Salt Lake's struggle to join world - on its own terms
Winter Games spotlight city's split identity
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When Gary and Karen Klc count up all they've done during the past week, they acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of their time is spent at home or at church functions. Yet both have jobs that help keep them connected with the non-Latter-day-Saint world.
Karen works at her old high school. When she went there, she knew only one person who wasn't white. Now, she sees a student body that is more than 40 percent racial minority - some are Mormon, many are not. Recently, one of her four blond-haired sons played on a local football team where "he was one of only four Caucasians, and the only towhead on the team," says Karen, "and he loved it."
For his part, Gary owns a smoke shop in Salt Lake - a place where few Mormons venture, and others feel safe in complaining about "what Mormons have done to them."
"They'll say, 'The Mormons down the hall tell me to quit smoking,' or 'They tell me I should try to live their way,'" he says.
Such comments are so common as to seep deep into public consciousness. Last month, The Salt Lake Tribune ran a special section chronicling the strained relations, headlined: "Unspoken Divide."
For several months, however, a new civic group called the Alliance for Unity has been trying to get people to do just that - speak. Member M. Russell Ballard, who is also one of the Latter-day Saints' governing Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, says relations are already better than they have been in the past. He notes that churches in Salt Lake are corresponding more frequently and fruitfully. But improving mutual understanding among citizens is key as well.
"If you have a problem, let's sit down and talk about it," he says. "We may agree to disagree,... but there ought to be more dialogue."
The Olympics will only heighten the need for such efforts, some say, as the outsiders become more aware of Salt Lake, and more likely to return. During the Games, for example, the church has said it is OK to tell curious visitors where they can buy a beer. "Something like the Olympics shows there's a pressure to change," says Professor McCormick.
Wendy Sorensen knows that. From her living room window, she can see the housing developments that have slowly crept up the Wasatch, filling with new Utahns. She's about as Old Utah as is possible. Her relatives have been in here ever since Young crested the Wasatch in 1847, and she can trace 28 ancestors to that original trek and subsequent wagon trains that brought settlers across the scrub and sand between Omaha, Neb., and Salt Lake on the Mormon Trail.
To her, the change is natural - part of the boom-and-bust cycles that her ancestors watched for generations. Salt Lake is not a Mormon fiefdom that should be reserved for the ancestors and spiritual kindred of those who plied the Mormon Trail. As the crossroads of the West, it has always been about "welcoming the world." She's even happy the Olympics are coming, despite early misgivings.
Sitting in her living room with her husband, Steve, surrounded by religious statuettes, family photos, and a painting of buggies on the Mormon Trail, she takes a longer-term view of Salt Lake's identity. It has always been bound to the values that those first pioneers brought with them, and that is something more than silicon or snowboards.
"Cultures come and go with different industries, and all have had some impact on our culture," agrees Steve. "You can change the limbs, but the trunk of the tree is the same."
