Thoughts on the Passing of Grindael

[Don Bradley]

My relationship with Johnny Grindael Stephenson didn't get off on the best foot, and to observers then, and to the two of us, it was anything but obvious that we would become friends. Johnny had left the LDS church decades earlier and held strong feelings against it. I had recently returned to that very same church.

We first talked, or, rather, sparred, over the Kinderhook plates. Johnny's argument was that Joseph Smith identified the Kinderhook plates as having Book of Mormon characters on them, characters he would decipher by revelation. My argument was that Smith compared the Kinderhook plates to the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language associated with the Book of Abraham, per a contemporary source saying Joseph Smith compared the Kinderhook plates to "his Egyptian Alphabet," and that he used the GAEL to "translate" from the Kinderhook plates. We were at serious loggerheads over this across weeks of gargantuan posting. And then Johnny posted something I thought was brilliant! He made an argument for why the anonymous source I used about Joseph Smith comparing the Kinderhook plates to the "Egyptian Alphabet" may not have been a non-Mormon (as the source alleged) but might actually have been the Mormon Robert D. Foster. The identification of this source as a Mormon would have mattered, because the source identified the "Egyptian Alphabet" as deriving from the Book of Mormon, rather than the Book of Abraham, a distinction a non-Mormon might fail to make, but one that a Mormon would surely get. So, Johnny and I started working together off the board to try to identify the source, a source we were eventually able to definitively identify.

Unbeknownst to me till much later, this working together that Johnny and I did bound him to me as a fast friend. We still sparred, sometimes in arguments that looked like bloodbaths, but we came to really understand one another. Because Johnny was combative, I initially thought he was angry with me during these arguments. But when I would talk with him afterward, I came to see that there wasn't a trace of animosity there. What I found out from talking with him offline is that he didn't take or intend things as personally as it seemed. To Johnny, argument was a sport. He would just throw himself into the fray and go at it, but he wasn't really angry even if it seemed like he was--he was actually enjoying being in the fray. Far from being angry, he was having the time of his life.

I started to notice too that in conversations where I wasn't there, Johnny would defend me. Because he and I had been able to team up to figure out who wrote the Nauvoo letter about the Kinderhook plates and the Egyptian Alphabet, Johnny didn't see me as an apologist or opponent but as a truth-seeker. Once when I wasn't on the board during the discussion, Johnny posted "Don doesn't defend; he explains." When I later saw this, I felt something that I think is rare for any of us in online discussion: I felt understood. Johnny would later post similar and even more detailed things about me on MDB and on the Mormon Historians Facebook page. When I've read these, they among the meaningful things anyone has said about me--that someone coming from an "opposite" angle to me would get my motivations and be able to describe them to me in a way I fully recognize was just so awesome to me. One of the greatest gifts we can give to one another in this world is to see others for who they really are, and to mirror that back to them. For all our differences, Johnny gave that gift to me. And it is a gift for which I am speechless with gratitude.

Johnny, as everyone knows, was an absolutely relentless and avid digger into history. While circumstances required him to do almost all his research from home, he was able to uncover the wildest and most obscure sources. He was a creative researcher and brought a fresh eye to many, many topics in Mormon history.

We talked a number of times on the phone over the years and got to hang out at JWHA in Nauvoo. We exchanged countless emails, with titles like "Critique My Explanatory Model."

My last conversation with Johnny was four months before he died, and I think was before he knew he was dying. Much of that conversation was an argument over an issue where we just saw the data so differently, Fanny Alger. Later that day, Johnny e-mailed me and told me he was troubled that weren't even close in our interpretations, so he wanted to go over the subject together again and maybe have me look over his manuscript.

How often does someone you have a knock-down, drag-out argument with come to you afterward for your input? In my experience it's rare to have someone you argue with ask for your input, and rarer still to have someone of Johnny's pugilist skill and temperament do so. But when it was all said and done, Johnny was after truth.

Johnny had stopped believing in Mormonism decades ago when, as a BYU student, he discovered that Brigham Young taught the Adam-God theory. He later became a Christian, definitely believing the ethical parts of Christianity though with some doubts about the supernatural aspects. It appears that faith strengthened later in his life. At his death, Johnny's sister posted that he died with trust in Christ as his Savior.

I share that faith. And I expect to meet Johnny again someday when we can look back on history, the history of our own lives and of humankind as a whole, with clarity, and when we can see eye to eye.

Till then, I will remember gratefully that Johnny Grindael Stephenson threw himself with skill and utterly dogged passion into digging up historical sources, that he was willing to both give and receive critique, that he was willing to see past differences of ideology to see me as I am, and that he was a loyal friend.

Till the day when we will see as we are seen and know as we are known, my friend...

Don

[Don Bradley]

by the way, Mods...

I've used Johnny's off-screen name here.

I assume this is okay, because...

1) This did not appear to be something he kept secret.

2) Other posters had posted the names of Johnny's publications (as I believe Johnny himself had), and these publications contain his full name.

3) Johnny's name could likely have been figured out from other, previous information, such as his date of death, etc.

and

4) Johnny is deceased, which would seem to greatly diminish privacy concerns.

I'd really rather not have to go through the pretense of changing his name always to his screen name, and I feel it honors him better in this eulogy, since that is what this is, to use his real name than to use a screen name.

Don

[Dr. Shades]

I agree with you, Don. Thank you for posting this; it helps us get to know him all the better.

[Meadowchik]

Don, this is a fantastic tribute to Grindael, thanks so much for sharing your experience.

The relationship you describe demonstrates the very best types of scholarship, faith, friendship, and dialogue. It is a compelling example of the virtue of discourse and also the intense joy that comes from being understood by someone who is also capable of expressing their disagreement.

I'm so sorry you lost such a friend, and I am sad that Grindael is no longer with us.

Thanks.

[Moksha]

It made me tearful reading this reminiscence. Thank you for posting it, Don.

[Philo Sofee]

Don that was a very nice and very good tribute. Anyone would be glad and proud to be friends with a man of your caliber and character my friend. Thank you for sharing that. Hope all is well with you and yours.

[Tator]

Two class acts, seeking truth, Don and Johnny.

Bless you much.

RIP Johnny.

[Kishkumen]

Thank you for sharing those reminiscences, Don. It helps us appreciate Johnny even more. I wish I had known him better than I did, but I feel privileged to have been among his many acquaintances.

[msnobody]

Thank you all for helping me get to know Grindael. I look forward to meeting him in real life one day.

[Shulem]

Grindael,

I'm at WinStar World Casino and Resort in Thackerville, Oklahoma.

If you are there, please, help me, SHULEM, win a jackpot tonight.

Thank you! Feel free to join me.

Shulem