A Question of Priorities

President Dallin Oaks, my colleagues at the university, graduates, and friends, I must first apologize to those of you who have received your doctorate after three years’ work while I received mine in fifteen minutes. But I am not going to turn it down.

I have a great affection for this university. I have taught here and have been involved in programs for Brigham Young University. I think it is the university in the United States—in fact, in the world. You cannot get the education elsewhere that is offered here.

As an example, the former chief justice of Pakistan attended a BYU conference. On a walk around the university, he asked me, “Where’s the trash?”

I said, “Well, here at BYU we teach them not to throw trash.”

“Oh,” he said.

Later on he asked, “How do you teach them to dress up?”

The answer was, “Well, that’s what we do here.”

“Hmm. I think I’m going to send my son here.”

I said, “Now wait a minute. You will have 25,000 people trying to baptize him if you send him here!”

The chief justice said, “I know. I know. But I think he will be safe here.”

His son graduated in business. He returned to Pakistan and is doing very well. His father is very proud of him and is still my close friend.

I am very grateful to receive this honorary doctorate degree from Brigham Young University. My life didn’t have a promising beginning. My father was an immigrant with a third-grade education and was an abusive alcoholic.

Although my high school grades were in the C−/D+ area, my life changed because four Latter-day Saint high school students befriended me, which led to my baptism.

I was fortunate to serve my country, and, as a veteran of World War II, I had the educational assistance of the GI bill. I did well in law school and began my career as a civil trial lawyer in the largest law firm in San Diego.

In the Church, I was called to serve the youth. However, when our stake was divided, I was called—having had little Church experience—to be a counselor in the new stake presidency. That was a little bit much.

At the end of that stake conference, I was standing alone in one of the rooms in the stake center when Elder LeGrand Richards of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles—who was presiding at the conference—noticed me. He came in and said something to this effect: “You look bewildered.”

I was not surprised. I was bewildered.

He asked, “What is the problem?”

I told him that I was just beginning my practice as a trial lawyer—which is very time-consuming—and that my wife was pregnant with our first child. I was concerned about how I could fulfill the responsibilities of my new calling.

He studied me briefly. Then these were his words, which I ask you to remember as you go out and face the world with its challenges and with its temptations. His words are indelibly written on my mind, and I have followed them since.

Elder Richards said, “Well, Brother Wallace, your first responsibility is to your family, and the second is to the Church. And if you have any time left over, you can earn a living.”

He expected me to be successful in all these endeavors, but it was a question of priorities.

You are now leaving a life that has been pretty much set for you. You had your goals here, and now you are moving out into the world where you will be challenged. You are smart people. You can succeed. But at the end of life, what do you want to have accomplished? What is going to be really important?

I decided that I would follow what Elder Richards said. I rarely stayed late at the office. I never went out with friends afterward for a soda pop or whatever they were drinking. I always arranged to be on time for my family dinner. We sat around the dinner table each evening and talked about our challenges and whatever interests we had on that day.

I had built a small office in our home. After I had taken care of my family and had read my children stories and so forth, I would then go out to my little office and get ready for the next day, sometimes working well into the night in preparation for a cross-examination to be held the next morning.

My legal commitment was never to fail a client. And I never did. I was never unprepared. I could tell you a little bit about how well that worked out for me, but you would think I was bragging. And I would be. It is also true that I never became a golfer—it took too much time. I was a jogger. I could work that in.

I found that if I carefully and prayerfully made the most important parts of my life consistent with their eternal worth, I accomplished much more of real value in my life’s endeavors.

As you graduate from this institution on this day, I am sure you can be successful. But as you go forward and make decisions on how you use your time and how you determine what the most important things are that you have to do, I suggest that you follow what a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles suggested I do and what I have followed in my life. The success I have had has been due to the important words of Elder LeGrand Richards.

My most important responsibility was and is to my family. My next responsibility was and is to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I never refused a calling. I have always done everything I could that I was asked to do. And I did become a successful lawyer and judge.

God bless you as you go out from here. You are not just going out as graduates. I was fortunate that some high school students came along and encouraged me to be baptized into the Church. My experiences—including my becoming successful in my profession—are all measured by how well I have kept those covenants.

God bless you so that at the end of your life’s work you can look back and say, “I got it right. I got it right.”

I put my family first. And I put the Church next. I responded to calls. Because God knows that, consistent with what I want to do, He is helping me along. But the family came first.

God bless you to have a wonderful life. Maybe in the next life we could have a meeting of this graduating class. We could then talk to each other and see how we solved the problems and challenges of life by adopting a life by which we could be successful, not only in this life but in the life to come.

I ask my Heavenly Father in humility to bless each one of you too so that at the end of your life you can say it was well done and can stand tall as you witness your own opportunity to embrace our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

© Brigham Young University. All rights reserved.