Church member, industrialist and philanthropist Jon M. Huntsman and his family have donated $100 million to fight one of humankind's most dreaded diseases, cancer. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Foundation has joined in that fight, it was announced Oct. 2, by contributing $1 million to the Huntsman Cancer Institute, which is to be built on the University of Utah campus. Funds donated by the Church Foundation to the institute do not come from tithing resources, but from tax-paying businesses the Church owns. Such foundation funds are used only for charitable purposes.

Other friends of the Huntsman family and corporations have contributed an additional $50 million, bringing to a total $151 million to be donated to this united fight against cancer.President Gordon B. Hinckley and his counselors in the First Presidency, President Thomas S. Monson and President James E. Faust, and their wives were among about 600 guests who attended a celebration to formally begin the institute. Several General Authorities, including members of the Quorum of the Twelve and Quorums of the Seventy, and their wives also attended the ceremony.

The highlight of the event, which was held under a large tent near University Hospital where the nine-story Huntsman Cancer Institute will be erected, was the official unveiling of architectural renderings and models of the facility.

The center's main focus will be on genetic research aimed at curing cancer. Reference was made at the Oct. 2 ceremony to the Church's vast collection of genealogical records in the Family History Library as a research resource. The Huntsman Cancer Institute will devote two floors of the facility to house efforts to fight cancer in children. Construction is expected to begin in early 1996, with possible completion in 1998.

President Hinckley was among several speakers who addressed the gathering. In brief remarks, President Hinckley alluded to many past charitable and philanthropic contributions Brother Huntsman and his wife, Karen, and their children have made to benefit people throughout the world. President Hinckley said, "Jon, you've done a lot of remarkable things in your life. You've accomplished tremendous things, but you will not do a thing of greater significance in terms of human happiness, release from pain, the avoidance of suffering, than that which will come of the very generous thing which you are now doing. It's our honor and our pleasure, as the Church and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Foundation, to contribute as an expression of our great appreciation for what you're doing. God bless you, and God bless this tremendous undertaking that it may result in the fulfillment of a dream which you have had and which is shared by so many others. We're grateful to you."

Brother Huntsman, a former regional representative and former stake president, said one of the most exciting phone calls of his life was the one he received from President Hinckley, who telephoned to say that the Church wanted to participate in building the Huntsman Cancer Institute.

Brother Huntsman shared some personal feelings about what he called "this horrible and dreaded disease of cancer."

"We must conquer it. We must not let it continue," he said. "One in three of us, at one time or another in our lives, will be afflicted with this horrible disease. It crosses all boundaries. It knows no face. It knows no ages. And it knows no races. It destroys families and it breaks hearts. It is no respecter of persons. Cancer must and can be stopped."

At times pausing to regain composure, Brother Huntsman spoke of people he has known who have had or are still suffering from the ravages of cancer. He made only a passing statement about his own bouts with cancer.

He spoke of a young girl, Becky, he met a few years ago who had leukemia. They became friends. Before she died three years later, he said, Becky "was my best pen pal during the 11 days I spent

in the hospitalT, undergoing my own surgery for cancer."

He next looked at an 8-year-old boy in the audience he identified only as Caleb, and called him his "special friend." Turning his gaze from Caleb, Brother Huntsman said, "I think of young children and how this horrible disease has affected their lives."

He spoke of friends and relatives who have died from cancer, or whose loved ones have died of cancer. Some were children, others were young mothers. "I think of my own mother, who, at a very young age, had breast cancer," he said. "I was holding her in my arms when she died." He mentioned a son-in-law, whose mother is undergoing treatment for cancer, and a daughter-in-law whose sister had cancer.

Brother Huntsman noted the presence of Elder Richard G. Scott of the Quorum of the Twelve, whose wife, Jeanene Watkins Scott, died of cancer May 15.

Brother Huntsman paid tribute to many people who have contributed to the Huntsman Cancer Institute. He said, "Very special and dear people have taken the time and the effort to come forward and to say, `We know this dream can come true, and we know it can happen.' "

Among others who spoke at the ceremony were Karen Huntsman; Jon M. Huntsman Jr.; Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah; University of Utah Pres. Arthur K. Smith; Scott S. Parker, president of Intermountain Health Care; David Salisbury, chairman of the IHC board; Robert Ingram of North Carolina, who represented the world's largest pharmaceutical company, Glaxo-Wellcome; James Packer, who represented his father, Kerry Packer, who is a close friend of Jon Huntsman and chairman of Consolidated Press Holdings Corp., of Sydney, Australia; and Dr. Ray White, director of the Huntsman Cancer Institute.

Dr. White, in closing comments at the ceremony, declared, "Cancer must become as it was with polio and smallpox - a disease of the past." He said that one of the features of the Huntsman Cancer Institute will be a "flame of hope" that will burn day and night. That flame, he noted, will remind people who look on it that there is hope, that cancer can be conquered.