Thanks to Amy Tanner Thiriot for conducting this interview and giving us permission to publish it! Thanks, too, to Jenny Lund, for her time and answers!

Please share some general background about yourself. Where are you from? What’s your general background? How are you connected to the field of Mormon or Latter-day Saint history?

I was born and raised a non-Mormon in a very Mormon Salt Lake City. An interest in family history and the discovery that most of my ancestors had come to the West as Latter-day Saint converts eventually led me to studying the Church’s history and converting at the age of sixteen, much to the dismay of my family. My studies sparked a lifelong interest in the history of the Latter-day Saints.

Shortly after receiving a master’s degree in American history with a minor in museum studies from Brigham Young University, I was hired as an educator at the Church History Museum. Although I had originally intended to work a few years before pursuing a Ph.D. in history, life became complicated, and I ended up spending the rest of my career in public history. I retired in January 2023 after 36 years working for the Church History Department. The last sixteen years I led the department’s historic sites program.

How did you get started in history? Did you start out in another field? Was there a person or event that prompted your entry into the field? Were there books or articles that influenced your early or ongoing work?

I have always loved history and museums. When I was old enough to pick my own books at the library, I’d come home with a stack of history books and biographies. Instead of a lemonade stand to earn extra cash, I created a museum in my parents’ garage, charging twenty-five cents per tour. Each artifact or specimen was accessioned, catalogued, displayed, and interpreted. Although I quickly learned it was difficult to con the neighbors into paying for more than one tour! And I was just ten years old when I started documenting my own family’s history.

I began college majoring in history, but was diverted along the way, finally graduating with a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in Spanish. I took every folklore class the University of Utah offered—including a couple of graduate level courses, did a study abroad in Mexico, and worked seven summer seasons at This Is the Place Heritage Park as a historic interpreter.

During my undergraduate studies, I took history classes on the side for fun. During my next to last semester, I took a Utah history class from Dean May which I loved and excelled at—I’d been a member of the Utah Historical Society since I was thirteen! One of our last class assignments was to read several articles and then discuss them with Dr. May in person. When my meeting with Dr. May concluded, he asked what my major was. I replied that I was graduating in English. He replied, “Too bad, you’d make a fine historian.” As I left his office, I came to the painful realization that I had majored in the wrong subject. Fortunately, hours later when I told my husband that I wanted to pursue a master’s degree in history, he was enthusiastically supportive.

Tell us about some of your projects!

As an educator at the Church History Museum I worked on teams that created 32 museum exhibits and several major historic site development projects, including projects at the Grandin Building, the Smith Farm, the Mormon Trail Center, the Kanesville Tabernacle, Historic Kirtland, the Johnson Home, the Mormon Battalion Historic Site, the Gadfield Elm Chapel, and the Priesthood Restoration Site.

I also trained docents, designed interpretive programming, developed historic markers and monuments, and wrote curriculum and policy. In more recent years, my job was dominated by administrative tasks that are much less interesting, but nonetheless important.

Along the way, I’ve crawled under historic houses batting my way through spiderwebs (I HATE spiders!), climbed steeples while dodging birds and bats, hiked historic trails, been stalked by a bobcat, and had a neighboring landowner threaten to pull a gun on me and some colleagues. Historic sites work is never dull!

What would you consider your greatest contribution to the field so far?

Although the Church’s historic sites are some of the most sacred places that the Church stewards, for decades their administration was a sidelight to the Church’s more prominent missionary program. I tried to build the infrastructure that would improve missionary training and the visitor experience and provide comprehensive historic sites management. When leaders of the Missionary Department decided that they no longer wanted to manage operations at historic sites, the Church History Department was ready. A division of sixteen staff members with expertise in various disciplines were prepared to assume operations and with other partners began transforming the historic sites into places designed for Latter-day Saints as the primary audience.

Do you do other types of history besides Mormon or Latter-day Saint history?

Utah, the American West, Scandinavian-American studies, material culture, social history, mining, and the history of photography are all areas where I have interests and intend to do further work. My master’s thesis was a history of Girl Scouting in Utah and I’ll likely develop a couple of articles from that research. I’ve also done some work on Scandinavian Methodists in Utah and have amassed a file drawer of research on the photographer C. W. Carter that may someday end up in a biography.

What have been some of your best collaborations in your work? How do you form professional networks?

Public history is by its very nature collaborative. Every project is created by a team with each team member bringing specific expertise to the table. And team members with specialized skills are often brought in from outside the institution. A healthy team environment creates incredible energy. I’ve loved working with my colleagues at the Church in several departments, consultants hired for various projects, and community partners. The field is incredibly open to building partnerships and it is critical for practitioners to cultivate relationships and networks that will put them in contact with highly creative people at design firms, government agencies, consulting groups, and other institutions. I have particularly enjoyed collaborations with colleagues at the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management.

Have you attended history conferences over the years? Can you share a memory or two from a conference?

I’ve attended a lot of conferences over the years—everything from a huge conference like the American Alliance of Museums to the much smaller Western Museums Association, and of course, the Mormon History Association. The best experience I ever had was the three-week, in-person History Leadership Institute (formerly the Seminar for Historical Administration) sponsored by the American Association for State and Local History. The seminar which brought in experts in the field to lecture was excellent, but the best part was getting to know two dozen other history professionals from all kinds of institutions. I learned more from the other participants than I did from the guest speakers. The intensity of the seminar created a unique bond that has persisted for more than a decade. Colleagues who attended that seminar in 2013 are still in touch with one another, listening to each other’s challenges, and providing advice and perspective.

For someone like me, who styles herself a “reluctant administrator,” the support group was critical to helping me grapple with the challenges of the job. If I had to give one piece of advice to someone just entering the field of public history, it would be to find a similar group that can be relied on for sympathy, encouragement, a fresh perspective, and straight talk.

Is there part of your work that has been either particularly rewarding or challenging?

When people would ask me what I did for a living in recent years, I would often say that it was my job to get six different Church departments to agree! It was true. That is what I spent a good portion of my life doing. It was definitely a challenge. However, there is also genius in a system that brings so many different perspectives and agendas to the same table. You have to figure out how to forge consensus to move forward. The product is much stronger than it would have been without the varied perspectives and the vigorous discussion.

Is there a funny experience you’d like to share from your work?

During the final installation of the Mormon Trail Center in Omaha, Nebraska, I lived at the Notre Dame Sisters Catholic convent adjacent to the Winter Quarters Cemetery. The convent was the Motherhouse for the order and had previously been a high school. In 1997, the dormitory wing was unused, and the sisters occasionally rented rooms for $10 per night to select guests. The sisters were good friends with the missionaries serving at the Trail Center and since we were trying to save money, it was arranged that Marj Conder, and I could stay there during the project. I was there alone for the first two weeks of the final installation, the only person in the entire wing except for a man and his wife who spent one night on another floor prior to his sister’s funeral. I hardly ever saw another soul.

As the Motherhouse for the order, the sisters operated a nursing home on one floor of another wing for sisters who were elderly and ill. We usually worked late nights at the Trail Center, and I would return to the convent after midnight after the main doors had been locked for the evening. I would need to go to the nursing home wing and ring the bell and the night nurse would come and let me in. I then walked through the dark halls of the nursing wing into the chapel and then into the dormitory wing on the other side of the building, my way lit only by the exit signs above the doors. When an elderly sister died, they laid her body on a bier in the center aisle of the chapel. So, each night, I would have to sidle past her dead body in the dark as I made my way back to my room. I am lucky I survived that experience!

Are you working on a project currently?

Although retired, I have several projects currently in-flight in what I refer to as career 2.0. I’m doing a little museum consulting work, serving on the board of trustees of Preservation Utah, and keeping busy researching and writing. My friend Beth Anderson and I have just finished reviewing proofs for our upcoming book We All Must Be Crasy: The Letters of Sarah Peterson Lund to Her Missionary Husband, 1872–1894 that will be published by the University of Utah Press in July.

Please share with us a life lesson you learned from working in the field.

Two life lessons spring to mind as worth sharing:

1) Always play a long game: Change at large institutions usually comes slowly and incrementally (and often painfully). Focusing on the vision of what is possible allows you to consistently make the case for change and help others buy into your vision for the future. 2) Always volunteer to draft policy and other noxious documents. No one wants to write policy documents or other difficult and/or boring documents. However, the individual who creates the draft, thinks most deeply on the subject, does the most research, and has the most influence. If you want to shape the institution or program, volunteer to draft the essential documents. No one will arm-wrestle you for the privilege!