreciated."

She recalls a conversation with Elder Marvin J. Ashton, then a member of the Council of the Twelve, who told her presidency "we were the eyes and ears that represented the women and that (church leaders) needed to hear" a female perspective from them. "I don't ever remember when I didn't feel like we were heard, respected and appreciated," she recalls.