This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
One significant result from this week's Hank Williams Jr. concert is that Red Butte Garden's executive director will now carefully review any potential controversial acts before his booking agents sign a deal.
Director Greg Lee says he was taken by surprise the day of the concert when he learned that one of the concession stands would be selling Confederate battle flags with Williams' logo stamped in the middle.
Lee said he asked the concessionaire to refrain from selling the flags, but he refused. Contractually, bands that perform at the garden, like at most venues, bring their own concessions and have control over what is sold. Once the deal is signed, the venue cannot refuse the concessions unless the products are illegal.
Many Williams fans seemed to love the souvenirs. The flags sold out so quickly the concessionaire had to go back to his truck to get more. They were draped around shoulders and being waved in the air as the country singer slipped into rants about liberals and socialists and Willie Nelson.
But some audience members were offended by the flaunting of that flag so soon after the South Carolina Legislature voted to remove it from that state's Capitol grounds in the wake of a racially motivated mass murder at a black church in Charleston.
One disconcerting fact: Under Utah law, the flag wavers could also have been carrying guns at the venue as long as they had a concealed-weapon permit.
Several concertgoers left early, ill at ease over the atmosphere.
Lee said Red Butte has been trying to diversify its shows, noting his booking agent is unfamiliar with the country genre and wasn't aware of past controversies with Williams, who was fired from ESPN's "Monday Night Football" show after comments he made on "Fox and Friends" comparing President Barack Obama to Hitler.
For those pained by Tuesday's concert, Lee has a remedy: Sunday's show features Mavis Staples, the soothing 76-year-old soul and gospel singer and civil-rights activist.
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Warnings from Ephraim • A small Christian sect in central Utah is so concerned about the spread of Mormonism it bought a 12-page supplement in three community newspapers in the suburbs of Indianapolis to protest the opening of a new LDS temple in the Hoosier State.
Tri-Grace Ministries, based in Ephraim and operator of the Solid Rock Cafe there, sits in the midst of Mormon-dominated Sanpete County not far from the LDS temple in neighboring Manti, site of the annual Mormon Miracle Pageant.
A story in The Indianapolis Star quoted Tri-Grace Ministries founder Chip Thompson as saying that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not preaching the truth.
"They're not following what Jesus taught," he said. "It concerns us that Christians are being deceived by their message."
Several voice mails left at the Solid Rock Cafe were not returned, but the Tri-Grace Ministries website is full of anti-Mormon statements and contains a video of Thompson calling the Book of Mormon a "fairy tale."
The Star reported the group plans to hold an event to depict the multiple wives of LDS founder Joseph Smith when the Indianapolis temple stages public tours, which wrap up Aug. 8.
The temple will be dedicated Aug. 23.
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The class that wasn't there • The Salt Lake City School District in the 1930s and '40s had a program in which the seventh and eighth grades were combined, enabling students to graduate from high school in 11 years, rather than 12.
The program ended in 1944, so the seventh-graders that year would go into eighth rather than ninth grade. After that group graduated in 1949, there was a vacuum in 1950 — no graduating class.
Allen Kimball, who was in that program's last graduating class from Salt Lake City's Uinta (now spelled Uintah) Elementary School, organized a class reunion at Red Butte Garden this summer.
Twenty-eight octogenarians showed up.
As an aside, the next graduating class after that group at East High (in 1951) produced former U.S. Sens. Jake Garn and Bob Bennett, former U.S, Rep. Jim Hansen, Mormon apostle Henry Eyring, former president of then-Dixie College Doug Alder, the late Salt Lake County Commissioner John Preston Creer, the late Utah Supreme Court Justice Daniel Stewart and the late Eugene England, a beloved professor at Brigham Young University and what is now Utah Valley University.
That extra year must have helped.