1970: Frank Moss – for shepherding through Congress (in his capacity as chairman of the Consumer Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee) the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act, which strengthened warning labels on cigarette packs and banned cigarette advertising on radio and television.

1971: The Osmond Brothers – for reaching #1 on the Billboard singles charts with One Bad Apple, while Donny reached #1 as a solo artist for Go Away Little Girl.

1972: Jack Anderson – for uncovering the ITT bribery scandal, thereby earning a place on Richard Nixon’s enemies list.

1973: Lester Bush – for publishing “Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview” in Dialogue.

1974: Douglas Stewart & Lex de Azevedo – for getting Saturday’s Warrior staged at BYU, thereby putting it on the Mormon radar screen.
Runner-up: Wayne Owens – for voting for Richard Nixon’s impeachment as a member of the House Judiciary Committee.

1975: Lowell Bennion – for his humanitarian efforts in Salt Lake County. (Another lifetime achievement award that fits here because of a lack of competition.)

1976: Leonard Arrington, James Allen & Glen Leonard – the former for presiding over the Camelot years at the Church Historian’s Office; the latter for publishing The Story of the Latter-day Saints under the auspices of that office, official (but unwarranted) displeasure with which eventually led to the demise of Camelot.

1977: Barbara B. Smith and Sonia Johnson – the former (who was the General Relief Society President) for instigating the Church’s opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, leading to this year’s IWY Conference fiasco; the latter for organizing support for the same, leading to her eventual excommunication.
Runner-up: Donna Hill – for publishing Joseph Smith: The First Mormon.

1978: Joseph Freeman – for being the first person of African heritage to be ordained to the priesthood after the revelation announced in Official Declaration #2.
Runner-up: Glen Larsen – for introducing “Kobol” to the world through Battlestar Gallactica.

1979: Jack Welch – for founding FARMS.
Runner-up: Sam Battistone – for moving the Jazz to Salt Lake.

1980: Paula Hawkins – for being the first Mormon woman and the first Mormon of either sex running in a state east of the Rockies (in her case, Florida) to be elected to the U.S. Senate.

1981: Rex E. Lee and Terrel Bell – the former for becoming Solicitor General of the United States, in which capacity he would argue 30 cases before the Supreme Court, winning 23 of them; the latter for becoming Secretary of Education and convincing Ronald Reagan not to dismantle the department despite his campaign promise.

1982: William deVries and Barney Clark – the former for performing (at the University of Utah) the first artificial heart implantation; the latter for receiving said heart.
Runner-up: Jake Garn – for shepherding through Congress (in his capacity as Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee) the deregulation of the savings & loan industry, thereby facilitating the crisis of 1989 and subsequent federal bailout.

1983: Dale Murphy – for winning his second of two National League MVP awards.

1984: LaVell Edwards and Peter Vidmar – the former for coaching BYU to a national championship in football; the latter for winning multiple medals (including an individual gold and a team gold) in gymnastics at the Summer Olympics.
Runners-up: Valeen Tippets Avery & Linda King Newell – for publishing Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith.

1985: Sharlene Wells – for serving honorably as Miss America immediately after the Vanessa Williams scandal.
Runners-up: Mark Hoffman – for achieving notoriety as a forger of historical documents and murderer.
Jake Garn – for being the first Mormon and the first member of Congress to fly in space, where he established a new standard for motion sickness (which is now measured in fractions of a Garn).

1986: Orson Scott Card – for winning the Hugo Award for Ender’s Game (which won the Nebula award the previous year) and the Nebula Award for Speaker for the Dead (which would win the Hugo award the following year).
Runner-up: Levi Peterson — for publishing The Backslider.

1987: Carol Lynn Pearson – for publishing Goodbye, I Love You. (This is more of a lifetime achievement thing, as this book alone probably doesn’t merit the award).

1988: James Fletcher — for getting the space shuttle program (which he got started during his first stint as NASA administrator) back on track during his second stint as NASA administrator after the Challenger disaster.
Runner-up: Evan Mecham – for being impeached as Governor of Arizona.

1989: Steven R. Covey – for publishing The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. (He would be a plausible winner in any year between 1989 and 1996, when he was named one of the 25 Most Influential People by Time magazine, but 1989 seemed to offer the least competition.)

I’m going to postpone posting a revised list until tomorrow, in hopes of getting some more suggestions.

I say leave in Carol Lynn Pearson. Her influence is unusual and fascinating. For a generation of Mormons (those purchasing LDS books in the 1970s) her work represents Mormon poetry, at a time when there was no LDS book market for literature, much less poetry. She is also a “popular” poet, the kind that academics recognize as fairly good, but not good enough for them to be very impressed with, but who was, nevertheless, quite popular (kind of like I understand that Pushkin is in Russia).

“Goodbye, I Love You” actually came out at an important time, too. The AIDS crisis had hit and I think most Mormons were still very confused about how to think about it and recognize that the people hit by the disease were real people, instead of “loathsome homosexuals” to be demonized.

I suppose someone else might be recognized as more important than Pearson, but I don’t know who. And I couldn’t judge whether they were more or less important than Pearson without knowing who.

In the meantime, Pearson is a very good choice, IMO.

I was pretty sure that THAT win plus BYU’s national championship would prove to be the opening phase of the millennium.

Sharlene was a really friendly and poised gal. I still think very highly of her.

Lester Bush – His article was the first solid piece of work to lay out the case that there was no initiating revelation behind the priesthood ban. How influential it was leading up to the revelation is debatable. Personally, I think it lowered the bar for how spectacular a revelation was required to overturn it. But the article’s influence didn’t end in 1978. Virtually every attempt to understand the ban has to build off of that paper. It (and some solicited responses to it) is the only pre-revelation writing on the subject that FAIR sees fit to link to from its pages.

Lowell Bennion – Bennion’s obscurity was his own choice and part of the point of his selection. If anybody goes out on the Web to find out who he was and why he deserved to be Mormon of the Year, his inclusion on this list will have served its purpose.

Leonard Arrington – If you like what the Church history department is doing now, thank Leonard Arrington, who established the model back in the 70s. A huge amount good history was written under his direction, even if most of it was published privately. The Allen and Leonard book was just the most accessible of those. At the very least, the work he did or inspired has slowed down the spread of bad history, and with any luck will bring good history to the masses.

Donna Hill – Her book was released by a national publisher and represented the first book about Joesph Smith written for a general audience that church members could comfortably point their friends to. How many people did it actually reach? Don’t know, but it filled a gaping hole for almost 30 years.

Jack Welch – His selection was more about FARMS than himself. FARMS has changed the whole discussion about the Book of Mormon. Like Arrington’s influence of the writing of history, Welch’s progeny has slowed down the spread of unwarranted assumptions about the Book of Mormon, and may one day bring the masses to a greater understanding. At least I can mention the Limited Geography hypothesis now without being labeled a heretic.

Avery & Newell – Less compelling than the others (from a guy’s perspective), but they did a great deal toward rehabilitating Emma Smith as a real person. A search on “Emma Smith” in the church magazines since 1971 turns up among the top 50 hits, 6 mentions before 1984 and 44 during or after 1984. Two of the pre-1984 mentions were by Avery & Newell themselves.

Carol Lynn Pearson – You may have a point on this one. I haven’t actually read any of her stuff myself, but she did (and maybe still does) have her fan base. I needed somebody for 1987 and I figured somebody would complain if I didn’t mention her, so I stuck her in. Alternatives for 1987 are welcome.

I really think Enders’ Game is much more significant than Levi Peterson’s book (which I have actually never heard of until now). Enders’ Game is widely loved and respected far beyond the Sci-Fi community; friends from high school (in the east, who never met another mormon besides me) who probably never read another sci fi book consider it to be among their favorite books; an english professor from my episcopalian liberal arts college (specializing in rennaisance literature, admittedly) considered it to be among the best novels written in the past thirty years. There are precious few Mormons who I expect my peers (well-educated, late twenties) to know of, realize that they are LDS, and respect their work who are not politicians (and, well, they may not even them…). Orson Scott Card is one of them.

As it is, the overall list is a bit too heavily concentrated on people who are, frankly, obscure mormon authors known to a very small part of the Wasatch front community, rather than the church as a whole, whose influence on the church, the community of mormons, and others’ perception thereof, seem rather small–including
Lester Bush, Lowell Bennion, Leonard Arrington, James Allen & Glen Leonard, Donna Hill, Jack Welch, Valeen Tippets Avery & Linda King Newell, and Carol Lynn Pearson.

1. Have Bell and Lee share the 1981 slot.
2. Have Edwards and Vidmar share the 1984 slot.
3. Add Levi Peterson as a runner-up in 1986. He was actually in earlier drafts of my list, but I removed him because I figured his audience was just too small. I’m still skeptical.
4. Put Fletcher in the 1988 slot with Mecham as a runner-up. Fletcher’s role in the post-Challenger era seemed to be more public (or at least that’s how I remember it), and his original contribution toward starting the shuttle program might be viewed now as a huge mistake had he not gotten the program back on its feet. And I don’t want to bump Anderson.