Welfare Square
Our "tourist" activity on this trip to Utah was Welfare Square, considered part of Temple Square although it's a few blocks away. We started at the Visitor's Center (which was not found intuitively - it's to the left of the Bishop's Storehouse entrance) and had a wonderful tour given by a couple of Japanese missionaries. That in itself was an amazing "coincidence" or beautiful opportunity. Wayne had lived in Japan as a child. Our grandsons had spent a week in Japan this month. We learned one of the sisters was great friends with the youngest daughter of some of our good friends in Tampa.
The tour started with a short film highlighting principles of the welfare program of the church. We saw the neatly organized shelves of the Bishop's Storehouse, then watched volunteers packaging freshly baked bread, before heading over to the canning building. Today they were processing spaghetti sauce.
The work you do in the cannery is the same as the work you do in the temple. The only difference is in the temple you do the work for the dead and in the cannery you do the work for the living. At the temple you make your covenants and at the cannery you keep them. All things were spiritual before they were temporal. Therefore, all things are spiritual.
Granary (see story below)
We walked through the Deseret Industries collection warehouse and store, then toured the Dairy where they were packaging dry milk powder, filling gallon milk jugs and cleaning up after making blocks of cheddar cheese.
We were greatly impressed with the cleanliness and order found in each of the buildings. The highlight of the trip for the kids was the chocolate milk at the end!
The big pour began on the morning of May 6, 1940. It continued for 8 1/2 days, 24 hours a day, utilizing three shifts of men and boys, as the rounded walls of the grain elevator rose higher and higher.
Originally, builders thought pouring concrete for the granary would take twice that time, but the "loyalty and enthusiasm" of the crew pushed it forward.
The grain elevator was the newest addition at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' then-new Welfare Square, and pride in the building was justified. It was the largest concrete project in the history of the state up to that time, and it involved impressive statistics: 15,000 bags of cement, $12,000 worth of reinforcing steel, 640 men and boys working, 70,151 hours of labor contributed.
The elevator could hold 318,000 bushels of wheat (more than 19 million pounds), or enough to fill 191 railroad cars, a train that would stretch a mile-and-a-half long. It was not the largest in the world, not the most magnificent ever built, but it was an impressive achievement for the fledgling welfare program.
Finished by August, the granary was dedicated by LDS Church President David O. McKay. At the ceremonies, his counselor, J. Reuben Clark, noted that "this building represents, above all else, the spirit of cooperation. I wish that all of us could really appreciate what united effort could mean if we should cooperate in all things as we have in this enterprise."
For more than 60 years, the granary has been one of the most striking landmarks on the city's west side. Visible from many parts of the valley, a somewhat rural icon in an increasingly urban setting, it has remained a symbol of sharing and sacrifice, a tangible reminder of the dignity of work and the nobility of service that are the heart and soul of the church's welfare program.
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