‘Gracious’ and ‘gutsy’ LDS woman who led a powerhouse Relief Society presidency dies

Elaine Jack could have spent her life being just a doctor’s wife, throwing parties, hobnobbing with the wealthy set and raising her four sons.

Instead, the gracious Canadian mother, who died Tuesday at 97, accepted and magnified every task she was given in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, eventually rising to the top of faith’s worldwide women’s organization, creating one of the most consequential Relief Society presidencies in the 20th century.

The triumvirate of Jack and her two powerhouse counselors — Chieko Okazaki and Aileen Clyde — was “as dynamic as the historical moment they occupied,” says Latter-day Saint historian Kathleen Flake. “They led the church forward in mediating the gulf between women working at home and in the world.”

David Hall, who is writing a biography of Jack, echoes that assessment.

“Experienced in church leadership and unusually astute and perceptive in her judgment,” Jack presided over “a sharpening of the Relief Society’s focus,” Hall writes in an email, “to ensure that the organization was vital and relevant in a world experiencing dramatic change.”

‘An optimistic lifetime’

Jack was born March 22, 1928, in Cardston, Alberta, Canada, the third child of Sterling and Lovina (Anderson) Low, who “nurtured [her] in a home that highly valued good grammar, cleanliness, manners and education,” according to the family’s obituary. “Community and family activities in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains and the [faith’s] Cardston Temple laid a foundation for an optimistic lifetime of efficient hard work and service.”

Jack attended the University of Utah, where she met and later married Joseph Erle Jack Jr., “a newly minted physician,” the family writes. The couple “lived in New York City, Boston and Alaska,” eventually returning to Utah in 1958.

As a family of six, the obituary says, “they actively golfed, skied, boated, backpacked and hiked.”

Then there was church work.

Relief Society General President Belle Spafford called Elaine Jack onto her general board in 1972. She continued on the board until the term of the next president, Barbara Smith, ended in 1984.

In 1987, she was tapped as a counselor in the church’s Young Women General Presidency under Ardeth G. Kapp, before serving as the 12th general Relief Society president from 1990 to 1997.

Being mentored by women like Kapp who were “skilled in navigating the church’s somewhat Byzantine administrative structure, Jack was particularly effective in achieving much of what she set out to do,” Hall says. “While sometimes stifled in her initiatives, she more often found ways to work around barriers as she sought to help women recognize their worth and realize their potential — no matter their circumstances or background. In so doing, she helped a broadly diverse body of women find their place as sisters in an increasingly international church.”

‘Genius of her presidency’

Jack was a “practical, down-to-earth, get-it-done” leader, says Carol Lee Hawkins, who served on her general board.

Despite having only one year of college, Hawkins says, “she picked counselors not at all like her.”

When asked about why she picked counselors so different from herself, she famously told an interviewer, “I didn’t want two Elaines.”

She, in fact, barely knew Okazaki and Clyde.

That was “the genius of their presidency,” Hawkins says. “It was driven by inspiration, not by tradition or friendship.”

The trio immediately revised the society’s mission to read: “Build personal testimony, bless the individual woman, develop and exercise charity, strengthen families, enjoy a unified sisterhood, be full participants in the blessings of the priesthood.”

Hawkins, the former board member, recalls being assigned to work on the Relief Society sesquicentennial celebration that would take place in 1992.

Jack told her that some leaders didn’t approve of previous plans, but when Hawkins asked the president what they didn’t like, Jack replied: “I don’t know. Go home and pray about it and come up with your own plans.”

Such trust, Hawkins says, “was remarkable.”

Jack also could be “gutsy,” Hawkins says. Throughout their planning for the big 1992 events, organizers had used the famous quote from church founder Joseph Smith in the original Relief Society minutes, in which the prophet had said, “I now turn the key to you.”

That wording was approved at every level, Hawkins recalls, but when the final program came back, the wording had been changed to a previous false reading: “I turn the key for you.”

Jack “marched over to [future church] President [Gordon] Hinckley and pointed it out. He told her he would ‘take care of it,’ and,” Hawkins says, “it’s never been quoted incorrectly since.”

The “ingenuity of their presidency was astonishing,” she says. “We really rallied all the women.”

Jack’s legacy

Under Jack’s leadership, Latter-day Saint women “engaged in meaningful acts of collective service, such as a churchwide literacy effort linked to the Relief Society sesquicentennial, and encouraged women of the faith to develop service projects especially adapted to the needs of their own communities,” Hall says. “She continually instructed local leaders ‘you are your own best resource.’ Another of her mantras was ‘no stereotypes,’ which reflected her recognition of the increasing diversity of Relief Society women.”

As part of the celebration, Jack asked each congregation to devise “its own service project, which was to include as many Relief Society members as possible, both as planners and as participants,” according to a church history report of her presidency. The congregations then sent accounts of what they did to church headquarters.

Jack felt the projects succeeded, the report says, “when they not only improved communities but also showed Relief Society members what they could accomplish.”

On the night of the celebration, it was the presidency’s idea to broadcast the festivities around the world simultaneously — a feat that had never been tried before in the church.

“More than any previous presidency, they were able to address the international character of their society,” says Flake, the historian, “reaching the international audience when it needed to be reached.”

They overcame the divide between “members in North America and the rest of the world,” she adds. “It was no longer ‘us’ and ‘them.’”

Jack saw the global church “with a kind of wholeness,” Flake says, “reaching beyond the borders of traditional Relief Society.”