Joseph Fielding Smith

Daniel Bay Gibbons is a former trial attorney and judge and is the author of several previous books. He has served as a full-time missionary, twice as a bishop, and as president of the Russia Novosibirsk Mission. Now in his ninety-fifth year, Francis M. Gibbons is the oldest living General Authority or former General Authority in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A graduate of Stanford University and former trial attorney, he served as secretary to the First Presidency for sixteen years in the administrations of Presidents Joseph Fielding Smith, Harold B. Lee, Spencer W. Kimball and Ezra Taft Benson. Brother Gibbons is also the best-selling and most prolific Mormon biographer of the past century and the author of more than twenty-five books, including full-length biographies of fifteen Church presidents. A Patriarch in the Church, he is also a former full-time missionary, bishop, stake president, and member of the First and Second Quorums of the Seventy.