Maxwell, John Gary. The Last Called Mormon Colonization: Polygamy, Kinship, and Wealth in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2022.
What motivated Mormon settlers to colonize frontier spaces? Historian Leonard Arrington observed that colonization in the mid-nineteenth century in the American West was a process directed by the church hierarchy. Church President Brigham Young “called” groups of people, often at the semi-annual General Conference, to populate the West. The language of “calling” mirrored the rhetoric about men called on missions. These settlers understood their colonization labor in religious terms; they were not only digging irrigation ditches, but they were also building Zion.[1] These settlers reported back to church leaders and received advice and support from them when needed. After Brigham Young’s death, however, new Mormon settlement patterns were less a product of institutional oversight and more driven by land-hungry settlers looking for decent land.[2] In his most recent book The Last Called Colonization: Polygamy, Kinship, and Wealth in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin, author John Gary Maxwell explores this theme of religious and economic motivations for Mormon colonization. He points to Church leader involvement in the Bighorn Basin and argues that it was the last place that the institutional church “called” its members to settle and represented a potential haven for polygamists.
Maxwell’s discussion of the religious calling of Mormon settlers is limited to the wave of settlers that arrived in 1900-1901. He acknowledges that the Mormon settlers that came to the region before and after did so as volunteers. He shows that Church leaders were interested in the area and promoted its settlement by publishing favorable newspaper articles about the region and assigning apostle Abraham Owen Woodruff to encourage Mormons to settle there. Church leaders also discussed subsidizing settlers railroad travel to Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin.
Yet Maxwell acknowledges later in the book that the First Presidency agreed not to issue “calls from the pulpit” and that many Mormon settlers could have been volunteers based on the positive press that this new area of colonization had received in the press.[3] Thus even his limited sample size of settlers in this small region in Wyoming were more complex than he recognizes in his title. Maxwell does not provide compelling primary source evidence that any settlers in the Bighorn region received a “calling” like they would have in the mid-nineteenth century. While Maxwell recognizes the importance of religiously motivated settlement and the involvement of Church leaders, he neglects to define what “calling” means in this study.
One of Maxwell’s central focuses is what he calls the “disingenuous denials” of Church leaders of polygamy after 1890 Manifesto.[4] Maxwell produces four tables throughout the book that list details about post-Manifesto cohabitation and marriage but does not cite where he obtained this information. In doing so, Maxwell elides some of the central contested nature of primary sources that historians face when looking at this period in Mormon history. His inattention to detail means that he makes mistakes, such as assuming that Matthias Cowley was excommunicated.[5] Maxwell also uses an interview with the current mayor of Cowley, Wyoming to help prove a historical point about the motivation of early Mormon settlers to the region.[6] His first and last chapter, over twenty percent of the book, details the general history of Mormon polygamy. By summarizing the scholarship of past historians, he misses the opportunity to show the details of the lives of polygamous families in the Bighorn Basin region and add nuance to the broader history of Mormon polygamy. The history of Mormonism in Wyoming is still under-developed when compared to other regional histories such as Mexico, Arizona, or Canada. Wyoming is one of the only places in the United States where Mormons talked about feeling “safe” to practice polygamy, particularly after the Manifesto.[7] Indeed Maxwell argues that Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin “was intended to preserve, in frontier isolation, a place to continue plural marriage.”[8] Maxwell shows his readers that polygamous Church leaders encouraged polygamous settlers to colonize the Bighorn Basin but he fails to show why that region fostered (and to some extent still does) polygamy. By prioritizing the history of the institutional church, he misses the opportunity to tell us a unique regional history of the geographic, political, and social conditions that made Wyoming a safe place for polygamists. We still need a history of Mormons in Wyoming that focuses on the politics of Cheyenne rather than Salt Lake City.
[1] Leonard J. Arrington and Ronald W. Walker, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-Day Saints, 1830-1900, New Edition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1958).
[2] Richard Sherlock, “Mormon Migration and Settlement after 1875,” Journal of Mormon History 2 (1975): 53–68.
[3] John Gary Maxwell, The Last Called Mormon Colonization: Polygamy, Kinship, and Wealth in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2022), 96.
Brian Q. Cannon and Clyde A. Milner II, eds., Reconstruction and Mormon America (University of Oklahoma Press, 2019).
In his 2002 presidential address for the Western History Association, Elliot West argued that American historians needed to think more broadly and holistically when considering race in the nineteenth century. The conflict between North and South over slavery that led to the Civil War was not the only problem surrounding race that vexed D.C. politicians. He writes:
At the moment we took the most dramatic step in our history toward racial justice, freeing one nonwhite people from slavery, we were gathering up skulls of another, and doing it on the premise that this nation was composed of starkly defined races that learned men could tabulate into an obvious hierarchy from best to worst. (1)
Six years later, West explained this further by arguing for what he called a “Greater Reconstruction” that spanned from the annexation of Texas in 1845 to the United States defeat of the Nez Percein 1877. (2) During this period, the United States government tried to assert power over two separate and simultaneous processes: successionist claims of the South over the institution of slavery and westward expansion in spite of the host of sovereign people occupying those lands. Greater Reconstruction thus implies both the expansion of federal power and the ways it strove to incorporate and exclude racial and religious others from citizenship. West argues that Reconstruction is best understood under a broader frame that incorporates federal actions in the West as well as the South.
Mormon Reconstruction takes West’s claims and tests them against the historical experiences of Mormons in the West during the nineteenth century. In doing so, this slate of well-accomplished scholars – in both Mormon history and Western history – tests Reconstruction in the West more generally to see how the idea of Greater Reconstruction works on the Mormon case. The essays in the edited collection come from the contributions and discussion from a 2017 seminar held at the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University.
The most compelling chapters of the bookare the ones that explicitly define (and problematize) the relationship between Mormonism and Reconstruction. Patrick Mason, for example, questions whether the term Reconstruction can be applied to a religious culture still in construction. Rachel St John builds on Mason’s critique of Mormon (re)construction and argues that the term loses its meaning when used to expansively cover both the South and the West. Reconstruction in the South occurred in the aftermath of the Civil War and the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. It was a rebuilding effort for a nation fractured over slavery. In the West, however, the federal government was still working to establish its authority. The federal government was still building its presence in the West as it was Reconstructing its presence in the South.
Elliot West and Rachel St John offer divergent methods. West urges historians to consider Reconstruction as a national project that took different forms in the West and the South; only then, he says, can we understand the contradictory relationships the state created as its power grew over the course of the nineteenth century. St John, by contrast, wants historians to get specific about what Reconstruction is. Does Greater Reconstruction entail a particular kind of state building and population control? Have we stretched Reconstruction’s time period so far that its boundaries no longer have a distinct meaning? Answering these questions, St John argues, shows that the connections between the history of the West and the South become “both too historically specific and insufficiently broad to encompass the diverse and far-reaching processes of state formation, nation building, colonization, and subordination of racial and minority groups that shaped North America in the nineteenth century.” (188)
If specificity is the goal, applying Mormon history to the already nebulous term of Greater Reconstruction creates another problem. What period of nineteenth century Mormon history merits the term Reconstruction? Authors of the volume seem undecided on this question. Angela Pulley Hudson engages with the idea of Mormon expulsion in the 1830s and 40s as potentially part of the Reconstruction experience. The majority of the authors focus on the Utah War in the late 1850s as the main period of Mormon Reconstruction. Meanwhile, I was surprised to find little explicit discussion of the 1880s when the federal government cracked down on the enforcing laws criminalizing polygamy (a period that legal historian Sarah Barringer Gordon called “Second Reconstruction”). (3) This multiplicity of moments in Mormon history (spanning fifty years) represents a whole array of interactions with the federal government. During these fifty years both the federal government and Mormonism as a movement changed and grew immensely. What does it mean then to speak collectively about a Mormon Reconstruction that references all these different moments?
What this book does best is model how historians of different backgrounds can come together disagree on a concept in a productive way. The diversity of the chapters give us a sense of the spirited debate that Brian Q. Cannon and Clyde A. Milner II fostered during their symposium. The idea of Reconstruction and Mormonism’s place inside it is never taken for granted in this book but something that authors can discuss, expand upon, and question.
(2) Elliott West, The Last Indian War the Nez Perce Story, Pivotal Moments in American History (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
(3) Sarah Barringer Gordon, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002) 144. The lack of discussion of the 1880s is a lost opportunity for the authors of this book, for a few reasons. Firstly, Mormons explicitly saw the conflict between them and the federal government through the lens of Reconstruction politics. They referred to federal agents as carpetbaggers and created political ties with Southern politicians based on a shared sympathy from this experience. Additionally, the raids of the 1880s (and 1890s) represent an opportunity to broaden the Mormon element of Reconstruction beyond just Utah. The mass imprisonment of Mormon men occurred not just in Utah but also in Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, and Wyoming.
This is the third post in a roundtable on Quincy D. Newell’s Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon (Oxford University Press, 2019). Find the first and second here
Newell knows the value of a good story, but she is also wary of the simplistic historical messages that such stories send. Newell is critical of the scholars of religious history who tell only the liberatory story of Biddy Mason*, an African American woman who sued and won her freedom in a California court, and not that of Jane Manning James who repeatedly and unsuccessfully petitioned white male church leaders to receive her temple endowments. Newell critiques this absence in the historiographical record but she is also wary of the narratives that do get told about Jane. In the post-1978 era, after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints lifted the temple and priesthood ban on its black members, historians and members alike have searched for racial diversity in the Church’s beginnings. They have resurrected Jane’s story because it highlights this diversity and, more importantly, because it shows her close interactions with the movement’s founder, Joseph Smith. Newell is, however, also unsatisfied with these narratives. She writes:
as a scholar of American religious history, I often find these popular representations of Jane James deeply discomfiting. The stereotypes of blackness, the “traditional” constructions of femininity, and the selective presentations of fact that they employ make me squirm. They flatten Jane’s experience, tidying up the messiness of her life. (4)
Newell’s book therefore serves as a counter to this easy narrative about Jane. It is the anecdote to excluding Jane from the historical record and to over-simplifying Jane.
Last year, MHA’s Face-to-Face mentorship event was a smashing hit, so we are bringing it back to this year’s conference! The purpose of this ninety-minute event is to facilitate conversations between applicants and experienced scholars of Mormon history. We are seeking applications from those interested in participating, whether as mentors or as students, independent researchers, non-traditional students, and so forth. Applicants can propose to talk to people about their research, career trajectories, digital humanities, publishing, and public history, and more! This is an amazing opportunity to have a one-on-one conversation and to receive specific advice about your unique place in the field of Mormon history.
For those seeking mentoring, use your application to describe your current research and interests in Mormon history. Who would you love to talk to and why? Or, if you are new to the field (or not sure who would best align with your interests), tell us about the conversation you’d like to have. Are you trying to think through a research problem? Figuring out how to take the next step to publish your book? Wondering how independent historians make it work? Exploring what’s next for you in the field?
In your application:
• Tell us who you are and what brings you to Mormon history (student, independent researcher, non-traditional student etc)
• Tell us about your research. What is your research project and the questions that drive it? What kind of historical sources and scholarship inform it?
• What do you hope to get out of this conversation? What problems are you hoping to brainstorm or solve?
• What is your career trajectory, what challenges do you face?
• Identify people in the field of Mormon history who would be helpful mentors and briefly state why. (Hint: check out the preliminary conference program w to see who will be at the conference)
Email applications to mha.face2face [at] gmail.com by May 5, 2019. Applications will be reviewed by members of the MHA Board. If you are interested in participating in this event as a mentor, please send us an email to the same address.
For more information please contact Hannah Jung at junghannah [at] gmail.com.
From http://www.hilobrow.com/2015/07/11/laurel-thatcher-ulrich/
On April 12th and 13th (this coming weekend!) there is a festschrift/retirement event in celebration of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s illustrious career as a Pulitzer and Bancroft Prize winning historian. She joined the history department faculty at Harvard in 1995 and did incredible work to transform the university and mentor students there.
But, as many of us in the Mormon history world know, Laurel was not only prolific author and mentor in the Ivy League halls. She also helped to foster Mormon feminists and upcoming scholars in Mormon history. On April 13th, MHA’s executive director Barbara Jones Brown will be speaking about Laurel’s mentorship in the Mormon history community. She would love to have people send her their experiences with Laurel as a mentor in the Mormon history community. People can do so directly by emailing her (bjonesbrown [at} gmail [dot] com) or they can comment on this post with their experiences.
To get the ball rolling, I will start:
I first met Laurel at MHA in 2013. I had bought her book Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History and I decided to muster up the courage to ask her to sign it. She agreed and opened the book only to find that it was an already signed copy. Oops. I asked her to sign it again because I am an awkward human being.
In 2015, I moved to Boston and reintroduced myself (without mention of the first incident). I asked to audit her Harvard class on the family in American history and she graciously let me do so. This was the beginning of the mentorship relationship that I had with Laurel: she served as an anchor point for me in a vulnerable period for me as I was applying to PhD programs. I am certain that her letter of reference was one of the turning points that got me accepted into two history programs.
Yes, Laurel is a well-decorated historian and Harvard professor. But to me she modelled something beyond just that. During the MHA conference in 2013, I remember watching as she challenged one presenter during the Q&A about the specifics of the Nauvoo Relief Society minutes. Laurel always seemed to me to model a quiet confidence in her ideas and research. She was not afraid to challenge assumptions or prod someone to better articulate their ideas. Laurel managed to strike a fine balance between critical and supportive that we so often long for in mentors.
Consultation on Latter-day Saint Women in Comparative Perspective 2019–2021
This three-year consultation will bring together a cohort of approximately twelve scholars with interests in gaining an in-depth understanding of the history and contemporary status of Latter-day Saint women in comparative perspective. Participants will gain and share critical tools for research, share drafts of work, and propose further avenues for future analysis.
The deadline to apply for the Face-to-Face Mentorship event is coming up in less than a week! The deadline for applications is May 1st (email them to mha.face2face@gmail.com). The call for applications can be found here. In the meantime, here are some details about the event and clarifications about the application process.
Why is it called a “Face-to-Face” mentorship?
The event is designed to facilitate dialogue. Your conversation, however, could take a number of different forms: you could workshop a research or source problem, strategize your career trajectory, or investigate an alternative occupation. Do you want to talk to the main scholar in your field about your research idea? Do you want to understand the ins and outs of the Church History Library archival process? Do you want to strategize how to get an academic job? Do you want to explore alternative career possibilities in publishing, digital humanities, public history, or archival work? MHA attracts so many different types of scholars that we have the unique ability to facilitate many different kinds of conversations.
The face-to-face mentorship also means that the mentorship will happen in a concentrated amount of time. Any continued contact between you and your mentor outside the event will be up to the two of you.
Who can apply?
The call for applications says “students” and “young scholars.” I would like to think of the “young scholar” category, especially in this first year, as an expansive category. In other words, if you think you could benefit from an event like this (whether you are an undergraduate, independent historian, or anything between) make a case for yourself in your application!
Who will the mentors be?
It is highly encouraged that you identify potential mentors (up to five people) and explain why they might be helpful. If you don’t know who to ask for that is okay! But make sure you describe in as much detail as possible what type of mentor and conversation you are looking to have so that the committee will get a better idea of who to pair you with.
The mentors will be people who are already attending the conference. So when you are listing potential mentors with make sure you keep in mind who will be at the conference. A good place to start is by looking at the preliminary program to get a sense of who will be there (although there will be more people coming who are not involved with the program).
How long is the event?
It will go from 5:30-6:30 on Friday and will be directly followed by the awards ceremony. We will start with a round of 2 minute introductions and then the rest of the time will be yours to talk with your mentor.
Why do we need to apply to take part?
Some academic organizations pre-select mentors and have drop by sessions where people can engage in general conversations.The idea for this event, however, is to have specialized one-on-one conversations.The application process will help you, in part, to understand the type of dialogue that will be useful for you.
This sounds cool! I’m available to participate as a mentor.
Great! Shoot an email to mha.face2face@gmail.com and let us know what you can offer.
We are happy to relay the great news that Barbara Jones Brown (a past contributor to the Juvenile Instructor) has been hired as the new executive director for the Mormon History Association. We wish you all the best and look forward to the energy you will bring to the job!
Here is the message written by Mormon History Association President Patrick Mason:
It is with great pleasure that I announce that the MHA Board of Directors has hired Barbara Jones Brown as the association’s next Executive Director. Barbara is well-known to our association as a former member of the board and a longtime champion and supporter of MHA. Most recently she has worked as the Historical Director of Better Days 2020, a non-profit dedicated to elevating and commemorating the history of the suffrage and women’s rights movement in Utah. In addition to her nonprofit leadership experience, she also has extensive professional experience as an editor, researcher, and writer. An active historian with an M.A. in American History from the University of Utah, she was the content editor of Massacre at Mountain Meadows. She is co-author with Richard E. Turley Jr. on the book’s sequel, detailing the aftermath of the Mountain Meadows Massacre which, through a happy coincidence of timing, she will be speaking about as one of the plenary speakers in our upcoming annual conference.
The board of directors is enthusiastic about working with Barbara to fulfill our shared vision of an expanded MHA that serves an increasingly large and diverse set of members and constituencies. As the oldest and premier organization dedicated to the scholarly study of the Mormon past, MHA is poised to establish an even stronger profile in both the historical community and broader public. Barbara represents both a commitment to the legacy of MHA and a vision of how to take the association to the next level of excellence and impact.
Barbara’s term will begin on May 1, 2018, and she will work alongside our outgoing Executive Director Rob Racker through the June conference. There will be additional opportunities over the next two months to thank Rob for his service to MHA, but for now it suffices to say that we all owe him a debt of gratitude for his leadership the past three years. He helped navigate the association through some challenging times, and MHA’s current forecast for success rests in no small part on the foundation of financial sustainability that he has worked so hard to build.
I am grateful to the search committee and board of directors for their many hours of volunteer labor committed to conducting this successful search. I am truly excited to see what the future holds for this association we all love under the forward-facing leadership of Barbara Jones Brown. Thank you for your continued support of MHA, and I look forward to seeing you all in Boise!
The Mormon History Association will be hosting a mentorship event this year at our annual June conference and is seeking applications from students and early career scholars to participate. Successful applicants will be paired with an advanced scholar in Mormon history and discuss their research interests and career trajectory. We welcome applications not only from those seeking traditional academic appointments but those interested in digital humanities, publishing, and public history. This is an amazing opportunity to have a one-on-one conversation and to receive specific advice about your unique place in the field of Mormon history.
The goals of the event are:
to introduce current research and receive feedback
to support students with information and advice on their career goals
to foster talent early career scholars in the field of Mormon history
to help inform people about career options
Each applicant should be clear about their accomplishments thus far, their research interests, and what they could gain from this event. Applications should be up to 500-700 words and should include:
key research questions and methodology of the applicant’s research
scholarship that informs the applicant’s research
professional goals and trajectory
optional: identify up to five people in the field of Mormon history who the applicant feels would be helpful mentors and briefly state why *hint* check the MHA program to see who will be attending the conference
Up-to-date CV
Applications will be reviewed by members of the MHA Board.
Please direct questions and applications to Hannah Jung (or in the comment section below) , MHA Student Representative, at mha.face2face@gmail.com. Deadline for applications is May 1st.
The deadline for the Mormon History Association’s annual conference in Boise, ID is coming up in about two weeks on Wednesday November 15th. The deadline is significantly later than usual so I trust that most of you are prepared and have already submitted. If not, no worries! There is still time.
While Idaho provides a rich tableau for the study of Mormonism in the context of the state’s history as a multiracial, multi-ethic, and multireligious place, we also seek papers and panels that address the theme of “Homelands and Bordered Lands” from any vantage point in the Mormon past. In addition to papers and panels that address the conference theme, the program committee also welcomes proposals on any topic in Mormon history.
In other words, Idaho is a fascinating place to explore the evocative theme of “Homelands and Bordered Lands” BUT the conference organizers will also welcome proposals on any area in Mormon history.
At MHA, as with other conferences, proposals for panels (consisting of a chair, three presenters, and a commentator) are much likelier to be accepted than individual papers. The first reason for this is that the program committee is made up of volunteers and shuffling all the papers to fit into cohesive panels would takes a lot of work. Secondly, unified panels enable both the audience and commentator to draw thematic threads throughout the presentations. Individual papers will still be considered but organizing a panel will significantly improve your chances.
I also want to draw your attention to the following part of the call for papers: “We encourage people to organize roundtables, ‘cafés’ in which participants are arranged in small groups to discuss a topic, pre-circulated papers, and so forth.” In other words, a good panel proposal does not have to consist of a chair, three presenters, and a commentator. You could propose a roundtable on professional development issue or under-explored methodology that is relevant to Mormon History. For other ideas look here.
What does a compelling abstract look like? A few years ago JI contributor Ben wrote a post where he summarized what conference organizers look for in a proposal. Y’all should read the whole post, but let me liberally quote some of the most important points.
When providing a description of your proposed paper, be as specific as you can about your topic, your approach, and your potential findings. It is not reasonable for you to have your entire paper written at this time – heaven knows we all submit paper proposals as a way to jump-start future research – but it is pretty obvious when a proposal is written without much thought. As a program committee, we want to know that you have given the topic serious thought, that you are familiar with the sources you will consult, and that this is something that will turn out to be a fine finished product. Put simply, your paper proposal should not be something you write on a whim an hour before you submit it, perhaps with a bit of academic jargon thrown in, but should rather be a reflection of your engagement with, knowledge of, and excitement for your topic.
Both the paper and panel proposal should cover what makes your submission relevant. What will be new in these presentations? What stories are you telling that have previously been ignored? How are they filling a space in the field previously overlooked? We sometimes like to cover the same stories, arguments, and theories again and again, so it is crucial to show what is going to be novel and important in these new presentations.
In putting together your panels, try your best to be as diverse as possible. This diversity includes not only demographic background, though that is always important, but also institutional or occupational backgrounds. For example, a panel on a particular person or event could include papers from an academic professor, a public history employee, as well as an interested observer. And it is always to crucial to ask if your panel could benefit from a different gender or racial perspective, a sensitivity that MHA has recently tried to address more frequently.
In an effort to help you through the difficult task of organizing a panel we want you to use the comment section of this post to network and find fellow panelists. Please summarize your idea for your paper. If others have similar ideas they can get in touch via the JI moderators.
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “The burden of proof is on the claim of there BEING Nephites. From a scholarly point of view, the burden of proof is on the…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “But that's not what I was saying about the nature of evidence of an unknown civilization. I am talking about linguistics, not ruins. …”
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “Large civilizations leave behind evidence of their existence. For instance, I just read that scholars estimate the kingdom of Judah to have been around 110,000…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “I have always understood the key to issues with Nephite archeology to be language. Besides the fact that there is vastly more to Mesoamerican…”
Steven Borup on In Memoriam: James B.: “Bro Allen was the lead coordinator in 1980 for the BYU Washington, DC Seminar and added valuable insights into American history as we also toured…”
David G. on In Memoriam: James B.: “Jim was a legend who impacted so many through his scholarship and kind mentoring. He'll be missed.”
Recent Comments
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “The burden of proof is on the claim of there BEING Nephites. From a scholarly point of view, the burden of proof is on the…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “But that's not what I was saying about the nature of evidence of an unknown civilization. I am talking about linguistics, not ruins. …”
Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 5:: “Large civilizations leave behind evidence of their existence. For instance, I just read that scholars estimate the kingdom of Judah to have been around 110,000…”
Eric on Study and Faith, 5:: “I have always understood the key to issues with Nephite archeology to be language. Besides the fact that there is vastly more to Mesoamerican…”
Steven Borup on In Memoriam: James B.: “Bro Allen was the lead coordinator in 1980 for the BYU Washington, DC Seminar and added valuable insights into American history as we also toured…”
David G. on In Memoriam: James B.: “Jim was a legend who impacted so many through his scholarship and kind mentoring. He'll be missed.”