She helped shape today’s LDS Primary. She sneaked behind the Iron Curtain. Oh, and she still water-skis at 92.

Dwan Jacobsen Young was tapped to head up the Primary, a global organization for children in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, at a pivotal point in the faith’s history.

It was 1980. Jimmy Carter was the U.S. president, gas prices were skyrocketing, and women were entering the workforce in record numbers.

The Utah-based church’s model for its congregations (wards), — which had been all-encompassing communities including weekday activities for children — needed to adapt.

To reduce travel time for members, Latter-day Saint authorities pulled the faith’s Primary, Sunday school, sacrament service, youth classes, priesthood meeting (for men) and Relief Society (for women) into a three-hour block of time on the Sabbath, in what was called “the consolidated meeting schedule.”

That’s when the male authorities turned to Young, a petite dynamo from Salt Lake City’s east bench with five children and broad experience in elementary education and music, to lead the Primary organization into a new era.

She and her two counselors, Virginia Cannon and Michaelene Grassli (who would succeed Young as president), were tasked with creating a fresh curriculum for children that would be appropriate for Sunday, rather than weekdays, which had been more like Cub Scouts or Girl Scouts.

They served from 1980 to 1988, after which Young went with her husband, Thomas Young Jr., to oversee missionaries in Calgary, Alberta. She later was appointed to the board of trustees of Primary Children’s Hospital and the board of what was then called Intermountain Health Care.

Young was among the first three women to address the general women’s meeting, which was established in 1984, and, when she was “released” in 1988, was among the first few modern women to speak at the faith’s General Conference.

It was a “challenging…but crucial time,” recalls the 92-year-old widow (her husband died in 2023).

Still lively and engaged — with scores of grandchildren and great-grandchildren — Young was named this year by Guinness World Records as the “world’s oldest female water-skier.”

“When they announced it,” she says, “I thought it was just a joke.”

It wasn’t — and she has the certificate to prove it.

Here are excerpts from Young’s recent interview with The Salt Lake Tribune.

How did you get to be the church’s seventh general Primary president?

I was on the Primary general board starting in 1970 and in the spring of 1980 had given a presentation on Cub Scouts in my stake (a regional cluster of congregations) and one of the other Primary board members was there. That could be why I was chosen.

What was your role in the first general women’s meeting in 1984?

Gordon B. Hinckley [then a counselor in the governing First Presidency, later church president] called the women leading the Relief Society, Young Women and me and said, “I want you to move into the Relief Society Building and speak with one voice.” Before that, we each had separate meetings. At the first combined meeting, all three of us [presidents] spoke. I was first. The goals toward which we worked were “diversity, equity, identity and unity.” We met every month and our adviser met with us. It was a glorious time and the beginning of wonderful things to happen as far as the unity between the organizations was concerned.

The consolidated meeting schedule was announced in February 1980, meaning there would no longer be any weekday Primary. Were you given any directive on how to make that change?

We had to start from scratch. We had advisers but we were given a free hand. We had to do a new curriculum with music, “sharing time,” “activity days” and “achievement days.”

What resources did you have?

There is a wonderful, spiritual background to this. In 1970, [future church] President Harold B. Lee, who then was just an apostle, had developed the curriculum department, and they had identified all of the principles of the gospel that were to be taught to the church and the years in which each of the principles were to be taught. At that time, the Junior Sunday school would present the principle and Primary would offer the application of the principles with stories and activities. So 10 years later, we sat down to ask what we should do, since the Primary curriculum didn’t work and the Sunday school curriculum didn’t have the application of the principles. The first year we took bits and pieces from both organizations and put together a temporary curriculum. We just sent out papers clipped together and mimeographed to instruct Primaries on what to teach. Then we started doing our own curriculum. [Lee’s list of principles] gave us a foundation. At the Primary, we just did the skeletal outline with purposes and the guidelines. In the past, the Primary general board wrote the lessons, not the presidency. So all we had to do was establish the principle, and then they filled in. So that’s what we did.

What were some of the challenges you faced?

First, women [who were called to teach Primary] didn’t want to miss Relief Society — and they were asked in temple recommend interviews if they attended all their meetings. Second, the transition of the girls got complicated. Boys moved into the priesthood on their birthdays when they turned 12, but girls stayed in Primary until the end of the year, when they turned 12, rather than move into Young Women. We had to figure that out. The most horrible challenge was we lost all the nonmember children at once. We lost thousands and thousands who had been coming before because they came right from school to Primary. Being on Sunday, they weren’t going to come.

Men suddenly could serve as Primary teachers, so was this the first time women presided over men in the church?

I think so, and it was wonderful. They were music leaders, they were nursery leaders, and the boys loved having a man teach them. Then members of the bishopric would come in each month to Primary to give a message, which was a great blessing for the children.

What’s your favorite experience in visiting Primaries in other countries?

I traveled a lot. We only went to places where there were stakes, so I didn’t visit anywhere in Africa [which had just officially opened to missionary work two years earlier with the end of the priesthood/temple ban on Black members]. Probably my most heartwarming experience was in then-East Germany, behind the Iron Curtain. We couldn’t take in books or anything, and we couldn’t talk to anyone because the government didn’t even know we were there. It was very hard for the members there. On a Sunday, we got to this nondescript building, and we opened the door, and it was filled with people, and it was like the sunshine poured out. We went to Primary in the back, and I thought, “What in the world will they teach? How could they get the materials?” The president said, “I have a relative in West Berlin. She writes me letters — the first pages are to the family, then she copies the Primary lesson and sends it to me.

Any other travel memories?

In the Philippines, we went out into the jungle to visit a family living in a wood-frame square facility, raised up off the ground. There was no running water, no sanitation, no electricity and a live chicken tied under the sink. But, here in her home, the wall was covered with pictures from the Ensign [church magazine]. So here was this mother. Her husband was in jail. She had four children. She couldn’t afford to send all the children to school because they had to take a bus into the school. So one child a day would go to school while the other children were home. At the end, one of them played the guitar and they sang “I Am a Child of God” in Spanish and Tagalog and the whole evening was filled with the spirit. The gospel was there, and she was happy and loved, loved the Lord and I thought, “Oh my word. The world is filled with mothers like this. It was very humbling and very inspiring. I think about her a lot.”

When did you take up water skiing?

I started snow skiing when I was 6. I think that helped me get used to the way to water-ski. I have skied all of my life ... but I had not had any introduction to water until I married Tom. His family loves the water. They love fishing and used to rent a house on Bear Lake. As soon as we got married in 1951, we started boating, and I started skiing then.

How did you get your unusual name?

My father saw it in the newspaper. A man named Robert Dwan, a movie director for Groucho Marx, and it was his last name. Dad just liked it. My name is Dwan Louise, named after Louise Covey — Stephen Covey’s mother and one of my mom’s best friends. Mom did not like it. She wanted me to be called Louise, so that was what she always called me. But everyone else called me Dwan.

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