A copy of the letter of authorization signed by James Anderson, also word that the ordinances were performed, was sent immediately to Miss Ettie Lee, who sent them immediately to me. There was no word of secrecy in Brother Anderson’s letter; in the one from Norton to Miss Lee was the statement that, “You may notify the family,” but the suggestion that this be not given “undue publicity.” Well, the Lee family is pretty large, and the word went like wildfire. Such rejoicing, such tears and prayers of thanksgiving you could hardly imagine. Miss Lee sent all the material with the word that this is just what we have all been waiting for, a fitting climax to the book.
Immediately there was a panic. Norton stated that if this were to appear in print “President McKay would rescind the action.” My answer to him was, “How crazy can you get. He cannot rescind the action!” I felt, like Lady Macbeth that “What’s done is done.” Well, there were long telephone calls from Zion to California to Phoenix, around and around, until at last Miss Lee in tears implored me not to put it in the book. Reluctantly I promised not to use it in the First Edition. I was called in to an interview with Apostle Stapley. He seemed not to hear what I said, but repeated over and over like a broken victrola record that word, “If this appears in print anywhere—in the book, on the jacket, in a review—President McKay will rescind the action.” I would only insist that I had made a promise to keep it out of the First Edition; more than that I would not promise.
Now they put on pressure from another source: I was invited to a meeting of the Lee family in Phoenix; they paid my fare down and back on a jet plane. The meeting was held at the home of Judge Jesse Udall, whose wife is a Lee. President were the official officers in the Lee organization along with six young Bishops. They each spoke, bore testimony that Pres. McKay was the only man on the earth authorized to speak in the name of God; that he could rescind the action; that if he did, Poor John D. Lee would have to wait out another hundred years. . . . (Juanita D. Brooks, Letter to Asael C. Lambert, December 11, 1961, in The Selected Letters of Juanita Brooks, ed. Craig S. Smith [Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2019], 231-32, emphasis in original)
