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50 years ago
President David O. McKay spoke of gratitude while dedicating the new Monument Park Third and Fourth Ward meetinghouse in Salt Lake City on Thanksgiving Day, 1955, according to an article in the Nov. 26, 1955, Church News.
The article said President McKay "commended the efforts and labors and contributions of all who had assisted in the building of the new chapel, and declared that thousands whom those present would never see or hear would be influenced for good by this edifice and what had gone into it."
The Church president said it was fitting that the meetinghouse was being dedicated on Thanksgiving Day and said there are three fundamental elements of the true spirit of thanksgiving.
"In the first place," he said, "our thoughts should be turned to a beneficent Creator and an acknowledgment of His divine blessings.
"(Second), we should offer thanks and gratitude for that gift second only to life itself — our liberty — the free agency vouchsafed to us to speak, to think, to live and to work without dictation.
"And third, we should be grateful for the spirit of gratitude itself, which actuates the spirit and hearts of men everywhere, and which is a part of man's own divinity."
He added, "May we ever cherish that spirit of gratitude which Carlyle called the one God-like attribute of man!"
