"America's choir" entertained America's citizen-soldiers in the Salt Lake Tabernacle Sept. 13.

The occasion was the 114th general conference of the National Guard Association of the United States.Guardsmen and their spouses from throughout the United States gathered for the Tabernacle Choir's regular network radio and television broadcast and for a 45-minute concert following the broadcast.

The 23rd Army Band, Utah National Guard, joined the choir for both the broadcast and the concert.

President Gordon B. Hinckley, first counselor in the First Presidency, welcomed the delegates and guests at the beginning of the concert.

"We're very proud of you in the work you do as a component - a very important component - of the armed forces of our nation," President Hinckley said.

He gave them a brief history of the location where they were meeting.

"This is Temple Square in Salt Lake City. When the Mormon pioneers arrived in 1847, four days after their arrival, this block was designated as the site on which to build the magnificent temple just to the east of us. It became Temple Square, and from this core the city was laid out."

President Hinckley told of construction of first a bowery covered with brush as a shelter for worship services, then a tiny adobe tabernacle, and finally the present-day tabernacle.

"This is a unique structure, a remarkable thing, 250 feet long, 150 feet wide," he said. "This tremendous roof rests on 44 sandstone buttresses. The roof is constructed of wood. They had no steel, no nails, no bolts. They developed a great truss work of timbers. They built those to create triangles of strength and joined them together with wooden dowels. Where the timber was split, they bound it with green rawhide."

He noted that rawhide shrinks when it dries, "as any good cavalryman would know." The audience chuckled at the military reference.

President Hinckley said the Tabernacle has been used continuously for 125 years for Church general conferences and many cultural events and community gatherings. He said it has been the home of the Tabernacle Choir ever since its construction, adding, "There was a choir before there was a building here."

He noted that the choir has been heard over the airwaves for more than 63 years and has traveled in many parts of the world, including eastern Europe and Russia last year.

"The day after Christmas, the choir is leaving for Israel to perform in that land," he said.

Selections performed by the choir and/or the band at the broadcast included "The Brotherhood of Man," "Holy, Holy, Holy," "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton" and "Arise O God and Shine." A medley titled "An American Tribute" featured such familiar tunes as "This Land Is Your Land," "Shenendoah," "Dixie" and "This Is My Country."

At the concert after the broadcast, the audience was stirred with renditions of "Stars and Stripes Forever" and the choir's signature song, "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

Assistant choir director Donald Ripplinger and band director Norman Wendel shared directing duties.

The band, which includes several Church members among its personnel, performed recently at October Hall in St. Petersburg, Russia, in a musical dialogue with the Leningrad Military District band.

The National Guard Association of the United States, comprised of some 58,000 members, is a non-governmental organization. It was formed in 1878 to provide united National Guard representation before Congress in obtaining better equipment, standardized training and a more combat-ready force. It has the same mission today.

U.S. President George Bush and U.S. presidential candidate Bill Clinton were among dignitaries who addressed the association conference later in the week.

Welcoming the delegates to Utah at a conference session in the Salt Palace following the Tabernacle concert, Gov. Norman H. Bangerter referred to the state's LDS heritage.

"We in Utah pride ourselves in a tradition of service in the militia that extends all the way back to the Nauvoo Legion which was formed in the 1840s to protect the early members of the Mormon Church in Illinois from persecution," he said.

"This organization evolved into the Mormon Battalion, which saw service in the Mexican War in 1846. When the first Utah territorial militia was organized in 1849, it took back the name of the Nauvoo Legion to protect the early settlers against the Indian tribes in the Utah territory."

When Utah became a state in 1896, the Nauvoo Legion became the Utah National Guard, the governor said.